Latest / The conspiracy / The Most Prolific Serial Killer You_ve Never Heard Of- part 1

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The Most Prolific Serial Killer You_ve Never Heard Of- part 1 · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: A forest at dusk, at the edge of Moscow. Somewhere
0:03
Speaker 1: out in the trees, a chess clock ticks, and this
0:07
Speaker 1: is where the story ends and where it begins. A
0:10
Speaker 1: man comes here to play. He's good at the game,
0:14
Speaker 1: very patient, very calm. He also is keeping score, but
0:18
Speaker 1: not of the wins of something else entirely because he
0:22
Speaker 1: keeps a chessboard at home with sixty four squares, and
0:26
Speaker 1: after each murder, he fills in a square and his
0:30
Speaker 1: plan is to fill all of them. This is the
0:33
Speaker 1: story of the chessboard killer.
0:35
Speaker 2: Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder all things that
0:40
Speaker 2: I love to consume, and I know you do too.
0:41
Speaker 2: You stick just a beautiful, intellectually minded Today we're talking
0:45
Speaker 2: about a very little loon serial killer whose murders involved
0:50
Speaker 2: a very popular game. So, without further ado, let's unbuckle
0:53
Speaker 2: our seatbelts, going my five to the highway, slamm of
0:55
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1:12
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2:52
Speaker 1: and let's get back to it. So in the Soviet Union,
2:56
Speaker 1: chess was a national obsession. The government even funded it,
3:00
Speaker 1: and politicians promoted it, and on the international stage it
3:04
Speaker 1: became the measuring stick for Russian intellectual power, and the
3:08
Speaker 1: Soviets had poured resources into the game since shortly after
3:11
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventeen revolution because it mirrored what they valued
3:15
Speaker 1: most precision, skill and strategy, and for decades they dominated.
3:21
Speaker 1: In the parks of Moscow, it was practically a spectator sport.
3:25
Speaker 1: Old men hunched over wooden boards while small crowds gathered
3:29
Speaker 1: to watch and argue and second guests every single move,
3:34
Speaker 1: and for millions of Soviet citizens, chess was a language.
3:38
Speaker 1: It was taught in schools, celebrated in newspapers, and debated
3:41
Speaker 1: over meals, and that culture filtered into daily life across
3:45
Speaker 1: the country and even in cities where most people wouldn't
3:48
Speaker 1: even think to visit, cities like Matischi, which sits northeast
3:52
Speaker 1: of Moscow, and it grew along the historic road connecting
3:55
Speaker 1: the capital to the Trinity Saint Sergius Monastery, and for
3:59
Speaker 1: much of its history it supplied the capital's drinking water,
4:02
Speaker 1: and by the early twentieth century, the city had reinvented
4:05
Speaker 1: itself as a center for machine building and transport manufacturing,
4:10
Speaker 1: functional industrial and pretty much unremarkable.
4:13
Speaker 2: And on the.
4:14
Speaker 1: Opposite edge of Moscow, on the city's southern fringe, there's
4:18
Speaker 1: a forest Bittsevsky Forest Park, to be exact, known to
4:22
Speaker 1: most simply as beets of Park, and it covers more
4:25
Speaker 1: than eight square miles of silver birch streams and rolling terrain,
4:29
Speaker 1: making it the second largest green space in the entire city,
4:32
Speaker 1: and ancient settlements and burial mounds sit alongside three historic estates,
4:37
Speaker 1: all remnants of a much older world hidden beneath the canopy,
4:41
Speaker 1: and in winter, cross country skiers carved fresh trails through
4:44
Speaker 1: the snow, and year round joggers threaded along the paths,
4:48
Speaker 1: and on warm days, families spread blankets in the grass
4:51
Speaker 1: while children ran between the trees and at tables under
4:55
Speaker 1: the branches. Elderly men gathered over bottles of vodka to
4:58
Speaker 1: play jess, earning patches of forest into open air arenas
5:03
Speaker 1: where a single match could last all afternoon. And for
5:06
Speaker 1: the residence of southern Moscow, Bitza Park was a refuge,
5:10
Speaker 1: a place to walk, to sit, and just to be.
5:13
Speaker 1: Alexander Yuryavish Patchushkin was born on April ninth, nineteen seventy
5:18
Speaker 1: four in Mitishi, and his father disappeared from the picture
5:21
Speaker 1: almost immediately, and one version of the story has his
5:24
Speaker 1: father leaving before Alexander was old enough to even remember,
5:28
Speaker 1: and others describe a divorce when Alexander was very, very young.
5:32
Speaker 1: Either way, the result was the same, and by the
5:34
Speaker 1: time he was old enough to ask, there was really
5:36
Speaker 1: nothing to remember, the kind of absence that really shapes
5:40
Speaker 1: a kid. Quietly, and his mother, Natasha, raised her son
5:43
Speaker 1: alone and she'd called the same place home since she
5:46
Speaker 1: was eleven years old, and they lived in a two
5:48
Speaker 1: bedroom apartment on Karsanskaya Street in Moscow, and the building
5:53
Speaker 1: went up during one of the Soviet Union's first waves
5:56
Speaker 1: of public housing construction, and it was about what you'd
5:58
Speaker 1: expect from that descript cold walls, tight rooms, and nothing
6:02
Speaker 1: about the place that made you really want to stay.
6:05
Speaker 1: Two small rooms for a young single mother and a
6:08
Speaker 1: growing boy in a building that had never been built
6:11
Speaker 1: with comfort in mind. And in nineteen eighty two, when
6:14
Speaker 1: Alexander was eight, Natasha would give birth to a daughter, Katya,
6:18
Speaker 1: Alexander's younger half sister. So the apartment that was already
6:22
Speaker 1: pretty tight started to feel like it was closing in
6:24
Speaker 1: on them. But the family had one thing working for them,
6:27
Speaker 1: even if they probably didn't think much of it, because
6:30
Speaker 1: from their front door it was about a six minute
6:32
Speaker 1: walk to the edge of Beetza Park, and Natasha and
6:36
Speaker 1: Alexander's grandfather took him there all the time, going for
6:40
Speaker 1: walks beneath the birch trees, lazy afternoons on the playground,
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Speaker 1: space to move that the apartment just couldn't provide, so
6:46
Speaker 1: for a kid just boxed into a Soviet flat. The
6:48
Speaker 1: park was an escape, to say the least, so it
6:51
Speaker 1: would become a big part of Alexander's world very early on,
6:56
Speaker 1: and some accounts describe Alexander as a sociable boy. Now,
7:00
Speaker 1: the people who knew Alexander described him as a pretty
7:03
Speaker 1: quiet kid and making friends didn't come naturally to him,
7:07
Speaker 1: and at school he spent most of his time alone,
7:10
Speaker 1: and his classmates mocked him for how withdrawn he was.
7:13
Speaker 1: But at home, the people around him saw someone different,
7:16
Speaker 1: not popular or loud, but not the hostile loone or
7:20
Speaker 1: his classmates seemed to think he was. Like a woman
7:23
Speaker 1: in their building named Fetlana knew him as a pretty
7:26
Speaker 1: well mannered kid whose whole world revolved around animals. He
7:29
Speaker 1: seemed to feel more at ease with them than with
7:32
Speaker 1: other people, and everyone who knew him said the same thing. Basically,
7:36
Speaker 1: he'd rather spend his time with animals instead of people
7:39
Speaker 1: because animals didn't tease him or pull away from him.
7:42
Speaker 1: You know, they were just there. In the world outside
7:45
Speaker 1: felt cold, animals were the one thing that felt safe.
7:49
Speaker 2: Now.
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Speaker 1: One afternoons, Fetlana walked into the stairwell where she found
7:53
Speaker 1: Alexander just sitting there and he couldn't stop crying because
7:58
Speaker 1: he'd lost his cat that morning and he was wrecked
8:01
Speaker 1: from the loss. Spelana said the grief was so total
8:04
Speaker 1: he couldn't even form words, just completely inconsolable. So a
8:09
Speaker 1: pretty normal reaction for a kid to lose their pet.
