Material for the book

A jury has been formed that will judge the “Bitsa maniac”

The Moscow City Court yesterday held a procedure for selecting jurors who will hear the case of the so-called “Bitsa maniac” - Muscovite Alexander Pichushkin, accused of 49 murders and three attempted murders. Yesterday he himself abandoned one of his lawyers - Roman Shirkin, who, in his opinion, protects not him, but the interests of the prosecutor's office. The hearings are expected to continue today - the prosecutor will announce the plot of the charges, after which the defendant will express his position on the case.

About 40 people came to court yesterday - relatives of Pichushkin's victims, as well as his housemates and employees of the store where he worked before his arrest. Before the meeting began, some people stood on the sidelines, discussing the tragedy with the victims. Others, on the contrary, were willing to talk to the press. “This idiot needs to be impaled so that he slowly dies,” his neighbor expressed her attitude towards the defendant. “All his talk about how he got a thrill from killing was nonsense,” said another acquaintance of Pichushkin’s named Igor confidently. - Do you know how he drank while working as a loader? Vodka made him go crazy. When he was drunk, he spoke such heresy!” “But he knew my Victor for a long time, communicated,” one of the victims said, bursting into tears. - We drank together. No one, of course, could even think of him. And here it is. Horror. Everyone in the house knew him.”

The state prosecution at the trial, as expected, was represented by the capital’s prosecutor himself, Yuri Semin, who, contrary to usual, looked very stern. The meeting began with Alexander Pichushkin demanding that the hearing be postponed to another day. According to him, the absence of all victims in court (out of 41, only 21 people came to court) and all candidates for the jury will lead to the fact that the proceedings will be incomplete and biased. But judge Vladimir Usov rejected the request, since due to the large number of participants in the process, it was simply impossible to gather them all. “However, as necessary, all victims will appear in court,” Mr. Usov said.

After this, Pichushkin announced the refusal of one of his lawyers, Roman Shirkin. According to the “Bitsa maniac,” a conversation took place between him and Shirkin the day before, during which the defender displeased him. “From the conversation, I realized that he was not only not going to defend me, but was also on the side of the prosecution,” said the defendant. This demand was satisfied, and the lawyer left the courtroom. After this, the court began to select the jury behind closed doors.

“The board has been formed. It included 12 main and six reserve assessors,” the Moscow City Court noted following the court hearing, which lasted about four hours. In an interview with Vremya Novostey, Pichushkin’s remaining lawyer, Pavel Ivannikov, said: “I am his appointed (at public expense - Ed. ) lawyer. I have no idea where Shirkin came from. Maybe relatives or acquaintances, of course, found the money and hired it, maybe someone else.” At the same time, the “fired” lawyer Shirkin himself refused to comment.

Alexander Pichushkin committed crimes for 14 years - since 1992. According to investigators, his first victim was his fellow vocational school student. After he was interrogated several times as a witness in that case, the future maniac got scared and calmed down for a while. However, in 2004-2005, Pichushkin returned to his old ways. The victims were divided into two categories. The first is old acquaintances whom he invited to the forest to remember his deceased dog. The second category included single people, mostly homeless people and drunks, whom he met near the metro or shops, and then invited to go have a drink in the park.

As a rule, the crime weapon was an ordinary hammer. Having finished off the next victim, Pichushkin stuck branches or bottles into her head. He left some of the bodies in the forest, others he pushed into a previously open sewer hatch, after which he closed it. An active search for the “Bitsa maniac” began at the end of 2005, but for quite some time it was not possible to identify him. After his arrest, Pichushkin told investigators that he had repeatedly bumped into police officers in the park, who even checked his documents and let him go, “because they didn’t know what a maniac looked like.” According to the suspect, “because of the policemen who flooded the park, he even had to postpone the murder.” In addition, during the investigation, Pichushkin stated that after the verdict he was going to write a book about his “adventures.”

Alexey IVLEV