Russian serial killer batters 62 to fill 145;chessboard146;

Known as the 8220;Bitsa maniac8221; in the Russian capital, Alexander Pichushkin has confessed to having brutally murdered 62 people to fill squares on his 8220;imaginary chessboard8221;.

Known as the 8220;Bitsa maniac8221; in the Russian capital, Alexander Pichushkin has confessed to having brutally murdered 62 people to fill squares on his 8220;imaginary chessboard8221;.

Investigators initially doubted many of Pichushkin8217;s claims of having battered 62 people to death in southwest Moscow8217;s heavily forested Bitsa Park, but links steadily emerged, acting head of the Russian Interior Ministry8217;s Criminal Investigation Department Iskander Galimov told reporters here.

8220;It was proved that Alexander Pichushkin, the so-called Bitsa maniac, committed 62 murders,8221; Galimov said, adding the prosecutor8217;s office investigated the case and its trial will begin in the Moscow City Court soon.

Pichushkin, a 32-year-old former supermarket worker, was arrested in June, 2006, after a series of murders in the Bitsa park.

Over a period of six years, beginning from 2000, he allegedly hunted down his victims in the park and killed them with a blow to the back of the head with a heavy object. 8220;I would sometimes wake up with the desire to kill, and would go to the woods that same day. I liked to watch the agony of the victims,8221; Pichushkin told investigators.

Pichushkin mostly targeted elderly people walking alone in the park. He murdered not only familiar women, but also those, whom he was not acquainted with. Pichushkin told the police investigators, he became frustrated that 8220;his murder spree8221; was going unnoticed in the media and began leaving the bodies out in the open.

He also said he had planned to kill 64 people, the number of squares on his chessboard and that he had only three squares left to fill.

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He said his aim was to beat the record of the notorious Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, convicted of murdering 52 children and teenagers between 1978 and 1990 in and around the city of Rostov, in southern Russia.