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A Moscow court has found former supermarket worker Alexander Pichushkin guilty of the first of 48 murder charges against him.
Pichushkin has never denied the murder charges and instead boasted that he fell in love with killing and has actually killed around 60 people in all.
If he has murdered 60 people, he would be Russia's most prolific serial killer. Andrei Chikatilo was convicted in 1992 and executed two years later for raping and murdering 52 people.
Asked to give the jury's verdict on whether Pichushkin had strangled a former classmate, the foreman answered: "Yes, he is guilty, that is unanimous."
Russian media branded him the "chessboard murderer" because he wanted to fill all 64 squares of a chess board with a coin for each murder.
Pichushkin said he knew most of the people he had killed, that he wanted to collect their spirits and that he felt no emotion when he killed them.
Prosecutors say Pichushkin lured most his victims to secluded parts of a large wood on the southwestern outskirts of Moscow where victims were found with their heads smashed with a hammer or strangled. Others were found drowned in a sewage pit or thrown off balconies.
- Reuters