8:13
Speaker 1: So Alexander as a kid, by all means, was a
8:15
Speaker 1: pretty normal kid. He was lonely, awkward and shy, but
8:19
Speaker 1: otherwise pretty normal. But that was until the accident. So
8:24
Speaker 1: he was young, and he was playing on a swing
8:26
Speaker 1: when he lost his balance and tumbled backward off the seat,
8:30
Speaker 1: and before he could get off the ground, the swing
8:32
Speaker 1: arched back and caught him right in the front of
8:35
Speaker 1: the skull, and the impact landed on the worst possible spot,
8:40
Speaker 1: his frontal cortex. For those of you who don't know,
8:43
Speaker 1: we've talked about this in previous cases, especially of serial killers.
8:47
Speaker 1: It's the part of your brain that keeps you from
8:49
Speaker 1: acting on every impulse, helps you think through consequences and
8:53
Speaker 1: plays a direct role in shaping who you are. And
8:56
Speaker 1: in an adult that kind of blow can cause lasting
8:59
Speaker 1: damn image, and in a child whose brain is still developing,
9:03
Speaker 1: the consequences can be far worse, and that moment on
9:07
Speaker 1: the swing was the moment that changed everything, because what
9:11
Speaker 1: came next was a completely different boy, And according to
9:15
Speaker 1: the people who knew him best, the boy they raised
9:19
Speaker 1: was gone, and the quiet, withdrawn kid from the stairwell
9:22
Speaker 1: was gone, and in his place was someone hostile, impulsive,
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Speaker 1: and completely unpredictable. And family members who'd known him his
9:32
Speaker 1: whole life barely recognized the child standing in front of them.
9:35
Speaker 1: And his mother had to make a difficult decision because
9:38
Speaker 1: Alexander's behavior had become aggressive enough that she pulled him
9:42
Speaker 1: out of his regular school and enrolled him in a
9:44
Speaker 1: school designed for children with learning disabilities. But the school
9:48
Speaker 1: was built to help get kids past what held them back,
9:51
Speaker 1: rather than focus on what helped them excel, if that
9:54
Speaker 1: makes sense. So whatever intelligence Alexander had was left sitting
9:58
Speaker 1: kind of idle. But the problem he faced with other
10:01
Speaker 1: kids didn't stay behind at his old school. Bullying he
10:04
Speaker 1: faced continued at his new school as well. Now the
10:07
Speaker 1: kids beat him up and he was verbally targeted again
10:11
Speaker 1: and again, and each incident fed the same fire. Just
10:15
Speaker 1: the anger that the swing had unlocked kept growing, and
10:19
Speaker 1: every taunt, every shove, every cruel word poured fuel on
10:23
Speaker 1: that fire, and nobody seemed to be stepping in, and
10:26
Speaker 1: nobody seemed to be listening, and the rage building inside
10:29
Speaker 1: him had nowhere productive to go. But then someone would
10:34
Speaker 1: finally see him, and that would be his grandfather, Because
10:37
Speaker 1: Alexander's grandfather looked at Alexander and didn't see a problem child,
10:42
Speaker 1: but instead he saw a boy who was sharper than
10:44
Speaker 1: anyone around him, realized a boy whose potential was being
10:48
Speaker 1: buried in a school that had no idea what to
10:50
Speaker 1: do with it. So his grandfather made a choice that
10:53
Speaker 1: changed everything, and he would take Alexander into his home,
10:56
Speaker 1: and from that point on they were together constantly. Though
11:00
Speaker 1: that didn't stop the bullying necessarily, because even after the move,
11:03
Speaker 1: other kids continued to make fun of him. But at
11:06
Speaker 1: least he was away from that cramped apartment with his
11:08
Speaker 1: half sister and his mother, and he was away from
11:11
Speaker 1: the schools that had failed him. So Alexander finally had
11:14
Speaker 1: something he never really had before, which was structure and attention,
11:19
Speaker 1: and someone who believed he was worth investing in. His
11:22
Speaker 1: grandfather began to steer him toward things that would actually
11:25
Speaker 1: challenge his mind, and one of them stuck immediately, and
11:29
Speaker 1: it was Chess. Alexander didn't just learn the game, he
11:33
Speaker 1: absorbed and immersed himself in it. He showed real skill
11:37
Speaker 1: from the beginning, and his grandfather witnessed the obsession grow stronger,
11:41
Speaker 1: and before long, the old man started bringing him to
11:44
Speaker 1: Beetza Park, the same tables where elderly men gathered to
11:47
Speaker 1: play and drink vodka and whatever, and Alexander sat down
11:51
Speaker 1: across from opponents decades older than him and outplayed them
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Speaker 1: all the time. Chess just gave him something nothing else,
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Speaker 1: had a way to dominate without destroying, a way to
12:03
Speaker 1: turn aggression into strategy and rage into focus. In every
12:08
Speaker 1: match was a controlled battle, and he was winning for
12:12
Speaker 1: the most part, and for a while, it seemed to work.
12:14
Speaker 1: As he grew older, he had a home that felt stable,
12:17
Speaker 1: and he had a grandfather who anchored him, and he
12:20
Speaker 1: had a game that absorbed the worst parts of his
12:22
Speaker 1: mind and turned them into something almost productive. But unfortunately
12:26
Speaker 1: that wouldn't last, because his grandfather would pass away, and
12:30
Speaker 1: that loss hit Alexander hard. He'd lost the only father
12:35
Speaker 1: figure he'd ever known, the only person whoever guided him
12:39
Speaker 1: with any sort of consistency. So with no reason to stay,
12:42
Speaker 1: he would move back into that cramped apartment with his
12:44
Speaker 1: mother and his half sister, and he would enroll in
12:47
Speaker 1: school again. But that foundation that was beneath him was
12:50
Speaker 1: just gone at this point. The structure his grandfather had built,
12:55
Speaker 1: and the discipline of the purpose, just all of it
12:58
Speaker 1: collapsed the moment his grandfather died. To cope, Alexander would
13:02
Speaker 1: start drinking large quantities of vodka day after day, just
13:07
Speaker 1: trying to dull the grief and quiet the aggression that
13:10
Speaker 1: had never really left him, and he would keep drifting
13:13
Speaker 1: back two beats at park. But now he wasn't the
13:16
Speaker 1: prodigy kids sitting across from old men. He was now
13:19
Speaker 1: a young man filling the hours with vodka and chess.
13:23
Speaker 1: So the park had once been this really positive escape
13:26
Speaker 1: for him, but now it was just a place where
13:28
Speaker 1: he coped. And then somewhere in his late teens, something
13:32
Speaker 1: darker started to surface, and he started carrying a video
13:35
Speaker 1: camera around children to threaten them. He'd approach kids and
13:40
Speaker 1: use the camera as a prop in a power game,
13:43
Speaker 1: and the thrill for him wasn't the recording, it was
13:46
Speaker 1: in the control the fear in their faces, the knowledge
13:49
Speaker 1: that he could do whatever he wanted and they couldn't
13:53
Speaker 1: stop him because he was basically an adult at this
13:56
Speaker 1: point and these were just little kids. And once he
13:58
Speaker 1: grabbed a kid by the end ankle, flipped them upside
14:01
Speaker 1: down and spoke to the camera saying, quote, you are
14:04
Speaker 1: in my power. Now I am going to drop you
14:07
Speaker 1: from the window and you will fall fifteen meters to
14:10
Speaker 1: your death. Unquote. Now he did not drop the child.
