True Crime with Kimbyr - The Chessboard Killer: Alexander Pichushkin - Playing Games With People's Lives!

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Today's case is about The Chessboard Killer. We examine the life of a Russian man who was not only fascinated with the game of chess but also fascinated with playing terrible games with innocent victims in Bitsa Park. He would lure his friends and strangers into the woods, pretending he was having a casual drink and toasting to his dog passing away but instead, it was all a game of control. We will take a look at his case and try to put together the pieces about what led him to carry out the things that he did. This is a story about Alexander Pichushkin. Even if you have heard of him before, I encourage you to watch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone. It's my very first episode of my podcast. I've launched this one time before, but I am back and better than ever. So welcome to True Crime with Kimber. If you've watched me on YouTube, you know I go into very long deep dives for most of my videos. And for this podcast, it should be similar. But first, I'm going to be repurposing a lot of my videos from YouTube. So if you already heard them over there, this might not be anything new to you. This one, I did so long ago. I think it was back in 2021. I can't believe I've been doing true crime that long, but this was a very crazy case. It is a very crazy case. This is the one about the Russian serial killer, the chessboard killer. And let me tell you, it's gruesome, it's weird, I don't think

I've ever heard a case quite like it. So let's get into it. Today we're talking about a Russian serial killer. His name is Alexander Pichuskin. Other than his parents getting divorced when he was pretty young, he still had a relatively normal life. As a child, he lived with his mom, and people that knew him said that he was really social. He liked having friends. He was pleasant, he was always polite.

And interestingly, because we know a lot of serial killers don't, he actually really loved animals. There's a picture of him with a cat. I'm going to put it up on the screen. It's so cute. And also, while we're on the topic of him being a child, I should just show you a really cute picture of him as a little boy. Baby pictures of killers.

I don't know about you, but I don't know. They always kind of confuse me, but I guess they shouldn't because we're so innocent when we're born. But just look at him. He doesn't look like he's going to grow up to kill people. It also scares me because, you know, I have a nine-year-old daughter, but chances are female killer, not so much. I will say, and we will talk about this in a lot of my videos, the traumatic brain injury. Okay, this might not have been one. but it could be. And I like to discuss why killers become the way that they do. Things changed for

Alexander because one day he fell off a swing and he had an injury to his head. So he hit his head on the swing because the swing came back and hit him really hard. Something we do know is when people do have brain injuries or head injuries, their personalities can change. Even though it's a minor incident in this case that all kids would go through or most kids have gone through. I mean, I was dropped on my head off of a waterbed when I was little. I mean, not to say, I don't have any issues, but these kind of things do happen. My mom sat on the waterbed and I went flying up. This was a life-changing event for Alexander because according to his family, after that day, nothing was the same anymore. He became impulsive. We've heard this before. Aggressive. And people just

noticed a definite change in his personality. It was so, so prominent. His mother actually transferred him to a new school that was for children with learning disabilities, which interests me because aggression and all that, it doesn't really equate to a learning disability, but maybe he was also having problems with that. But because of this and his weird behavior, he was bullied by other children. And I've seen this with other serial killers. It's very interesting. You even see this with mass murderers, with mass shootings. There's They're bullied by children and I know we've all been through that. So it's not an excuse and I never make excuses for killers.

But we do need to think about why someone becomes the way that they do. And bullying seems to be one of those factors. And this was why he had a lot of growing hostility towards people and he was once a really friendly child. So you can see he became more and more of an introvert and an outsider. And I think when you do get bullied, you feel like you're on the outside. Like you can't sit with me syndrome. and that's hard.

That's really, really hard to deal with. So the more a child has that impression that people don't like them, I think there's more susceptibility for them to become resentful. And that could lead, in this case, to becoming a murderer. But for Alexander, his grandfather took him under his wing. He saw something different about him. He saw that he was very intelligent. and he thought that perhaps Alexander's talents were being wasted because he was in this non-stimulating

home environment and the school that just focused on overcoming your disability. So he decided to take Alexander and brought him into his house and let him live under his roof and he started introducing him to the world of chess. Leave it in the comments below if you have watched the Queen's Gambit. It's one of my favorite shows and I'm actually pretty intrigued by chess. My daughter just got for a Christmas this a chess board that is all Harry Potter themed. I don't know how to play chess. It's something that I would love to learn because I do know it can increase your reaction speed, your thinking. You know how those games kind of strengthen our mind. Well, and that's why they're in, I think this is why they're in, like, I don't want to say mental institutions. I know we have a different word for it now, so I don't

