And he was planning to stop when he got to 64 murders!
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Now this guy has got nads. I quote:
>
> "Defense lawyer Pavel Ivannikov asked for leniency
> for
> his client and said Pichushkin should be kept
> isolated
> from other prisoners, noting that he had no criminal
> record prior to the killings."
>
> The Moscow Times
>
> Thursday, October 25, 2007
>
> Bittsevsky Maniac Guilty in 48 Deaths
> By Svetlana Osadchuk and Alexander Osipovich
> Staff Writers
>
> A Moscow jury found Alexander Pichushkin, the
> so-called Bittsevsky Maniac, guilty of 48 murders
> Wednesday in the trial of the country's
> most-prolific
> known serial killer in more than a decade.
>
> Prosecutors also made the stunning admission that
> authorities missed a chance to stop Pichushkin's
> rampage in 2002, when a police officer ignored the
> story of a woman who survived one of his attacks.
> That
> officer is now under investigation.
>
> Pichushkin, 33, listened carefully from his
> defendant's cage at the Moscow City Court and
> occasionally grinned as the jury's foreman read the
> verdict in a courtroom packed with journalists and
> relatives of the victims.
>
> "Thank God," an elderly woman whispered as the
> verdict
> was read.
>
> The jury deliberated for less than three hours
> before
> reaching its unanimous decision. It also found
> Pichushkin guilty on three counts of attempted
> murder
> and recommended no leniency in his sentencing.
> Russia
> currently has a moratorium on the death penalty,
> meaning he faces a maximum penalty of life in
> prison.
>
> Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pichushkin
> to
> life in prison with mandatory psychiatric treatment
> and requested that he spend his first 15 years in a
> regular prison, where he may be kept with other
> inmates.
>
> Defense lawyer Pavel Ivannikov asked for leniency
> for
> his client and said Pichushkin should be kept
> isolated
> from other prisoners, noting that he had no criminal
> record prior to the killings.
>
> Pichushkin could be sentenced as early as Thursday,
> when he will be allowed a final statement.
>
> Pichushkin earned his nickname by committing most of
> the murders in the sprawling Bittsevsky Park in
> southwest Moscow from 2001 to 2006. Over the course
> of
> the five-week trial, he boasted that he committed 63
> murders in an attempt to kill one person for each
> square on a chessboard, but prosecutors only found
> evidence for 48 killings.
>
> Prosecutor Yury Syomin told reporters Wednesday that
> investigators would look into the remaining murders
> that Pichushkin had described.
>
> Investigators say Pichushkin sought to outdo Andrei
> Chikatilo, the notorious serial killer who was
> convicted in 1992 of murdering 52 women and
> children,
> dismembering them and eating some of their remains.
>
> Pichushkin's killing spree began when he was 18 with
> the murder of a classmate, Mikhail Odeichuk, in
> 1992.
> In court, Pichushkin confessed that he lured
> Odeichuk
> into a secluded part of the forest, strangled him
> with
> a rope and tossed his body into a sewer. Odeichuk's
> relatives did not learn how he had died for another
> 14
> years.
>
> "A first killing is like your first love," he said
> in
> court. "You never forget it."
>
> Earlier reports said Pichushkin pushed Odeichuk out
> the window of an apartment building.
>
> In 2001, Pichushkin started killing again after a
> break of nearly a decade. He usually met lonely men
> near Kakhovskaya metro station, offered them a shot
> of
> vodka or beer to commemorate the death of his dog,
> and
> invited them for a walk into the wooded park to
> visit
> the dog's grave.
>
> "I liked to talk to these people for an hour or two
> because it was interesting to talk to those destined
> to die," he said during the trial.
>
> The walk usually ended when Pichushkin bludgeoned
> his
> victim to death with a hammer. Other times he simply
> tossed his victim into a sewer after getting them
> drunk.
>
> Pichushkin often kept the cap from the bottle of
> Coca-Cola or Sprite he had shared with the victim as
> a
> souvenir. He also recorded each killing on the
> square
> of a chessboard, which police found in his apartment
> after his arrest in June 2006.
>
> Tragically, police missed a chance to stop
> Pichushkin
> at the height of his rampage, prosecutor Maria
> Semenenko said Wednesday.
>
> In February 2002, he threw a young woman, Maria
> Viricheva, into a sewer and left her for dead.
> Viricheva managed to escape and tell a police
> officer,
> whom Semenenko only identified by his last name,
> Kalashnikov.
>
> Kalashnikov forced Viricheva to retract her story,
> Semenenko said.
>
> Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation
> into
> Kalashnikov, she said.
>
> Pichushkin's trial featured the testimony of dozens
> of
> relatives of his victims, some of whom verbally
> clashed with him in court. One of them was Svetlana
> Shamayeva, the sister of Yegor Kudryavtsev, an old
> childhood playmate of Pichushkin's who was killed on
> Aug. 30, 2003.
>
> "Just tell me, why did you choose Yegor, what evil
> did
> he do to you?" Shamayeva asked Pichushkin, fighting
> back tears.
>
> "Nothing," the killer replied calmly. "He just was
> my
> friend, and that was the reason."
>
> Many of Pichushkin's victims were people he knew.
> Two
> of them, Larisa Kulygina and Marina Moskalyova, were
> his co-workers at a Grossmart supermarket on Ulitsa
> Khersonskaya.
>
> Moskalyova, 36, was Pichushkin's last victim. Her
> body
> was discovered in the park on June 14, 2006.
>
> Prosecutors said it was two small pieces of paper
> that
> led investigators to Pichushkin. A metro ticket
> found
> in Moskalyova's coat pocket helped investigators
> establish the date and time she rode the train, and
> video surveillance footage showed Pichushkin walking
> with her, they said.
>
> The second piece of paper was a note Moskalyova had
> left for her teenage son that he showed police the
> day
> her body was found, prosecutors said. Moskalyova
> wrote
> on the piece of paper that she had gone for a walk
> with Pichushkin and jotted down his cell phone
> number.
>
> Pichushkin, who was arrested two days after
> Moskalyova's body was found, also kept a list of
> names
>
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