Doomed to Fail

Ep 57: A Most Dangerous Game - Alexander Pichushkin - The Chess Board Killer

Episode Summary

Today in True Crime we head to Russia for the story of Alexander Pichushkin - The Chess Board Killer. No, he didn't just kill Knights and Rooks - instead, he attacked the most vulnerable people in post-Soviet Union Russia and tried to fill his chess board by killing 64 people. Before he was finally caught he got pretty damn close. We love Russian History so it tracks that we would also find a great Russian True Crime Tale. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod   Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod  Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com

Episode Notes

Today in True Crime we head to Russia for the story of Alexander Pichushkin - The Chess Board Killer. No, he didn't just kill Knights and Rooks - instead, he attacked the most vulnerable people in post-Soviet Union Russia and tried to fill his chess board by killing 64 people. Before he was finally caught he got pretty damn close.

We love Russian History so it tracks that we would also find a great Russian True Crime Tale.

Pics via NY Times & Wikipedia, & Midjourney 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  

Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod 

Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com 

Episode Transcription

Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor

 

and we're off you so we'll go

ahead and kick things off welcome to doomed to fail the podcast where we cover things that are doomed to fail

whether true crime or historical I'm fars joined by Taylor hi Taylor hi fars

I have my axe my hand in a from last week oh my God I was laughing just I I

listened to it and I was laughing about it again when I was trying to do my like outro and you're like itching your face with a freaking Axe and I'm like

f you'll never you'll never learn um I'll never learn um so I I um you know

it's funny I uh I told I just told Taylor that my family was in Talent visiting this weekend which was like

incredibly stressful and borderline nightmarish and completely hellish and I'm definitely not relaxed and not ready

for the week but in addition to that it was actually my high school 20y year reunion this last weekend did you go no

because my parents were here oh right right and you're from wait are you from Dallas Oh no you're in Austin I'm back

Austin yes exactly and so I live in Austin reunions in Dallas and you know

like when I saw a couple of pictures start trickling in on social media I was like ah man I need to set a reminder for myself for like 10 years to go to like

the 30-year reunion reunion and then I I saw like all these other pictures getting uploaded I was like I will I'm

so glad I didn't go oh my God I had the exact same experience because I'm two years older than you but they just did

mine because my 20y year reunion was like during coid so they moved it and then like I saw pictures go in and I was

like oh why didn't I get invited and then I then I remembered that I blocked

the Facebook group about it because I didn't want to get invited yeah I was like oh right I chose

not to do that and then also I didn't know half [ __ ] people there I was like I don't know who people are I mean that was the thing I was looking I was

looking at the pictures I was like I was like I'm so I'm so bad at names I'm so bad at faces like I there's so many

people that I would run into like conferences I'm like I know your face I think we met I have no idea where I have

no idea when I don't know your name I don't know who you work for I'm looking at these pictures I'm like I recognize a lot of them but I'm like man like a lot

of them I don't recognize and what do you do you just walk up and say oh also

I used to go by Farm Mars I used to go by my full name and now I go by fars and like hey I'm far far Mars and it's like

I don't yeah I know but I know also I don't really want to like hang out with

any of these people I know I feel like the it was fun when it was a mystery like I know my dad like when he went to

his like 10e high school reunion there was a guy that he was good friends with who was dead you know like he didn't know CU like you didn't know because it

was the 80s you know but now I mean I talk to who I want to talk

to yeah exactly my friendships from high school and this whole experience as

weekend with my family being here and just [ __ ] annoying the [ __ ] out of me it just reminded me like dude I don't

have to spend time with people I don't want to [ __ ] spend time with like I've earned the right to be like dude I'm gonna [ __ ] check out and do my

own thing and I'm it's I'm within my rights to do that so it's also like during the pandemic when I blocked a bunch of my cousins on Facebook because

they were being ridiculous and embarrassing and then one of my cousins was like talk my mom the other day and