14:14
Speaker 1: He just wanted the feeling of holding a life in
14:16
Speaker 1: his hands, of being the one who decided what happened next,
14:20
Speaker 1: basically playing god, which is scary. So every threat he
14:25
Speaker 1: made and inevitably got away with told him the same thing,
14:29
Speaker 1: and that was that no one was watching and no
14:32
Speaker 1: one was going to stop him. So by nineteen ninety two,
14:36
Speaker 1: Alexander was eighteen years old and his heavy drinking, chess
14:40
Speaker 1: playing and free time terrorizing children for the rush of
14:44
Speaker 1: dominance just wasn't enough anymore. So. Mikyle Odachuk was Alexander's classmate,
14:50
Speaker 1: and some sources call him a school friend, but beyond that,
14:54
Speaker 1: almost nothing about his life survives in the public record,
14:57
Speaker 1: and who he actually was got buried under what happened
15:01
Speaker 1: to him, and it will be a pattern that repeats
15:03
Speaker 1: across this entire case. So in July twenty seventh, nineteen
15:07
Speaker 1: ninety two, Alexander arranged to meet Mikyle in Beatza Park
15:11
Speaker 1: and the reason for the meeting was a proposal. Alexander
15:15
Speaker 1: wanted to kill sixty four people won for every square
15:20
Speaker 1: on a chessboard, and he wanted Mikile to help. Now,
15:24
Speaker 1: Mikyle wanted no part of it because he wasn't a murderer,
15:28
Speaker 1: so he would listen, but he would refuse, and that
15:32
Speaker 1: refusal would cost him his life. Alexander sled him with
15:37
Speaker 1: a rope right there in the park, and then he
15:40
Speaker 1: dragged his body to a sewer opening and dropped it in.
15:44
Speaker 1: And Mikile was never found. He was reported missing, and
15:48
Speaker 1: that was all the world would ever officially. No. Naturally,
15:52
Speaker 1: the disappearance didn't go unnoticed because people had seen the
15:55
Speaker 1: two of them together shortly before Mikile vanished, and that
15:58
Speaker 1: information reached Mossas Police, with Andre Supernenko as chief investigator. Now,
16:04
Speaker 1: the Mosscow Police investigators brought Alexander in for questioning, and
16:07
Speaker 1: he would just tell a simple story he admitted he'd
16:10
Speaker 1: met Mikile that day and they hung out and they
16:13
Speaker 1: parted ways, and Mikile was perfectly fine when he walked off,
16:17
Speaker 1: and that was it. And it worked because since there
16:20
Speaker 1: was no body and no physical evidence tying him to
16:22
Speaker 1: a crime, witnesses could only place them together and nothing more.
16:26
Speaker 1: Because that just proved a meeting, not necessarily a murder
16:30
Speaker 1: about something concrete, investigators had nothing to hold him on,
16:33
Speaker 1: so Alexander walked free. So the system had its first
16:37
Speaker 1: chance to stop him there, but they couldn't. So after
16:40
Speaker 1: the murder of Mikile, nearly a decade passed with no
16:44
Speaker 1: known killings, and on the surface, Alexander's life looked unremarkable.
16:49
Speaker 1: During the stretch, he held down a job, kept drinking,
16:52
Speaker 1: and kept playing chess in park, and anyone watching from
16:55
Speaker 1: the outside, he was just another man grinding through post
16:59
Speaker 1: Soviet life. But something was building underneath, because during those years,
17:03
Speaker 1: Alexander developed a fixation on one man in particular, Andrei Chikatillo,
17:09
Speaker 1: known as the Rostov Ripper. At Chikatillo was Russia's most
17:14
Speaker 1: notorious serial killer, killing fifty two women and children across
17:19
Speaker 1: twelve years. His case is utterly disgusting. He is a monster,
17:25
Speaker 1: and that was the final tally when a court finally
17:28
Speaker 1: convicted Chikatillo in nineteen ninety two, and he would be
17:32
Speaker 1: sentenced to death and then executed in February of nineteen
17:35
Speaker 1: ninety four. But his rampage had stretched across the Soviet
17:39
Speaker 1: Union and Chikatillo became a dark landmark in Russian criminal history.
17:44
Speaker 1: And for Alexander, Chikatilla became something else entirely, though, and
17:48
Speaker 1: that was an obsession. Meanwhile, the country around him was shifting,
17:54
Speaker 1: and Russia became a member of the Council of Europe
17:56
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, and with that membership came upon
18:00
Speaker 1: ledge to stop executing prisoners, and a moratorium on the
18:03
Speaker 1: death penalty took effect that same year. The groundwork for
18:07
Speaker 1: it had been laid three years earlier, and the nineteen
18:10
Speaker 1: ninety three constitution allow of the death penalty only as
18:13
Speaker 1: a temporary measure restricted to exceptional cases quote unquote, until
18:17
Speaker 1: its complete abolition, but the nineteen ninety six commitment made
18:21
Speaker 1: it official, so from that point forward, no one in
18:24
Speaker 1: Russia would be executed, and life imprisonment became the ceiling.
18:28
Speaker 1: So the year started to blur together for Alexander, what
18:31
Speaker 1: with work, vodka, chess, and tom park. These were his constants,
18:37
Speaker 1: though the routines that he built after his grandfather's death
18:39
Speaker 1: hadn't changed. Whatever restraint had kept him from killing again
18:43
Speaker 1: was starting to erode, and then in the summer of
18:46
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, the silence broke, and Alexander described
18:50
Speaker 1: the moment in his own words, saying, quote, it dawned
18:54
Speaker 1: upon me on that day that I would murder someone unquote,
18:57
Speaker 1: which is hilling to just think of a man playing
19:02
Speaker 1: chess in a park and realizing he could just murder
19:05
Speaker 1: whoever he wants. So just like that, the gears of
19:08
Speaker 1: quiet were over. So Yevgeny Pronan was fifty two years
19:12
Speaker 1: old and he played chess with Alexander in Beetza Park.
19:16
Speaker 1: He was an older man, a casual acquaintance, if you will,
19:20
Speaker 1: and on May seventeenth, two thousand and one, the two
19:22
Speaker 1: finished a game of chess and Alexander asked Pronin to
19:26
Speaker 1: take a walk with him. He had a story on
19:28
Speaker 1: the ready. His dog had died and he wanted to
19:31
Speaker 1: pay respects at the grave. So, not thinking anything of
19:35
Speaker 1: it because he's played chess with Alexander for you know, years.
19:38
Speaker 1: At this point, Pronin went alone and they walked to
19:42
Speaker 1: a remote stretch of the park, far from the paths
19:45
Speaker 1: and the crowds, and Alexander opened a bottle of vodka
19:48
Speaker 1: and they raised a toast to the dead dog that
19:50
Speaker 1: didn't exist. And then Alexander would attack him and he
19:54
Speaker 1: would blood Pronan, unconscious and dump him into a sewage well.
19:59
Speaker 1: So everything that would define his method was present in
20:03
Speaker 1: this single killing. The rouss, the vodka, the toast, the ambush,
20:08
Speaker 1: and the well. It was the birth of a pattern
20:12
Speaker 1: of his mo and within eight weeks Alexander killed nine
20:16
Speaker 1: more people. In two thousand and one alone, he murdered
20:20
Speaker 1: eleven people, six of them in a single month. So
20:24
Speaker 1: whatever had broken open inside him that summer wasn't slowing down.
