(L-R) Real-life killer Alexander Pichushkin, Rainn Wilson (for the network Movie-of-the-Week version), Gary Oldman (for the studio version)
More picks after the jump…
NICK’S PICK: Martin Freeman (for the Channel 4 Films Production) 
JACKRABBIT’S PICK: Stellan Skarrsgard (for the weird, Dogme-style Lars von Trier version) 
I have never even heard of this guy or his story. Guess I’m out of the loop…
I haven’t either. He killed people with chessboards, I’m assuming? Or drew chessboards on their foreheads after they were dead? Did he inspire the climactic action sequence in the first Harry Potter movie?
I’m stumped.
I looked it up and read a few paragraphs about him. Apparently he wanted to kill 64 people because that’s the number of spaces on a chessboard. Unfortunately for his psychosis, he only got to 61.
There’s always a checkerboard I guess…oh…wait
He’s been all over the press today because of his confession. Frankly, I hadn’t even heard of him until this morning (on, it grieves me to say, FoxNews).
What a clown he is…only losers don’t finish what they start.
I think he looks a little like Stellan Skarsgaard (sp?)
Spelled Skarsgård, but Skarsgaard is acceptable also, since the letter ‘å’ is often translated as ‘aa’ in English. Pronounced like “Skarsghord”
Think he looks like a Martin Freeman, of Love Actually fame.
Anyone see Citizen X? One of the better direct-to-tv films I’ve seen. So good it actually got a cinema release over here, if I remember correctly. Great cast, good story (mostly true). This latest guy was trying to break his ‘record’.
Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s not like Americans to admit that the Russians were better than them at anything.
There’s a contest?
“He said his aim had been to beat the record of the infamous Soviet killer Andrei Chikatilo, convicted of murdering 52 children and teenagers between 1978 and 1990 in southern Russia, and executed February 14, 1994.” – http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070801/70097233.html
Right…soviet…this has nothing to do with a contest with America, right?
I assume that’s exactly what your news media thought when they decided 52 russians murdered Russians weren’t worthy of notice.
yikes…what’s bringing this on?
You insinuated that the Chessboard killer was “better” than the Americans at something.
So I jokingly asked if this was a contest…I knew that this killer was trying to outdo a previous soviet killer, so I didn’t think this was an instance where someone was trying to outdo America. Maybe he was. I haven’t researched where all the serial killers with 50+ hits are from…maybe America had one and now Russia has two. So maybe they beat us. I have no idea.
Is this outrage from last week’s Women’s World Cup decision?
Updated with everyone else’s picks.
It sickens me that the USA is falling behind in serial killer body counts…surely it’s time for a direct head-to-head competition between our worst and their worst. Basically: the 1980 Olympic Hockey Finals, but with knives and roofies.
Maybe none of the victims were blond?
61 wouldn’t even put him in the top ten.
I’m going with Martin Freeman for the win. Good call.
Oh, come on. I’m being cynical mostly, and very tongue in cheek. News media in general is a joke, I just find it a somewhat more tragic one in the American case. I mean, had this guy been found in the States it would have been blown up like nothing else this year.
That was some morbid but fascinating reading. Going to try and track down Crónicas, which I remember Wells recommended. The Swedish contribution to the list, Thomas Quick, has steadily lost his prestige, as many of his confessed killings appear to have been made up, and he’s been diagnosed with mythomania. Not all, but most of them.
I dunno … is he in the middle of a child custody fight? That would really help with the publicity.
I saw it, was pretty decent. Was much more about the media than the killer, though.
What was up with the COPS?? Stupid…