Picture: NTV One Siberian woman, who works in a children's shop, has won a special place in his heart, and she even calls herself Natalya Pichushkin, as if they are already married. Some faux camaraderieYou respect me, and I respect you, so lets drink!and then a surprise blow to the head, followed by a shove down the well. Pichushkin will never go free. 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. There was fear, which led to speculation. He has a job. Pichushkin is incarcerated in the Arctic penal colony "Polar Owl" and spends his days in solitary confinement. Newspapers nicknamed Pichushkin the "Bittsevsky Maniac" and "The Bittsa Beast.". In the beginning, we only had thirteen bodies. Shortly after the trial, Pichushkin was sentenced to life in prison. On October 24, 2007, Alexander Pichushkin was found guilty of murdering forty-eight people. The way the Maniac talked about killinghe would tell the court that ones first murder is like first lovemade it sound like a biological imperative. Viricheva said she didnt have any papers. What is love? The khrushchovki are separated by single-lane roads and narrow strips of park. The park is enormous, encompassing more than 2,700 acres. He doesnt know who he is., She takes out Sashas collection of commemorative pins, which look like the kind of souvenirs any boy growing up in the Soviet Union might collect. Contents 1 Background 2 Killings, Capture, and Incarceration 3 Modus Operandi Pichushkin, 32, was eager to explain. This was his routine. The maniac preferred men. All the victims family members, the prosecutors, almost everyone with any connection to the case, say Suprunenko and his team did a superb job. Only two, or possibly three, of his victims were women. Odichuk had tagged along, half in jest, probably not quite sure what to expect. He set a goal of killing at least 64 people, which corresponded to the squares on a chessboard, in order to eventually surpass his idol, Andrei Chikatilo. He suggested a walk in the park. When it became clear that Odiychuk wasn't as committed to the act, Pichushkin killed him instead of a random victim. Then he said he was busy and hung up. He sees something flash across her face, like many disparate pieces of information coalescing into an anticipation ofwhat? [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 mostly targeted homeless elderly men, luring them with offers of free vodka. Peter Savodnik is a writer based in New York. Andrei Suprunenko, the detective who led the Pichushkin investigation for the prosecutor generals Department of Homicide and Armed Robbery in Moscow, also rules out the possibility that the Maniac is homosexual. Pichushkin arranged to meet his classmate, Mikhail Odtchuk, in Bitsa Park to jointly hatch a plan to kill sixty-four people. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was me who opened the door for them to another world. He was sentenced to life in prison. Welcome, or welcome back, to Twisted Minds, my name is James and today we're going to be deep diving into the case of Alexander Pichushkin, a Russian-born se. And then, as the disappearances mounted, the families found one another. In the months following his July 2006 arrest, Alexander Yurievich Pichushkin, now 35, achieved his only goal: Around the world, he was hailed as a monster. After the loss of his grandfather, with whom he shared a close bond, Pichushkin became depressed. Pichushkin's confession was aired on Russian television. Then, on February 23, 2002, Pichushkin tried to kill Maria Viricheva, a pregnant woman. 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. It's now known that Pichushkin committed his first murder around 1992 and that the death was ruled a suicide at the time. Alexander PIchushkin is led into trial by a court guard. There was a process. But when he reached him, the Maniac said, I havent seen her in two months, which was a strange thing to say about a woman he worked with every day. Pichushkin claims he killed up to 63 people, although that story varies sometimes he credits himself with 61 victims, and sometimes he says he killed more, per Biography. The Maniac was worried that this foul-smelling, inebriated little man would change his mind and turn around, depriving Pichushkin of what he believed was his. He then admitted to dozens of murders, telling authorities he attacked his victims and left their bodies in Moscow's Bitsevski (Bitsa) Park and sewer drains. Pichushkin, now 47, has always claimed he killed another 11 people, a figure accepted by most experts. Even Chessboard Killer is misleading, Suprunenko believes, because it suggests Pichushkin would have stopped killing when he reached sixty-four, the number of squares on a chessboard, as if his mission was to fill up a chessboard of death, as if he