This Killer was so Dangerous that he was Kept Inside a Glass Box for his Trial | The Chessboard…

This Killer was so Dangerous that he was Kept Inside a Glass Box for his Trial | The Chessboard Killer — Alexander Pichushkin

This man killed at least 60 people in the early 2000s.

Bitsa Park in Moscow, Russia went from a lovely community park to a death sentence in 2001.

Located in the Southern Moscow Suburbs, known as “the asshole of the world,” Bitsa Park was one of the few reprieves the local people had. Compared to the Golden Mile, known as the richest neighborhood in Moscow, the Southern Moscow Suburbs were mostly in financial ruin. Jobs had dried up in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. People were unable to relocate resulting in very poor families and overcrowding. Police in the suburbs were corrupt and underfunded. Crimes and drugs ran rampant in the area.

Bitsa or Bitsevski Park covers 4 miles top to bottom, totaling 2,700 acres. It is teeming with wildlife and streams. The park was very popular with tourists in the area due to its beautiful scenic views. It boomed in the 90s as a getaway for the crashing economy. The park would take a bad and mysterious turn only a decade later. People would become too frightened to even visit the park they once loved.

From May to July of 2001, a total of ten people would go missing from Bitsa Park. All ten of them were men. Each of the missing men had last been seen in the park at the edge of the heavy forest or inside the forest. All ten of them had been last seen alone, as well.

It was not uncommon for people to flee the Suburbs to try to find a better life for themselves. However, they would always come back within a few days or weeks of running away. The men that went missing from the park in 2001 did not come back like the others.

The families of the ten men reported them missing to the police. Unfortunately, the police accused the missing men of being drunk bums. They claimed that whatever trouble these men had gotten themselves into was their own fault. The police were not going to help. The community did not believe the police but accepted what had happened to the men.

There was a lull in missing people for a few months until October of 2001 when another man would go missing. In the two remaining months of that year, 4 more vanished under the same mysterious circumstances, totaling 15 men in the full year. Families reported them missing but no investigation would be launched to find the men or discover what had happened to them. Families mourned the loss and speculated what happened to them but no new information ever came out.

This mysterious phenomenon would continue for 4 more years. From 2002 to 2005, 25 more people went missing. 24 of the were men and one was a woman. It was not initially clear if the one woman was in the same category as the nearly 40 men. Regardless of the high number of missing people, police still shrugged it off and the community moved on.

In November of 2005, the 41st person would go missing. Unlike the others, this one would be found again.

Nikolai Zakharchenko was a retired police officer. Despite being well aware of all the people missing from Bitsa Park, he loved going on walks and continued to do so. Nikolai believed that he could take on whatever was lurking in the park.

On November 16th of 2005, he told his sister he was going for a walk in the park. He did not return that night, but the family decided to wait until morning. When Nikolai still did not appear in the morning, they went to the police.

Once again, the police refused to take any action.

A few days later, a local was walking deep in the forested part of the park. They noticed something tucked into the underbrush. They reported what they found to the police.

Finally, they did come out to investigate what the person had found.

The police discovered Nikolai Zakharchenko’s body face down and fully clothed. He only had one injury, but it had been fatal. He had a massive hole in his head from blunt force trauma. The police quickly deduced that Nikolai had been attacked by a person or group of people. They believed that his attacker had snuck up on him.

The police officers looked for a murder weapon nearby but found nothing.

Since a body had finally been found, police could no longer ignore fact that so many people had gone missing. They called in reinforcements from Russia’s Criminal Investigation Department. Together, they began searching every inch of the park for bodies or who or what was behind the attack.

Ultimately, the massive search turned up nothing at all. They did not find anything in the entire park.

The news about the death of Nikolai Zakharchenko spread quickly throughout the Southern Moscow Suburbs. With the news spread a deep fear. The people realized that all those people that went missing in the last few years were likely murdered.

People stopped going to the park. They gave a name to the evil thing in the park. The people of the Southern Moscow Suburbs called the mysterious killer the Bitsa Park Maniac.

Even with near-constant police presence in the park, people continued to go missing within the park’s parameters.

A week after Nikolai Zakharchenko was found up until April of 2006, nine more men went missing in the park. Something had changed, though. Each man would be found within a couple of days of going missing. They all had a huge hole in their head with a glass bottle jammed into it.

A serial killer was obviously on the loose around Bitsa Park.

32-year-old Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin was one of the only people still going to Bitsa Park. Alexander had been born in the Southern Moscow suburbs. Bitsa Park had always been a huge part of his life since he was young.

When Alexander was 4 years old, he had fallen off a swing that then came back and hit him in the forehead. The force of the blow caused brain damage, but his family could not afford to take him to the hospital. Once he got up and started moving, seeming okay, they thought he would be fine. However, the blow to the head had impaired his cognitive abilities. He would spend his childhood years being bullied for “sounding dumb.”

At some point during his childhood, Alexander’s grandfather took him to live with him. Seeing that Alexander was greatly intelligent, his grandfather taught him how to play chess. Alexander took to the game immediately. He quickly gained a lot of skill and could easily beat his grandfather at the game.

His grandfather introduced him to playing exhibition games at Bitsa Park. Elderly men met daily in the park to play on the chess tables there. Alexander loved playing chess at the park. The men there respected him. After finding out that Alexander was being bullied, they had told him that he would always have a place there with them and their exhibition games.

Not long after moving in with him, his grandfather passed away. Pichushkin moved back in with his mother but continued to play chess at the park. He still went even after people started to go missing and others were turning up dead. His mother greatly feared for his safety. She believed he did not understand the danger of returning to the park every day. Regardless, Alexander would tell her that he was fine and would continue to go to Bitsa Park.

By April of 2006, at least 50 people had vanished from the park. A total of ten bodies had been found.