he was like so Taylor blocked me and she's like well Taylor has strong opinions and I'm like yeah a strong opinion is he's [ __ ] dumb and I'm a

grownup I don't have to know him exact friend exactly we're allow we're allowed to do that like it's okay to do that so

anyways yeah like that was that was literally the experience I had of this weekend and now this talking through

here but we can go ahead and Dive Right In and start chattering away Taylor who

goes first today you do I believe cool I think I have a relatively

straightforward and short one because my topic is not very well covered despite

being relatively recent so I'll go ahead and why don't you tell me what you're drinking I can Dive Right

In yeah let me just make sure you go first I think you do the last thing we did

was yeah let we know is the Axe Murders um I did not think of a drink I forgot

I'm gonna say ice water nice and healthy stay hydrated

yeah lots of ice water cold cold cold water lovely lovely ice water awesome oh

what oh [ __ ] but it's in a bad way I didn't do the thing you told me to do oh

that's fine I want to talk about it because I didn't like it so we'll talk about it in a minute great okay okay uh so bypass that okay my drink is going to

be bloody bodka because we are going to the

motherland again of Russia is that like a bloody Mary with or like just vodka with like literal blood in it I mean it

would be better if you have literal blood preferably the blood of like a very old man that you can like okay pour

in but if you don't you can also make a Bloody Mary sweet get some CL which I enjoy you do love you do love that so

yeah you know you as we already learned you stole my whole idea giving that it's October to do like a Halloween theme I

try I try to steal your ideas whenever possible I know I know but this guy is actually more Batman themed than

amazing I'm going to be covering a guy whose name I would assume you would know Taylor his name is Alexander

Pushkin I think so keep going he's also known as the chessboard killer o that's

exciting I feel like maybe I know a little bit but not a ton so tell me more so I looked up the Batman Universe and

in the DC pantheons there is a game

known as the Chessmen okay they operate in Gotham and the Narrows which I don't know what the Narrows are but it comes

up a lot in the Batman movies sure and and the way that they communicate with each other is they give each other

different chests or different colored squares and then each member can only go

a certain direction kind of like a chest piece and so they're like hey Bill

here's your square and Bill can only go diagonal so he just has to run diagonal to get to the next crime spot whole idea

between behind the chest then and that's how they evade Authority so that was I I

heard like the chessboard killer and I was like that's kind of cute this one's this story is not that cute though it's

a lot less cute than that than than the DC Universe yeah it doesn't it doesn't

sound cute when you put the word killer at the end of it unless it's like a puppy the puppy killer no no not the

puppy killer like this puppy's named Killer he's a puppy but get it cuz he's a puppy I now that that was on me I said

that wrong got it got it got it uh that's the only time the word killer is cute is if you name your puppy killer continue got it got it okay I hearded

the other way around don't kill puppies go nobody kill puppies so Alex I'm GNA

refer to him as Alex so he was known as a chessboard killer because he was super good at chess and because he wanted to

kill as many people as there were squares on a chessboard how many squares are on a chessboard Taylor Pop Quiz 26

45 64 64 I have no idea um I thought you were going to say maybe he only wanted

to kill like kings and queens and knights cuz that'd be fun that would be fun that would be a little cuter I think

yeah no he killed he killed elderly old men c not cute not cute this getting

less cute the more we talk about it I know I know that's that's the case of all my stories

