The former supermarket worker, who says he battered his victims to death in a park in southern Moscow to fill the 64 squares on his chessboard, claims many of his victims have yet to be discovered by investigators.
The judge offered Pichushkin an additional defense lawyer to protect his interests, and Pichushkin agreed. The lawyer, Alexander Kalyagin, said he was ready to begin representing his new client, and would not need extra time to familiarize himself with the case materials.
Lawyer Pavel Ivannikov told journalists after the court hearing that his client had been transferred from the Butyrsky detention center to Matrosskaya Tishina, a detention center in northeastern Moscow, after Pichushkin refused to testify until moved to the center, where conditions are "more comfortable."
Alexander Pichushkin, 33, is believed to have the dubious distinction of being Russia's most prolific serial killer, with a gruesome tally of over 62 victims. Although he has only been officially charged with 49 murders, he said at the time of his arrest that he had only three squares left to fill on the chessboard reportedly found in his apartment.
Investigators say Pichushkin committed his first murder in 1992, but that his main killing spree occurred between 2001 and 2006. Almost all the murders are believed to have taken place in Bitsa Park's woodlands. The majority of his victims were male, but three were women and one was a child.
He told investigators earlier: "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."
Most of his targets were elderly people walking alone in the park. Pichushkin said that initially he dumped the bodies in nearby sewage works. But he said he became frustrated that his murder spree was going unnoticed and began leaving the bodies out in the open.
The self-professed killer would lure his victims into the woods, often inviting them to drink with him, and would murder them by battering them on the back of the head with a heavy object - in some cases a hammer, and often a bottle of his favorite brand of vodka.
Pichushkin was arrested in the park on June 16, 2006, 11 days after doing away with his final victim and leaving her body in a stream running through the park. He said his aim had been to beat the record of the infamous Soviet killer Andrei Chikatilo, convicted of murdering 52 children and teenagers between 1978 and 1990 in southern Russia, and executed February 14, 1994.
However, there is no likelihood that Pichushkin will share the fate of his role model, as Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1996.
