Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Chessboard Killer” Alexander Pichushkin Pt. 2

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

After killing dozens of people and getting away with it, Alexander Pichushkin got bored with his routine. So, he mixed things up — in brutal fashion. His unchecked maneuvers amounted to at least 48 murders in Moscow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Parcasters. I'd like to take a moment to let you know that we'll be taking a break next week for the Thanksgiving holiday. But don't worry, we do have a very special treat lined up, so stay tuned for that. I'd also like to take this opportunity to say thank you. Your loyalty and support is what makes this show possible. And this year more than ever, it has meant so much to us. From all of us here at Parcast, we wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for listening. nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, assault, and bodily mutilation that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Officer Dennis Adamenko could hear the sound of his own breathing

too loud in his ears as he made his way through the overgrown forest. Something had caught his eye, and he needed a better look. As he drew closer, his mind struggled to process what he was seeing. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, trying to make sense of the shape on the ground before him. As a police officer in post-Soviet Moscow, Adamenco was no stranger to brutal crime. He didn't flinch at much, but this shook him to his core. A man's body lay face down in the undergrowth. His skull was caved in, and there was something unnatural about the shape of it. As Adamenko crouched down to look more closely, light glimmered off the back of the man's head like glass. And that's when he realized that there was a bottle protruding like an artificial limb,

crammed neck-first into a bloody wound on the back of the man's skull. It was a mutilation unlike anything Adamenko had seen before, and though the scene offered no clues about the killer, he knew that this wasn't a random act of spontaneous violence. This was the work of a maniac. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers.

Today, we'll explore the horrific killing spree of Alexander Pichuskin, also known as The Chessboard Killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of Serial Killers and all other originals from Parcast for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. In our last episode, we talked about Pichikin's tough upbringing in Moscow and how his obsession with chess spiraled into a single-minded desire to kill.

Today, we'll delve into the last four years of Pichikishkin's murder spree and how his increasingly reckless killings led to his downfall. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels.

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In February of 2002, Russia's capital city was under attack by one of the most prolific serial killers in the nation's history, but nobody knew it. 27-year-old Alexander Pitchewski was as stealthy as he was single-minded, employing a well-honed method that worked like a charm. Once he settled on a victim, he would invite them to accompany him on a walk through Bitsa Park, a sprawling woodland in the city's southwest. He'd lure them with a sob story.

His dog had died, he wanted company, and the promise of free vodka. Once he was alone with his victim, he'd incapacized, facilitate them by hitting them over the head, then throw them down a well to drown in the vast sewer system below. Not a trace of them remained. Over the course of a single year, Pichikin had killed at least ten people this way. And he was only just getting started. As we discussed last time, Pichikin was a keen chess player, ever since his grandfather introduced him to the game in his adolescence. We don't know exactly what it was about chess that drew him in, but since Petushkin was bullied at school and struggled academically. It's likely he got a thrill from finding

something that he could finally excel at. But after Petchuskin committed his first murder at 18, his obsession with chess took a dark turn. The thrill of simply winning a match paled in comparison to getting away with murder, and his twisted mind concocted away to blend the two. He wanted to kill enough people to fill the squares on a chessboard, all 64 of them. Pitchushkin was now playing a much darker kind of game, the rules of which give us some insight into his personality. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist,

but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Petchuskin's interaction with his victims was, of course, nothing like chess. It was a one-sided, sadistic game, in which his opponent had no opportunity to strategize or make their own moves. In fact, Pichchuskin didn't see his victims as his opponents at all. He saw them as pieces on a board, inanimate objects that he could manipulate and position as he pleased. Seeing other human beings in this way could be a symptom of a personality disorder,

most likely narcissistic personality disorder. According to the DSM-5, NPD is characterized by a pattern of grandkids. grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. As far as we know, Pichuskin has never been formally diagnosed, but he fits all three main criteria. Grandiosity in psychology refers to feelings of superiority and entitlement, an exaggerated sense of being better and more deserving than other people. Pichushchkin had no qualms about preying on vulnerable people and taking their lives, and seemed to gain a feeling of power and superiority from doing so. His killing spree was motivated by his desperate desire for admiration,