20:29
Speaker 1: But his targets were almost always the same, primarily elderly
20:33
Speaker 1: homeless men in and around Betza Park, people he could
20:36
Speaker 1: approach with a bottle and a story and who had
20:39
Speaker 1: no reason to say no to a free drink, and
20:41
Speaker 1: the routine became a ritual. He'd sit with them first,
20:45
Speaker 1: talking and listening, sometimes for over an hour. He was
20:49
Speaker 1: never in a rush, and he believes that the closer
20:51
Speaker 1: you are to the person who is about to die,
20:54
Speaker 1: the more pleasant it is to kill them. His words,
20:58
Speaker 1: and one of his favorite books was Dale Carnegie's How
21:01
Speaker 1: to Win Friends and Influence People. But the friendships were
21:05
Speaker 1: never real. He just built up those friendships for one reason,
21:08
Speaker 1: and that was to get close enough to kill them,
21:11
Speaker 1: and because it felt better killing someone he knew a
21:13
Speaker 1: little better. And when that moment came, he always struck
21:17
Speaker 1: from behind, partly to catch them off guard and partly
21:21
Speaker 1: to keep blood off his clothes. His words, not mine,
21:25
Speaker 1: and his weapon of choice was a hammer, and in
21:28
Speaker 1: some cases he used the bottle of vodka that they
21:31
Speaker 1: drank from right before their death. But a handful of
21:34
Speaker 1: victims were also strangled and a few others were shot
21:38
Speaker 1: in the head with a homemade weapon he rigged from
21:41
Speaker 1: a pipe. Because he didn't swing to kill, He just
21:44
Speaker 1: hit hard enough to drop them, but not hard enough
21:47
Speaker 1: to finish them off. The point was consciousness. He needed
21:52
Speaker 1: them to know what was being done to them. And
21:55
Speaker 1: then came the disposal and wells at the edge of
21:58
Speaker 1: the park gave him access to Moscow's sewer network, and
22:01
Speaker 1: the fall was about thirty feet, so if the blow
22:04
Speaker 1: hadn't killed them, the impact at the bottom would, so
22:08
Speaker 1: the sewers just did the rest for him, and the
22:11
Speaker 1: current pushed remains through miles of underground pipe, and some
22:15
Speaker 1: washed up at a treatment facility on the far side
22:17
Speaker 1: of the city, and others never surfaced at all, and
22:21
Speaker 1: investigators believed at least thirteen bodies remain lodged in the
22:25
Speaker 1: tunnels to this day. So between May two thousand and
22:28
Speaker 1: one and September two thousand and five, Alexander attacked thirty
22:32
Speaker 1: six people, and three of them survived, but the rest
22:36
Speaker 1: obviously wouldn't, and almost all of them fit the same profile,
22:41
Speaker 1: older homeless living on the margins. They were basically invisible
22:46
Speaker 1: to society long before Alexander found them, people who could
22:50
Speaker 1: vanish without anyone filing a report, without anyone raising an alarm.
22:54
Speaker 1: And twenty of the people he murdered were men he
22:57
Speaker 1: played chess with in the park, people who knew his face,
23:00
Speaker 1: his name, his habits, but not all of them fit
23:03
Speaker 1: that profile. He also killed younger men and women, and
23:08
Speaker 1: at least one child and money of his victims will
23:12
Speaker 1: never be identified, and their names and stories are gone,
23:16
Speaker 1: And I feel awful that I can't tell you who
23:18
Speaker 1: they were, but the information just doesn't exist because these
23:22
Speaker 1: people just had no record of who they were, especially
23:26
Speaker 1: because of a lot of them were homeless. And that
23:28
Speaker 1: just adds to the horror of this whole situation because
23:31
Speaker 1: they were basically erased twice, once by Alexander and once
23:36
Speaker 1: by a system that never looked for them. But the
23:39
Speaker 1: first survivor was Maria Verishiva, a pregnant saleswoman. So on
23:44
Speaker 1: February twenty third, two thousand and two, Alexander got Maria
23:49
Speaker 1: into beats at Park and forced her down one of
23:52
Speaker 1: the wells, but she would grab the walls on the
23:55
Speaker 1: way down, doing anything she could to hold on, but
23:59
Speaker 1: he would grab a fistful of her hair and drive
24:02
Speaker 1: her head into the concrete walls again and again. And
24:06
Speaker 1: when he left, he was sure she was finished, but
24:10
Speaker 1: she wasn't, and she lived, and somehow she pulled herself
24:14
Speaker 1: out of the well, saving the baby's life too, which
24:18
Speaker 1: is such a miracle, like what a oh, I'm just
24:21
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that that was able to happen, I mean,
24:24
Speaker 1: like a mother's will. And after she got herself out
24:27
Speaker 1: of the well and was beaten bloody. She went to
24:30
Speaker 1: the police and they offered her a deal. Keep your
24:33
Speaker 1: mouth shut about what happened and we won't ask about
24:37
Speaker 1: your registration papers. Yeah, so she stayed quiet, and in
24:43
Speaker 1: the two weeks after her attack, Alexander killed three more people,
24:47
Speaker 1: so the system was absolutelycked. Guy tries to kill someone,
24:53
Speaker 1: a woman, and they're just like, we don't really want
24:56
Speaker 1: to deal with this right now, so just like shut
24:58
Speaker 1: up and leave what stoll and Another survivor was Mikyle Lobov,
25:06
Speaker 1: a teenager, and on March tenth, two thousand and two,
25:09
Speaker 1: Alexander got Lobov to follow him into the park again
25:13
Speaker 1: just like Maria, and the bait was either a job
25:16
Speaker 1: carrying a printer or cigarettes of vodka, depending on the account,
25:21
Speaker 1: but Alexander cracked him over the head and sent him
25:24
Speaker 1: down the well shaft. But on the way down, his
25:28
Speaker 1: jacket thankfully snagged on a metal edge jutting from the
25:32
Speaker 1: wall and it held, ensuring he never hit the water,
25:35
Speaker 1: and Mikayle Lobov climbed out alive, and he found a
25:39
Speaker 1: police officer and told him what happened, but the officer
25:43
Speaker 1: told him to go home, which like what is happening,
25:48
Speaker 1: What was happening in Soviet Russia at this time? This
25:51
Speaker 1: is insane, This is insane in the early two thousands.
25:54
Speaker 1: But seven days later, Lobov was hanging around the metro
25:57
Speaker 1: station and there was Alexander right in front of him,
26:01
Speaker 1: and the kid lost his shit rightfully, so he was yelling,
26:05
Speaker 1: pulling out one of the officers posted outside, pointing straight
26:09
Speaker 1: at the man who'd thrown him down a well, and
26:12
Speaker 1: the officers told him to leave, so nothing happened. Alexander
26:16
Speaker 1: didn't go to jail, wasn't even questioned. They just told
26:19
Speaker 1: him to go away, like he was a pest to
26:22
Speaker 1: this kid who was near murdered. So that was now
26:26
Speaker 1: two reports of attempted murder and two dismissals. A child
26:31
Speaker 1: pointing at his attacker in broad daylight, and nobody listened,
26:36
Speaker 1: and Alexander knew it, because no one would believe a
26:39
Speaker 1: punk that like to hang out at metro stations, you know,
26:42
Speaker 1: And at this point everybody he knows. He's a pretty
26:46
Speaker 1: well respected man who just plays chess in the park. Yeah,
26:48
Speaker 1: he drinks a lot, Other than that, he seems pretty harmless.
26:53
Speaker 1: But then there was a third survivor, who was Constantine
26:56
Speaker 1: at Paula Carpo and they were thirty one years old
27:00
Speaker 1: on November fifteenth, two thousand and three, and not much
27:03
Speaker 1: is known about this event, but there's another survivor and
27:07
Speaker 1: nothing happened again. But after this attack, something shifted and
27:12
Speaker 1: Alexander stopped killing for fifteen months that we know of,
27:17
Speaker 1: and he didn't resume until February twenty second, two thousand
27:20
Speaker 1: and five, when he murdered fifty seven year old Peter
27:23
Speaker 1: de Duncan. And the killings would come slower now, one
27:27
Speaker 1: in June and one more in September. But the hiatus
27:31
Speaker 1: was just that, only a pause, not necessarily an ending.
27:35
Speaker 1: All right, guys, let's take a quick pause to talk
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Speaker 1: for sponsoring the video on supporting the channel, and let's
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Speaker 1: get back to it. So for years, people simply vanished,
29:25
Speaker 1: and in the rare cases where a family member filed
29:27
Speaker 1: a missing person's report, police rarely acted on it because
29:31
Speaker 1: they're just standing there with their hand. I don't really know.
29:34
Speaker 1: Because Moscow police had a reputation for corruption and heavy drinking,
29:38
Speaker 1: and a missing homeless man wasn't anyone's priority, and Alexander,
29:43
Speaker 1: being the smart man that he is albeit a monster,
29:47
Speaker 1: understood this. So that led him to choose victims who
29:50
Speaker 1: wouldn't be missed, people without a close family, without stable addresses,
29:54
Speaker 1: without anyone who would sound the alarm quickly enough to matter.
