Due to his behaviour, Pichushkin's mother decided to transfer him from the mainstream school he had been attending to one for children with learning disabilities.

Upon reaching early adolescence, his maternal grandfather recognized that Pichushkin was highly intelligent and felt that his innate talents were being wasted, as he wasn't involved in any activities at home and the school he was enrolled in focused more on overcoming disability than on promoting achievement.

However, he continued to be bullied by mainstream school children and suffered an emotional blow when, toward the end of his adolescence, his grandfather died.

In an effort to both dull the pain of the loss as well as to calm his severe aggressive tendencies, he began to consume large quantities of vodka.

I am going to drop you from the window... and you will fall fifteen meters to your death..." He then watched these videos repeatedly to reaffirm his power.

Pichushkin arranged to meet his classmate, Mikhail Odïtchuk, in Bitsa Park to jointly hatch a plan to kill sixty-four people.

However, when they arrived at the meeting point, Odïtchuk changed his mind and told Pichushkin that he no longer wanted to take action.

Feeling teased by his best friend, Pichushkin strangled him and threw his body in a sewer entrance at Bitsa Park, then returned to his mother's apartment a short distance away.

[citation needed] On 17 May 2001, Pichushkin was in Bitsa Park playing chess with a 52-year-old man named Yevgeny Pronin.

At the end of their game, Pichushkin invited Pronin to take a walk with him, claiming it was the anniversary of his dog's death and that he wanted to visit the grave in Bitsa Park.

Pronin accompanied him to an isolated area in Bitsa Park, whereupon Pichushkin pulled out a bottle of vodka and offered him a drink.

He would kill his victims by repeated blows to the head with a hammer, and would then push a vodka bottle into the gaping wound in their skulls.

[13] Once apprehended, Pichushkin led police officers to the scenes of many of his crimes in Bitsa Park and demonstrated a keen recollection of how the murders were committed.

[14] He was filmed reenacting his crimes in great detail, a process which is a regular part of Russian criminal investigation.

[11] Upon conviction, Judge Vladimir Usov sentenced Pichushkin to life imprisonment, with the first fifteen years to be spent in solitary confinement.