specifically his wish to be as famous as the notorious Russian serial killer, Andrei Chichikatillo, and Pichushkin's lack of empathy for his victims is clear in every account of the murders. He had no empathy, even for the most vulnerable kinds of people, and often targeted them on purpose. Many of his victims were seniors, A few were children, and as most recent, was a pregnant woman. On February 23, 2002, Petushkin attacked 19-year-old Maria Viracheva,

who survived against extraordinary odds after he threw her down a well and left her to die. By February 24, 2002, Maria was in the hospital, where police told her that they wouldn't investigate the attack, and Petushkin, believing her dead, was on top of the world. Over the next couple of weeks, he killed three more people. Then, in early March, he crossed paths with Mikhail Lobov, a 13-year-old boy he met outside a metro station. Some reports say Mikhail was homeless, but it's not clear whether that's true. But he was bored and broke and easily lured by the promise of free alcohol.

So he went with Petushkin into the wilderness of Bitsa Park, trudging for 20 minutes through snowy forests, until at last they reached a clearing beside a well. Pichuschen offered Mikhail a cigarette, which he readily accepted along with his vodka. They drank, and then, in a flash, Pichuskin struck. The blow to the head sent Mikhail crumpling to the ground, barely conscious. It was easy for Pichikin to shove him down the well, sending him tumbling into the darkness.

But Pichuschkin made a mistake, elated by yet another successful kill, he turned on his heel and strolled back out of the park, never looking back. If he had, he would have noticed that Mikhail's jacket was caught on a piece of metal just inside the well. The fabric was strong enough to stop the teen's fall, suspending him in mid-air. Disoriented, Mikhail crawled back out of the well and lay shaking on the frozen ground. Once he regained his strength, he made his way back out of the park and found a policeman. He reported exactly what happened to him.

Unmoved, the policeman told Mikhail to go home. It gets weirder. A week later, Mikhail ran into Pitchkin outside the same metro station where they met. It's hard to say which of them was more startled, but Mikhail's reaction was instant. The boy screamed in horror, clutching at his hair, drawing stairs from passers-by. He ran over to a police officer stationed near the metro, and grabbed his arm, pointing frantically at Petushkin. He yelled,

That's the man who attacked me. That's him. You have to do something. Throughout all of this, Petchishkin was eerily calm. He was surprised to see Mikhail alive, of course, but he wasn't worried. He knew that nobody would believe Mikhail, who was just a kid.

And he was right. The policeman snatched his arm away from Mikhail and told him to go home. None of the cops even looked twice at Pichuschen. After Maria Veraceva reported her attack to the police, the officer blackmailed her to keep her quiet, not because he was trying to protect Pachishkin. It seems that he simply didn't want to do the work

of investigating this heinous crime. Now, in light of Mikhail's two attempts to alert the police, it's clear that this was a pattern of behavior. In the mid-2000s, the Russian police didn't have a good reputation. Corruption was rampant, and citizens were used to being stopped by police for reasons that seemed arbitrary designed to solicit bribes. A 2008 survey by the Levada Center in Moscow showed more than half of the Russian population didn't trust the police. And yet, both Maria and Mikhail wanted to put their trust in the police. They wanted to believe that law enforcement would do its job and protect them.

Instead, the authorities cast them aside and let Petushkin's reign of terror, continue. The moment outside the metro station was intoxicating for Pichikin. As a child and adolescent, he felt ignored, abandoned by his father, and ostracized by his classmates. Now he felt invincible. Mikhail accused him in broad daylight, right in front of a group of police officers, and nothing happened. He was unstoppable, a superhuman force. And yet, his personal life remained frustratingly mundane, Now 28, Pichchuschen had lived in the same small apartment with his mother and sister for his entire life. In the two-room apartment, which was part of Russia's first public housing projects,

the living room doubled as a second bedroom. There was little space, even less privacy, and things were about to get even more uncomfortable. Around 2003, Pichikovin's sister Katya got married and her husband moved into the Pichikovin family apartment. The young couple took the bedroom, while Pichuschkin and his mother, Natasha, both slept in the living room. Petrishkin slept on a couch, 10 feet from his mother's queen-sized bed. We don't know much about what the family environment was like, but it's hard to imagine this was a comfortable situation for a young man. But Pichuschkin had a goal to keep him occupied. One of his few possessions was the chessboard where he marked off his kills one by one.