I I was trying to research if this guy's actually good at chess so there's a there's a rating system in chess called

the ELO rating and so a really good chess player like an exceptional chess player is going be like a 2,000 a pretty

good chess player 1700 by all accounts like what people were saying about this guy this is relatively recent history is

that he was ranking somewhere around a 12200 which was like a little bit better than a beginner so he was okay like he

would beat a lot of people but he wasn't like a chess master and all he would do is just play retired old men not retired

homeless old men who are kind of retired I guess in the Park yeah just in the park can we say that like homeless men

are also retired yeah they're not working there you go all right there we go so he was playing retired man that was the way he

usually got his practice in so regardless as I said his goal was to kill 64 people which is the number of

squares on a chess board later on he would argue that his motives had more to do with another incredibly famous serial

killer in Russia called Andre chello saying that he wanted to yeah saying he wanted to like basically Andre got

caught the Year this guy got started killing and so he like came up with him

in his like it was a common thing in Russia to talk about this guy yeah he like beat him so handedly like Andre

killed eight people in total this guy by the time he was caught had killed 49

that they know of but it was like it was actually like probably closer to 60 that he actually killed pretty close he's

yeah he like actually almost achieved his dreams which is kind of blle in a lot of ways wow so the Doom toell part here is

that I'm lying when I say this but can we just blame chess on this something

happens to your brain when you get really good at chess I think I mean look at the Fisher guy who turned into it's

opposite like what a weird type of person is really good at chess oh I don't know maybe

damn cor correlation okay fine there's no Doom to fail component here because sa just killed the the I'm sorry I'm

sorry I'm just having a conversation and are you mad also cuz you didn't finish taking chess classes with those

kids okay so long story short when I was living in La I went and took like a chess class because trying to get really

good at chess and I went to Santa Monica I took a chess class it was free and I walked in and they were like okay your

first task is you're going to play this like [ __ ] toddler this like okay not a toddler he was like maybe like seven years old okay it was a seven-year-old

kid this kid like he he wasn't even paying ATT ention when I move like he just come do

a move he'd run around like jump him and down and then he'd have like a stack pack then he' come back and do another move and then he beat me like four moves

he was like crazy I was like he was playing like four games at the same time was crazy oh my so funny yes I'm upset

that my chess career never panned out unfortunately so let's we'll move on we'll move on for this so getting into

the life of Alex so he was born in Moscow in 1974 this is during the USSR USSR era of

Russia where poverty and being completely destitute was basically a way of life in his childhood he was

apparently pretty outgoing and sociable as a child until when he was four years old he was on a park swing he fell

backwards on the swing when he came up the swing like smacked him hard in the head it doesn't sound like it should

have been that bad but by all accounts this is like really really bad by by all accounts his personality like changed

that day from it's like precocious outgoing child to like someone who's very introverted and kind of hostile to

people which I don't that always happens does it you always have a thing so many

serial killers have had injuries when they're kids yeah like yeah 80 90% of

them do um and it's crazy how like your brain is you

know so kind of important fragile you know like you like like Shake one piece up and you like for you forget how to

read you know or like so what they were saying was because he was four years old they were like okay so if this had

happened when he was like close to like his 18th birthday nothing would have gone wrong because exactly because his

skull would have been so hard at the front like adults skulls are like super hard apparently and so yeah your skull

is like in a lot of pieces when you're a baby it's like a tectonic plate stop

putting your axe near your head I feel like I'm also worried because your axe is no longer in your bedroom so now what are you going to do am I going to

protect myself yeah I'll throw Luna at the Shooters I take but yeah you know

how babies have a soft spot on their head do you remember that yeah it's the middle right yeah because their heads aren't fully to get out their head has

to squish a little bit so it can get out of that hole and so yeah so it doesn't get fully hard until later which makes

sense that hitting your head when you're a kid can really [ __ ] you up so around 13 or 14 Alex left his mother's home and

went to live with his Grand grandmother and grandfather mostly it sounds like the mom just wasn't like able to cope

with having a kid that's like probably has a little bit of autism mostly it sounds like and the grandparents were

[ __ ] awesome this is like one of those rare cases where like the upbringing of this kid was like great

like his grandfather was like hey we need just like basically the mom put him in like a remedial school for like kids

with learning disabilities and all they would do is like try to teach them how to be quote unquote normal and Alex's

