Perverted Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous - Episode XXXXIII > Mayor, Bellator, NFL, Harvard, Lockdown Prof, WWE, Football

South Korea mayor faces sexual misconduct allegations

By Elizabeth Shim

Oh Keo-don (R), South Korean mayor of Busan, resigned this week following allegations of sexual misconduct.

File Photo by Yonhap/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- The mayor of South Korea's second-largest city may be confronting multiple allegations of sexual misconduct after he resigned Thursday.

Busan Mayor Oh Keo-don, a member of Seoul's ruling Democratic Party, is facing accusations of sexual harassment, and possibly assault, after a victim first came forward in early April, South Korea's MBC and Segye Ilbo reported Friday.

A second allegation now under police investigation dates back to October, when a female government worker appeared on a South Korean YouTube channel, claiming she had been sexually harassed.

The source had said she was paid hush money to keep quiet about Oh's misconduct during 2018 regional elections. Oh had also filed a $400,000 suit against the group that uploaded the YouTube confession, according to Segye Ilbo.

Oh at the time had described the interview as "fake news," that "even cows would find funny."

Oh's main accuser who came forward in April is currently under the protection of a rape crisis center in Busan. Her identity remains undisclosed.

"The victim is currently in a very painful and difficult situation," a source at the center said. "Only after the passage of time will she be able to decide on whether or not to pursue a lawsuit."

The rape crisis center also said the victim is suffering from trauma that "may prevent her from being able to work again."

On Thursday, Oh shed tears as he told reporters of his decision to resign.

"I made an unnecessary physical contact with the person during a short, five-minute meeting," he said while bowing deeply, according to The New York Times.

"I have realized that this could amount to sexual assault...Regardless of the severity of my act, I admit that it cannot be forgiven."

'He groomed us': Bellator champ and sister claim 'disgusting' coach offered schoolgirls cash for sex acts in campaign of abuse

Caution: graphic details below

Bellator flyweight champion Ilima Macfarlane has vowed that basketball coach Dwayne Yuen's "time is up" after filing against him for a string of sexual abuse offenses that she alleges she suffered at a private school in Hawaii.

Macfarlane has detailed her alleged ordeal at Punahou School and admitted she has spent years "in denial" after filing a lawsuit against Yuen alongside her sister, Mahina, and a fellow student athlete, compelled by the discovery that the coach is still teaching minors and was at the center of accusations by fellow pupils in 2018.

The Honolulu-born fighter has claimed she abandoned her dreams of becoming a basketball professional and turned to wrestling because of Yuen's behavior, which is said to have started when she was a 12-year-old and included sending explicit photos of his penis, forcing the pair to touch his genitals and offering cash for sex acts, according to the lawsuit filed at Honolulu Circuit Court.

"I was in sixth grade and Mahina was a freshman when the sexual abuse and grooming started," Macfarlane told fans, describing Yuen's alleged actions at the school she had attended since kindergarten as "sexual assault in the first, second, third and fourth degree."

"My sister reported him to the school when it happened and they swept it under the rug. Punahou knew I was a victim and witness to my own sister’s abuse and didn’t even bother to check on me.

"As a result, we were retaliated against by him and the basketball program and had to see him every day, still allowed on campus around minors.

"I ended up losing my love for basketball, which was crazy. That’s what I wanted to do as a career. I wanted to play professional basketball in the WNBA."

Yuen, who was in his early 30s at the time, is said to have taken an "immediate and perverted" interest in Mahina, despite the teenager not even initially being on the team he was coaching.

An assistant for the Junior Varsity team before becoming head coach of the school's Intermediate team, Yuen is described as giving Mahina "special attention," including rides home from school alone after practice.

He is alleged to have bought her expensive gifts including shoes, clothes and a cellphone, becoming increasingly sexually flirtatious and offering her $1,000 for a "hand-job" and to watch him pleasure himself.

Despite Mahina apparently growing upset and asking to drop out of school, other coaches who were also allegedly sent photos by Yuen of his private parts are said to have described his behaviour as "Dwayne just being Dwayne."