With each square, he was inching steadily closer to his dream of 64 kills. And he was already frighteningly far along with that plan. The details of Pitchkin's murders in the second half of 2002 and early months of 2003 get murky. There isn't much reporting from this time, but we know that by early 2003, he killed close to 30 people. And thanks to the police's indifference, Pichickens had no reason to believe, he'd have any trouble doubling that number. But while Pachushchechen himself was flying under the radar, his crimes were not. For all his plotting, he was not a particularly adventurous hunter.

He rarely ventured outside of his comfort zone, finding most of his victims in the park or at metro stations nearby. Many of Pachushchkin's victims were also his neighbors. This was by design. He found it more satisfying to kill someone if he bonded with them first. and he had no shortage of neighbors to choose from. The Pichushkin's building was one of several identical Soviet blocks on Kersenskaya Street. Over the years, 10 people went missing from four adjacent apartment buildings on Kersenkaia,

and by early 2003, the word was spreading. The families of the 10 missing victims on Kersenkaia found each other. With no police investigating, it fell to them to make the connection and draw the obvious conclusion. that these disappearances were not a coincidence. They had to be the work of a monster. In the absence of any real information, the families could only guess at who was responsible. Some suspected that a violent patient had escaped

from the psychiatric institution on the edge of Bitsa Park. Others wondered if the mafia was involved. And surely some people must have suspected that the culprit was someone closer to home, someone who lived among them. But nobody seemed to suspect Pichuskin, and nobody really expected the police to do anything. They were used to being ignored, and so Pichuskin carried on. In the spring of 2003, he was walking close to home when his eye fell on a middle-aged man.

The man was sitting alone at a bus stop drinking. He looked aimless, as though he had nowhere in particular to be, as though he could use some company, as though he would make a perfect 30-second victim. Pichuschen walked up to the man and went through his familiar routine, inviting him on a walk through Bitsa Park. The man agreed, though he didn't seem enthusiastic, he was morose, a little drunk, and lost in his own thoughts. As they walked, Pachishkin tried to cheer his companion up. He asked, if you could be granted one wish, what would it be? The man responded solemnly to stop drinking.

With a smile, Pichikin replied, I promise you, today will be the day that you stop drinking. Once the two men reached Pichikin's favorite clearing, he didn't waste any time. He knew that this drunk, miserable man wasn't going to provide him with much worthwhile conversation. So when the man's back was turned, he struck him over the head with a hammer

and pushed him down the well. Another life ended, another body lost to the sewers. But walking home that night after claiming his 32nd victim, Pichikin felt restless, unsatisfied. The old adrenaline rush eluded him. He realized that he was tired of his same routine, tired of his familiar victims, and above all, he was tired of putting in all this work,

pulling off so many perfect crimes, and getting no recognition for it. Despite his waning interest, Pichikin killed several more people through the rest of 2003. But there's no record of any confirmed murders in 2004. We don't know exactly why he took this hiatus. But based on what happened next, we can guess.

Petchuskin was a meticulous killer who loved to strategize. After his first murder in 1992, he waited nine years before he killed again. And in 2004, he was biding his time once more, cooking up a new plan that would renew his enthusiasm for murder. Coming up, Pitchhens' killing spree takes an even more gruesome turn. Listeners, here's a show you do not want to miss.