thought of murder as a game. But the sex act itself is not erotic for serial killers, Bukhanovsky says. Russian serial killer Alexander Pichushkin, nicknamed "The Chessboard Killer," was caught in Moscow and convicted in 2007 of killing 48 people. Could it be a psychiatric patient whod escaped from the institution in the park? They are talking about something important. The public envisioned a monster, an animal of a man, potentially more than one man, hiding around every corner, living in shadows, preying on the weak. Her body was found with a metro ticket in its possession, which led authorities to review surveillance tapes from the Moscow metro system. The worst, says Natasha Fyedosova, was the corpse they found by the side of a stream. During his confession, which was aired on television, he claimed that his need to kill was similar to other peoples need for food. But now he doesnt. Pichushkin turned on his former classmate and beat the 18-year-old to death. He wanted recognition and respect. Had he hewed to his own routinetossing his victims into sewage wellsthe Maniac may never have been caught. Though she did not survive, the police were alerted to her disappearance and the fact that she had been wary of Pichushkin. [9], In September 1992, Pichushkin was romantically rejected by Olga A., his 18-year-old neighbor, as she was already in a relationship with a man named Sergei B. A few hours later, when Moskalyeva hadnt come home and her son was watching TV and saw that theyd found a womans body in the park, he called his father, who then called the police. He says Pichushkin doesnt have any sexual longings for men; he just doesnt care about women. Pichushkin said he wanted to kill enough people to fill the squares on a chessboard - earning him the infamous Chessboard Killer name. There are pieces of bark pressed against her cheek, a scratch on her neck. Except for his mother and Suprunenko, almost everyone else is here at the recently renovated Supreme Court of Russia, on Povarskaya Street in the center of Moscow: Natasha Fyedosova, Pichushkins lawyer Pavel Ivannikov, the panel of three judges, the prosecutor in his royal blue military-style uniform, the babushkas who lost sons and husbands, the younger men and girls whispering into their cell phones, too scared to look at the Maniac, who looks bored, then amused, then angry. The victim had been killed at least two days earlier, and some wild dogs had found him first. The simple fact is that the Maniacs desire to kill vastly exceeded the systems capacity to stop him, or even recognize that he existed. The Maniac is startled. Valentines day, 2008. He also used to face bullying during his school days, which only worsened his mental state. He used to ask, Wheres Sasha? she says. Pichushkin was convicted of murdering forty-nine victims and suspected of killing as many as sixty. Psychiatrists propose Pichushkin developed a propensity toward violence after suffering a sharp personality change due to his childhood injury. He was convicted in October 2007 and sentenced to life in prison. To conceal the bodies, he often threw his victims into a sewer pit. There was a doctor walking his dog, she says, and he saw one of these wild dogs with a bone in his mouth. But how many victims did Pichushkin actually have? In an effort to both dull the pain of the loss as well as to calm his severe aggressive tendencies, he began to consume large quantities of vodka. For Pichushkin this meant the biting wind in the evening, the shadows and birds and birch trees, the crunch of ice and branches, the kaleidoscopic splatter of an old mans blood on fresh snow. After that she had a hard time saying anything. She knows, of course, about the disappearances. Neuroscientists maintain a connection between damage to the frontal lobe of the brain and neuropsychiatric abnormalities, such as aggressive behavior and psychopathy. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. He was then transferred from a mainstream school to a school for the disabled, as he was being bullied. Unsatisfied with the ruling, however, he asked the court to please up his victim count by 11, bringing his total number of victims up to 60 murders, plus three attempted. 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. Also Known As: Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin. According to GQ, some were still alive when they were thrown into the dump. That was when the moniker Bitsevsky Park Maniac entered the local lexicon and then the national discourse and then the global airwaves, the Internet message boards brimming with anonymous posters waxing cryptic about the invisible monster prowling the wilds of southern Moscow. I know now that I raised my son very poorly, she says. Pichushkin would wait for hours until his victims were all alone, Fyedo-sova says. It was very important for Pichushkin that people think he was a hero, so I made him feel like a hero.. If the victim wasnt dead before he plunged the thirty feet to the bottom, the impact would finish the job. In the beginning2001, 2002people just disappeared. 