By Katherine Ramsland

(Continued)

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Pichushkin often targeted the elderly. The Moscow Times reported that he would invite his victim to drink with him in a secluded area of the park — supposedly the grave of his dog — and once they were drunk, he would bash in their heads with a hammer or pipe, and either leave them on the grounds or dump them into a sewer pit (sometimes alive but too inebriated to save themselves).

Alexander Pichushkin

In his 2006 confession, televised to prove it was not coerced, Pichushkin said that he'd first committed murder in 1992 when he was a teenager (the year Chikatilo was tried and convicted). The victim was a boy that he'd pushed out a window. He was questioned but not charged and police had closed the case as a suicide. This only encouraged Pichushkin to consider himself invincible. Nevertheless, nine years passed before he committed murder again.

Squares on a Chessboard

He started up again in 2001, killing people in the park. Most he tossed into sewer ducts but left seventeen lying where they were killed. He got away with it, because few of these people were reported missing. Nevertheless, the bodies did draw attention and police were on the lookout for the Bittsa Beast. In the interview, he stated, "A life with murders is a life without food." He also stated that he believed he had opened a door for his victims and given them a "new life." The killing had been "a necessity."

In the typical "poor me" manner of many psychopaths, he described what he viewed as a difficult life. He'd never known his father and his mother had placed him in a institution for the disabled before removing him to live with his grandfather. (Some sources say his grandfather, not his mother, rescued him.) When the grandfather died, Pichushkin would go walking in the park with his dog. But then the dog died and he buried it in the park. Then he grew depressed. (His mother would say that his problems began with a head injury when he was four.)

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