PENZA, March 22 (RIA Novosti) – A resident of Russia’s Urals region who claimed to have eaten the hearts of two of the nine people he is accused of murdering will not be charged with cannibalism, a state prosecutor said on Friday.

The Penza Region Court is due to pass a verdict later today in the case of Alexander Bychkov, who called himself Rambo. He is accused of killing nine people, as well as stealing from a local store, prosecutor Nadezhda Akulova said.

According to the prosecution, Bychkov murdered alcoholics and homeless people between 2009 and 2011 because he disapproved of their lifestyle.

The defendant confessed to dismembering their bodies to hinder identification and investigation.

However, Akulova said he has not been charged with desecrating corpses.

“He’s an unusual man, he had peculiar motives, but his aim was not to desecrate corpses,” she said, adding that they only had the defendant’s word for it and no evidence confirming that Bychkov had in fact eaten the hearts of two of his alleged victims.