methods took time, so he relied on the
soporific effects of the vodka. Manual
strangulation, he knew, demands a
considerable physical effort, and keeping
the hands there long enough to kill
seems like an eternity. Similarly with
hammer blows – the first rarely kills
outright. But with the victim heavily
intoxicated it was so much easier,
because he or she wasn’t usually in a
state to protest or fight back.
When Pichushkin killed with his
hammer, he finished off each victim by
sticking the unfinished bottle of vodka
into his or her shattered skull.
Pichushkin tossed most of his victims
into 20-foot-deep sewage pits next to
his killing ground, although they weren’t
always dead. One of the witnesses at
his trial was a man who miraculously
survived being thrown into a pit.
Another was a 19-year-old woman
who trod water for an hour before she
managed to grip the slippery side of the
pit and crawl out.B
y 2005, as the number of murders
mounted remorselessly, panic
gripped the city. By then Pichushkin
wasn’t even bothering to hide the
bodies, leaving them among the trees for
strollers to discover.
He was caught after killing his finalRUSSIA’S CHESSBOARD KILLER
HE SET OUT TO SLAY 64 –
BUT “ONLY” MADE IT TO 48
Right, Alexander Pichushkin. He claimed he placed a coin on a
chessboard to represent each one of his victims – and almost filled
it. Below, Moscow’s Bitsevsky Park, where he played chess and
selected the numerous victims he throttled and bludgeoned to death
victim, a 36-year-old female colleague
and friend at the supermarket where he
worked.
When in June 2006 he asked her to go
for a walk in the park with him she was
slightly suspicious and left a note at her
home for her son, telling him she was
going out with Alexander Pichushkin
and enclosing his address and phone
number.
“I knew this was the riskiest murder,”
Pichushkin told the police. “Because
I knew she had left that note. But I
couldn’t control my bloodlust. As we
were heading towards the park and
talking, I kept wondering whether to
kill her or to exercise caution. I finally
decided to take the risk. I was in that
mood already.”
The note left by his victim led police
to his apartment. Even so, they made
heavy work of arresting him in an
elaborate operation in which special