Grandpa was like no there's nothing you are the way you are there's nothing wrong with the way you are we're not going to try and keep trying to change

you to be like this version of yourself that you're never going to be we're just going to try and find and accentuate the

better qualities that you could have if you were given the opportunity to do so and so this is how he yeah this is how

he got into chess so the grandfather would take him to this park next to

their house and teach him chess and then have him play with other people and like it just like it gave him that outlet it

gave him a thing to do that became really good so that was basically it he would

play chess with these like elderly men he plays just with Grandpa and that would be what would occupy his time when he wasn't in school and

apparently this kind of diminished his hostile behavior and his like outwardly

introverted uh nature and so around like a little bit around 18 years old his

grandfather died of natural causes and this basically sent him spiraling because like think about this kid was

like he basically had nobody for like all this time and then he finally found this elder guy who's like really nice to

him and and and loves him and he goes away and he ends up dying and so Alex

would still play chess in the park but he would also supplement that with something new that happened as his

grandfather died so there two things that came came along which actually sound like pretty common Russian pastimes the first one was he was

started drinking a shitload of vodka he's always drinking vodka which feels customary and the second thing which

also feels kind of customary is he would film himself basically assaulting children so there's like one story I

read where he held a kid kid by his like legs outside of a window saying he's going to drop him and

like that sounds like what Putin does like recreationally that's fair I don't feel

like that's a Russian stereotype as much as vka is but got it

I do but sure I'm overgeneralizing perhaps a little bit just a smidge of

overgeneralization so in July of 1992 when Alex is 18 years old he arranged to

meet a last mate named Mel and I can't really pronounce his last name so I'm just going to leave it at Mel and they

were supposed to be in the park where Alex would play chess and when they got together Alex basically told Mel hey I

have this idea I'm going to kill 64 people Alex basically was like uncomfortable and was like this is like

what I thought we're looking at leavs like why why are you talking about this yeah mfortable yeah and so again Alex strikes

me someone with like a version of autism or something he basically interpreted male's like reticence to get involved in

his like let's murder 64 people plan as him making fun of him and laughing at him and so Alex got mad and strangled

male and threw his body into a ditch he went home to his mother's house was right down the street Witnesses placed

male with Alex that night so police immediately questioned him there was no direct evidence it was just like people

saying hey like I saw them walk into the woods like there was no does it like I mean also it's like Russia it's like

Russia right after the USSR collapse like they're not going to like be that diligent anyways right

other [ __ ] going on there's other [ __ ] going on yeah every trying figure how they're goingon to survive yeah where they gonna get toilet paper tomorrow so

yeah it's cold at this point Alex takes a long break between killings it isn't well

understood exactly like a how long a break that he took or why he ended up taking such a long break some things go

ahead sorry can I speculate before you say something yes it sounds like he didn't mean he didn't plan to do the first one that day right yeah yeah he

wasn't plan to do it he just like flew off the handle yeah yeah so maybe maybe like it's like it was accidental murder

he got his itch scratched and that was it it could be that yeah yeah but some actually think that there wasn't that

long of a break so there's some speculation that Alex was in love with a girl named Olga and Olga had a boyfriend

who like threw himself off a building so we know that this boyfriend threw himself off a building and then we we know that Alex knew a girl named Olga

that lived in their building together and some argue that Alex is the one who basically coed the guy up there and throw off the building but we don't know

for sure it's kind of like an unsubstantiated death but it's worth noting that Alex never had any romantic

partners that we know of nor express any sexual interest in men or women okay so

my bet is that Olga's boyfriend killed himself and had nothing that's my guess

yeah t I'm GNA go into like a little bit of a side thing here have you heard a thing called the Council of Europe no

okay I haven't either so it's kind of like the UN but for like European countries only but it's not like the EU

because it has no governing power like the EU has it's basically like a recommendation thing it's like a it's

like a procedure saying you join you make recommendations maybe the UN listens to you maybe the EU listens to you but the Council of Europe has no