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. A week later, Lobov was back at the metro station when he happened to see Pichushkin, who would tell everyone in court that it didnt matter what Lobov claimed because nobody would believe a punk who hung out at metro stations, which is true everywhere and especially in Russia. He lacked preferences or ideas about other people, God, art, beauty. Pichushkin was convicted of 48 murders, making him among the deadliest serial killers in history, possibly behind Albert Fish an early 20th-century New York killer nicknamed "The Gray Man" and ahead of the infamous Zodiac Killer(viaBest Attorney). Actually, there are five television screensfour medium-size sets and one large flat-screen. Whom did he plan to marry? All rights reserved. [3] Experts speculated that this event damaged the frontal cortex of Pichushkin's brain; such damage is known to produce poor impulse regulation and a tendency towards aggression. It was early evening. He was arrested on 16th June 2006, and was eventually convicted in October the following year. But once the pair entered the forest, Pichushkin did not stray from his script. Before perestroika the system was better, says Alexander Bukhanovsky, the serial-killer expert. He offered her a cigarette. Alexander Pichushkin killed dozens of people in Russia between 1992 and 2006, . As the killings progressed, Pichushkin's attacks grew even more savage. In the winter, its popular with cross-country skiers. He is practiced. There were men disappearing almost every week back then, and she and Katya pleaded with him not to go. 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. Hes talking about intimacy, of all things. Written on the board, in all but two of the squares, were calendar dates. Echoing her son, she says he never lies. She didnt know him all that well, but well enough, and she wanted another cigarette. The cops had questioned him about Odichuks death, an experience that must have spooked him. There had been other lies, of course, countless tiny deceptions meant to lure his victims into the park, but no one had ever asked Pichushkin point-blank if he had ever killed anyone. The deepest of these interests was chess. Russian police have shown for the first time how they lured notorious 'Chessboard Killer' mass murderer Alexander Pichushkin into publicly confessing to 61 murders He saw the cameras and. But Lobov began screaming and clawing at his hair, and he grabbed one of the officers standing outside the station and started pointing and shouting and telling the cops they had to do something. They dont say where he will be sent; only his mother will know, and she will not be able to see him often. MAXIM MARMUR/AFP via Getty ImagesAlexander Pichushkin, Moscows Bittsevsky Maniac a.k.a. "For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you," Pichushkin reportedly said. Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Alexander Pichushkin, Birth Year: 1974, Birth date: April 9, 1974, Birth City: Moscow, Birth Country: Russia. [3] Pichushkin was aware of the note, but was undeterred. According to Biography, the dates on the board corresponded to the dates on which Pichushkin had murdered his victims. 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. Hes a drunk.) A cold night in December 2007. In this case, he did not say what he and 32 discussed before he attacked. Alexander Yurevich Pichushkin (born Apr. By then the count was approaching thirty. When future-serial killer Alexander Pichushkin was a child, he fell backward off of a swing. She couldnt move. Police searching his Moscow apartment in June 2006 found a chessboard, with numbers on 61 of the 64 squares. Theyre impossible questions, but theyre the only ones that really matter now, and every time they come up, Natasha cries and shakes her head and stares through a window at the darkened courtyard below. After the accident, Pichushkins mother sent him to a special school for the disabled, which Pichushkin reportedly found traumatic. In court he will declare: I always say exactly what I think. He wanted to talk, Suprunenko says. De padre alcohlico. It was only after the bodies started turning up in the forest that the Interior Ministry took over the case and that people like Andrei Suprunenkopeople who actually know how to find serial killersstarted looking for him. No one made any connections. The maniac lumbers through a silent forest. 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