Notorious ‘chessboard serial killer’ who brutally slaughtered 48 people poised to confess to 11 more murders
THE notorious “chessboard serial killer” who heinously executed 28 people is posed to confess to a shocking 11 more murders.
Evil Alexander Pichushkin, 50, targeted mostly the homeless, alcoholics, or the elderly before bludgeoning them with a hammer.
Pichushkin “declared his readiness to confess to having committed 11 murders of men and women”, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said.
The murders were committed around Bitsevsky Park in Moscow – like his other victims.
The monster had a killing spree that spanned from 1992 to 2006 before getting tried and jailed in 2007.
He got his name as the “chessboard killer” as he chillingly told detectives he had plotted to put a coin on every square of a 64-square chessboard, representing each of his victims.
Pichushkin is currently serving multiple life sentences in Russia’s bleak Polar Owl jail in the Russian Arctic, where he is known to receive love letters from Russian women.
Today’s announcement comes as a surprise as the killer first confessed to additional executions in a video recording nearly two decades ago.
At the time, he said there were 12 additional killings, but now will confess to 11 more.
The taped confession was kept secret at the time, but emerged publicly in 2021.
In it, the maniac – handcuffed and wearing a T-shirt – said: “The Bitsa Maniac, as they call me, it is me. In fact I committed 61 murders.
“Sixty of them in Bitsa Park and one in the city [Moscow].
“Most of the bodies I drowned in sewage wells. Why did I kill?
“I don’t know. There was no sense in life for me without this.”
His 2006 confession came after he was tricked into thinking he was speaking live at a press conference.
Police had set up the session after he said he would only confess live on TV.
Later he admitted in an interview from his top-security jail – from which he will never be freed – that each killing “brought me colossal pleasure.
“It is comparable to an orgasm.”
It was also revealed in 2021 that a victim who was attacked and left for dead in a sewer by Pichushkin had given cops his name and address after he had killed 24 people.
Maria Viricheva was 18 in February 2002 when Pichushkin saw her in tears after a row with her boyfriend and pretended to comfort her.
Her persuaded her to go with him into the park.
As they walked, he told her his name and address, and she realised she lived close to him.
But Pichushkin had only one aim, which was to brutally kill her.
She said: “I saw an open sewage well.
“[Pichushkin] grabbed my hair and started banging my head against the iron well cover.
“I knew… he would kill me.”
She then let herself fall and crash a whopping 25ft into the sewage well.
By a miracle, many hours later she managed to lift a manhole cover and scream for help.
Maria was taken to hospital where she gave a policeman her attacker’s name and address.
But the lazy cop – named Kalashnikov – was not interested in probing the attack on her.
He promised to tell her boyfriend she was safe, and get him to bring some clothes for her, but only if she pretended she had fallen into the well.
The policeman was later jailed for incompetence.