Alexander had a job stocking shelves at a local store. On April 12th of 2005, when Alexander went to work he noticed that there was a new employee. He immediately found this woman interesting, but he was too afraid to talk to her.

The pair left work at the same time that day. Once outside, Alexander’s new coworker pulled out a cigarette and was looking desperately for her lighter. Alexander took advantage of this and offered her his lighter.

From there, the two began talking. She would tell him that her name was Larissa Kulygina, Their conversation would continue as Alex walked her home to her apartment. They had seemed to hit it off, and, once they reached her building, Alexander asked Larissa if she would like to walk to Bitsa Park with him. She agreed.

Once at the Park, Alexander immediately took her to the chessboards that he loved to play on. They wanted to spend more time together so they began walking on one of the paths that led into the forest and back out.

Sometime after they began their journey down the trail, the path began to disappear. They soon both realized that they were no longer on the trail they had started on.

At this point, Larissa came to a conclusion. She slunk away from Alexander, hugged a tree, and slid down to the bottom where she was in a crouched position. She then said to Alexander, “You’re the Maniac, aren’t you?”

Alexander was surprised. Typically, he had to tell his victims that he was the Bitsa Park Manic. Larissa had been the only one to ever figure it out on her own.

Alexander pulled out a hammer. He hit her several times in the back of the head. He then put a vodka bottle in the hole he had created.

After killing Larissa, Alexander lored another woman named Marina Moskalyova into the woods with the intention of killing her. Marina had been Larissa’s replacement where Alexander had been working.

Before Marina and Alexander made their way to the park, they stopped at Marina’s home so she could leave a note for her son. She told him where she was going and that she was going with Alexander. She also listed his phone number.

Alexander knew that if he killed Marina, he would surely get caught. He decided that he would go along with the killing despite that possibility.

Marina’s son would later call Alexander asking if he had been with his mother. Alexander would lie to the child and tell him that he had not seen her.

It is believed that the brain damage Alexander received as a child had rewired his brain and made him more aggressive. Part of why he loved chess so much was because it made him feel powerful to dominate over the other chess players.

After his grandfather had passed, Alexander began drinking copious amounts of vodka. His aggression became worse. He began videotaping himself picking on younger children. He would later rewatch these videos to affirm to himself that he did have power.

In 1992, he got his first urge to kill. His friend Mikhail Odichuk told Alexander he wanted to kill as well. Mikhail and Alexander met up and went to Bitsa Park looking for a lone person to be their victim.

Along the way, Mikhail got cold feet. Alexander told him they could try again at a different time. When Mikhail turned to head back, Alexander pulled out a hammer and hit him in the head. Mikhail collapsed to the ground. Alexander dragged him into the forest. He recalled seeing a well hidden in the trees. He dumped Mikhail’s body into the well and returned the cover. He picked up his hammer and left.

The well that Alexander dumped Mikhail’s body into wasn’t like your standard water well. It was actually an access point to the sewer that ran underneath Bitsa Park. The shaft of the well opened up into a large basin of deep water. There was no ladder inside the well and once the lid had been put back on top, it was completely dark. Other tunnels lead into the well, causing a current that swept through to the other side.

If Mikhail had not already been dead, he would have been pushed by the current into another tunnel where he would have drowned, regardless.

After killing Mikhail, Alexander waited nine years before he would kill again.

In May of 2001, Alexander lured a man he often played chess with into the forest. The man, named Yevgeny Pronin, followed Alexander to where he claimed his dog had been buried. They “paid respects” to Alexander’s supposed dead dog by having a drink of vodka. What Yevgeny did not know is that Alexander had led him straight to the well where he had previously dumped Mikhail’s body.

Alexander got out a bottle of vodka and both men took a drink. Alexander gestured for Yevgeny to turn around and lead them back. Once his back was turned, Alexander hit the man in the head with a hammer. He then dragged Yevgeny’s body to the well and dumped it inside. He would do the same to nearly all of his victims.

All the people that Alexander murdered were people that he knew. He had personal relationships with all of them. He would tell the police that it made him feel like God.

Not all of Alexander’s victims would die, surprisingly. Victims 16 and 17, a pregnant woman, named Maria Viricheva, and a 13-year-old boy, named Mikhail Lobov, both managed to survive. When Alexander threw their bodies into the well, their clothing snagged on the side of the well. Miraculously, both were able to climb back out.

Both victims went to the police and identified their attacker. Instead of getting the help, they had hoped for, both were told that they needed to drop the charges. If they did not, the police would come up with something to have them arrested. Both victims were forced to stay quiet.

Some believe that Alexander got caught on purpose. They believe that he wanted to get fame for the awful things he had done. It is speculated that this might be why he started leaving the bodies out in the open. He, also, started to pose the bodies. He wanted the police to find them so he could have the credit he felt that he deserved.

When police searched his home, they found a notebook with a chessboard drawn inside. A standard chessboard has 64 squares. The chessboard that Alexander had drawn had 62 squares filled in, each one representing one of his victims. He was unaware that two of his victims had not perished so they were still included on his chessboard.

Once arrested, Alexander completely cooperated with the police. He told them all the details of each of his murders, going so far as to reenact what he had done to some of them.

Police were only able to provide evidence for 49 of his 60 murders. Alexander was disappointed and asked if he could get credit for the other 11 murders. He wanted to retain his 60 victim mark.

Alexander was seen as such a threat during his trial that he was kept inside a glass cage the entire time. He showed no remorse throughout his trial. He seemed to enjoy the spectacle of it all.

Alexander Pichushkin was given the highest punishment under Russian law. He received life in prison without parole. His first 15 years of his imprisonment were to be served in complete and total solitary confinement. He could have nothing in his cell and was not allowed to leave.

Pichushkin is still in solitary confinement today.

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