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Russia's `Chessboard Killer' Convicted of 48 Murders

Bloomberg

2007-10-24

A Russian court convicted the man known as the ``chessboard killer'' of murdering 48 people, most of them with a hammer in a Moscow park during a five-year killing spree.

A Moscow jury today found Alexander Pichushkin, 33, guilty on 48 counts of murder and three of attempted murder. All but one took place between 2001 and 2006. Pichushkin, who is unmarried and lived with his mother, claims to have killed more than 60 people.

``He doesn't regret a thing, which to me is bizarre,'' Pichushkin's lawyer, Pavel Ivannikov, said in remarks broadcast on state television channel Vesti-24.

Pichushkin told prosecutors that he had marked 63 of the 64 squares on a chess board, one for each murder, leading Russian media to dub him the ``chessboard killer.'' The country's most notorious serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, was convicted in 1992 of murdering 52 people and executed two years later.

The prosecutor, Yury Syomin, said he was seeking life in prison for Pichushkin. Russia suspended capital punishment in 1996.

``He was found guilty of 48 murders and three attempted murders. The jury decided that Alexander Pichushkin does not deserve leniency,'' court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova said in a televised statement.

Pichushkin, who declined to address the court today, will wait until sentencing before deciding whether to appeal, Ivannikov said by phone.

Killing Spree

Prosecutors say the first killing took place in 1992. After a nine-year break, Pichushkin went on a killing spree in southwestern Moscow's Bitsevsky Park that lasted until 2006. Many of his victims were elderly men.

Police detained Pichushkin after the murder of a female colleague at a grocery store where he worked. Russian media reported that she left Pichushkin's phone number with her son before going on a walk with her killer.

``When a serial killer gets the taste, he cannot help but continue killing,'' Mikhail Vinogradov, a criminal psychiatrist, said when the trial started in August.

Pichushkin's first victim was a male schoolmate, whom he killed at age 18 and buried in Bitsevsky Park. ``Your first murder is like your first love, you never forget it,'' Pichushkin was quoted as saying by Russian media.

Relatives of the victims who attended the court hearings said Pichushkin deserved to be torn to pieces for his crimes.

The spate of murders in Bitsevsky Park revived memories of Chikatilo, who killed and mutilated his victims, mostly women and children, over 12 years until his capture in 1990. A married man with children who lived in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on- Don, he was executed by firing squad.

The most prolific U.S. serial killer was John Wayne Gacy, who was executed in 1994 after being convicted of murdering 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. The victims' bodies were found under Gacy's suburban Chicago home.

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