Anatoly Yemelianovich Slivko (Russian: Анатолий Емельянович Сливко; 28 December 1938 – 16 September 1989) was a Soviet serial killer and necrophile who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated seven boys in and around Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, between 1964 and 1985. He is also known to have sexually assaulted at least 36 other victims.
Slivko's murder victims were aged between 11 and 15. All were deceived into participating in home movies ostensibly reenacting the scene of a partisan soldier executed by Nazi soldiers in which the boy would be hanged. Upon rendering his victim unconscious, Slivko would sexually assault, then murder and dismember his victim before setting the body alight. The entire routine would invariably be filmed, photographed, and documented in diaries to fuel Slivko's pyrophilia and erotic fantasies.
The routine of hanging, mutilation and burning enacted by Slivko was an attempt to recreate a traffic accident involving the violent death of a teenage boy he had witnessed in 1961 which had sexually aroused him and awakened his paraphilias.
Sentenced to death in 1986, Slivko was executed by shooting on 16 September 1989.
Early life Childhood Anatoly Yemelianovich Slivko was born on 28 December 1938 in the town of Izerbash, Dagestan ASSR, Russian SFSR. He was the oldest of two children born to impoverished parents.
At the time of Slivko's birth, Ukraine was in the grip of a famine caused by Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture, from which Soviet Dagestan was not immune. The marriage between Slivko's parents was fraught: both parents frequently argued. Furthermore, his father was an alcoholic. Slivko was an intelligent, but sickly child who suffered from insomnia and several childhood illnesses. He was also a classic loner, and later recalled his childhood as blighted by instability, hunger, war, and poverty.
When the Soviet Union entered the Second World War, Slivko's father was conscripted into the Red Army. Slivko himself witnessed many atrocities committed by the Nazis following their invasion of the Soviet Union, including their invasion of his own home in 1943, although one of his most graphic wartime memories was of seeking shelter with four other children in a cemetery to escape German bombing raids, only to be pushed aside by these children, who were repulsed by his emaciated appearance. According to Slivko, as he crouched into a ball, he observed the mutilated remains of a woman and a horse strewn across a nearby street.
Adolescence Slivko performed poorly academically. Although intelligent, his lack of commitment to his studies and propensity to daydream in class resulted in his achieving average grades. When he reached puberty, Slivko discovered he was homosexual; he also discovered he suffered from erectile dysfunction. Both discoveries deeply shamed Slivko, who kept his sexuality and sexual dysfunction a secret from his family and few close friends.
Military service In an effort to escape his humble origins, Slivko applied for a scholarship at Moscow State University shortly after his graduation from school in 1956, although he failed the entrance exam. Shortly thereafter, he began his compulsory military service and was deployed in the Russian Far East. He was frequently subjected to the mockery and ridicule of his comrades—many of whom derided his timid and submissive personality. His superiors concluded Slivko was "incompatible" with military life, and he was discharged from the Soviet Army—officially due to health issues—in 1960, prior to the completion of his service.
Relocation to Stavropol In 1961, Slivko relocated from Izerbash to Stavropol Krai, where he found employment as a telephone engineer. His younger sister later relocated to the same city, obtaining employment in a local factory. In late 1962, Slivko's sister—having become concerned as to her brother's introverted lifestyle and lack of interaction with women—introduced him to a young colleague of hers named Lyudmila. The two began dating and married in a modest ceremony the following summer. Shortly after their wedding, the couple relocated to the city of Nevinnomyssk, where they soon established reputations as upstanding members of the community.
According to Slivko, although he cared for his wife, his sexuality obscured any physical attraction to her and his erectile dysfunction limited their intercourse to brief episodes of what he termed "quick, humiliating" coupling. On one occasion, he did seek medical help to overcome his inability to sustain an erection in the presence of a female, although the sight of a young nurse discreetly laughing at his predicament meant he never again sought any form of professional advice.
Slivko later admitted to investigators he and Lyudmila had engaged in intercourse no more than ten times throughout their seventeen-year relationship, and never after the birth of their second child.
Erotic fantasies In 1961, Slivko witnessed a traffic accident in which a drunken motorcyclist swerved onto a pavement and into a group of pedestrians, fatally injuring a boy in his early teens who was wearing a Young Pioneers uniform. For reasons Slivko would later insist he never could explain, this scene had sexually excited him, triggering a powerful orgasm. He later recalled the accident vividly: "The boy had experienced convulsions in his death throes as the smell of gasoline and fire permeated the air ... That boy looked so helpless, especially in his uniform. It reminded me of how I felt inside myself after a childhood of pain and suffering. Each time he cried out in agony, I became more excited. [By the time of the boy's death], I became oblivious to everyone else apart from that boy."