want to offend anyone, but yeah, I think that's why they're in those facilities because at least you're challenged. His grandfather noticed that he learned the game really fast and Sooner or later, he became extremely talented. And this game was a way where he could curb any aggression that he was going through it. It focused his mind. He had something to, I don't want to say put his aggression towards because we know it's on an aggressive sport. But I think it was somewhere for him to channel some of that energy. He moved from just playing at home to playing against elderly men in Bitsa Park.

It's a natural park in Moscow. I mean, I've never seen a park like this. Let me know below if you have. I may be just living in California. We don't have one. But I don't just stumble upon people playing chess in a park. But again, happened in Queens Gambit, so it must be a thing in some cities.

Unfortunately for Alexander, his new talent wasn't enough to stop other children from bullying him. So he was still getting bullied. And then his grandfather died. And this was the one person that I really felt like took a real interest in him and believed in him and saw something. in him that other people maybe didn't and didn't see him as having a learning disability. But this was a huge blow emotionally because, again, he was very close to his grandfather and now he

started to drink vodka, possibly to just numb himself from the pain. And he had to move back in with his mother. But he did continue to play chess in the park. You know, he also joined a lot of his opponents in drinking. I don't know for sure, so you can leave this below if you know it, but I think the drinking age in Russia is around 18 but that doesn't mean he wasn't doing this younger but I did not get an age range on when he was doing this so for a lot of people on the outside Alexander probably looked as if he was sad he was grieving and he's just looking for comfort by drinking and playing chess but that is not what he was doing he started carrying a video camera which might not seem to be too much of a big deal but he's not

But he used it when he ran into children and he would record himself bullying and threatening them, which is kind of odd. I thought that people were bullying him, but it looks like now he was doing it to them. And in one instance, which has been made public, he hung a kid out of a window. He held him upside down and he threatened to drop him to his death. And he would watch these videos over and over and over again. He would watch them until he wouldn't get any satisfaction from them anymore because he did. He was gaining some kind of satisfaction. And I know this is going to sound gross, but this is who I am.

I've watched a lot of murders. We know that there are a lot of people, a lot of men, who like to record themselves carrying out crimes and watch them back. They're like trophies. And it's pretty disgusting. So it looks like he was entering into. that territory and eventually it just wasn't enough he was desensitized but it wasn't until 1992 that Alexander carried out his first murder and he was actually still a student at the time

so this is interesting he ended up committing his first murder on July 27th 1992 and he murdered a fellow student mcale audichuk and this was actually someone somewhat of a friend and he'd plan to kill people with macaille but Alexander didn't get it. He had all intention of making this serious and Mikhail thought he was joking. And he never, he never agreed to help Alexander with these fantasies. But that ended up resulting in Mikhail's murder. Alexander's weapon of choice was a hammer, which in of itself it's uh it's an odd it's an odd choice it is a gruesome way to murder someone because you have to see all of that blood and just you have to keep going and it's personal and it's just nasty

he smashed mcale over the head with a hammer and pushed his body down into a well it's just terrible a few days later he was questioned by the police about his friend's death and despite there being some evidence against Alexander, nothing ever came out of this, out of the investigation, and I don't know why, but Alexander would say later that just like his first love, his first murder was also unforgettable. You know, a serial killer's mind, a murder's mind is so unique. It's so different. We don't see things like that. I think when we're dealing with someone who probably most likely had some personality disorders, if not comorbidity between maybe narcissism, maybe not in this case, antisocial personality disorder or even borderline.

We don't know exactly what was going on in Alexander's mind and what led him to feel these certain things, but there are a lot of people who get themselves into these positions where they do end up hurting people, harming people, raping people, killing people, and it turns out they're struggling with a mental health condition, not an excuse, a reason. A reason that leads to what ends up happening. He claimed that he killed another person in 1992, his ex-girlfriend Olga. She just dumped him and she started dating his friend, Sergei,

and Alexander was furious, as a lot of us could be. You're now dating my friend. I mean, it's happened to me. I would be pretty mad. I've been pretty mad. But I don't kill people. And Alexander was furious. He saw him as a rival,

and he threw him out of a window. But somehow, Sergei's death was declared as a suicide. And again, Alexander was able to continue as if nothing happened. Do you think this was the fault of authorities? What do you think is going on here? Because you can see what he looks like. I always say this like somebody looks evil. And I know there's no such thing as an evil look.

