Alexander Pichushkin, the so-called "chessboard killer", was well known along the leafy lanes of Moscow's Bitsevsky Park. The 33-year-old supermarket worker played chess under the trees and even invited his opponents for a drink afterwards.
Pichushkin lured his victims, who were mostly elderly men, to a quiet part of the park before attacking them from behind with a hammer. He would suggest drinking a glass of vodka next to the grave of his beloved dog before killing them.
"He dreamed of surpassing Chikatilo and going down in history," Moscow prosecutor Yury Syomin said at his trial, referring to Andrei Chikatilo, Russia's most notorious serial killer, who was convicted in 1992 of killing and mutilating 52 people.
Pichushkin's neighbour as a boy, Svetlana Mortyakova, remembers the future serial killer as a pleasant young man, always polite and someone who loved animals. She once found him in tears in the stairwell of the block of flats they shared, speechless with grief over the death of his cat.
Pichushkin began his murderous career in 1992 when he was just 18, killing the boyfriend of a neighbour he had fallen in love with. The boy, Sergei was found dead in his apartment. Police initially believed it was suicide. It is also thought Pichushkin later killed the girl Olga, whose body was found in Bitsevsky Park five years ago.
Pichushkin did not murder again until 2001, when he went on his five-year killing spree.
Until summer 2006, when he was finally arrested, Pichushkin worked in a supermarket and stayed with his ageing mother, Natalya, in a high-rise block in the south Moscow suburbs, where he had lived since birth
Pichushkin spent much of his childhood in Bitsevsky, a densely wooded park where Muscovites walk, smoke and drink beer on the benches under the trees.
His mother charts the beginning of Pichushkin's downfall to when he was hit on the head by a swing aged four. She said he might also have been affected by the sudden death of his grandfather, with whom he also lived.
Pichushkin himself said he had a "difficult life" in which he had never known his father, who walked out on the family.
After his grandfather died, the young Pichushkin would go walking in the park with his dog. He grew depressed when it died.
Psychologist Mikhail Vinogradov interpreted the murders as being prompted by anger at his grandfather for "abandoning" him.
There was also a "sexual subtext", he said. Pichushkin described his criminal career as a "perpetual orgasm". But experts at Moscow's Serbsky Institute, Russia's main psychiatric clinic, declared that Pichushkin was not mentally ill and was fit to stand trial.
Although most of his victims were elderly men, three were women, and one was a child. He could be particularly cruel. The body of one woman was found with tiny stakes hammered into her skull and around her eyes.
"For me, life without killing is like life without food for you," he is reported as saying. "I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world."
Pichushkin lured his victims, who were mostly elderly men, to a quiet part of the park before attacking them from behind with a hammer. He would suggest drinking a glass of vodka next to the grave of his beloved dog before killing them.
"He dreamed of surpassing Chikatilo and going down in history," Moscow prosecutor Yury Syomin said at his trial, referring to Andrei Chikatilo, Russia's most notorious serial killer, who was convicted in 1992 of killing and mutilating 52 people.
Pichushkin's neighbour as a boy, Svetlana Mortyakova, remembers the future serial killer as a pleasant young man, always polite and someone who loved animals. She once found him in tears in the stairwell of the block of flats they shared, speechless with grief over the death of his cat.
Pichushkin began his murderous career in 1992 when he was just 18, killing the boyfriend of a neighbour he had fallen in love with. The boy, Sergei was found dead in his apartment. Police initially believed it was suicide. It is also thought Pichushkin later killed the girl Olga, whose body was found in Bitsevsky Park five years ago.
Pichushkin did not murder again until 2001, when he went on his five-year killing spree.
Until summer 2006, when he was finally arrested, Pichushkin worked in a supermarket and stayed with his ageing mother, Natalya, in a high-rise block in the south Moscow suburbs, where he had lived since birth
Pichushkin spent much of his childhood in Bitsevsky, a densely wooded park where Muscovites walk, smoke and drink beer on the benches under the trees.
His mother charts the beginning of Pichushkin's downfall to when he was hit on the head by a swing aged four. She said he might also have been affected by the sudden death of his grandfather, with whom he also lived.
Pichushkin himself said he had a "difficult life" in which he had never known his father, who walked out on the family.
After his grandfather died, the young Pichushkin would go walking in the park with his dog. He grew depressed when it died.
Psychologist Mikhail Vinogradov interpreted the murders as being prompted by anger at his grandfather for "abandoning" him.
There was also a "sexual subtext", he said. Pichushkin described his criminal career as a "perpetual orgasm". But experts at Moscow's Serbsky Institute, Russia's main psychiatric clinic, declared that Pichushkin was not mentally ill and was fit to stand trial.
Although most of his victims were elderly men, three were women, and one was a child. He could be particularly cruel. The body of one woman was found with tiny stakes hammered into her skull and around her eyes.
"For me, life without killing is like life without food for you," he is reported as saying. "I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world."
someone needs to put him in a cell next to richard ramirez so they could do a pissing contest
