The former supermarket worker, who says he battered his victims to death to fill the 64 squares on his chessboard, is charged with 49 murders and three attempted murders. The presentation of evidence and witness questioning began in the Moscow City court today, a day after the jury was picked.
The 33-year-old former supermarket worker, when asked by the judge whether he pleaded guilty, answered: "I want to say this: there are still a few personal issues about me that haven't been decided, so today I'm not going to say yes or no, and won't give any testimony."
After the court hearing, Pichushkin's lawyer explained that his client insisted on being moved from the Butyrsky detention center to Matrosskaya Tishina, a jail in northern Moscow where Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was previously held, where conditions are "more comfortable."
However, Pavel Ivannikov said the killer had already fully acknowledged his guilt. "Pichushkin confesses to everything the state prosecution accuses him of," he said.
Alexander Pichushkin is believed to have the dubious distinction of being Russia's most prolific serial killer, with a gruesome tally of over 62 victims. Although he has only been officially charged with 49 murders, he said at the time of his arrest that he had only three squares left to fill on the chessboard reportedly found in his flat. Pichushkin claims that several bodies of his victims, dumped in wooded areas of Bitsa Park, have yet to be discovered.
Criminal investigators say Pichushkin committed his first murder in 1992, but that his main killing spree occurred between 2001 and 2006. Almost all the murders are believed to have taken place in Bitsa Park's woodlands. The majority of his victims were male, but three were women and one was a child.
He told investigators earlier: "I would sometimes wake up with the desire to kill, and would go to the woods that same day. I liked to watch the agony of the victims."
"For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you," Pichushkin also commented.
Most of his targets were elderly people walking alone in the park. Pichushkin said that initially he dumped the bodies in nearby sewage works. But he said he became frustrated that his murder spree was going unnoticed and began leaving the bodies out in the open.
The self-professed killer would lure his victims into the woods, often inviting them to drink with him, and would murder them by battering them on the back of the head with a heavy object - in some cases a hammer, and often a bottle of his favorite brand of vodka.
Pichushkin was arrested in the park on June 16, 2006, 11 days after doing away with his final victim and leaving her body in a stream running through the park. He said his aim had been to beat the record of the infamous Soviet killer Andrei Chikatilo, convicted of murdering 52 children and teenagers between 1978 and 1990 in southern Russia, and executed February 14, 1994.
However, there is no likelihood that Pichushkin will share the fate of his role model, as Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1996.
As the jury was chosen on Thursday, the 33-year-old paced slowly up and down in his glass cage, his face unreadable. He looked pale and tired. As there is little doubt that Pichushkin will be found guilty, the trial has been described as catharsis for the victims' relatives by Russian media.