29:58
Speaker 1: But that didn't even matter because people who survived an
30:01
Speaker 1: attempted murder yelling of the police didn't even matter to
30:04
Speaker 1: the police. So but that brought him a buffer of days.
30:08
Speaker 1: Sometimes even weeks before anyone even wondered where these men
30:13
Speaker 1: had gone, and the sewer system handled the rest like
30:16
Speaker 1: we talked about, because you can't build a murder case
30:18
Speaker 1: without a body, and the sewers were swallowing that evidence.
30:22
Speaker 1: But the police already had the evidence because victims hand
30:26
Speaker 1: delivered this evidence right to them, but they just chose
30:29
Speaker 1: to bury it. And more than forty people disappeared before
30:33
Speaker 1: anyone in a position of authority acknowledged that a serial
30:36
Speaker 1: killer was operating in Moscow. So the families started connecting
30:40
Speaker 1: the dots on their own, and one missing person led
30:43
Speaker 1: to another, and then another, and they were asking the
30:47
Speaker 1: same questions. Could it be someone that they knew? Too
30:50
Speaker 1: many people were dying from the same neighborhood, the same park,
30:53
Speaker 1: in the same circles. It couldn't be a coincidence. So,
30:58
Speaker 1: like what happens in every small town, rumors started to spread,
31:01
Speaker 1: and some said it was psychiatric patient chechens and some
31:05
Speaker 1: said the mafia, and everyone had a theory, but no
31:08
Speaker 1: one had the answers, and the sewage wells were nearly
31:11
Speaker 1: a perfect system. As long as the bodies went underground,
31:15
Speaker 1: no one was looking. But eventually the bodies stopped going
31:18
Speaker 1: underground and they started appearing in the open, and once
31:22
Speaker 1: that happened, the killings could no longer be ignored. So
31:26
Speaker 1: on October of two thousand and five, something changed and
31:29
Speaker 1: Alexander stopped using the sewage wells that had served him
31:32
Speaker 1: for years, and the killings became more brutal, and he
31:37
Speaker 1: struck victims multiple times, now, hammering their skulls with a
31:40
Speaker 1: violence that went beyond what was needed to kill, just
31:44
Speaker 1: complete overkill. And then he would take an unfinished bottle
31:47
Speaker 1: of vodka and would shove it into their open wounds,
31:51
Speaker 1: which was a signature that was meant to be seen clearly.
31:55
Speaker 1: And Alexander at this point was just being so blase
31:59
Speaker 1: and overcast about it because he was just leaving the
32:01
Speaker 1: bodies where they fell, no more dragging them to wells
32:05
Speaker 1: for disposal, no more sewer systems. The corpses just stayed
32:09
Speaker 1: in the park, out in the open, waiting to be found.
32:13
Speaker 1: And for years people had been disappearing across southern Moscow
32:16
Speaker 1: and the world hadn't noticed, and that silence just kind
32:20
Speaker 1: of ate at him. He kind of wanted to be
32:22
Speaker 1: noticed now. He wanted people to start talking about him,
32:26
Speaker 1: so he would make the deaths impossible to ignore, and
32:29
Speaker 1: he would just display them in public. And with ever
32:32
Speaker 1: killing he got away with, his confidence would just swell.
32:36
Speaker 1: His head got big, and the caution that had kept
32:39
Speaker 1: him underground for years gave way to something reckless, and
32:44
Speaker 1: he wasn't hiding anymore. He was just kind of daring
32:47
Speaker 1: someone to find him. So Alexander killed ten people from
32:51
Speaker 1: the very buildings where he lived the same cluster of
32:55
Speaker 1: buildings on Kersansky Street, where he'd grown up, where his
32:59
Speaker 1: mother still lived, where he walked in and out of
33:01
Speaker 1: every day, and he did it with the same playbook
33:04
Speaker 1: he used on everyone else. A bottle, a conversation, and
33:08
Speaker 1: a walk into the park, and once they were alone
33:10
Speaker 1: in pizza, he beat them to death. And on his
33:14
Speaker 1: off time from killing, he would just work at a
33:16
Speaker 1: grocery store and he stocked shelves, chatted with shoppers and
33:20
Speaker 1: smiled at faces all day long and made conversation and
33:24
Speaker 1: his coworkers thought he was just quiet, maybe a little odd,
33:28
Speaker 1: but nobody would call him dangerous, and nobody looked at
33:31
Speaker 1: him and saw what he was doing after hours, so
33:33
Speaker 1: nobody would look at him in real life and assume
33:35
Speaker 1: that he was a serial killer. He didn't really make
33:38
Speaker 1: it obvious besides, you know, leaving bodies out in the
33:41
Speaker 1: open and the police doing nothing. But the first body
33:43
Speaker 1: of the open period surfaced on October fifteenth, two thousand
33:47
Speaker 1: and five, and it was Nikolai Verrobiev, who was thirty
33:50
Speaker 1: one years old. The Moscow police found him with a
33:54
Speaker 1: catastrophic head wound and a bottle lodged into his skull,
33:58
Speaker 1: and he was among the first victims discovered bearing this
34:02
Speaker 1: new signature. And a month later a second body would appear,
34:06
Speaker 1: and he would be Nikolai Zakharchenko, a former police officer.
34:10
Speaker 1: He's killing police officers, and his body was also left
34:14
Speaker 1: in the open as a taunt. And at this point
34:17
Speaker 1: that we know of, this would be victim number forty one.
34:20
Speaker 1: And the bodies just kept coming, an unarmed sixty year
34:23
Speaker 1: old man found roughly a month after Nikolai Vladimir de
34:27
Speaker 1: Dunkin discovered about two weeks after that, and another unidentified
34:31
Speaker 1: victim surfacing a week later, and by Christmas of two
34:34
Speaker 1: thousand and five, seven bodies had been recovered and police
34:38
Speaker 1: found that nothing had been stolen from any of them,
34:41
Speaker 1: but everybody would tell the same story catastrophic skull damage
34:44
Speaker 1: with a vodka bottle or a wooden stick jammed into
34:48
Speaker 1: the wound. The pattern was undeniable, and Russian police knew
34:53
Speaker 1: they were now hunting a serial killer in Moscow's elite
34:56
Speaker 1: murder squad caught the assignment, and in February of two thousand,
35:00
Speaker 1: they assigned a senior investigator to lead the hunt. And
35:03
Speaker 1: his name was Andrea Supernenko. If you remember, back in
35:07
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, he'd been the one assigned to Mikyle
35:10
Speaker 1: Odinchuk's disappearance, the investigator that would question eighteen year old
35:14
Speaker 1: Alexander and let him walk. And this was the first
35:18
Speaker 1: victim Alexander had ever killed that we know of, of course,
35:21
Speaker 1: but his friend from school. So it was coming full
35:24
Speaker 1: circle with the same investigator now on the case again.
35:27
Speaker 1: But he had no idea the killer he was chasing
35:29
Speaker 1: was the same teenager he'd questioned and released fourteen years before.
35:34
Speaker 1: So Andrea's team found almost nothing at the crime scenes,
35:37
Speaker 1: no fingerprints, no traces, because the killer was meticulous about
35:41
Speaker 1: what he left behind. Now, the team turned to forensic
35:44
Speaker 1: scientist Professor Vladimir veronstaff for answers. Now, Vladimir cataloged the injuries,
35:50
Speaker 1: repeated blows to the back and sides, that the head
35:53
Speaker 1: strikes to the face and consistent pattern across every victim,
35:56
Speaker 1: and based on the wound patterns alone, Vladimir identify the
36:00
Speaker 1: weapon as a hammer. So two hundred officers flooded Beatza
36:04
Speaker 1: Park and every person walking through the park was approached
36:07
Speaker 1: and interrogated. A psychiatric sanatorium sat near the edge of
36:11
Speaker 1: the forest, and investigators theorized and escaped patient had gone
36:15
Speaker 1: to the ground in the woods, killing from the shadows potentially,
36:19
Speaker 1: and they questioned everyone connected to the facility, but no
36:22
Speaker 1: one fit and the theory collapsed, and then they thought
36:25
Speaker 1: they had a break and one suspect caught their attention
36:29
Speaker 1: because he had a hammer on him and he said
36:31
Speaker 1: he just carried it for protection, But after twenty four
36:34
Speaker 1: hours of questioning, it really just went nowhere and his
36:37
Speaker 1: alibi was solid and he would walk and only a
36:40
Speaker 1: week later a woman's body would be found, and that
36:43
Speaker 1: brought the body count for the forest killings to twelve.