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doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. Now back to the story. By the end of 2003, 29-year-old Alexander Pichuschen had killed more than 30 people. Despite being reported to police by two surviving victims, he had gone completely undetected. In 2004, he seemingly took a hiatus from killing, perhaps because he lost his enthusiasm for an act that had become routine. He spent that year plotting his next move. The following year 2005, Pichikin returned a killing with a vengeance, but his mindset had changed in a critical way. Petchuskin was questioned once by the police in 1992 when he was 18,

after murdering his classmate Mikhail Odichuk. He was released without charge, but the experience soon. spooked him. When he started killing again in 2001, he was careful to dispose of his victims in a way that made him untraceable. But now, four years on, Pichikin threw caution to the wind. Maybe he'd simply become arrogant. After all, he'd been confronted by Mikhail Lubbof right in front of the police and walked away a free man. He had no reason to fear capture. Though perhaps he finally wanted to be noticed. He was sick of putting in such meticulous work and then being forced to destroy the evidence. He was ready to put on a show. In October, Pichikin met 31-year-old Nikolai Vorubyov in the park.

He asked him to take a walk, offered him vodka, faint interest in his life. He did all of the things that had become part of his routine. But this time, something was different. When Vorabiof was distracted, Pichuschen pulled a hammer from his pocket and hit him in the back of the head again and again. As Vorabiyov lay either unconscious or dying, Pichuskin had a choice to make. He could do what he always did and dispose of his victim's body in the sewer system, thereby ensuring that it would not be found, or he could put his gruesome new plan into motion, the plan that had been occupying his mind for more than a year. Reckless though it was, Pichikov couldn't resist.

He crouched beside the motionless Vorobyov, who lay face down on the ground. Then he picked up the vodka bottle, and slowly, deliberately, he jammed it into the back of Vorabiov's cracked skull. Then, elated, Pichikov walked away. He left Vorov's brutalized body lying in the forest and went home to his family. He no longer feared getting caught. Then again, it's also possible that deep down he wanted to be caught. He'd been invisible for his entire life, with a dead-end job and no love life. Now almost 30, he faced the prospect of growing older under his mother's roof, alone and unnoticed.

And if attention from the police is what Pachishkin wanted, he wouldn't have to wait much longer. On Saturday, October 15, 2005, Moscow police officers patrolling Bitsa Park, found Nikolai Vorubiov's mutilated body, with a vodka bottle still protruding from his skull. It was a horrific sight. Dennis Adamenko, one of the first officers on the scene that day, knew that they were dealing with something highly unusual, and he suspected that this was the work of a serial murderer, and his suspicions would soon be confirmed. A month later in mid-November, Petitschkin met and murdered his 41st victim, 63-year-old Nikolai Zakarchenko.

Though we don't have any details about his interaction with Pichikin, there's one significant detail about Zachchenko that sets him apart from the rest. He was a retired cop. It's not clear whether Pichikov knew about Zacharchenko's former profession, but given his habit of engaging his victims in conversation, asking them questions about their lives, it's likely that it came up. In the past, finding out that his victim was a cop might have given Pichikin, pause, but now, with his newly reckless approach, he forged ahead.

When Zokarchenko's body was found with wounds that precisely matched Borobiovs, the police knew they were dealing with the serial killer. The prosecutor general was notified, as for senior detectives at Russia's Ministry of the Interior, the race to find the killer was on. And 31-year-old Petrushkin was running his own race. Through the final weeks of 2005, he killed another four. five men, and he finished each murder with the same gruesome flourish, a vodka bottle or stick jammed into the bloody wound on the back of his victim's head.

He left the bodies strewn haphazardly around the snowy park, where they were discovered by police. By Christmas of that year, Moscow was gripped by terror, as word spread that a serial killer was on the loose in Bitsa Park. The story made national headlines and attracted interest across the globe, as the The coverage snowballed, Moscow's anonymous monster was given a name, the Bitsiewski Park Maniac. The shadow of the maniac loomed large over the city that winter. Normally a popular spot for sledding and skiing, a park became forbidden territory for children, and even for many cautious adults.