enforcement capabilities on its own but regardless like I mentioned just now this is like right after the collapse of the USSR and so Russia is trying desper

to figure out like its place and position in the entire Global community and so one thing that their president

really wanted to do was join the Council of Europe and this is in 1996 and in 1986 a prerequisite of

joining the Council of Europe was the abolition of the death penalty and so yeah

so the theory was or one of the theories is that Alex stopped killing or yeah

sorry Alex took a break and then when the Council of Europe formed and or

sorry the the uh Russia started applying to the Council of Europe and it death penalty was uh out of contention for him

that's when he started wanting to kill again that's one Theory but the other theory is by an FBI report where it said

that basically serial killers T typically take long cooling off periods

either because a new outlet is discovered that replaces The Act of Killing or the circumstances that cause

the stress which result in killing go away or to your point Taylor it could just been an accident it was an accident

and he was like it was like hey remember that idea I had forever ago maybe I should go back to that I hate I mean

like I I'm I'm not I'm against the death penalty because you know there are people who are not guilty who you know

get it and and all those things but I think it's such a such a dick move when a killer is like oh please don't kill me

[ __ ] you I know I know you know like oh you don't want to die because what you're afid of death you just killed people yeah that's funny because I

actually came up with Andre chello where Andre CH where he was like he was like oh please like spare my life

SP my life like it was like so you know what the value of life is which is like crazy exactly yeah yeah yeah really

gross so we don't totally know what happened in this time period between him

killing Mel and when I'm going to talk about his next round of Prim spree all we really know is that this time he

moved back in with his mother and his sister in a two-bedroom Soviet era apartment where the living room is also a bedroom and his job was to stack

shelves at a local supermarket so I doubt the stressors had been removed and

that's why he stopped yeah it's such a weird life like I Wasing this I was like what kind of life is that like God

you're like 30 years old and you live in a [ __ ] or at this point been 27 years old and you live in like a tiny little

dingy apartment and you probably bch all the time potatoes a lot of potatoes I mean

they probably even have fried pickles probably not or probably don't even have that today probably don't even have that

today I know so if you want to become rich start a fried pickle franchise in Russia

oh so lighten the mood a little bit yeah yeah everybody loves fried pickles everybody calm down here's some fried

pickles far as just fried pickles writes itself I like it um so on to the next

crime spree and the next round of murders that end up happening okay this kind of shitty to say but a ton of the

details around who these people were outside of their names and manner of death is a little bit oisc the reason

being that they were mostly just old homeless men so nobody G gave a [ __ ] about them anyways also this is Russia

right right after the Soviet Union like I said earlier like things weren't good back then like things were really really

bad because they collapsed because they had no money so the rub will collapsed and they're trying to figure out how

they're like sustain themselves as a country what we really know is that his

standard method of trying to find tool was to convince some poor unsuspecting and super vulnerable vulnerable person

to drink VOD with him in the park and then bashed them in the skull repeatedly with either the vodka bottle or a hammer

and then he had a habit of like shoving the bottle into the hole that he created in their skull like into their brains to

ensure they were dead like it was kind of it's kind of intense yeah yuck his

first victim this is in 2020 or sorry this is in 2001 so we went from 1982

from Mel to 2001 MH this guy was a 52-year-old homeless man named guine

pronin and he was one of the guys that he would played chess with in the park that's one common thing with Alex's crimes that he kind of sort of knew all

of them like he had some relationship with them even if it was something as simple as playing chess in the park with

them what he told if guy was that that day was the anniversary of his dog's

death which is true and to come visit his burial spot with him deep into the

woods and if getting obliged she goes yeah let's go have a drink to your dog it was sad it was like he like he like

made a toast for his dog on behalf of his dog he was trying to be like very very supportive and stuff and they had a

drink in the middle of this Alex attacked him with the vodka bottle beat him to death threw his body in the in

