Alexander Pichushkin "Chessboard Killer" found guilty

October 24, 2007

Moscow, Russia - Alexander Pichushkin, known as the "Chessboard Killer", has been found guilty of 48 murders.

Pichushkin recorded the murders on a chessboard.

A Moscow jury convicted Pichushkin, known to the Russian media as the "Bittsa maniac", after four hours of deliberation.

Most of the murders were committed over five years, in the Bittsa Park in Moscow's southern suburbs.

Pichushkin has never denied the charges. He was also found guilty on three counts of attempted murder.

He is due to be sentenced later this week.

Many Russians would like to see him executed but, as Russia has suspended the use of death penalty, he faces instead a sentence of life in jail.

Pichushkin began his 14-year killing spree in Moscow in 1992, and was arrested in June 2006.

His victims were drowned in a sewer or bludgeoned to death with a hammer, investigators say.

People living near the park where he stalked his victims became afraid to venture out even for a walk.

Pichushkin claims he actually killed 61 people. Many of the victims were elderly men who got drunk with him, investigators say.

The vigilance of a relative of one of the dead led to his capture, otherwise, he warned, he would never have stopped.

Before the Pichushkin case came to light, Russia's most notorious serial killer in recent times was Andrei Chikatilo, who killed 53 women and children in the southern city of Rostov. He was convicted and executed in 1994.