The case of the Bitsevsky maniac. What kind of confession is the killer willing to make

The Bitsevsky maniac Alexander Pichushkin is ready to testify about 11 murders in the Northern Butovo area of Moscow. The criminal is currently in a penal colony for those sentenced to life in prison. Why the maniac could not be caught for so long and how he evaluates himself is in the Izvestia article.

What is the killer known for

• Alexander Pichushkin, the "Bitsevsky maniac" or "chess killer," was born in 1974. He was trying to bring the number of his victims to 64, the number of squares on the chessboard. However, he confessed in court that he had committed 62 murders.

However, his involvement in 11 crimes, which he himself described during interrogations, has not yet been proven. In some cases, victims are listed as missing.

• Pichushkin killed for the first time at the age of 18. He attacked a fellow student who refused to participate in the crimes with him. The most active phase of his criminal activity occurred in 2001-2006. In October 2007, a court sentenced him to life in prison for the murders of 48 people and for the attempted murders of three others in the capital's Bitsevsky Park. Additionally, the court decided to assign him compulsory psychiatric supervision.

• In an interview with Izvestia, Pichushkin admitted that he deliberately chose people he knew as victims because he felt a certain connection with them. In his opinion, the arrest was the result of his own mistake: his last victim left his son a note with the details of the meeting, but despite this, the maniac did not stop.

• Describing himself, Pichushkin claims that he has always been extremely punctual. He added that he considers his excessive kindness to be a disadvantage. "You call me evil, but in fact it's you who are evil, not me," he said in an interview. However, he noted that he does not support the idea of returning the death penalty.

• Alevtina Luchnikova, head of the psychological laboratory at IK-18, reported that Pichushkin has a pronounced tendency to sadism. According to her, he got pleasure from killing because of the desire for self—affirmation - all his victims were physically weaker than him. He probably wouldn't have attacked a strong opponent.

Pichushkin found himself in a penal isolation cell more than once. In prison, he keeps to himself, prefers solitude on walks. He refuses to talk about his family, but he talks about the crimes he has committed without much hesitation and even with a certain passion.

Why couldn't they catch the maniac for a long time

• It became clear at the trial that Pichushkin could have been detained much earlier, but the chance was missed. He strangled his first victim with a rope and dumped him into a sewer well. Then he was interrogated about the disappearance of an acquaintance, and there were still rope marks on his wrists. However, no one paid any attention to this. It was at that moment, as the criminal himself later admitted, that he realized that he could kill anyone with impunity.

• All the murders were committed in the same park, and he systematically dumped the bodies into the same manhole. Vladimir Mukhin, the head of the Kuryanovsky sewage treatment plants, has repeatedly contacted law enforcement agencies with reports that human remains are being washed out of the sewer system. In the period from 2001 to 2005 alone, 29 bodies were found in this way. However, criminal cases were not initiated in every case, as the disappearances occurred in another area.

• The maniac could have been stopped back in 2002, when he dumped a pregnant Marina Viricheva into the sewer. Her screams were heard by a watchman from a nearby garage cooperative, who rushed to help and pulled the victim out. At the hospital, Marina gave detailed testimony to the district police officer, but either her story seemed implausible to him, or he simply did not want to deal with this case. As a result, the girl was persuaded to abandon the proceedings, promising trouble due to lack of registration. As a result, Viricheva wrote a statement that she allegedly fell into the well herself.

In the spring of the same year, Pichushkin pushed 13-year-old Mikhail Lobov down a manhole. The teenager managed to swim through the sewage for about half a kilometer and get out. The teenager told the police officer on duty about the incident. However, the policeman only called a car to take the boy home. Moreover, a week later, Misha saw the maniac again at the subway station. Running up to the policeman, he tried to attract attention, but they wouldn't listen to him.

• Alexey Pushkov turned out to be the 26th victim. At the moment when the maniac was leading him into the forest, Pushkov's sister was walking towards him, but no one compared these events. Later, when Andrei Maslov, a friend of the maniac, disappeared, the operatives even visited Pichushkin's house, but, not finding him on the spot, they no longer attempted to interrogate him.

• The maniac's neighbor, Andrei Konovaltsev, became the thirtieth victim. In 2005, when a criminal was trying to hide his body in a sewer, two women noticed him. Police arrived at the scene, cordoned off the area, and Pichushkin, pretending to be a curious passerby, watched their actions. After this incident, he stopped hiding the bodies, leaving them right at the crime scene. It was then that law enforcement officers finally realized that a serial killer was operating in Bitsevsky Park.

Why did you decide to confess

• On April 17 last year, Natalia Guskova, the mother of the Bitsevsky maniac, spoke about the serious state of her son's health in the colony. According to her, Pichushkin is on the verge of life and death due to a serious illness. Presumably, the deterioration of his health could have prompted him to reveal all the details of his crimes before his possible death.

• According to Izvestia, Pichushkin is scheduled to be transferred to Moscow in the near future for investigative measures. He expressed his willingness to confess to 11 murders of men and women committed in the Severnoye Butovo area. These data were obtained during a joint investigation conducted by the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.