the ditch yikes and this is thing this happens so many times there's so many

murders and all of them kind of fall this Mo and like I said before most of these people nobody gave a [ __ ] about so

all we know is like their names and so I'll I'll just summarize the remaining part of this mostly which is like over

the span of 52 months he killed 33 people that we know of wow so he killed

these two so we're 35 right now and first off that's a lot of people to

kill in 52 months like that's feels like you're kind of going nuts a little bit

he attacked another three that we know of that ultimately ended up Surviving we know that because he reported him to the

police and nobody gave a [ __ ] but I'll get into that here in a moment one of the three that he attacked

was a girlfriend of one of his I I don't want to call call him a friend it's more like just an associate this guy named

sge this girl was named Marina maracha she was 19 years old and she was

pregnant with Serge's child when Alex ran into tour at a train station in Moscow you look like you're gonna say

something no I'm just frowning because that sucks yeah yeah you haven't even told me how she dies but it sucks keep

going yeah she's not going to die thankfully so for yeah so Maria was just

over fight that she'd had with s Alex ran into her and he was thinking pretty quickly and realized that even in Russia

trying to convince a pregnant woman to come to the park to have drinks with you probably wasn't going to work out very well and so what he told her instead was

he had some expensive camera equipment in the park that he wanted to help moving if she helped him he would give

her half the equipment so that she could sell them and be financially relieved of pressure with being a pregnant single

woman basically that makes no sense but yes sure I mean it's I guess in 2001

were cameras common yes I mean that's a good question I do I did go to I studied abro

in 2002 and I got all of my pictures developed so it wasn't like a digital

camera but like also why would you have your why would your stuff just be like sitting in the park take better care of it if the story

doesn't make sense yeah it's not true yeah Jack and the giant bean sucks why

are they magic it makes no sense

so oops I mute that so Maria agreed and went with him

to the park and obviously there was no camera equipment in the park instead Alex tell takes the manhole cover off of

thing saying that hey the cameras are inside this manhole cover which also makes even less sense them being in the

park and no they're not they are not and he he asks me to put like come close to

help him grab it as she gets closer he grabs her head and start bashing into the side of this manhole the opening the

manhole cover oh my God it happens quite a bit to the point where she consciously

she was still conscious she consciously decides that it's better to go into the hole than it is to stay up there with

him so she like throws herself blooded and battered into this hole he can't get her anymore or unless he like goes down

there but exactly exactly and so she does that and at this time it's winter time so she she's wearing thick you know

clothing and so she starts getting sucked under into the water into the current wow so she thinking incredibly

quickly faster than I would probably think at this moment she end up getting naked so she could actually like waight up and she did she ended up getting

pushed down to a different part of the underground tunnels that make up the sewer system which like so [ __ ] scary

like it's so terrifying to me and she grabs a hold somehow of a ladder and starts climbing a ladder to another

manhole cover apparently she the manhole covers weigh about 90 pounds and so she

kept trying to push his manhole cover up and it wouldn't budge well it budged enough to where some woman saw it and

then screams and runs and grabs two security guards they come back and they remove the manhole cover off her wow

that's I have chills I have chills that's amazing good very very very fortunate woman wow so she's taken to

the hospital and police come to the hospital room and they question her and ask what she's been up

to how was your day hey we fell all this clothing that's just soaking in

the sewer but she immediately names Alex as the prop because again her boyfriend was

friends with Alex or acquaintances whatever you want to call him this is like a weird thing I didn't know but apparently back during this

time if you wanted to live in like a really cool hit populace part of Russia you had to get like special permission

to live there you had to get like special papers that allowed you to live there so in this case Maria came from a

rural family in a rural part of Russia and so she didn't have any paper she actually immigrated in there illegally