Back on Kersen Skaia, the street where Pachishkin lived, the families of the missing victims wondered if the maniac had claimed their loved ones too. Relayed through frightened whispers, the story consumed the entire block. The Pichikin home was no exception. One night, the family was watching TV together when a news report about the maniac aired. Kacha, Pichikin's sister, was fascinated and wondered openly who the killer might be. Sitting next to her, Pachishkin resisted the urge to announce that it was him. Desperate, though,

he was for attention, Petushkin didn't want to be caught yet. He had a lot more people to kill before he reached his goal. Through the first half of 2006, Petchishkin killed at least five more people, all of whom were found in bits of park. Their locations were all over the map, but their injuries never varied. Head trauma, fractured skull, and a foreign object protruding from a gaping wound. In February of 2006, the case was taken over by Andre Supranenko, a senior detective appointed by the prosecutor general. Suprenenko was a seasoned investigator, but he and his team had limited information to go on. Petchuskin left no traces of fingerprints or DNA at any of his crime scenes. Autopsies on the victims revealed only that their skulls were fractured by an object

with an angled edge, most likely a hammer. But with no other evidence and no apparent links between the victims, the investigation moved slowly. And then, in June of 2006, Petushkin made a mistake that would be his undoing. Or perhaps it wasn't a mistake. Perhaps it was a deliberate sacrifice. The concept of sacrifice is central in chess. In a sacrifice, a player gives up a piece, often something valuable like a queen, in order to gain some other tax. advantage or to facilitate a checkmate. It's a leap of faith, giving up something of value in the belief that the reward will

outweigh the cost. This idea might help us understand what happened next. On an afternoon in mid-June, Petushkin had just finished a shift at the supermarket. His co-worker, 36-year-old Marina Mosklyova, was leaving the store at the same time, and the two struck up a conversation. Petruchkin asked if she'd like to go on a walk in the park. Park. Marina said yes. Then Pichuschkin asked, how about right now? Marina shook her head. She had plans this evening, but she could go with him tomorrow.

With a smile, Pichikin agreed. It was a date. The next day, as Marina prepared to leave her apartment to meet Pichikin, she hesitated. She had known him for a long time through work. She had no particular reason to be wary of him. and yet she felt a sense of foreboding. She knew the headlines about the bits of park maniac had put her on edge, that she was probably overreacting. Still, before she left her apartment that night, she wrote a note to her son,

explaining that she was out with Alexander Pichuskin and included his phone number. Marina met up with Pichikin on the outskirts of the park and wandered through the forest with him. On a crisp sunny June afternoon, the dappled woodland paths were idyllic, the air ringing with birdsong. But Pichikin barely noticed. His urge to kill was so overwhelming that he could focus on little else.

As the sun sank lower in the sky, Pichuschkin and Marina stopped in a clearing surrounded by silver birch trees. They shared several beers, and at some point, Marina told him about the note she left for her son. We don't know exactly why she brought this up. It's possible she was scared. Maybe she sensed a strange vibe from her companion. Or perhaps it was a joke, a darkly comic line like,

you better not have brought me out here to kill me. Either way, this information gave Picheskin pause. He now knew with absolute certainty that if Marina went missing, he would be the police's first suspect. This wasn't like when Mikhail accused him in front of police at the metro station. Now his murders were front-page news, and the country's most senior investigators were leading the case. In other words, Pitchhkin knew that killing Marina was tantamount to turning himself in, but he couldn't resist. Maybe he was drunk on arrogance, unable to fathom how he could ever be caught.