Macfarlane is described as a "gym rat" in the documents, which suggest that her former coach showered her with presents, made and delivered her food and took requests for destinations while driving her around in his SUV vehicle with dark tint, which made her feel "cool."

He is alleged to have bought her a phone and plan, using it to text and call Macfarlane as part of a scheme that made her "fall in love" with him, including taking her to his house where he would fall asleep next to her, as well as sending her explicit photos and showing her crude pictures on campus.

Macfarlane says Yuen told her to "deny, deny, deny" any suspicions from others and caused her to have a nervous breakdown in school.

Their co-defendent has named "repulsive" sexual acts, "sexually explicit recitals" of acts involving toys and penetration and the sending of hundreds of "menacing sexual extortion messages" as part of her suit.

The alleged abuse took place in 2003 and 2004, and the sisters are said to have "courageously" asked the school to take action in 2004 and 2005, receiving no protection while Yuen was allowed to continue playing a key role in the campus basketball program.

They say that coaches and members of the school community called them "liars" and "sluts," ridiculed them and benched them as a result of their claims.

Macfarlane graduated from Punahou in 2009 and began her stellar MMA career five years later, swiftly signing for Bellator as part of a rise that has required a toughness which she feels may have prevented her from talking publicly about her school days.

"I never really shared my own story," she said. "I have to be strong. I’m a professional fighter. I can’t show any vulnerability. To be honest, I was in denial and didn’t want to admit that it affected me as much as it did. I can’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he infiltrated my thoughts, relationships and life even 15 years later. But here we are. The time is now."

In a statement released to Hawaii News Now, the school said it was "deeply troubled" by the reports and that an investigation was underway with the aim of achieving "resolution and healing." “In no uncertain terms, Punahou stands with survivors of sexual abuse everywhere, and we respect the courage it takes to report these incidents,” the statement read.

Macfarlane insisted that the school had been negligent. "My sister and I tried our best to move on with our lives until [the allegations] resurfaced in 2018 when more victims came forward," she said. "Punahou claimed they were doing an internal investigation but again didn’t contact me and refused to share the results of the 'investigation' with my sister.

"Disgustingly, we found out that he’s still coaching and teaching minor girls. So here we are now, 15 years later seeking justice together. "He can’t get away with this anymore. Dwayne Yuen, your time is up."

Macfarlane, 30, is a hero on her home island, where an annual day in her honor takes place in September. Known as 'The Ilimanator', she is unbeaten in 11 pro MMA outings, last defeating Kate Jackson via unanimous decision in December. 

Bellator fighter Leah McCourt, UFC middleweight Puna Soriano and former US presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard were among those to offer their support following her announcement on social media.

Yuen did not reply to a request for comment, ESPN reported. 

Ex-NFL star Telvin Smith arrested after
'paying 17-y/o girl $100 for sex'

A SWAT team has raided the home of 29-year-old Telvin Smith, a former linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars, as he was arrested on charges of unlawful sexual activity with minors, according to reports in the US.

Smith’s Florida home was raided on Wednesday as he was taken into custody and held on $50,000 bail. Police records say the arrest pertains to offenaes that allegedly occurred on the last day of August last year at a residence.

Officials say they have a raft of evidence against Smith, including voice recordings and DNA to prove his guilt over the accusations that he offered an underage girl $200 for sex.

Smith was taken from his house in the late afternoon and transferred to Duval County Jail. The alleged victim has spoken of the incident and said that she used the money given to her by Smith in order to buy contraception - and that there was a further incident later that year in which he picked her up in his Cadillac Escalade, where they again allegedly had sex.

The SWAT team that combed through Smith’s house arrived with guns drawn as they believed someone was armed at the property, though that later proved not to be the case.

The Jaguars released a statement on the matter, saying: “The Jaguars are aware of the report involving former linebacker Telvin Smith. The club is unable to comment further on this ongoing investigation.”

