Alexander Pichushkin (Chessboard Killer)

Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin, born 9 April 1974 in Mytishchi, Moscow Oblast, grew up near Bittsa Park in Moscow, where he later played chess with elderly men and where most of his crimes occurred. According to Wikipedia's account of his biography, an early head injury and subsequent bullying were followed by his grandfather's encouragement of his interest in chess; after his grandfather's death, Pichushkin began drinking heavily and developed increasingly violent private behavior involving threats recorded on video.

His first killing occurred on 27 July 1992, when he was 18. He strangled a classmate, Mikhail Odïtchuk, in Bittsa Park after Odïtchuk backed out of a plan the two had discussed to kill people, and dumped the body in a sewer entrance; the body was never recovered. Police, led by Chief Investigator Andrei Suprunenko, questioned and briefly detained Pichushkin but released him for lack of evidence. He did not kill again for several years, resuming after Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1996.

From May 2001 to September 2005, in what has been described as his "sewers" period, Pichushkin killed at least 33 people (with three additional victims surviving), primarily elderly or homeless men he met in Bittsa Park, typically by offering vodka and then striking them with a hammer or bottle, or pushing them into a sewage canal. He sometimes left an empty vodka bottle or sticks impaled in the victim's skull. From October 2005 until his final killing in June 2006 — an "open" period — his method shifted to repeated hammer blows followed by pushing a bottle into the victim's head wound. Ten victims during this period lived in the same apartment complex on Khersonskaya Street where Pichushkin lived.

Pichushkin was arrested after the June 2006 killing of his 36-year-old coworker, Marina Moskalyova, who had left a note for her son naming Pichushkin before going for a walk with him. Her body was found in Bittsa Park on 14 June 2006, and a Moscow Metro ticket in her possession led investigators to surveillance footage showing her with Pichushkin shortly before her death. After his arrest, Pichushkin led police to numerous crime scenes and was filmed reenacting the killings.

On 24 October 2007, Pichushkin was convicted of 49 murders and three attempted murders; he asked the court to add 11 more claimed victims, for a total claimed toll of 60. Judge Vladimir Usov sentenced him to life imprisonment, with the first 15 years to be served in solitary confinement. Pichushkin appealed, calling the sentence too harsh and requesting 25 years instead. As of 2026, per the Wikipedia article, he remained in solitary confinement at the Polar Owl penal colony in the Russian Arctic.