Or maybe in killing Marina, he made a choice. For months, he had killed recklessly, leaving his victims out in the open with a distinctive trade Mark. He was tired of skulking in the shadows, watching the Bitsiewski Park Maniac command the nation's attention and getting none of the credit. He wanted notoriety, and he was ready to make some sacrifices to get it. When her back was turned, Pitchchkin hit Marina over the head with the hammer and kept beating her until she was unconscious or dead. He had no vodka bottle with him this afternoon, so he took a hefty stick and pushed it into the wound

in the back of her skull. Then he walked home and waited for whatever came next. Up next, the Moscow police close in on Pichikin. Now back to the story. In June of 2006,

32-year-old Alexander Pichuskin had killed more than 50 people, drawing ever closer to his goal of filling a chessboard with his kills. Moscow was gripped by fear of the Bitsa Park Maniac, and investigators had very few leads, but Pichchuskin's most recent victim,

Marina Moskilova, had taken precautions. Marina spooked by the headlines about the Bitsa Park Maniac, left her son a note, explaining that she was on a date with Alexander Pichikin, whose phone number she wrote down. After Marina failed to come home from her date, her son knew exactly what to do. He called Pichikin and asked where his mother was.

Petchuskin's response was baffling. I haven't seen her in two months. This was an obvious lie. Petchishkin and Marina worked together at the supermarket almost every day. He should have been anticipating this call since Marina had told him about the note, but he didn't seem to have a cover story prepared. As Marina's son pressed him,

Pichikin said he was busy. and then hung up. Immediately, Marina's son alerted the police who began searching the park. At this point, they'd found 12 of the maniac's victims and had a horrible suspicion that Marina was about to become the 13th. They didn't have to search for long. On June 14th, the police found Marina. Her distinctive wounds left no doubt that she was murdered by the maniac.

But there was an even more important piece of evidence on her body. Police found a metro ticket inside Marina's pocket, which was timestamped. Using that ticket, they searched surveillance footage and found Marina with Alexander Pichuskin at her side. The pair got onto a train at Novié Cheramushki Station and got off at Konkofo, which was close to Bitsa Park. Taken together, the note and the surveillance footage were damning. And this time, the police weren't going to sit on their hands and do nothing. Shortly before midnight on July 16, 2006, the Pichuschen family were getting ready for bed. A knock on the door startled Pachushkin's mother, Natasha, who answered it warily.

As soon as the door was open, a small army of riot police stormed the apartment, pushing into the living room where Pichikin was. Natasha was terrified, but the officers were pleasant, telling her that they needed to question her son about a string of burglaries in the area. Pichuskin was calm and didn't resist as the police put him under arrest and escorted him out of the apartment. Curtains twitched as the row of officers marched Pichuskin past the windows of aghast neighbors. Once he was in custody, an officer handed Natasha a document, spelling out what Pichuskin was actually accused of. Natasha sank to the couch in motionless shock.

Around her, police officers searched the apartment from top to bottom, looking for evidence against Pichikin. Among his scant belongings, they found a chessboard with 63 of its 64 squares marked. There are conflicting reports on exactly what this chessboard looked like. Different versions of the story claim that Pichikin marked each square with a cross, a coin, or a pasted-on number. But there's no ambiguity about what the marked-off squares represent.

Each one was a murder victim. Petitschkin knew it was risky to keep track of his kills on a physical chessboard. In such a small apartment, his mother, sister, or brother-in-law surely must have seen the board at some point and wondered what the marked-off squares represented. But despite the risk, keeping a physical record of murders is a common behavior among serial killers. Many serial killers keep trophies or trinkets from their victims,

clothing, personal possessions, even body parts. In their seminal 1995 book Mind Hunter inside the FBI's elite serial crime unit, FBI agents John Douglas and Mark Olshaker describe one possible reason for this behavior. Once the victim is dead and the body has been disposed of, the killer wants to be able to relive the thrill, continue acting out the fantasy, do it again and again. By keeping a kill tally on his chessboard, Petushkin was trying to buy. model the feeling of overwhelming power he had as he murdered his victims, and it would soon become clear just how eager he was to relive his crimes in great detail. In a holding cell at the police station, Detective Superdanko questioned Pachishkin. At first, the 32-year-old was quiet, unwilling to talk, but Supernanko knew how to draw him out.