I mean, there just really isn't. Anybody is capable of something like this. You might not think that's true. but that's my perspective. People want to just call them psycho. I don't think so. Just like with Chris Watts, I do not think Chris Watts was psycho. People snap. Things happen and we can't just look at someone and say, okay, that looks like a murderer, although we can in some cases. But just looking at him, I kind of get the creeps. I don't know. Let me know what you think. Do you think this is authorities or do you think he was intelligent enough to talk his way out of these situations?

nevertheless, Alexander went through a long, quiet time after his first murder, and he pretty much led what appeared to the outside as a normal life. He had a steady job, he was working at a supermarket, and it wasn't until 1999 when he was 25 years old that he began killing on a more regular basis. From 2002 onward, he killed, on average, one victim a month, and he would even take three lives in 10 days. That's how frequent this started to become. And all of his victims fit in pretty much the same category. They were homeless. They were drug addicts. They were people living on pretty much the margins of society. And this was pretty convenient for him because nobody missed these victims. And sometimes they were never even reported missing to police. And you find this with a lot

of rape cases. You find this with murders as well. Sex workers are murdered. And this happened a lot because the murderer just thinks I can throw this person away. It's super sad. Those people are someone's family member. But according to Alexander, he would pretend to share his vodka with his victims and he would do this by pretending his dog died and toasting to his dog's death to lure them in to this remote area of Bitsa Park where he would play chess. When I see people being lowered into the park, I'm always like, why? Why? Why are you going with this person? But I guess if they're drinking, it kind of makes sense.

Your inhibitions are lowered. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. Okay, this next part, trigger warning, it's pretty gross, but you're going to have that happening on this channel. So if you don't like this minor gruesome moment, you might not like watching this channel because I'm going to go into exactly what happened every victim. He would get them drunk and then he would drown them in sewage, smash their head with a hammer, or strangle them. Whatever he felt like doing that day.

But one of his signatures was a vodka bottle rammed into the victim's head. Yeah, this is just the tip of the iceberg of how gruesome some of these murders we're going to be discussing are. In addition to homeless and older men, Alexander also killed some women and at least one child. So he didn't really have a preference even though he does have signatures to his crimes. In 2006, the Russian police, they finally became aware that they were dealing with a serial killer. A year earlier, November 16, 2005, the police had found a former policeman, Nikolai Zakirchenko. I hope I'm saying that right. His body had actually been dumped out in the open.

It wasn't hidden in a well. and they thought it might have actually been a challenge to the cops like, hey, I'm here. I did this and I don't even care. I'm not going to even cover their body. Nope. Come catch me if you can. So we started getting really cocky with his murders. And it's either cocky or sloppy in my opinion because we've seen this with other murderers.

They just, I don't know. Maybe they just don't care anymore. Maybe they know they're going to get caught at some point. but he was still careful enough not to actually get captured by the police. So we're dealing with someone that was talented. He even left a few of his victims alive. He was still able to stay on the loose. And there was one woman, notably, that did survive.

Her name was Maria. She was actually a pregnant woman. Yeah, this is intense. He held her hair. And he smashed her head against concrete walls repeatedly. And then he threw her into the well. That's disgusting. Why would you do that?

And she lived. And she was able to report this attempted murder to the police, but she was an illegal immigrant. So she was forced to drop her claim. I'm watching The Serpent right now. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. It bothers me so bad.

I have major anxiety watching it because I, there are some murderers, believe it or not, that I don't necessarily have compassion for. Please don't get me wrong, but I can tolerate them. I don't know if it's the actor or what, but I cannot tolerate. I cannot tolerate the killer in that show. And I just, I want them to be caught so badly. Another survivor was Mikhail, a man named Mikhail, who Alexander promised free. cigarettes and vodka before hitting him in the head and also pushing him down the well.

