Serial killer apprehended in Moscow!

wind2000 · Sep 14, 2007

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- A man accused of killing dozens of people and keeping count of them on a chessboard lured most of his victims by offering them vodka to mourn the death of a nonexistent dog, prosecutors said at his murder trial Friday.

Alexander Pichushkin looks on from behind a glass security cage during the first day of his trial in Moscow.

Alexander Pichushkin has confessed to killing at least 62 people, with the goal of marking all 64 squares on the chessboard. He has been charged with 49 murders, most committed over the course of five years in a sprawling park on the edge of Moscow.

Pichushkin's lawyer, Pavel Ivannikov, said his client admitted all the charges.

Pichushkin himself refused to enter a plea, however, demanding that he be transferred, seeking what his lawyer called a "more comfortable" prison.

"I'm not going to say 'yes' or 'no' today because some of my personal issues have not been resolved yet," Pichushkin told the court.

Pichushkin, 33, had requested a jury trial, which is relatively rare in Russia, and 12 jurors and six alternates were chosen Thursday. If convicted, Pichushkin faces life in prison.

Pichushkin remained calm and looked down, sitting in a glass cage on Friday as he listened to prosecutors who described his crimes one by one.

Pichushkin's first victim was his school friend, whom he strangled and threw into a sewage pit in 1992 because he was "upset" by the friend's refusal to kill people together with him, said Moscow Chief Prosecutor Yuri Syomin.

He began his series of killings in Bittsa Park in southwestern Moscow, which terrorized the capital, in May 2001, Syomin said. Most of the victims were men, whom Pichushkin had lured to the park with the promise of a drink of vodka to mourn the death of his nonexistent "beloved" dog.

"He treated them to a drink until they got helpless and then killed them," Syomin said.

Pichushkin killed 11 people in 2001, including six in one month, prosecutors said. He killed about 40 of his first victims by throwing them into a sewage pit, and in a few cases strangled or shot them in the head with "a self-made device."

From 2005, he began to kill with "particular cruelty," hitting his intoxicated victims multiple times in the head with a hammer, then sticking an unfinished bottle of vodka into their broken skulls, prosecutors said Friday. He also no longer tried to conceal the bodies, leaving them at the crime scene, they said.

Three of Pichushkin's victims survived, and one identified him.

Only a few relatives of victims, some of whom were his neighbors and colleagues from a shop where he had worked, attended Friday's court session.

One woman said her father had been missing since 2003, and after Pichushkin's arrest, they were told that he was murdered by Pichushkin. She looked tense when prosecutors were going through Pichushkin's crimes in 2003. She refused to give her name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Pichushkin was arrested in June 2006 after police found his name and phone number on a piece of paper that a woman who was killed in the park had left for her son. He denied involvement at first, but then confessed to the murder after police confronted him with video from a subway surveillance camera that showed him accompanying the victim, according to the authorities.

Pichushkin went on to confess to at least 62 murders and led police to the bodies, investigators said.

Shortly after his arrest, police invited NTV to film and broadcast his confessions to counter speculation that he had been coerced.

"For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you," Pichushkin bragged in his TV confession. "I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world."

Police found his chessboard with numbers attached to its squares, all the way to 62, and Pichushkin also used the chessboard to keep stoppers from bottles of vodka he offered his victims, his lawyer said.

Experts at the Serbsky Institute, Russia's main psychiatric clinic, have found Pichushkin sane.

Russian media, including the government-run Rossisskaya Gazeta, have speculated that Pichushkin may have been motivated by a macabre competition with Russia's most notorious serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted in 1992 of killing 52 children and young women in 12 years.

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http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/09/14/russia.trial.ap/index.html

Lesson number 1, never accept drinks from strangers. -devil

xmichelly · Sep 14, 2007

dang 62 people ... that's crazy

BigM · Sep 15, 2007

Holy Moly

That's a lot of lives...

moor_moth · Sep 15, 2007

He deserves to die. All he's gonna get is life imprisonment...... he killed 62 people man, wtf!!

skid · Sep 15, 2007

whats the point of killing him, should lock him up and just let him rot in his cell.

[N] · Sep 15, 2007

62 victims damn, should just execute this guy, life imprisonment is just a waste of tax dollars, he ain't gonna show any remorse...but first he should feel what's the reaction of vodka's direct contact to the brain while he's alive...

hem · Sep 15, 2007

talk about trying to break the records of killing most innocent people.nobody/nothing in this world could save this guy from death.

khaotic · Sep 15, 2007

Death Penalty! Now!

asiangang · Sep 15, 2007

thats scary...-unsure

chickenutbread · Sep 15, 2007

what people would do to get attention.. just like a small immature kid.. -nono

wind2000 · Sep 15, 2007

chickenutbread said: ↑

what people would do to get attention.. just like a small immature kid.. -nono
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Ill take the immature kid over that dude anytime -what?

The_Jelly · Sep 15, 2007

Thats really odd...they declared him as "sane". What "sane" person kills 62 people.

ProjectD · Sep 15, 2007

dang..... friggin ppl in russia pretty crazy huh

nyckeion · Sep 17, 2007

scary part is this dude is young AND he had a normal job

Taxloss · Sep 17, 2007

"Alexander Pichushkin has confessed to killing at least 62 people, with the goal of marking all 64 squares on the chessboard."

He wants to be added in the notorious hall of fame for serial killers or something! -shock

chickenutbread · Sep 17, 2007

*shudder* then shortly after meeting his goal, he'd have probably moved on to filling up all the squares in "snakes and ladders"

Serial killer apprehended in Moscow!

wind2000 Self Schemata

xmichelly Well-Known Member

BigM Well-Known Member

moor_moth Well-Known Member

skid Well-Known Member

[N] RATED [ ]

hem Well-Known Member

khaotic Fobulous

asiangang Well-Known Member

chickenutbread Well-Known Member

wind2000 Self Schemata

The_Jelly NSFW? :P

ProjectD VIP yay :]

nyckeion ....Boo....

Taxloss Stripper Vicar

chickenutbread Well-Known Member