In the quiet paths of Moscow’s Bitsa Park, people went for walks, shared vodka with strangers, and simply vanished. One man counted them like squares on a board. He wanted sixty-four. He nearly got there.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the chilling true story of Alexander Pichushkin — the Chessboard Killer — a soft-spoken supermarket worker who murdered dozens between 1992 and 2006, marking each death on a chessboard he kept in his apartment. From his first kill at age 18 to the note that finally stopped him, this is the story of a man who said killing felt like oxygen… and like first love.

Seventeen elderly women. Eight years of terror. One smiling stranger at the door.

Between 2002 and 2010, Irina Gaidamachuk posed as a social worker to gain entry into the homes of lonely pensioners across Russia’s Sverdlovsk region. Once inside, she bludgeoned them to death with a hammer or axe—then stole whatever cash she could find to feed her alcohol addiction. Sometimes she killed for the price of a few bottles of vodka.

Police believed only a man could commit such brutal crimes. They were wrong.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, host Alexander Lawson uncovers the chilling story of the woman known as “Satan in a Skirt”—a wife and mother of two whose ordinary life hid one of Russia’s most prolific female serial killers.

Seventeen victims. One survivor. A 20-year sentence that left families outraged.

For nearly two decades, women in the Siberian city of Angarsk vanished into the night—only to be found murdered and mutilated in the forests. The man responsible wasn’t a stranger. He was a police officer.

Join host Alexander Lawson as he examines the crimes of Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov, the former cop known as the Angarsk Maniac and the Werewolf. With more than 90 confirmed victims, Popkov stands as Russia’s most prolific serial killer. This episode traces his calculated methods, the long investigation that finally stopped him, and the chilling reality of a predator who used the authority of the badge to hunt.

In 2015, four women in Novosibirsk accepted a ride from a taxi driver and vanished. Their bodies were later found in the woods — beaten, burned, and mutilated. The man behind the wheel called himself “The Cleaner.” He said he was purifying the city of “promiscuous” women.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of Alexei Yevgenyevich Ivanov, the unofficial taxi driver whose six-month killing spree terrorized Siberia until one victim’s call left a digital trail that finally stopped him. From a broken marriage and a sudden descent into violence to the confession, recantation, and life sentence, this is the chilling case of the Taxi Driver Maniac.

They knocked on a fortune teller’s door claiming they wanted their futures read. Minutes later she was dead. Over the next eight months in Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir Guryanov and his partner Elvira Egorycheva murdered at least 13 people — raping, robbing, and killing in the name of a private religion they invented. He called himself Prince Vladimir, last of the Rurikids. She called herself Mother. Together they believed the women they slaughtered would become his wives in the afterlife.

Host Alexander Lawson traces how an icon painter and a widow built a delusion that turned into one of Russia’s most unsettling killing sprees — from newspaper ads that lured victims, to pawned jewelry that finally gave them away, to a supermarket arrest that ended it.

A story of faith twisted into permission, and the ordinary people who opened their doors.

In February 2011 a man walked out of an apartment in Oryol carrying a small child and leaving two bodies behind. Investigators would soon learn he had already done this before — more than once.

Alexey Vladimirovich Gromov, born in the quiet town of Lyubim, became known as Sinaya Boroda — Bluebeard. Over sixteen years he killed five women: his former wife, three partners, and one of their mothers. He used a hammer, an awl, a knife, and an axe. After each killing he simply moved on, often finding the next relationship through the same quiet persistence that had once made him seem ordinary.

Released after serving time for his first murder, Gromov spent nearly a decade evading capture across Yaroslavl, Tver, and Oryol. He compared the crimes to war and the women to opponents. Only a child left with his mother finally led police to his door.

Host Alexander Lawson traces the full path of Russia’s Bluebeard — the relationships, the weapons, the years he stayed free, and the life sentence that followed.

A True Crime Podcast.

In the quiet villages of Belgorod Oblast, a stranger would knock on doors asking only for a place to sleep. What the elderly residents found instead was a man raised by the woods — a killer they called Leshy, The Goblin.

Alexander Ivanovich Greba grew up more animal than human. Abandoned to the forest as a boy, he returned as a teenager and murdered an old woman because she reminded him of his mother. After nearly nine years in prison he was released… and immediately went back to the trees.

Over two terrifying weeks in the summer of 2004 he killed four more people, eating their food, taking their clothes, and vanishing into the forest after every attack. Police found his hut. He watched them from the trees and waited.

This is the story of the Belgorod Mowgli — the boy the woods raised, the man the system set free, and the five lives he ended before one young woman outran him.

Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

A True Crime Podcast.

In Chelyabinsk in the winter of 2004, young women placed ordinary ads — a wedding dress for sale, a job wanted. A polite man called, arranged a meeting, and walked through the door.

Over five months Denis Alekseevich Gorbunov robbed eight women and murdered five of them. One he stabbed ninety-six times. He hunted them through the classifieds.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of the man police called the Ad Killer and the Bloody Groom — how he chose his victims, how a newspaper sting finally stopped him, and what happened four days after a Russian court sentenced him to life.

This episode contains descriptions of violence.

October 12, 2008. A quiet pond outside a Russian village. Two groups of men, vodka, and one insult that would not be forgotten.

Dmitry Vladimirovich Golubev had already killed once. In 1991, at nineteen, he was convicted of a robbery-murder in Uzbekistan and sentenced to fifteen years. He served twelve. Released in 2003, he was stateless, unemployed, and living on the margins in Penza Oblast.

Seventeen years after his first killing, a drunken argument on the bank of a pond near Krutets ended with three fishermen dead. Nineteen stab wounds. Fifteen. Twenty-three. One of the victims had not even taken part in the fight.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the

You place an ad for a room. A polite man answers, looks around, and says he’ll take it. Then he comes back with a knife.

Between 1996 and 2000, Andrei Grigoryevich Golovachyov — known as the Apartment Maniac and Shvarts — traveled across six regions of Russia answering classified ads for rooms and apartments. He stabbed victims dozens of times and slit their throats. He later claimed he was taking their life force. Investigators eventually linked him to at least 14 murders.

Born in the Komi Republic, Golovachyov began as a small-time criminal before his first killings in Ukhta. After a judge released him on recognizance, he vanished and refined a terrifying method: live among people who needed a tenant, then kill them and move on. He was caught in 2000 and sentenced to life in 2002. Years later, from prison, he began confessing to more unsolved cases.

Host Alexander Lawson traces the chaotic 1990s backdrop, the early gangland murders, the nationwide apartment-hunting spree, the 2002 trial, and the later wave of confessions that closed cases two decades after the fact.

This is A True Crime Podcast.