for economic activity and opportunity obviously yeah the the cop as she's in

the hospital bloodied and bandaged asks her for papers and Maria's like I don't

have my papers yeah and the cop goes look we can either track this thing down

and you can be basically deported to your own rural Village or you can let

this go and we'll just call it a Day Jesus sucks I'm sure that happens all

the [ __ ] time yeah yeah and so obviously she was like I don't I want to stay where I'm at and so she didn't say

anything and or she said nothing happened the cop was like cool then let's all go about our day and so that's what still alive how's she doing is she

better I bet she's still alive I mean she was 19 in 2002 so oh yeah she's she's our age yeah

age yeah wow we should trying find her I know we should

so I'd say this would dis embolden Alex but in his mind Maria was dead because he just saw her body float away in the

underwater sewer but it did validate him on two things that would come in handy

later one is he can kill someone who's not a homeless man to get away with it two he doesn't need to stick with his

vodka dead dog story to convince people to go with him he can actually improvised like he gave him a lot of

confidence in this so like I mentioned before by this time

uh he was living in this two-bedroom apartment mom sister him sounds like absolute [ __ ] trash like I can't

imagine how anybody lives like that and it actually gets surprisingly worse because Alex has another sister who had

just gotten married and then the husband and the additional sister moov in to the

actual yeah yeah so so now it's Alex a sister and a mom living in the bedroom

SL living room that sounds terrible I had four people here in my like four

bedroom house and I how do people do this I was like how do people do this like I can't I can't

imagine so again not a stressfree environment not great the one time that is Mo mosop

Ronde basically changed in his victim profile really changed outside of Maria was when he it was actually a time he

ended up getting caught so this was when he approached a lovely 36-year-old woman

named Marina muscal yova [ __ ] nailed that [ __ ] and Marina like immediately

got creepy Vibes off Alex but you know she's like single had a kid was like cool I'll go hang out with this guy

let's see what he's about and so she ended up going out with Alex one night and they ended up taking a stroll to the

park Marie Marina had had enough creepy Vibes to where she'd given it the

reports differ some say she gave her son some say she gave a friend uh Alex's

name and phone number so that in case anything goes wrong somebody would know yeah and obviously something went wrong

he beat the [ __ ] out of her he shoved the vodka bottle into her brain cavity

that he left open and that's actually how police discovered her in on June 14th of 2006 oh my God yeah so on her

body police found a Metro ticket which traced her back to a railway station in

Moscow which is where her and Alex were seen on surveillance camera boarding a boarding a

train so they knew something was going on with this ended up questioning Alex and they say he admitted to the

crime but I think they probably beat the [ __ ] out of him most likely yeah probably both maybe a little bit of both

because because later on like when I explained where Alex ended up getting sent after spoiler alert getting

convicted they also opened an investigation on them because there was like 190 cases where people confess to

crimes where which was like out of the size of the number of people that were being arrested was like way outside the

norm and they concluded that they were being the [ __ ] out of these people and that's the only way they were getting confessions out of them so I I bet Alex

was was beat up but it was all true like it wasn't like you know he prob he might not have confessed on his own but he did

do it because what he ended up leading every all the cops to the bodies that he left over the ones that didn't end up in

the sewer he took it directly to them so it was obvious he did this

yeah he he explained that a he did it for the chess reason which is like the

nerdiest thing in the world but the other thing was he basically just felt powerless he felt like a powerless

nothing and he was like like this made me feel it's like the whole holding a kid out of a window and saying I can

kill you at any time like it's power it's all that's all it comes from that's basically what he wanted he said he it

made him feel like he's their father being able to like kill them whenever he wanted to and so that was basically what

he what what what drove him committ his crimes uh he was convicted on 49 counts of murder and three counts of attempted

murder and again at this time there's no death penalty there's still no death penalty in Russia this like crazy how

many people just randomly die there he was he was sentenced to life

imprisonment along with 15 years in solitary confinement oh my God he he

again just like Andre chillo also like appealed this over and over again saying this is unfair which just like you did