Florida has somewhat different laws when it comes to the age of consent, and in the state anyone who is aged 24 or above can be charged with a second degree felony if found to have engaged in sexual activity with someone aged 16 or 17.

Smith had his car towed last November in what is believed to be a similar investigation, although charges were not brought on that occasion. 

Harvard math professor put on administrative leave after report of ties to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

The disgraced billionaire pedophile gave $6.5 million to the professor's research center

Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

CARLOS GARCIA
The  Blaze

A report of the ties between Harvard University and deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has led to a math professor being placed on administrative leave.

The report was ordered by Harvard's president and found troubling access given to Epstein at the behest of Martin Nowak, a director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Epstein gave $6.5 million to help establish the research center in 2003.

According to the Associated Press, the report found that Epstein was allowed to have an office at the office of the program by Nowak, who bent the security rules to give Epstein unfettered access.

Nowak said that the office belonged to Epstein "in name only," but the report found differing accounts from others in the program.

Officials put Nowak on leave on Friday while their investigation into his behavior continued.

"We do not take this step lightly, but the seriousness of the matter leads us to believe it is not appropriate for Professor Nowak to continue in his role," said Claudine Gay, a Harvard dean.

The report found that other faculty members travelled with Epstein and even visited in jail.

The accusations against Epstein gained new life in 2019 as more women went to the press and told their stories of sexual assault by the politically connected billionaire.

He was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 after what appeared to be a suicide. The highly charged circumstances of his death led to many conspiracy theories relating to the powerful people that he might have been able to implicate in his crimes had he continued to live.

'Professor lockdown' Ferguson resigns after violating quarantine he designed to meet married lover

'Professor lockdown' Ferguson resigns after violating quarantine he designed to meet married lover

Imperial College Professor Neil Ferguson © Wikipedia / Marshaj2020

Professor Neil Ferguson, author of apocalyptic coronavirus models, has resigned from his position as adviser to 10 Downing Street after revelations that he violated quarantine himself to meet with a married lover.

Following Ferguson’s resignation on Tuesday night, the Daily Telegraph made it public that the man known as ‘Professor Lockdown’ had allowed a married mother with whom he was having an affair to visit him at least twice during the quarantine. The woman was identified as Antonia Staats, 38.


The Telegraph✔
@Telegraph

🔴 Prof Ferguson allowed the woman to visit him at home during the lockdown while lecturing the public on the need for strict social distancinghttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/exclusive-government-scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking/?

Exclusive: Government scientist Neil Ferguson resigns after breaking lockdown rules to meet his...

Prof Ferguson allowed the woman to visit him at home during the lockdown while lecturing the public on the need for strict social distancing

The first visit was reportedly on March 30, as Ferguson warned the British public that lockdown measures – in effect for a week at that time – would have to remain in place until June. Her second visit was on April 8.

"I accept I made an error of judgment and took the wrong course of action,” Ferguson told the Telegraph, confirming that he has resigned from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). He maintained the need for the continued lockdown, however.

“I deeply regret any undermining of the clear messages around the continued need for social distancing to control this devastating epidemic. The government guidance is unequivocal, and is there to protect all of us,” he said.

Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London is behind the computer model that predicted more than half a million Britons would die from the virus unless the country was locked down, a view which eventually prevailed over the ‘herd immunity’ approach initially floated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

With Johnson himself contracting the virus and being sidelined for weeks, the government has continued to follow Ferguson’s recommendations, repeating the mantra “Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives” for seven weeks now.

The UK has just crossed the threshold of 30,000 deaths attributed to the coronavirus, outpacing the previously hardest-hit European countries such as Italy and Spain.

More than 9,000 people in England and Wales have been fined for breaches of the lockdown over the past seven weeks – one every five minutes, according to the Telegraph – while a senior Scottish medical official had to resign after being caught visiting her second home in defiance of government orders.

Following Ferguson’s prescriptions, the UK government allows people to leave their homes only for daily exercise, essential food shopping, medical emergencies, and specific kinds of work. 

