A man suspected to be a serial killed has been charged with 49 murders and three attempted murders crimes, as his trial began Thursday in Russia’s capital Moscow.

Alexander Pichushkin allegedly murdered in cold blood 49 persons between 1992 and 2006, but the man claims he had killed 61 persons in Moscow.

Pichushkin was arrested last year in June after investigators found his name and phone number among the belongings of a woman found dead in Bitsa Park in southwest Moscow.

During inquiry he described his gruesome actions, saying he lured mostly elderly persons with alcohol in the forest on the city’s outskirts. After drinking with them, he would killed them using a heavy object.

Some of the victims were pushed into a sewage pit, but Pichushkin said no one noticed and then decided to leave them in the open.

“For me, a life without murder is like life without food for you,” the former shop assistant said while describing the reprehensible acts.

Pichushkin was nicknamed the “chessboard killer” after saying he wanted to kill a person for each of the 64 squares on the chessboard. When police detained him last year, he said only three more spaces were left empty.

After several tests, psychiatrists said Pichushkin is sane and was fully aware of his actions. Pichushkin said the chessboard was only a temporary target, because he would never have stopped killing if the police didn’t arrest him.

The 33-year-old said he was planning to beat the record of another Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo. He was convicted of  murdering 52 people between 1978 and 1990, and was executed on February 14, 1994.

If convicted Pichushkin won’t share the same fate as Chikatilo, after the death penalty was suspended in 1996.