The 33-year-old former supermarket worker dubbed Russia's "chessboard killer" for his fantasy of placing coins on each of the 64 squares of a chessboard to mark his victim tally, was invited by the judge to give a last testimony before sentencing, set for Monday.
"I have now been detained for 500 days. All this time, my fate has been decided by a huge number of people - cops, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, jurors... In my time, I myself decided the fate of 60 people. I was an executioner. I decided myself who would live, and who would not. I was almost a god," he told the court.
It remains unclear how many people Pichushkin killed. He earlier put the figure at 63, and prosecutors are currently investigating 11 murders in addition to the 48 he was yesterday found guilty of. Most of the killings are believed to have taken place between 2001 and 2006 in wooded areas of south Moscow's Bitsa Park, and many of the victims were elderly people the killer lured into the woods. Typically, Pichushkin plied his victims with vodka before battering them to death with a hammer.
Speaking from his glass cage in the courtroom, he said the jurors had failed to understand the killings.
"They don't know what happened there in the woods. They weren't there. I never deliberately chose pensioners. The important thing is that they were my acquaintances. Age was secondary."
"I don't agree that I killed with particular cruelty. I did not try to inflict suffering and torment. I just have my signature. Concepts of good and evil are relative, like pain and painlessness."
Pichushkin, who never denied the murders, said: "everything I told the court is the absolute truth."
He also stressed that he never robbed his victims: "I don't need junk, even if it's very valuable. I'm only interested in human life. That is more precious than anything... I took the most valuable thing."
Pichushkin earlier told the court he had begun killing in 1992, long before his main spree, and described in detail his first victim - a classmate who he strangled before throwing down a well.
Most of Pichushkin's victims were found in Bitsa Park with their skulls smashed. The killer initially dumped the bodies in sewage works, but said he became frustrated that his murder spree was going unnoticed and began leaving the bodies out in the open.
He was arrested in the park on June 16, 2006, 11 days after finishing off his final victim and leaving her body in a stream running through the park.
Chief prosecutor Yury Syomin recommended to the court on Wednesday that the defendant serve a life sentence in a high-security prison and undergo psychiatric treatment. Russia imposed a moratorium on capital punishment 11 years ago.
