By TIM SPANTON and WILL STEWART in Moscow
POLICE have arrested a serial killer who planned to fill an imaginary chessboard with a body on all 64 squares.
Chillingly, the maniac almost succeeded. Although 14 bodies have been found so far, he has confessed to 61 MURDERS.
Alexander Pichushkin, a skilled problem solver at chess, told Moscow cops he killed people who complained their lives were full of problems.
“I’m a great fan of chess,” he said, handing over a school-style notebook in which he kept a diary of his killings.
It contains a sketched chess board with the squares filled with the date and time of each killing plus details of the victims.
Just three squares were blank when police swooped on the flat where Pichushkin, 32, lived with his mother and niece.
A senior police source revealed: “He implies his killings were somehow linked to the moves in a chess game.
“As yet we don’t understand the pattern but we are still at an early stage of a complex investigation. We need to understand what was going on in his warped mind.”
Pichushkin is now undergoing psychiatric tests to see if he is fit to stand trial.
Another detective said: “He didn’t like people who moaned. By killing them, he felt he was releasing them from their problems.”
There was also a sexual element in the attacks. Most of the known victims were men aged 50 to 70 and each was killed with a blow to the back of the head with a heavy object.
Pichushkin, a shop assistant, told police: “Looking at my victims’ agony gave me orgasms.”
The killings, in Moscow’s vast Bittsevsky Park, began six years ago.
The final victim, a woman, was found on June 14 this year.
Police say that before she died, she scrawled a note to her son with Pichushkin’s mobile phone number.
She knew her attacker through work but most of the other victims appear to have been chosen randomly.
The killer says he hid the bodies in wells and water channels but in most cases cannot recall exactly where, despite the notes he made.
Neighbours of Pichushkin say they are shocked by his arrest.
One said: “We used to have drinks together. I can’t believe he is capable of these killings.
“Vodka influences people in different ways but with him he just became weak and used to collapse at my feet.”
Pichushkin was brought up by his mum single-handedly after his father walked out soon after he was born.
Neighbours remember him as a polite, well-spoken boy who kept himself to himself and did not have close friends. He frequently got into fights with older boys and often ended up beating them.
At 17 he fell in love with a girl his own age, Olga Maksheeva, who lived nearby.
She took him home and told her mother he was going to university, although he hadn’t studied since leaving school.
Her brother Stanislav says Olga soon lost interest in the relationship and started up with another man, Sergei Kozyrev, 20.
Stanislav said: “It drove Alexander mad and he wanted to punish his rival.”
Sergei was found dead in his apartment block the following spring. At the time it was listed as a suicide but police are now re-investigating.
Pichushkin again tried to win Olga back but she found a new boyfriend.
Her body was discovered in a pond in Bittsevsky Park five years ago.
Stanislav recalled: “I saw Pichushkin at my sister’s funeral. I was surprised he came, as a long time had passed, and how could he have known about her death?
“I told the police that some time ago he had been very jealous over my sister.
“The killer wasn’t found then but I have just learned he admitted to police he killed Olga.”