Nobody knew anything; therefore, everybody did. Pichushkin would wait for hours until his victims were all alone, Fyedo-sova says. She begins talking to herself. They were dank, charmless, and overflowing with tenants, but they were the first single-family homes most of these people had ever lived in. There is a story (unverified) that in late 2001 or early 2002, Pichushkin wandered into a police station near the park and declared for all to hear that he killed peoplenot once or sometimes but regularly. It is unknown whether the dog is actually buried there, however. And then Pichushkin began to tell us that hed killed more than sixty people. Pichushkin told him about the park, the sewage wellhis entire m.o.and Suprunenko began to understand the fates of all those people who had disappeared. Shes a small woman, about five four, with dyed reddish-purplish hair, a weak voice, and a sickliness that seems ironed into her face. 19 Natalya is obsessed with. Thats because the people on Kherson-skaya, like so many Russian peasants in their crumbling urban hives, understand that in their country only certain people matter, and that they are not among them. He would kill his victims by repeated blows to the head with a hammer, and would then push a vodka bottle into the gaping wound in their skulls. Pichushkin turned and exited the parkbut didnt notice that Lobovs jacket had caught on a piece of metal inside the well. Alexander Pichushkin, an unassuming supermarket worker, would offer passersby in a southern Moscow park a shot of vodka or beer. According to him, his goal was to kill 64 people the same as the number of squares on a chessboard. Average IQ of serial killers 33.5 A huge difference! According to Biography, the dates on the board corresponded to the dates on which Pichushkin had murdered his victims. In reality, Alexander Pichushkin was working days at a grocery store, making small talk with the hundreds of people who passed through his register every day. Or in some cases, family members waited the requisite three days and then filed a missing-person report with the police, but the police, who are known for drinking and taking bribes, rarely did anything. Because that is what I do, Pichushkin supposedly said. Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin, nicknamed "The Chessboard Killer," was caught in Moscow and convicted in 2007 of killing 48 people. (During the trial hell have this to say about intimacy: The closer a person is to you and the better you know them, the more pleasurable it is to kill them.) They can hear trails of moving laughter somewhere far away, other people carousing, but here, in this particular swath of woods, there are only trees and shadows. This abuse served to intensify Pichushkin's anger. Alexander Pichushkin was born on 9th April 1974 in Moscow. Zakharchenko was the first person who hadnt just gone missing but was discovered, tagged, and determined beyond any doubt to have been murdered. He no longer pushed his victims down the well. After a five-week trial, a jury found Pichushkin guilty last Wednesday on all counts. He also used to face bullying during his school days, which only worsened his mental state. Alexander Pichushkin killed dozens of people in Russia between 1992 and 2006, . The khrushchovki are separated by single-lane roads and narrow strips of park. After his arrest, Pichushkin happily confessed to his crimes, handing his diary over to police, and showing them his most prized possession, a chessboard on which he had kept track of his murder victims. The Maniac is in a cell on a closed-caption screen, laughing, posing unwittingly in his televised cage. His co-workers always referred to him as quiet, perhaps a little strange, but certainly not dangerous. A week after his conviction, Pichushkins attorneys filed an appeal, requesting a more lenient sentence. [10], Moskalyova's body was discovered in Bitsa Park on 14 June 2006, complete with Pichushkin's trademark injuries. Shortly after the trial, Pichushkin was sentenced to life in prison. Russian serial killer, Alexander Pichushkin, speaks from prison. [14] He was filmed reenacting his crimes in great detail, a process which is a regular part of Russian criminal investigation. I know now that I raised my son very poorly, she says. He mostly targeted homeless elderly men, luring them with offers of free vodka. It's now known that Pichushkin committed his first murder around 1992 and that the death was ruled a suicide at the time. It was warm outside, and there were too many people around. In the beginning, we only had thirteen bodies. Could it be the Chechens? However, when they had arrived at the meeting point, Odtchuk changed his mind and told Pichushkin that he no longer wanted to take action. He offered her a cigarette. By then the count was approaching thirty. Sometimes, when the Maniac and his prey reached the well, he would propose a toast to his dead dog. She throws her arms around a tree trunk and falls to the ground sobbing, squeezing her eyes shut tight. Only two, or possibly three, of his victims were women. [8], When Odtchuk's body was discovered the following day, Moscow police opened an investigation. Soon he will be moved from his jail in Moscow (where his mother has been able to visit twice a month, bearing gifts of cigarettes, cheese, and salo, or salted lard) to a maximum-security prison, probably in the north or maybe in the Ural Mountains, where he will spend the first fifteen years of his sentence in solitary confinement. All maniacs want to talk., They would sit in one of the holding cells, Suprunenko on one side, Pichushkin on the other, under fluorescent lights, smoking. Pichushkin never completed his chessboard murders, but he did confess to killing 61 people. She covers her face. It has been suggested that Pichushkin, furious that Olga rejected him, went to Sergei's apartment and threw him out a window, causing him to fall several meters to his death; however, this has not been confirmed, and a police investigation ruled Sergei's death a suicide.