He was familiar with men like this, narcissists who have never felt appreciated or who want nothing more than to be flattered. Supranenko made a point of staring directly at Pichuschen, giving him his full attention. He told Pichikin that he admired him and watched the younger man's face light up. Describing his interrogation technique, he said, it was very important for Pichikin that people think he was a hero, so I made him feel like a hero. Over the course of many months, Pichikin gave a confession that stunned even the heart Supernanko. It didn't take long for Pichikin to confess to the 13 murders that the police knew about.

But soon, he began telling Supernanko and his colleagues that there were more, a lot more. There were over 60. He told them about the sewer years, how he murdered dozens of people and disposed of their bodies inside wells. Supernanko and his team were somewhat skeptical. They knew that Pachushkin enjoyed their attention and would happily love. to keep it, and yet they also had reason to believe him. There had been a string of unsolved disappearances, dating all the way back to 2001, and many of the missing victims' families already suspected the Bitsa Park maniac was responsible. When investigators scoured the missing person reports, a lot of the details lined up.

But they couldn't take his word for it, and so on dozens of visits to Bitsa Park, detectives escorted Pichikin through the woods as he retraced his footsteps and reenacted his crimes on videotape. Using dummies, detectives had him demonstrate exactly how he murdered his victims. He had alarmingly accurate recall of exactly where and how they each died. After months of these surreal reenactments in combination with missing person records, the authorities had enough evidence to charge Pichikin with 48. eight murders and three attempted murders. Petchuschen was upset, not because he was being charged, but because he insisted that his

real kill count was 60. Even taking into account the three victims who escaped, he said that there were 12 more murders that should be counted, but the state could only prosecute what it could prove. On September 13, 2007, Pichikin's trial began in Moscow. In a particularly striking piece of imagery, he was confined to a glass cage throughout six-week-long proceedings. As he gave his testimony, he was in high spirits, showing no remorse. Experts from Russia's main psychiatric clinic testified that Pichuskin was sane, and also concluded that he had a personality disorder expressed in a sadistic inclination toward murder.

His lack of empathy was on full display as Pichuskin smirked and murkishkin smirked and, showboated his way through the trial. He taunted the court, taking great pleasure in recounting his crimes. Recalling the feeling of power he got from killing, Pitchikin said, I alone was prosecutor. I was the lawyer, jury, judge. I was whoever I needed to be. And I decided who was going to live and who wasn't. I was just like God. God or not, it was Petchishkin's turn to be judged. I On October 24, 2007, 33-year-old Alexander Pichickin was found guilty of 48 counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. Even after the verdict, he continued to insist that he had actually taken 60 lives. He was adamant on this point.

He said it wouldn't be fair to forget about the other 12 people. Of course, he didn't care at all about those people. He didn't even see them as human. Petushkin wanted credit for every single one of his victims so that he could relive the feeling of power he'd experienced as he killed them. He wanted to beat Andre Chiquatillo, whose 52 murders had made him a legend. He wanted glory, recognition, respect. He wanted to go down in history.

He did not get his wish. As we've discussed, it's tough to find reliable information about much of Petruchkin's life, or detailed records of his crimes, much of what he did is lost to history. And Pichikin himself is in permanent exile. He was sentenced to life behind bars and sent to a remote prison deep in the Russian mountains. Part of his sentence included 15 years in solitary confinement,

where he remains to this day. All alone, Pichikov can has little to occupy his mind, except for that image of the unfinished chessboard with just 60 of its 64 squares filled in. That image will likely haunt him for the rest of his lonely days. His monstrous chess game at an eternal stalemate.

Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back next week with a new episode. For more information on Alexander Pichuskin, amongst the many sources we used, we found Peter Savodnik's article in GQ extremely helpful to our research. You can find all episodes, of serial killers and all other originals from Parcast for free on Spotify.

We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cuddler, sound design by Michael Motion, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Emma Dibdin,

with writing assistance by Joel Callan, Fact-checking by Cara Macerlene and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Cereal Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Don't forget to check out Our Love Story, the newest Spotify original from Parcast. Every Tuesday, discover the many pathways to love, as told by the actual couples who found them.

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