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Moscow murderer guilty of 48 'Chess' killings - 2007/10/29 21:56
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y Tony Halpin in Moscow
Thursday October 25 2007
ALEXANDER Pichushkin compared murder to love in his campaign to kill enough people to fill every square on a chessboard.
The Russian "chessboard killer" was convicted yesterday of 48 murders and three attempted murders by a Moscow jury. He was, however, deprived of the status he craved as the country's worst serial killer.
Pichushkin had admitted the charges and boasted of killing 63 people, one short of his goal. Prosecutors charged him with 48 deaths, saying they had no evidence that he was responsible for more.
Investigators said that Pichushkin sought to claim more victims to overtake the "Rostov Ripper", Andrei Chikatilo, who was executed by firing squad in 1994 for the murder of 52 women and children.
Russia now has a moratorium on the death penalty, so Pichushkin (33), faces life in jail after the jury took less than three hours to convict him at the end of a five-week trial.
He leaned against his reinforced glass cage, staring at the floor, as Judge Vladimir Usov read out the verdict for an hour to a courtroom packed with relatives of his victims.
The judge said: "On all accounts Pichushkin has been found guilty with no mitigating circumstances."
Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment, with the first 15 years in solitary confinement because of Pichushkin's violent nature.
The judge is expected to set a date for sentencing soon. The former supermarket worker showed no remorse throughout the trial, telling the court he remembered his first killing as others remembered their first love.
Pichushkin said that he would never have stopped had he not been caught.
He also boasted that he knew his final victim had written his name in a note at home to say that she was going for a walk with him, but killed her anyway. "I burnt myself, so there's no need for the cops to take credit for catching me. I'm a professional," he said.
Pichushkin's reign of terror extended from 1992 until his arrest in June last year. Most of his victims died in Bittsa Park in southern Moscow, leading the local press to dub him the "Bittsa Maniac".
Committed
He committed his first murder at 18, when a fellow student Mikhail Odiichuk balked at a plan for joint killing. Pichushkin told the court that he had "sent him to heaven" after strangling his friend.
Prosecutors said that most of the other victims, many of them homeless men, were lured to the park by an invitation from Pichushkin to drink vodka together to mourn the death of his dog.
He killed 11 people in 2001, including six in one month, throwing most of them into a sewage pit after getting them drunk.
The attacks became more violent by 2005, when he would smash his victims over the head with a hammer before stuffing an unfinished bottle of vodka into their skulls. (© The Times, London)
- Tony Halpin in Moscow
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