36:47
Speaker 1: But as we know it right now, there's a lot
36:50
Speaker 1: more because they don't know about the sewers yet, and
36:52
Speaker 1: in April of two thousand and six, another victim was identified,
36:56
Speaker 1: Larissa Kuligina, and she worked with Alexander, and she was
37:00
Speaker 1: the first confirmed victim pulled from his own workplace rather
37:04
Speaker 1: than from the park benches and housing walks. So the
37:07
Speaker 1: circle around him was tightening, and it was his own
37:10
Speaker 1: fault because he enjoyed killing people that were very close
37:14
Speaker 1: to him, and he's so arrogant at this point, he
37:18
Speaker 1: just thinks he can get away with anything, which at
37:20
Speaker 1: this point, obviously he's a monster and he's a shit
37:23
Speaker 1: stay in society. But I don't blame him because the
37:25
Speaker 1: police are failing in every way, shape and form, And
37:28
Speaker 1: a big part of it is that most of the
37:30
Speaker 1: people killed during these months have never been publicly identified.
37:33
Speaker 1: A lot of them are unidentified because people don't know
37:36
Speaker 1: who they are. And even with two hundred officers in
37:39
Speaker 1: the park and a forensic team analyzing wound patterns, a
37:41
Speaker 1: senior investigator with a decade and a half of experience
37:44
Speaker 1: and still the man they were looking for, walked to
37:47
Speaker 1: work every morning, rang up groceries, and came home to
37:51
Speaker 1: the same street where his victims had lived. Now Marina
37:55
Speaker 1: Moskaliova was thirty six years old, and she was a
37:58
Speaker 1: single mother raising a fifteen year old son named Serge,
38:01
Speaker 1: and it was just the two of them. She worked
38:04
Speaker 1: at the same supermarket as Alexander, and he was a
38:08
Speaker 1: warehouse worker and she was a colleague, and they saw
38:11
Speaker 1: each other regularly. And Marina didn't fit the usual profile
38:15
Speaker 1: of a fringe person, no one would remember. She was
38:18
Speaker 1: a woman with a job and a child and a
38:20
Speaker 1: daily routine that overlapped with his. But on June thirteenth,
38:25
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Alexander asked Marina to join him
38:28
Speaker 1: for a picnic, and some reports suggest she already had
38:32
Speaker 1: a bad feeling about him, but whatever her reservations were,
38:35
Speaker 1: she did agree to go, and before she left, she
38:39
Speaker 1: tried to call Serge, but she couldn't reach him, so
38:42
Speaker 1: she wrote a note instead, and she wrote down who
38:45
Speaker 1: she'd be with and where they were going, and she
38:48
Speaker 1: added Alexander's phone number and left the note where her
38:52
Speaker 1: son could find it, and then she walked out the door.
38:55
Speaker 1: And Alexander even knew about the note, and at this point,
38:59
Speaker 1: killing a co worker was the riskiest thing he'd ever attempted,
39:03
Speaker 1: and he knew it. She could be traced back to
39:05
Speaker 1: him in hours, and the connection was obvious, but still
39:08
Speaker 1: he went ahead anyway, the arrogance of the sky, and
39:12
Speaker 1: they walked into Beiza Park, allegedly spending hours together there,
39:16
Speaker 1: just the two of them and no one else was around,
39:19
Speaker 1: and he spent that time turning the decision over in
39:22
Speaker 1: his head, rather to go through with it or to
39:25
Speaker 1: just let her walk away, and he decided that he couldn't.
39:29
Speaker 1: Sparing her would have made his life unbearable, and the
39:32
Speaker 1: compulsion was stronger than the risk, and he would kill
39:35
Speaker 1: her there in the park, and the wounds would match
39:38
Speaker 1: his m O and Alexander knew that killing her was
39:41
Speaker 1: different from killing the others, but that did not matter
39:43
Speaker 1: to him this time. So Marina's body was found in
39:46
Speaker 1: Beatsa Park on June fourteenth, and the injuries were unmistakable.
39:50
Speaker 1: Investigators recognized them immediately as the work of the killer
39:53
Speaker 1: they'd been hunting for months, and Sergey came to identify
39:57
Speaker 1: his mother because his mother left the apartment that day
40:00
Speaker 1: with someone she'd been spending time with, someone that she
40:03
Speaker 1: called Sasha, and then Sergei handed the police the note
40:07
Speaker 1: she'd written before she left, and they found that The
40:10
Speaker 1: phone number belonged to a thirty two year old man
40:13
Speaker 1: named Alexander Prushishkin, and he worked at the same supermarket
40:18
Speaker 1: as Marina, and Sasha is the common Russian nickname for Alexander,
40:23
Speaker 1: so the name Sergei had given them had matched. But
40:25
Speaker 1: the note wasn't the only thing Marina left behind, because
40:29
Speaker 1: inside her coat pocket, investigators found a Moscow metro ticket.
40:33
Speaker 1: Investigators started combing through Moscow Metro security cameras looking for
40:37
Speaker 1: anything that could show them where Marina had been before
40:40
Speaker 1: she died, and the footage was pretty clear, showing Marina
40:43
Speaker 1: on a metro platform with Alexander right beside her, just
40:47
Speaker 1: hours before her death. So police had the note, the
40:50
Speaker 1: phone number, the coworker connection confirmed by the supermarket, and
40:54
Speaker 1: now video evidence placing him with the victim on the
40:57
Speaker 1: day she was killed. So for the first time in
41:00
Speaker 1: years of hunting, investigators had a face, a name, and proof.
41:05
Speaker 1: So on June sixteenth, the police arrested Alexander Prusishkin and
41:09
Speaker 1: they raided his apartment in Moscow, and investigators were hoping
41:12
Speaker 1: to close the Beatza Park case, and they believed they'd
41:15
Speaker 1: caught the man responsible for the string of killings had
41:18
Speaker 1: a terrorized southern Moscow, and they were right, but nothing
41:21
Speaker 1: prepared them for what came next. Is Alexander confessed to
41:26
Speaker 1: sixty murders, years of killing stretching back to two thousand
41:30
Speaker 1: and one, because investigators had been hunting the beats of
41:33
Speaker 1: maniac and they found something far worse than they imagined.
