Alexander Pichushkin

Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin (Алекса́ндр Ю́рьевич Пичу́шкин, born 9 April 1974), also known as the Chessboard Killer (Убийца с шахматной доской) and the Bitsa Park Maniac (Битцевский маньяк), is a Russian serial killer who is believed to have killed at least forty-nine people, and possibly as many as sixty, between 1992 and 2006.

Pichushkin was active in Moscow's Bitsa Park, where a number of the victims' bodies were found.

Alexander Pichushkin was born on 9 April 1974 in Mytishchi, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, and grew up on 2 Khersonskaya Street in Moscow proper.

He lived there with his mother Natalia Elmouradovna, his younger half-sister, her husband, and their son in a two-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor.

Their apartment building was a six-minute walk from the north end of Bitsa Park.

Pichushkin is remembered to have been an initially sociable child.

However, this changed following an incident in which Pichushkin fell backwards off a swing, which then struck him in the forehead as it swung back.

Experts speculated that this event damaged the frontal cortex of Pichushkin's brain; such damage is known to produce poor impulse regulation and a tendency towards aggression.

Since Pichushkin was still a child, the damage would have been more severe, as a child's forehead provides only a fraction of the protection for the brain compared to an adult's. Following this accident, Pichushkin frequently became hostile and impulsive.

Due to his behavior, Pichushkin's mother decided to transfer him from the mainstream school he had been attending to one for children with learning disabilities.

Prior to this transfer, children from the mainstream school were known to have physically and verbally bullied Pichushkin, referring to him as "that retard".

This abuse served to intensify Pichushkin's anger.

Upon reaching early adolescence, his maternal grandfather recognized that Pichushkin was highly intelligent and felt that his innate talents were being wasted, as he wasn't involved in any activities at home and the school he was enrolled in focused more on overcoming disability than on promoting achievement.

Pichushkin moved into his grandfather's home and was encouraged to pursue intellectual pursuits outside of school.

The deepest of these interests was chess.

Pichushkin was taught how to play, and after demonstrating his ability was introduced to the exhibition games against elderly men who played publicly in Bitsa Park.

An outstanding chess player, Pichushkin found a channel for his aggression when dominating the chessboard in all of his games.

However, he continued to be bullied by mainstream school children and suffered an emotional blow when, toward the end of his adolescence, his grandfather died.

Pichushkin was left to return to his mother's home, after which he enrolled as a student.

According to reports, the death of his grandfather greatly affected Pichushkin.

In an effort to both dull the pain of the loss as well as to calm his severe aggressive tendencies, he began to consume large quantities of vodka.

He continued to play chess both at home and in Bitsa Park, now joining the other men in drinking vodka, though unlike them he could play without being greatly affected by the alcohol.

It was at this time that Pichushkin began to develop a more sinister hobby that, at the time, remained unknown to anyone: whenever he knew he was going to come into contact with children, he would take a video camera along and proceed to threaten them.

On one occasion that has since been made public, he held a young child by one leg, upside down, and said to the camera: "You are in my power now... I am going to drop you from the window... and you will fall fifteen meters to your death..."

He then watched these videos repeatedly to reaffirm his power.

However, by 1992, this practice had become insufficient to satisfy his urges.

Russian media have speculated that Pichushkin was motivated, in part, by a macabre competition with another notorious Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted of killing fifty-two children and young women over a twelve-year period.

Pichushkin has said his aim was to kill sixty-four people, the number of squares on a chessboard.

He later recanted this statement, saying that he would have continued killing indefinitely had he not been stopped.

Pichushkin's first murder occurred on 27 July 1992, when he was aged 18.

Pichushkin arranged to meet his classmate, Mikhail Odïtchuk, in Bitsa Park to jointly hatch a plan to kill sixty-four people.

However, when they had arrived at the meeting point, Odïtchuk changed his mind and told Pichushkin that he no longer wanted to take action.

Feeling teased by his best friend, Pichushkin strangled him and threw his body in a sewer entrance at Bitsa Park, then returned to his mother's apartment a short distance away.

The body was never found.

After Odïtchuk's disappearance, Moscow police opened an investigation.

Witness testimony provided to the police stated that Odïtchuk was last seen with Pichushkin, walking in the direction of the park.

Pichushkin was arrested at his mother's home on 30 July and taken to Moscow police station for questioning.

When asked about his schedule on the day of Odïtchuk's disappearance, Pichushkin confirmed having met with Odïtchuk but claimed to have left him unharmed in the park.

With no evidence tying him to the disappearance, Pichushkin was released.

In 2007 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.