Translated material
"It's a job done"
“Bitsevsky maniac” was imprisoned forever
The Moscow City Court yesterday pronounced a verdict in the case of the so-called “Bitsa maniac” - Muscovite Alexander Pichushkin, who admitted to committing more than 60 murders on the territory of Bitsa Park in Moscow. Previously, a jury found him completely guilty and not deserving of leniency, so the court's decision - life imprisonment in a maximum security colony - was predictable.To some extent, the court even “commuted” the killer’s punishment. The prosecutor also demanded a life sentence for him, but with the first 15 years served in prison. However, Pichushkin was immediately sent to a colony. Obviously, the court took into account that in Russian realities a prison, where the convicted person would spend most of the time in solitary confinement and was left to his own devices, is too “hothouse” conditions for such a criminal.
In modern Russian history, Pichushkin can rightfully be considered the most widespread serial killer. Even the world-famous Andrei Chikatilo, whose name became almost synonymous with the word “maniac,” had fewer ruined lives on his conscience (he was convicted of 53 murders, he himself admitted to 56). However, the “Bitsa maniac” is unlikely to leave a mark at all in the history of criminology. Because Alexander Pichushkin, judging by what the investigation told about him, has no special connection to this science.
After all, most of the murders he committed (if not all) can rather be attributed to a banal “everyday affair” in the Russian sense of the word - they went to the park, drank, hit him, threw him into a sewer well, or beat him with a hammer. And Pichushkin killed not strangers, but exclusively his acquaintances, and most often the least socially protected - alcoholics, suffering from mental illness, or, at worst, simply poor and degenerate. Moreover, Pichushkin himself, judging by the results of the investigation and trial, was the same - all his life he worked as a loader or laborer and, like his victims, drank heavily, in fact becoming a binge alcoholic by the time of his arrest.
So it can most likely go down in history as a classic result of the degradation of the state system, which, without bribes and “grease”, will not even pay attention to the death of people until corpses literally rain down on it in hail. As it turned out, the search for Pichushkin began only because he, in fact, simply went mad from his own impunity - he began to kill dozens of people in the same place in the same way. And the fact that he could continue to do this for so long clearly proves that the people he killed simply were not needed by anyone. After all, if law enforcement agencies had taken at least one of his victims seriously, the “Bitsa maniac” simply would not have happened. He would have immediately gone to prison for murder, as police and prosecutorial chiefs like to say with disdain, “on the basis of hostile relations that suddenly arose after drinking alcohol.”
In this regard, a comparison with the well-known Jack the Ripper will be very revealing. He also killed asocial people - prostitutes, but took the lives of almost ten times fewer victims. The only difference is that the authorities paid attention to those events. That's why Jack the Ripper went down in history. And after the Pichushkin case, one can only guess how many such Pichushkins and rippers remain in Russia.
...Several dozen relatives and acquaintances of the victims of the “Bitsa maniac” came to the announcement of the verdict in the Pichushkin case. The small courtroom was packed. The judge based the verdict on the jury’s verdict that Pichushkin’s crimes were committed with particular cruelty, “in a painful way for those killed.” When imposing the punishment, Judge Vladimir Usov especially noted that he took into account the “exceptional danger of the defendant to society” and his “sadistic inclinations.” And also the fact that Pichushkin, when committing crimes, took advantage of the helpless state of his victims, most of whom were disabled or suffered from mental illness.
The court found Pichushkin guilty of 48 murders and three attempts. However, then the judge excluded one episode from the charges due to the expiration of the statute of limitations - the first murder by Pichushkin of his friend Mikhail Odiychuk, committed in 1992. In addition, the court decided to assign Pichushkin “compulsory treatment and observation by a psychiatrist”: “The court takes into account the results of examinations, according to which the defendant suffers from mental illnesses that do not exclude his sanity.” When the judge asked the criminal whether he understood the sentence, he, who did not raise his eyes from the floor all the time, replied: “I am not deaf.”
After the verdict, Moscow prosecutor Yuri Semin, who represented the prosecution, looked pleased. “You know, this is work, this is work done,” he said, smiling. - Justice has been done. Pichushkin got what he deserved.” Regarding the fact that the trial dealt with “only” 48 murders and three attempts, while Pichushkin himself confessed to 60 murders, the prosecutor reported: “The investigation into 11 cases in which Pichushkin confessed is ongoing, it was highlighted in a separate matter. The Investigation Department is checking whether these cases occurred and whether the convicted person was involved in their commission.”
When asked why it took so long to catch the villain, the prosecutor answered: “This is a combination of reasons that I cannot yet talk about right away. The time will come and we will tell you everything.”
According to the investigation and the confessions of the killer himself, he committed his first crime in 1992 - the victim was his fellow student, to whom the murderer invited him to kill together. When he refused, Pichushkin considered his friend “cowardly,” a “coward,” and invited him for a walk in the park, where, taking advantage of the moment, he threw him into a sewer well. After this, Pichushkin got scared and lived quietly for more than ten years. He started killing “massively” only a few years ago. He also threw 29 people - his old or casual acquaintances - into the well. Then he experimented, looked for new methods of killing - he threw one homeless man from the balcony of the 16th floor, killed two people with a shooting pen, and simply strangled two more. However, these methods, according to Pichushkin, did not give him pleasure. Then he began to kill people with an ax, and then insert bottles into their broken heads, leaving the victims in the same Bitsevsky park.
Only after this did they begin to search for the “Bitsa maniac” purposefully, but they still detained him in June 2006 by accident. Pichushkin’s last victim, a saleswoman at the store where he worked, left Alexander’s phone number for her son before going for a walk with him. This is how he was identified. At the trial, Pichushkin confessed to everything, saying that he killed simply for pleasure: “I did what I wanted.”