Alexander Pichushkin, Russia’s most well-known serial killer, has signaled willingness to admit to 11 more murders, a press release issued by Russia’s penal service said on Saturday.
Pichushkin, now 50 years old, has been in prison since 2007 on a life sentence for killing 48 individuals and attempting to kill three more. His spate of killings, which ran from 1992 to 2006, mostly victimized vulnerable people frequently the homeless, alcoholics, and elderly near Moscow’s Bitsevsky Park.
Nicknamed the “Chessboard Killer” by the Russian press, Pichushkin told police at one point that he wanted to kill 64, the number of squares on a chessboard. He said he planned to leave a coin on each square as a symbol for a victim.
He is now being detained at the Polar Owl prison, a maximum-security jail in Russia’s Arctic north. The fresh revelations were posted on the penal service’s official Telegram channel, saying that Pichushkin recently informed investigators that he is willing to give information about 11 previously unconfirmed killings of men and women.
Even though Pichushkin testified at his trial that he had murdered 63 individuals, prosecutors charged him with just 48 murders. Authorities have long suspected that he might be responsible for more murders than officially documented.
If Pichushkin were convicted of the new crimes, his overall total of victims would be 59, and arguably Russia’s second most prolific serial killer behind one-time police officer Mikhail Popkov, who was convicted of having killed 78 people.
A new investigation that will look over old cases left unsolved while Pichushkin was carrying out his criminal activities has just been initiated. Authorities have so far made no announcement about when further legal hearings might be triggered.