I'm sitting here thinking, is this the same well? Because that would be gross. There's just bodies piling up in a well. In this case, McHale's jacket had actually gotten caught on a piece of metal inside the well and he was able to climb out. Do you know how terrifying that must be? But still, nothing happened to Alexander and the Moscow people stayed afraid of this mysterious killer now known as the Bitsa Park Maniac. Pretty fitting. Again, watching the serpent, I can't help but think I'm glad I live in America. Our justice system seems to be way different and also our police seem to, I don't want to say want to solve murders, but sometimes when I look at other countries, I'm like, aren't they going to do something about this?

Tell me if you agree. If you live in another country, let us know what it's like. Do police take things as seriously? I just can't believe because Maria was an illegal immigrant. She didn't have a case against her attempted murderer. That just seems unfair. You almost died. And they're not going to give any credence to that.

It's just like, sorry. So in June of the same year, Alexander's reign of terror would finally come to an end. He hit too close to home because it was one of his coworkers. She was 36 years old and her name was Marina. Not Maria, not the survivor, but Marina. And I freaking love that name. She was founded also in Bitsa Park and it would be Marina herself who would let authorities know who her killer was. And you're going to be like, wait, I thought you just said it's not the survivor.

So how did the dead woman tell the police who her killer was? but the day before her death, she told her son she was going on a date with Alexander. She had even written his name and phone number down in case of an emergency. So police also discovered a metro ticket in her coat. So they were able to piece things together in this case and know, okay, this is it. We have to review surveillance from the metro station and see if we can piece together what happened to Marina. where did she go? And that's when they saw her walking with Alexander.

So this is when he was arrested by police and his residence was completely searched. But investigators were actually pretty stunned because they thought that Alexander was obviously going to be responsible for this one death. But he ends up confessing that he had not only killed Marina, but a total of 60 other people. So 61 people were killed by the hands of Alexander. And he explained, this is where the chessboard killer and chess come into this disgusting, gruesome trail of murders. He explained to police that he had a fantasy of filling every square on a chess board after every murder.

He wanted to fill the square with a murder until he had filled all the squares on the chess board. I, yeah, that's quite interesting. He also had a logbook that contains 64 squares inside in each square. 62 of them filled and it represented someone that he had killed. He also told police that he would have carried on killing even after filling the chessboard. Why? Well, was it because he already got used to it? But he said if he wouldn't have been caught, he would have continued. Another thing is Alexander also idolized another serial killer.

His name was Andre Chiquotillo, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right once again, but he was a serial killer that was convicted in 1992 of murdering 52 people. Maybe we should look into that person because I've never heard of them. But investigators would later say that Alexander was motivated by this competition with the infamination Soviet error serial killer another interesting one but he wanted to be better it's like a sport he was into chess he wanted to be better than his opponent he was talented and now he wanted to be better and surpassed the number of victims that Andre had and he he actually claimed he felt like god when he was deciding who would live and who would die he even quoted for me life without

murder is like life without food and I felt like the father of all these people since it was me who opened the door for them to another world you just kind of wonder what makes somebody think that way opening them up for another world I just wish I don't know if he was ever interviewed publicly but I really like getting into the mind of a killer with my psychology background I just I want to know I want to understand even if it doesn't make sense to me I want to try to understand. But prosecutors ended up charging Alexander with 49 murders and three attempted murders, only the cases with the evidence. So even if there were other ones out there, like he said, they only charged him for the ones that they had actual proof that he committed.

Because again, he was almost bragging and we really don't know whether he really did. but he asked the court to include 11 murders. He's like just pile them on that he claimed he had committed because, quote, I thought it would not be fair to forget about the other 11 people. During his trial, Alexander was actually housed in a glass cage for his own protection. And coincidentally, his idol, Andre, 15 years earlier, was also housed. in a glass cage. I've never heard of that. That must be a Russian thing. But despite his request, Alexander was found guilty of only 48 murders, but that's still a lot, a lot of victims.