41:37
Speaker 1: And in his words, taking life was the only thing
41:40
Speaker 1: that made him feel like he existed for a reason,
41:43
Speaker 1: that it was the thing that made his life feel
41:45
Speaker 1: like it meant something. And inside the apartment there was
41:48
Speaker 1: a chessboard. Sixty one of the sixty four squares had
41:53
Speaker 1: been filled in and numbered, and each number corresponded to
41:57
Speaker 1: a victim, so it was a scoreboard, a ledger of
42:02
Speaker 1: the dead, organized on the same grid he'd played on
42:06
Speaker 1: since childhood, and three squares remained empty. And Moscow police
42:11
Speaker 1: made an unusual decision and allowed MTV television cameras to
42:16
Speaker 1: be brought into the station, so every word of Alexander's
42:19
Speaker 1: confession was recorded, so by recording everything, they could prove
42:24
Speaker 1: the statements for voluntary and the news rippled outward from
42:27
Speaker 1: the precinct and the city was only now beginning to
42:30
Speaker 1: understand what had been living in its shadow, so before
42:33
Speaker 1: the trial even began, Alexander gave the country a preview
42:37
Speaker 1: of what it was dealing with. And his confession aired
42:40
Speaker 1: on national television, not just like a leak or a clip,
42:44
Speaker 1: but a full filmed declaration broadcast across Russia, and he
42:49
Speaker 1: sat in front of cameras and spoke about murder the
42:51
Speaker 1: way most people talk about like a meal they enjoyed,
42:54
Speaker 1: saying quote, I was like the father of these people,
42:58
Speaker 1: since it was I who opened the door for them
43:00
Speaker 1: to another world unquote. He was just disgustingly proud, and
43:06
Speaker 1: he described befriending victims over chests, luring them with vodka,
43:11
Speaker 1: attacking with a hammer, and disposing of their bodies in
43:14
Speaker 1: sewage wells, and then each step delivered with the calmness
43:17
Speaker 1: of someone just recounting their daily routine. And what bothered
43:22
Speaker 1: him was the anonymity, saying quote, I was dismayed my
43:25
Speaker 1: work had been attributed to others unquote. So it was
43:29
Speaker 1: literally his ego that got him caught. He wanted the
43:32
Speaker 1: credit for it, and he'd spent years watching police chase
43:36
Speaker 1: theories that had nothing to do with him, and it
43:39
Speaker 1: ate at him that someone else might get the credit,
43:42
Speaker 1: so he made sure no one would, saying, quote, I
43:45
Speaker 1: burned myself, so there's no need for the cops to
43:48
Speaker 1: take credit for catching me. I'm professional unquote. Oh, it's
43:53
Speaker 1: just the fact that he chose to get caught, you know,
43:57
Speaker 1: he chose to get caught. He there's a good chance
44:01
Speaker 1: he could have just walked about life without getting caught,
44:04
Speaker 1: which is horrifying. I'm so glad his pathetic, disgusting ego
44:10
Speaker 1: took over and allowed him to get caught. But after
44:12
Speaker 1: the confession, investigators brought him back to Betza Park seen
44:16
Speaker 1: by scene, he walked them through the killings. The reenactments
44:19
Speaker 1: were filmed and his recall was disturbingly precise. He was, unfortunately,
44:24
Speaker 1: a really smart guy, and he pointed out where he'd
44:27
Speaker 1: sat with the victims, where he struck them, where the
44:30
Speaker 1: bodies went, and the fixation on Andrea Chikatillo had never
44:35
Speaker 1: faded and actually had sharpened into something kind of competitive.
44:39
Speaker 1: Because Chicatillo had been convicted of fifty two murders and
44:43
Speaker 1: the worst in Russian history. Remember, and Alexander wanted to
44:47
Speaker 1: surpass him. But the goal was more than the numbers.
44:51
Speaker 1: It was about structure, and the number he'd chosen was
44:54
Speaker 1: sixty four, matching the sixty four squares of a chessboard.
44:57
Speaker 1: The game that had once saved him became the framework
45:00
Speaker 1: for everything he destroyed. And he was blunt with the
45:04
Speaker 1: court that if the police hadn't caught him, he never
45:07
Speaker 1: would have stopped, saying, quote, in one week, I killed
45:10
Speaker 1: two people. If they hadn't caught me, I would have
45:13
Speaker 1: never stopped having caught me. They saved many lives unquote.
45:18
Speaker 1: He described the compulsion like a physical need, saying, quote,
45:21
Speaker 1: I killed so I could live myself. You kill someone
45:25
Speaker 1: and immediately feel relieved, Your shoulders straightened up, and you
45:28
Speaker 1: want to live. For me, A life without murder is
45:31
Speaker 1: like a life without food for you. Put this man
45:33
Speaker 1: in a hole underground and close it. He left no
45:37
Speaker 1: room for misunderstanding. He just called himself almost god because
45:42
Speaker 1: he had the power over life and death that belonged
45:45
Speaker 1: to him. And in his final statement to the court,
45:47
Speaker 1: he offered one last declaration, saying, quote, the notions of
45:51
Speaker 1: good and evil are relative things unquote. And he absolutely
45:55
Speaker 1: believed every single word of what it was coming out
45:57
Speaker 1: of his vile mouth, or at least he needed the
46:00
Speaker 1: court to think he did. However, his defense lawyer, Paval
46:04
Speaker 1: Ivannikov saw something else beneath the performance, and Ivanikov told
46:09
Speaker 1: the Associated Press quote, he wants to convince us that
46:12
Speaker 1: what he was doing was right. He imagined himself to
46:15
Speaker 1: be God, the one who decides who is to live
46:18
Speaker 1: and who is to die unquote. But he added a
46:21
Speaker 1: crucial detail that despite the defiance and despite the gloating,
46:25
Speaker 1: Alexander quote unquote, is afraid and wants to wiggle himself out. Ah.
46:31
Speaker 1: So the bravado was probably real, but so is the
46:35
Speaker 1: fear underneath the scared, little pathetic boy that he was.
46:40
Speaker 1: The psychiatric team from Russia's top clinic assessed him and
46:43
Speaker 1: concluded he was sane, and the judge agreed there was
46:47
Speaker 1: a disorder, but that didn't matter, and Alexander knew exactly
46:50
Speaker 1: what he was doing and no diagnosis was going to
46:53
Speaker 1: shield him from what he owed. And he also acknowledged
46:56
Speaker 1: that he knew about the note Marina had left behind.
47:00
Speaker 1: He still said, quote unquote, I could not stop myself
47:03
Speaker 1: from killing her. So the trial opened on September thirteenth,
47:06
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, in Moscow, and the courtroom had
47:09
Speaker 1: reinforced glass cage built into it, and Alexander was locked
47:13
Speaker 1: inside for all five weeks, like a gerbil in a cage.
47:18
Speaker 1: And he had forty eight murder charges three counts of
47:21
Speaker 1: attempted murder. Remember the people that came up and told
47:24
Speaker 1: the police said, Hey, this guy tried to murder me,
47:27
Speaker 1: but they didn't do anything about it. Yeah, they're finally
47:29
Speaker 1: getting some justice there. But depending on when you asked him,
47:32
Speaker 1: the number was sixty and other times it was sixty three.
