Author Topic: Monsters from Russia and the former Soviet Republics  (Read 200 times)

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raul

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Monsters from Russia and the former Soviet Republics
« on: February 16, 2022, 04:49:03 am »
Alexander Pichushkin
The Chessboard Killer

Many people have role models in life, a sports star perhaps, a political leader or a visionary businessman. Alexander Pichushkin however, chose a less salubrious individual to model himself on. He chose Andrei Chikatilo, a homicidal maniac who was the Soviet Union’s most notorious serial killer, believed to have been responsible for over 50 murders. Not only did Pichushkin idolize Chikatilo, he plastered his bedroom walls with newspaper cuttings about the depraved killer. And he also planned to emulate his hero – no, not emulate, surpass. Chikilto had confessed to 53 murders, Pichushkin planned to commit 64.   

Like most serial killers, Alexander Pichushkin was a nobody. At 27, he was an alcoholic
supermarket shelf packer, devoid of friends and still living with his mother. Most of his time was spent watching pornography and drinking vodka, or flipping through his collection of Chikatilo newspaper cuttings. Those cuttings filled him with a strange yearning, a desire to instill in people the awe and revulsion that his hero had.

In 1992, while studying at Moscow University, he’d bludgeoned a fellow student to death. That crime had filled him with a feeling of self-loathing and with genuine terror at the prospect of being caught. It certainly had not instilled in him the feeling of omnipotence that he’d expected.

And the intervening years had done two things to his already damaged psyche. For one thing,
the feelings of guilt and disgust were long gone, for another, the anger he felt at the worthlessness of his own existence had built up to the point of implosion. The hours that he’d spent fantasizing about murder and mutilation, about the infamy that such acts would bring him, required an outlet. Pichushkin thought that he had a plan to service that need.

The scheme was diabolically simple. He was going to kill 64 people, one for each square on the chessboard. He had the perfect hunting ground too, the vast tract of forested land known as Bittsevsky Park lay right on his doorstep in southwest Moscow.

Over the next five years, the Moscow media ran regular reports on the spate of brutal murders committed in the park. Sixteen people had been found savagely bludgeoned to death, many of them horribly mutilated. And that was aside from many others who had entered the beauty spot for a day of hiking or sightseeing and had simply disappeared, never to be seen again.

The Moscow police suspected a serial killer, and although they publically denied that a single killer might be responsible for the spate of murders, they launched a series of massive operations aimed at catching him. Despite their efforts, the “Bittsevsky Maniac,” as he was by now being dubbed by the media, remained at large.

Then, in June 2006, the police caught an unexpected break in the case. That midsummer had brought glorious weather to the Russian capital, with many of the city’s citizens streaming to Bittsevsky Park for a day communing with nature. For two of them, a pair of hikers, that day trip would end with a shocking discovery. The horrendously disfigured body of a 36-year-old woman lay on the banks of a small stream, flies blackening her corpse just as her clotted blood blackened the sand around her. The hikers ran immediately to find a police officer.

Forensic experts arriving on the scene quickly established that the woman had been bludgeoned to death, probably with a hammer. Those were not the only injuries, though. A number of small branches had been sharpened into stakes and then driven into the woman’s skull and eye sockets. It was a small mercy that these horrific injuries had been inflicted postmortem.

The victim was soon identified as 36-year-old Marina Moskalyova, a supermarket employee. Given her injuries, investigators were certain that she was the latest victim of the Bittsevsky Maniac. As such, they did not expect that the murder would ever be solved. But that was before they spoke to Marina’s 15-year-old son. The boy had some interesting information to share. He said that, on the day of her death, his mother had phoned him to say that she was going for a walk in the park with a colleague from work. The boy did not know the man’s name, but inquiries at the supermarket where Moskalyova had worked, pointed to a shelf packer named Alexander Pichushkin, with whom she had been friendly.

Pichushkin was brought in for questioning and stunned his interrogators by immediately admitting that he’d killed Marina. But she wasn’t the only one, he said. In fact, he was the elusive serial killer that they’d been hunting, responsible for 61 deaths, eight more than Chikatilo. His only regret was that they’d caught him before he’d reached his target of 64. “The chessboard shall remain incomplete,” he sighed, with what appeared to be genuine regret.

The police were initially skeptical of Pichushkin’s claims. This puny rake of a man was the monster who had terrorized the city for the last five years? It didn’t seem possible. But as Pichushkin continued talking, they began to give more and more credence to his confession.
There were things about the murders that only the killer would know.

Pichushkin claimed that most of those he’d killed had been homeless men, living in the park, many of whom had been known to him. He’d employed a standard ruse to tempt them into the woods, telling them that he wanted to drink a toast to a favorite dog that he’d buried there.

Unable to resist the promise of free vodka, the men had inevitably followed him. Pichushkin would then walk to an isolated spot and make his toast before handing the bottle to the vagrant. While the man was drinking, he’d sneak up behind and strike him on the head with a hammer. He’d straddle the man’s body after he fell, delivering several more blows to ensure that he was dead. With his victim now lying dead on the ground, Pichushkin would begin inflicting the mutilations that were his grisly signature. He’d force sticks and shards of glass into the gaps that had appeared in the victim’s shattered skull bone, and hammer stakes into the eyes and other orifices. He said that he particularly enjoyed the sound the skull made as it ****

Pichushkin’s graphic description left even hardened detectives feeling slightly queasy. But there was one more thing they needed to know. Why had he done it? What was his motive? To this, Pichushkin shrugged nonchalantly, “Killing people made me feel like God,” he said. “For me, a life without killing is like a life without food for you.” 

Any remaining doubt that the police had indeed captured the “Bittsevsky Maniac” was removed during the following days as Pichushkin led them to various burial sites and revealed further details of the murders. He also provided an explanation as to why many of his victims’ bodies had not been found. He’d thrown them into the sewers, he said, some while they were still alive.

This explanation had the ring of truth to it. One man had, in fact, been pulled alive from storm drain with severe trauma to his skull. He’d told police at the time that he’d been attacked by a hammer-wielding assailant.

But had Pichushkin really committed the 61 murders that he claimed? The police could only connect him to 49 and that was the number he would eventually be tried for. Convicted on all counts in October 2007, he was sentenced to life in prison, with the first 15 years to be spent in solitary confinement. Russia had suspended capital punishment in 1996, failing which there is little doubt that Pichushkin, like his hero Chikatilo, would have been executed.

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