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MOSCOW - Russia's "chessboard murderer" was sentenced to life in prison for killing 48 people, after the supermarket worker told a court last week he felt like God as he decided whether his victims should live or die.
The 33-year-old Alexander Pichushkin stood with his head bowed inside a glass cage in the courtroom as the judge, Vladimir Usov, read out the sentence.
Asked if he understood, Pichushkin without lifting his head replied: "I'm not deaf. I understood."
Pichushkin was given his nickname by the Russian media because he told detectives in a confession that he had hoped to put a coin on every square of a 64-square chessboard for each of his victims.
He is Russia's deadliest serial killer since Andrei Chikatilo, who was convicted in 1992 and executed for killing more than 50 people. Russia is now observing a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty.
Room number 507 at the Moscow City Courthouse in the suburbs of the Russian capital overflowed with journalists, television cameras, police officers and some of the relatives of Pichushkin's victims.
Some struggled to catch sight of their loved ones' killer. About 20 relatives of his victims, including many elderly mothers, listened intently to the judgment, fighting back tears.
One young woman, who appeared to be in her late 20s, stared directly at Pichushkin with red, tear-stained eyes. Pichushkin kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
Pichushkin claimed during his trial to have killed 63 people, but prosecutors only charged him with 48 murders and three attempted murders. They are investigating the other cases.
After the verdict, a smartly dressed, red haired woman called Tatiana, stopped to talk to the journalists.
She pulled a neatly kept photograph of herself hugging her husband and her 31-year-old son, Vladimir. A month after the photograph was taken Vladimir was dead, she said.
"I feel bad," she said, her voice breaking. "It's good that it's all over but I don't have a son any more. Where is he?"
Most of Pichushkin's victims were from the margins of society: homeless people, alcoholics and the elderly.
He would often invite his victims to drink vodka in a park in southern Moscow. When they were drunk he would smash their skulls in and throw their lifeless bodies into a swift-moving sewage canal.
Pichushkin said he killed his first victim, a friend, in 1992, an experience he said was like first love: "You never forget it."
He killed an average of one victim a month from 2002 onwards, once taking three lives in 10 days.
During his own testimony, Pichushkin said he felt like a God. "I took the most valuable thing, human life," he said. "I didn't take anything else of value from them. Money, jewellery, I didn't need it. I felt like God."
"I tried to collect their spirits, their souls," he said. "I felt no emotion when I killed them."
- Reuters