The professor’s prior claim to fame was the 1990s model predicting up to 50,000 deaths from the human form of bovine foot-and-mouth disease, which led to a mass culling of animals in 2001, wrecking the British food industry and inflicting an estimated £10 billion loss to the economy.

'I felt so ashamed and blamed myself': WWE icon Nikki Bella reveals harrowing details of double rape as teenager

Harrowing excerpts from WWE Hall of Famer Nikki Bella's memoir reveal she was sexually assaulted on two separate occasions, both while she was in her teens.

Californian Bella has released her memoir 'Incomparable' - penned with twin sister Brie - and it contains some truly shocking revelations about the WWE wrestler’s upbringing, including two accounts of when she was subject to sexual assault by older men.

Bella, 36, real name Stephanie Nicole Garcia-Colace, says the first incident involved her being raped by someone she thought of as a friend, and occurred when she was just 15. The second rape was perpetrated by a college-age man when she was 16.

And while she kept details of the attacks secret, they unfortunately had a lasting effect, coloring her relationships for many years afterwards.

"When that happened to me, I immediately just felt so ashamed and blamed myself, and that's what made me want to keep it such a secret,” she writes.

“And keeping that a secret and blaming myself, I started to lose my confidence. I started to disrespect myself. And then the relationships I got into at a young age, I let other people disrespect me and felt like, that's okay, this is what I deserved.”

Bella, who went on to appear in WWE spin-off reality show 'Total Bellas' was in a relationship with fellow WWE legend John Cena for six years, and she credits him with having a very positive impact on her, helping her to ‘respect herself.’ She’s now engaged to Dancing with the Stars’ Artem Chigvintsev.

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French league football star arrested for 'masturbating in public' on same day he signed bumper new contract

El Melali (right)

Angers winger Farid El Melali was detained by police after neighbors saw him indecently exposing himself while looking through a woman’s window.

Algerian Ligue 1 player El Melali, 22, was taken into police custody on Monday night after shocked neighbors said they witnessed him masturbating in the courtyard of his apartment block - on the same day he signed a lucrative contract extension with his club until 2023.

El Melali told police that his attitude was inappropriate, and that he thought he was alone in the courtyard of the complex, located in the center of Angers.

Although his lawyer Sandra Chirak Kollarik said that the player “was not targeting anyone and was not aggressive towards anyone,” El Melali immediately admitted his guilt and was released in the early hours of the morning, French media report.

Kollarik is expected to say in mitigation that El Melali didn’t think the female neighbor could see what he was doing.

Incredibly, police sources say that it isn’t the first time the player has been reported for exactly this kind of offense, however the witness wasn’t able to 'positively identify him' after an alleged incident last month.

He is likely to face a fine this time around, but while his club have confirmed his arrest, they haven’t announced if they will take further disciplinary measures against him, instead saying they will “wait for the decision.”

Catholic Church Child Sex Scandal - Time for a Congressional Inquiry

I have been calling for a Congressional Inquiry into Institutional Child Sex Abuse for a couple years now. The Pennsylvania inquiry should make it obvious how necessary that is. 17,000 USA victims of Catholic predators admitted by church. Wonder how many there really were?

Church sex scandal: Abuse victims want a full reckoning

Since the crisis exploded in Boston in 2002, dioceses around the country have dealt with similar revelations of widespread sexual abuse.

THE CANADIAN PRESS
 

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, conducts Mass at St. Mathews Cathedral, Wednesday, August 15, 2018 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania joined the list this week of those around the U.S. that have been forced to face the ugly truth about child-molesting priests in their ranks.

But in dozens of other dioceses, there has been no reckoning, leading victims to wonder if the church will ever truly take responsibility or be held accountable.

“It happens everywhere, so it’s not really so much a question of where has it happened, but instead, where has word gotten out, where is information about it accessible?” said Terry McKiernan, founder of BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts-based non-profit group that tracks clergy sexual abuse cases.