And this is when Russia considered reinstating the death penalty. Because, I mean, what is your thought on that? What do you think is worse? Spending your life in prison or the death penalty? Let me know how you feel about that. at the most respected psychiatric clinic in Moscow, it's called the Serbsky Institute, they pronounced that Alexander was sane. Important because I said, I don't like calling killers crazy. They said he was sane but suffering from antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, which I mentioned earlier forgetting that that's what they actually diagnosed him with. I don't diagnose people on this.

but I think it's interesting because according to investigators and psychologists, he had actually never been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness. Should he have been? I think mental health is much more respected, I want to say, now than it used to be. He had the average intelligence, so that wasn't a thing. And he never actually showed any severe tendencies towards violence. I mean, other than his murders, I'm just saying in his life. Nevertheless, mental health condition or not, he was ultimately sentenced to life in prison in 2007 with the first 15 years to be served in solitary confinement. Think about that. Just think about that. Now get this. He wasn't just in solitary confinement for 15 years. He was in a special prison that is for the worst of the worst. It's cold. it's the harshest weather, it's freezing, and it's actually known as the Arctic Penal Colony.

But they refer to it as polar owl. That's because there is a statue outside. You'll see it in a picture of an owl, and it's freezing. So this was not a good place to live and to be. So today, Alexander is in his late 40s. He still remains and will for the rest of his life in the Russian prison. His mother actually stated that in order for her to be able to deal with this whole situation, it's better to just pretend like she never had a son than to think that your son did this.

Okay, now here's where it gets interesting. Now, you've heard of women who are attracted to murderers. We hear about it all the time. But in 2014, and let me know below why you think that is, because I have my own theory on it. You can hear it maybe later. but in 2014 a Siberian woman named Natalia, she had a special place in Alexander's heart. And that's interesting to me too.

I always think, how can these murderers, because when we talk about the serpent, if you haven't seen it, again, watch it, how can they devote themselves to one woman and not kill her? Like, don't they ever get angry and want to take up? I don't understand. Is it because they want to look normal?

Is it something like that? Is it a front? but anyhow she did have a special place in Alexander's heart and she claimed it was love at first sight maybe they both claimed that but they only communicated through letters kind of interesting but she quoted I go to bed thinking about him I wake up thinking about him she even has a portrait of Alexander with a chessboard tattooed on her arm and she calls herself Natalia Picheskin as if they're already married but they're not. In 2016, authorities were said to have been blocking the letters between them and Natalia

continued complaining about it and she said, I don't know what I've done or why they're doing that to her, but that Alexander was her everything and that she has nothing without him. Nothing in the world without him. She said she was dead without him. Would you be dead if you were with him? The status of Alexander and Natalia's relationship now is a mystery. We don't know. And honestly, to me and probably to you, it is a complete mystery. Why? A woman would want to be with someone and marry them when they've killed so many people.

This is a man who once said that using a hammer to smash the heads of his victims brought him colossal pleasure and he compared it to having an orgasm. I mean, it's true. Some men have these fantasies and for whatever reason they associate pain with pleasure in a way where they can't get to that climax unless they're doing it in this particular manner. And I've always been so interested and intrigued by that, not in a positive way. But again, I want to get into the head of these killers. I want to understand it. Because you know, you know, if a man came forward and went to a psychologist and said, hey, I get off by thinking

about killing people and I'm thinking about killing people. They're going to be straight up into a facility, they're going to be put in a room with padded walls in a straitjacket, they're going to hurt themselves or others, and psychologists have a duty to report that. You may think, okay, there's no way that person can be rehabilitated and maybe they can't, but I don't know. I don't feel sorry for them, but I do like to analyze what's going on, the facts. And if people are struggling with these mental health conditions, is there a way to help them so that they don't carry out those crimes. I know there's a place where they let you take sled jammers and axes and let you hit cars as hard as you want. You can break and

shatter the glass. You can do whatever you want to get out this aggression. I don't know. Sometimes I just wonder, is there a way we can help these type of people or are they just worthless? Let me know what you think of that because my father was in prison growing up and he's a convicted felon. I don't think his life is a waste. Obviously, he's not a serial killer. But nonetheless, I just wonder if there will ever be a time when we can use technology, perhaps, chips in the head, to change these behaviors. Because when we really think about it, it comes down to the way our brain functions. And we have to remember he did have a brain injury or a head injury. Maybe not a brain injury. We don't know that. It's just something to think

about. Thanks for spending time with me. I hope you come back. soon. And until next time, stay safe out there. Okay, that's all I have for you on this episode of True Crime with Kimber. Don't forget to check out my YouTube channel if you want to see pictures of the victims, the killers, and more detailed oriented videos. Thank you all so very much for being here with me today for this episode. Thanks for spending some time with me again. I will see you in the next episode. Bye.