Having achieved orgasm, Slivko walked approximately twenty yards towards a nearby bus shelter where he sat and continued to stare at the deceased teenager, who remained pinioned beneath the motorcycle as emergency services arrived at the scene. According to Slivko, he experienced arousal, elation and a sense of empowerment as he sat and contemplated the suffering the teenager had endured before his death.
Slivko would later describe his witnessing the traffic accident as one of the most pivotal moments in his life. Prior to witnessing the accident, he had repressed his sexuality; after witnessing the accident, he developed an overwhelming desire to engage in physical sexual relations with young males. Furthermore, the sight of blood on the teenager's shoes further compounded the shoe fetish he had already developed, and he began incorporating boys' footwear into his masturbatory fantasies.
Youth club Within months of witnessing this traffic accident, Slivko established a youth club in Nevinnomyssk. Ostensibly, the club was established to encourage local boys to participate in Young Pioneer activities, although Slivko also soon began using the club as a means of befriending boys and developing methods to gain their trust.
This first club was destroyed in an act of arson approximately one year after its establishment. Allegedly, the perpetrator was one of the boys who attended the club and whom Slivko had either mistreated or molested. No criminal charges were filed. Shortly thereafter, Slivko established a new club, which he named Chergid. This youth club was based three miles from his home.
Slivko's youth club activities aroused no suspicion; the parents of boys who attended the club regularly bestowed praise upon him for devoting attention to their children and steering them away from trouble. Slivko regularly took his young charges on hiking and hill climbing expeditions, with the expeditions frequently lasting for days at a time. Articles relating to the club's activities frequently appeared in local newspapers and radio broadcasts. Slivko also granted several interviews with local television outlets and even received commendation from local Communist Party officials for his ongoing efforts to educate, entertain and morally nurture Nevinnomyssk's youth. In 1977, he was elected Deputy of the City Council and awarded the title of Honoured Teacher of the Soviet Union.
Hanging experiments By June 1963, Slivko had devised a routine whereby he could physically relive the erotic fantasies sparked by the 1961 traffic accident: once or twice a year, he would form a close friendship with a boy at the youth club typically aged between 11 and 15, but never older than 17. The boy would be short for his age and would be wearing a Young Pioneers uniform just like the boy Slivko had seen die in the traffic accident. Slivko would gain the boy's confidence and tell him of an experiment he knew which involved a controlled hanging to stretch the spine, and that he would be required to reenact the scene of a partisan executed by Nazi soldiers for his youth club as Slivko filmed the hanging, after which, the boy was assured, Slivko would revive him from his state of unconsciousness.
Prior to each boy undertaking this "experiment", Slivko would harmlessly rehearse the hanging scene with his intended victim in order to gain his confidence; he would then purchase a new uniform for the victim to wear and shine his shoes before enacting the hanging. In addition, to prevent any vomiting, the victim was required not to eat for several hours before the experiment. Once the boy was anaesthetized via inhaling ether, had placed the noose around his own neck and was unconscious, Slivko would strip him naked, caress and fondle him, arrange the body in suggestive positions, and repeatedly masturbate – frequently onto the boy's shoes. This entire process would invariably be filmed by Slivko on one of his 16mm cameras and retained to fuel his erotic fantasies. To allay any parental concern as to their sons' participation in these home movies, their parents were informed Slivko – known in the community to have created several amateur documentaries with his personal camera – was to film these videos on the stage at his club.
Although many of the boys Slivko initially persuaded to participate in these home movies were restrained and hanged inside or within the vicinity of Chergid, by the mid-1960s, he had begun to persuade his victims to participate in his home movies in increasingly rural locations—often without their parents' knowledge.
Murders Over the course of 22 years, Slivko persuaded forty-three boys to take part in this contrived experiment. In thirty-six cases, following his established ritual of photography, filming and repeated masturbation, Slivko revived these boys. Cautioned by Slivko into silence, these individuals resumed their lives unaware of what had happened to them whilst they had been unconscious. However, in seven cases, Slivko's behaviour became violent: once these victims were unconscious, he extensively dismembered their bodies, poured gasoline on their limbs and torso, and set the remains on fire to remind himself of the traffic accident which had sparked his arousal. Slivko typically retained the victim's shoes as a memento, as well as the photographs and films which he developed in a home laboratory. In addition, Slivko meticulously recorded details of each hanging—fatal or otherwise—in his diaries. The shoes, pictures and films served as stimuli for Slivko's masturbatory fantasies for months or years until he needed fresher stimuli and killed again.