it like we know you did it you took them to bodies you terribly murdered people like I don't I mean there's a little bit

of like yeah like I don't know yeah I don't think yeah we know you're a bad guy we

know you're a bad guy he end up getting sent to a super cute called named play though he got sent to Polar Al oh that

is cute which is a penal colony I left the penal colony part out you're supposed to say polar alow penal colony

but I said I thought if I just said polar Al you think it's really cute and that means and that means goog which is back basically yeah so yeah essentially

that and like and this is I looked up the list of prisoners at

polar Al it is is a whoo who of absolute [ __ ] maniacs it's like the it's like

the prison that they kept Magneto in in X like it's it's like their version of

like alcatra it sounds terrifying like so many people there I just run to the

roster russan s killer Russian s killer spree killer like just yeah one after the other and so he's there he's still

alive he's still in prison um he's not that old he's only 49 yeah he's not that old so he there was like some quotes I

read that was like again it gives you a sense of what his life was like outside

like he was so thrilled at the prospect of having hot water in prison like he

talked about it he was talking about how he has like sometimes he even has to like dilute it with cold water because the water's so hot because I guess he

just didn't have access to it when he was free and it's like that impressive to have hot water so he's he's living

his best life I mean I'm kind of jealous with the guy I mean I'm sure it's not great in

there but but also yeah it probably wasn't great out of there either exactly

exactly really what's really interesting is like like with like with so many of these other guys there's a lot of facts out about

them this guy there's really not that much out there yeah which I think might

have something to do with the fact that like the Soviet Union was there and then collapsed and people just memories I

don't know there's so many other things that F were focused on well it doesn't S like they were looking for him at all

yeah they also weren't looking for him well so it was it was also like so this

apartment complex that they lived in everybody kind of knew each other right and so there was chatter at the

apartment complex of something's going on because 10 of the people he killed they were his neighbors oh okay yeah and

so there was some talk about like hey there's something weird going on like we don't know what but yeah um yeah also it

made me think of like dude he's a stock clerk like can you imagine going to your local local grocery store and like it's

your stock clerk that's like dumping bodies left and right I mean I'm sure that I've like talked to

people who killed people right there's no way I hav't whether it's like at the store or like on the bus like I don't

know is there was there some stat that says that the average person will in their lifetime interact with four serial

killers I don't know maybe there's some sad rad like that but luckily we haven't yet or if we

have we don't know it yikes yeah well that's awful that's it that's the

chessboard killer that's Alex pichin P push pushin and uh and yeah the Doom defil

part I don't know what it is exactly I think it's probably just don't play chos

no I don't think that's it but go ahead just don't avoid CH just a little jealous little jealous of that kid yeah

I should figure out what that kid's name was he's probably so famous right now he was an Indian kid little little rich

kid really good run he run to a sippy cup and then come back and just [ __ ] smoke me you gotta learn when you're

young I feel like what was my joke I made a hilarious joke as I was leaving I was like I was like whatever kid at

least I can drive you know you can't do that yeah [ __ ] you dude [ __ ] you child who's good at chess whose parents care

for him and brought him to this place so that awful that's my lovely

story this is my lovely and yeah let us know if you are a fan of

Alex pusin or not I don't think you will be a fan necessarily most people should

not be fans of Al awesome well thank you fars um thanks to everyone who is a new listener um we

have a whole bunch of we're almost at a thousand followers on Instagram which is very exciting and thanks everyone who is

listening please like and share and send it to your friends if you have any questions or or ideas or any feedback

email us at Doom tood gmail.com and find us on social media at Doom phod do we have any listener mail

today nope damn come on people write in oh I have something actually September

our friend from Instagram sent us some fun stories about haunted Lakes so I'm going to look at those they were cool so

was fun thank you September sweet yeah next series awesome okay well go ahead and cut this off and we'll join y'all

on Wednesday see you soon bye [Music]

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