47:36
Speaker 1: But the evidence held up for at least forty eight
47:39
Speaker 1: murder charges and three counts of attempted murder, and the
47:42
Speaker 1: gap between what he claimed and what could be proven
47:45
Speaker 1: hung over the entire trial, and throughout those five weeks,
47:48
Speaker 1: Alexander treated the courtroom like a stage. He bragged about
47:52
Speaker 1: what he'd done, He mocked the detectives who spent months
47:55
Speaker 1: trying to find him, and he showed zero remorse and
47:58
Speaker 1: made no apologies. Laid out the escalation in painstaking detail,
48:03
Speaker 1: and prosecutors told the court that starting in two thousand
48:05
Speaker 1: and five, the violence crossed into a new category. They
48:09
Speaker 1: used the phrase particular cruelty because he'd wait until his
48:12
Speaker 1: victims were drunk, then bring the hammer down on their
48:15
Speaker 1: heads over and over, and then he would just leave
48:18
Speaker 1: them where they fell. And Chief Prosecutor Euricealman told the
48:21
Speaker 1: court that Alexander drew quote unquote particular pleasure and satisfaction
48:26
Speaker 1: from finishing off his victims as they quote unquote pleaded
48:29
Speaker 1: for mercy. And then came an unexpected moment, and former
48:33
Speaker 1: employers had submitted glowing references on his behalf and the
48:37
Speaker 1: words read aloud in court were disciplined and diligent and
48:41
Speaker 1: polite and tactful, just written by people who had worked
48:45
Speaker 1: alongside him and never suspected a thing. And Alexander listened
48:48
Speaker 1: from behind the glass and responded, quote unquote, why are
48:51
Speaker 1: you studying me so thoroughly? Just shut up? Why is
48:55
Speaker 1: he even allowed to talk? And then the families came,
48:58
Speaker 1: The people who'd buried someone because of the beats of
49:01
Speaker 1: maniac showed up to the courtroom, and there was weeks
49:04
Speaker 1: of testimony and every method, every victim, every detail read
49:08
Speaker 1: aloud while the people who loved them listened. And then
49:11
Speaker 1: on October twenty fourth, two thousand and seven, the jury
49:13
Speaker 1: returned its verdict and deliberations lasted roughly two to three
49:17
Speaker 1: hours and he was guilty on all counts. Reading the
49:21
Speaker 1: full verdict out loud took the foreman close to an hour,
49:25
Speaker 1: and the whole time Alexander had his back pressed against
49:28
Speaker 1: the glass, eyes on the floor, and he did not
49:31
Speaker 1: look up. And every seat in the courthouse was taken
49:34
Speaker 1: and press filled the room, and around twenty family members
49:37
Speaker 1: were there as well, And during a recess after the verdict,
49:40
Speaker 1: a young woman broke down crying and a reporter approached
49:43
Speaker 1: her as she wouldn't say a word. She just shook
49:46
Speaker 1: her head and turned away. And then five days later,
49:49
Speaker 1: on October twenty ninth, Judge Vladimir Usov handed down the
49:52
Speaker 1: sentence life imprisonment, Russia's harshest possible punishment, and he was
49:58
Speaker 1: on his feet behind the glass locked behind him while
50:02
Speaker 1: Judge Usov delivered the sentence, and the court directed him
50:05
Speaker 1: to a hard labor colony, and it also mandated psychiatric
50:08
Speaker 1: treatment for what is described as a personality disorder expressed
50:12
Speaker 1: in a sadistic inclination toward murder, but the judge wasn't
50:16
Speaker 1: offering him shelter and Alexander knew full well and the
50:20
Speaker 1: disorder changed nothing about his guilt, and the prosecutor had
50:23
Speaker 1: pushed for something extra in the form of fifteen years
50:26
Speaker 1: of total isolation at the start of the sentence because
50:29
Speaker 1: of how dangerous Alexander was, and when the judge asked
50:32
Speaker 1: whether Alexander understood the sentence, his reply was short, saying,
50:35
Speaker 1: quote unquote, I'm not deaf. I've made this man so
50:39
Speaker 1: much on Russia's moratorium on capital punishment meant life behind
50:43
Speaker 1: bars was the ceiling like we talked about before. Not
50:46
Speaker 1: everyone in the courtroom accepted that, and Tatyana Vlasova stood
50:50
Speaker 1: holding a photograph of her son, Vladimir, one of the
50:53
Speaker 1: forty eight, and she told reporters he'd never grasp the
50:56
Speaker 1: weight of what he took from her, saying, quote, he
50:59
Speaker 1: should have been treated as an exceptional case and given
51:02
Speaker 1: a death sentence unquote. And after the sentencing, Moscow City
51:06
Speaker 1: prosecutor Siomon addressed the press, saying, quote, justice has been done,
51:10
Speaker 1: the culprit has been held accountable unquote, And the glass
51:13
Speaker 1: cage was emptied and the courtroom was then cleared and
51:17
Speaker 1: Alexander was dealt with in one of the only ways
51:20
Speaker 1: Russian law allowed. But to reach the place where Alexander
51:23
Speaker 1: will spend the rest of his life. You need two
51:26
Speaker 1: days on a train heading north, then a crossing over
51:29
Speaker 1: the Obe River, and then fifty kilometers of frozen, featureless
51:33
Speaker 1: ground so there's no roads and nothing to navigate by,
51:37
Speaker 1: and eventually a settlement appears named Karp and it's an
51:41
Speaker 1: urban type settlement in Russia's Yamalo Nenetz Autonomous District above
51:46
Speaker 1: the Arctic Circle, basically frozen hell essentially, and fewer than
51:52
Speaker 1: five thousand people live there. And the polar Owl Special
51:55
Speaker 1: Regime Colony sits at the edge of it, which is
51:58
Speaker 1: one of the harshest penal facilities in Russia, and it's
52:01
Speaker 1: built to hold just over one thousand inmates and it
52:03
Speaker 1: currently houses roughly four hundred and fifty and polar Owl
52:08
Speaker 1: operates across three distinct sections. Lifers go to the Special
52:12
Speaker 1: Regime wing, long term inmates serve under the strict regime,
52:15
Speaker 1: and the last is a settlement colony, which is the
52:18
Speaker 1: closest thing to lenient that the facility offers. And the
52:22
Speaker 1: main compound has four housing blocks and every one of
52:24
Speaker 1: them holds inmates serving life sentences and several rows of
52:28
Speaker 1: fencing ring the perimeter. High voltage wire runs between them,
52:32
Speaker 1: and cameras watch from every corner, and guards carry automatic
52:35
Speaker 1: rifles along the outer walls, and every day plays out
52:38
Speaker 1: inside four square meters of concrete, a metal bend, a table,
52:42
Speaker 1: a sink, and a toilet. I think they should have bucket,
52:46
Speaker 1: but that's just me. But you can basically touch every
52:48
Speaker 1: surface without moving your feet in that cell. And that
52:51
Speaker 1: cell holds two inmates. And there's also a barred window,
52:55
Speaker 1: but no one is allowed near it, and standing back,
52:58
Speaker 1: all you can see through it is an narrow strip
53:00
Speaker 1: of sky, and any speaking above a whisper is not allowed.
53:04
Speaker 1: And the daily routine never changes. You wake up at
53:07
Speaker 1: six in the morning, exercise at six', ten roll call
53:09
Speaker 1: at six point, thirty breakfast at Seven outdoor time runs
53:13
Speaker 1: about two. Hours the exercise yard is concrete on every,
53:16
Speaker 1: side topped with a metal grate inside of an open.
53:18
Speaker 1: Sky only inmates with ten spotless years earned the right to,
53:21
Speaker 1: work and everyone else, reads, writes home and. Waits and
53:25
Speaker 1: no one has ever escaped out of The Polar Owl,
53:28
Speaker 1: colony and the facility hasn't logged a single violent incident
53:31
Speaker 1: between inmates in over a, decade and the men held Alongside,
53:35
Speaker 1: alexander are among the most notorious criminals In russian, history
53:39
Speaker 1: so needless to, say he is rotting in a quite
53:42
Speaker 1: literal frozen, hell the closest thing you could come to.
53:45
Speaker 1: It but That, April Russia's Federal Penitentiary service announced That
53:50
Speaker 1: alexander had told investigators he wanted to confess to eleven
53:53
Speaker 1: additional killings men and women currently on soolf, cases and
53:58
Speaker 1: a month later he asked to be moved from Polar
54:00
Speaker 1: owl to a prison In, mordovia and The Federal Penitentiary
54:04
Speaker 1: service luckily said, no and By august prison physicians had
54:08
Speaker 1: evaluated him and cleared him to stay and no medical
54:11
Speaker 1: grounds for. Transfer though videolink, hearings he went after The
54:15
Speaker 1: Federal Penitentiary service for one hundred thousand, rules and he
54:19
Speaker 1: called it compensation for moral suffering and blamed the arctic
54:23
Speaker 1: conditions for wrecking his. Health and At september twenty twenty,
54:26
Speaker 1: five his appeal of the verdict reached The Supreme court
54:30
Speaker 1: of The Russian federation and he wanted the life sentence
54:33
Speaker 1: replaced with twenty five, years pointing to what he called mitigating,
54:36
Speaker 1: factors a full confession and willingness to cooperate with, investigators
54:41
Speaker 1: and The Supreme court did not grant the. Request and
54:44
Speaker 1: the man who once called himself Almost god now lives
54:47
Speaker 1: in a cell where he can't speak above a, whisper
54:50
Speaker 1: and the man who killed for recognition exists in a
54:52
Speaker 1: place designed to erase every trace of, Individuality and whether
54:57
Speaker 1: that constitutes justice or simply maintainment is left for you to.
55:01
Speaker 1: Decide and, UNFORTUNATELY i don't think we'll ever know how
55:04
Speaker 1: many people he truly. Killed But i'm just glad he's
55:08
Speaker 1: rotting in that prison. Personally but that is it for
55:13
Speaker 1: the chessboard killer. Case please let me know if you
55:15
Speaker 1: want me to deep dive into any other cases down,
55:18
Speaker 1: below and until THEN i will see your beautiful. Face,
55:21
Speaker 1: okay stay safe out. There thanks, bye