[9]. By the early 2000s, though, Pichushkin would kill again, luring unsuspecting victims to a park near his house and killing them with a blunt object before throwing them in a sewer pit. [15], Pichushkin claimed that deciding whether his victims should live or die made him feel like God. Everyone does. Pichushkin, after all, was supposed to be taking a stroll with his mother. But now he doesnt. And still they did nothing. Many bodies never turned up at all. Unlike Andrei Chikatilo, a sexually dysfunctional sexual predator, or Ted Bundy, who preferred college girls, Pichushkin didnt want sex. When he talks, he has an almost preternatural concentration. He appeared to be in competition with one of Russia's most well-known serial killers, Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted of 52 murders in 1992. According toBiography, the dates on the board corresponded to the dates on which Pichushkin had murdered his victims. A majority of Pichushkins victims were elderly homeless people, whom he found in Bitsevsky Park in Moscow, and lured in with the promise of free vodka, as reported by GQ. As they neared the park, Pichushkin tried to cheer him up. Until the night he was arrested, he lived most of his life at 2 Khersonskaya, where he slept on a couch in the first bedroom, which doubled as the living room. They were kind to me, she says. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. In court he will declare: I always say exactly what I think. Bums. Could it have been his fathers abandonment of the family? He grew up on 2 Khersonskaya St. in Moscow, six minutes away from the north end of Bitsa Park where he would claim most of his victims. Throughout the trial, he insisted that hed actually taken sixty-three lives, but authorities could muster evidence to prosecute him for only four dozen. Pichushkina says she opened the door very slowly, and when she did, a column of men in uniforms pushed through the narrow corridor crammed with jackets and old bos and into the little bedroom/living room where Alexander Pichushkin was about to turn in for the night. [12] Ten of his victims lived in the same four-building complex where he livedfour from 2 Khersonskaya; two from 4 Khersonskaya, next door; three from 6; and one from 8. He was also found guilty on three counts of attempted murder. Ted Bundy committed about thirty homicides; Jeffrey Dahmer, seventeen; Ken Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler, twelve. For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you. He lived there with his mother Natalia Elmouradovna, his younger half-sister, her husband, and their son in a two-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor. As they were about to enter the woods, the Maniac asked the man what he would wish for if he were granted one wish. In the winter, its popular with cross-country skiers. But it was Pichushkin who delivered Pichushkin to the police. The man had been smoking and drinking on a bench, legs crossed, next to a bus stop around the corner from Pichushkins apartment. Now she seems certain that this man with sturdy hands and thick wrists, this co-worker, is the Maniac. That chessboard belonged to Alexander Pichushkin, otherwise known as "The Chessboard Killer," one of the most notorious serial killers in Russian history. They can no longer see the road. She stresses how ordinary he was. [1], Alexander Pichushkin was born on 9 April 1974 in Mytishchi, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, and grew up on 2 Khersonskaya Street in Moscow proper. Once Odtchuk was dead, Pichushkin deposited his body near a sewer entrance at Bitsa Park, then returned to his mother's apartment a short distance away. he is a sallow-faced man with a stout physique and a deep, low voice. In court he wont be able to recall what she was saying, or trying to say, but hell remember the penultimate moment with absolute clarity. . [11], Upon conviction, Judge Vladimir Usov sentenced Pichushkin to life imprisonment, with the first fifteen years to be spent in solitary confinement. Alexander Pichushkin killed his first victim in 1992 but killed only sporadically until 2001, when he began regularly targeting victims. He didnt have strong opinions. Witness testimony provided to the police stated that Odtchuk was last seen with Pichushkin, walking in the direction of the park. She never met the bride-to-be. Source: allthatintresting During interrogation, the number of victims Pichushkin acknowledged continued to change. What is erotic is killing and all its associations, the mental links and symbols of murder. He killed prolifically over the next decade and also began competing with another serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo. Psychiatrists propose Pichushkin developed a propensity toward violence after suffering a sharp personality change due to his childhood injury. The babushkas look uneasy in this place, a majestic building made of steel, glass, and marble. I thought it was strange that he only wanted to kill people he knew, she says, sipping instant coffee. Pichushkin was active in Moscow's Bitsa Park, where a number of the victims' bodies were found. He endured a tough childhood and even though Pichushkin was once a sociable child, he changed after he suffered massive brain damage at an early age. Then he encountered Mikhail Lobov, age 13. (Her husband, the Maniacs father, moved out before Alexander turned 1.) He is, in fact, a frighteningly ordinary man: rough, crude, a heavy drinker, a smoker, with no expectation that his life will ever get any better or easier. Newspapers nicknamed Pichushkin the "Bittsevsky Maniac" and "The Bittsa Beast.". He endured a tough childhood and even though Pichushkin was once a sociable child, he changed after he suffered massive brain damage at an early age. He started in the early 90s and often targeted elderly or transient men, some of which he had formerly played chess with, in the nearby park. Its worth pointing out that the Maniac, so proud of never lying, lied about killing Marina Moskalyeva. One night he was watching TV with his mother and sister, and there was a report about the Bitsevsky Park killer. Despite the date references, the police were only able to charge Pichushkin with 51 counts of murder and attempted murder (three of his victims survived). Odichuk had tagged along, half in jest, probably not quite sure what to expect. However, by 1992, this practice had become insufficient to satisfy his urges. At the end of their game, Pichushkin invited Pronin to take a walk with him, claiming it was the anniversary of his dog's death and that he wanted to visit the grave in Bitsa Park. A man who once boasted he wanted to kill one victim for each of the 64 squares on a chessboard was found guilty of 48 murders Wednesday, a bloody spree that terrorized the Russian capital.. He had gone on a walk with Marina Moskalyeva, another co-worker. He wants to be understood, and he likes to say he never lies. (He found a job in Khimky.) 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