Since the crisis exploded in Boston in 2002, dioceses around the country have dealt with similar revelations of widespread sexual abuse, with many of them forced to come clean by aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys, assertive prosecutors or relentless journalists.

In a few instances, namely in Tucson, Arizona, and Seattle, dioceses voluntarily named names.

15 Dioceses; 3 Orders bankrupt

Dioceses in Boston; Los Angeles; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; Denver; San Diego; Louisville, Kentucky; and Dallas have all paid multimillion-dollar settlements to victims. Fifteen dioceses and three Catholic religious orders have filed for bankruptcy to deal with thousands of lawsuits.

Still, only about 40 of the nearly 200 dioceses in the U.S. have released lists of priests accused of abusing children, and there have been only nine investigations by a prosecutor or grand jury of a Catholic diocese or archdiocese in the U.S., according to BishopAccountability.org.

In many of the dioceses that have been examined, the numbers have been staggering: in the six Pennsylvania dioceses, 300 abusive priests and more than 1,000 victims since the 1940s; in Boston, at least 250 priests and more than 500 victims.

All told, U.S. bishops have acknowledged that more than 17,000 people nationwide have reported being molested by priests and others in the church going back to 1950.

Phil Saviano, a Massachusetts man who said he was sexually abused by a priest in 1960s beginning at age 11, said he hopes the grand jury report in Pennsylvania will prompt attorneys general in other states to conduct similar investigations. He said he doubts dioceses will release names unless forced to do so.

“My personal feeling is that none of them are going to come forward voluntarily. It’s always going to take some pressure from the public, the parishioners or legal authorities,” said Saviano, whose story was one of many exposed by The Boston Globe in its 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning series and later in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight.”

Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston lawyer who estimates he has represented 3,000 clergy sex abuse victims from around the world since the 1990s, said he has sent letters detailing about two dozen allegations of abuse against priests from dioceses in Michigan, Ohio and Rhode Island and received similar responses from all three.

“They say, ‘We feel very sorry for your clients, but it’s outside the statute of limitations,’” Garabedian said, adding, “The church knows there is no legal recourse, so the church says it will not act responsibly and will not act appropriately.”

Legally, they are free from consequences. Morally, they don't seem to know that they will stand before Jesus Christ one day and answer for their moral failures.

In many states, statutes of limitations allow people abused as children to file civil claims up until only age 21 or slightly older. In Massachusetts and other states hit hard by the crisis, those statutes were amended after the scandal erupted. But in many other states, the laws have remained unchanged.

The Pennsylvania grand jury said that in almost every case there, the statute of limitations for bringing criminal charges has run out.

In fact, there were only 2 out of 300 Catholic predators who could be charged.

Echoing what was discovered in Boston and other places, the grand jury report accused senior church officials of hushing up allegations against priests, in some cases by shuffling them from parish to parish.

Not only did that cover-up the abuses, but it enabled the predators to keep on feeding their perversion, at the expense of innocent children, of course.

In a statement, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People expressed sorrow over the Pennsylvania findings and said: “We are committed to work in determined ways so that such abuse cannot happen.”

In recent years, the U.S. bishops have adopted widespread reforms, including mandatory criminal background checks for priests and lay employees, a requirement that abuse allegations be reported to law enforcement, the suspension of priests while they are being investigated, and permanent removal from ministry when accusations are substantiated.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest who is a senior analyst for the Religion News Service, noted such reforms but said the Pennsylvania grand jury report should be a “wake-up call” to other dioceses that they need to hire outside groups to do independent investigations, then must publish the results. But he said he is doubtful that will happen.

“A lot of bishops feel, ‘Hey, that was done before I got here. I regret that it happened, I’m sorry that it happened, but we’ve changed, this is no longer happening under my watch because of the procedures we’ve put in place,’” Reese said.

“If they had just gotten all of the dirt out at the very beginning, all at the same time, then we wouldn’t be suffering death by 1,000 cuts. It’s just place after place, and frankly, it’s the same story in every place.”

The need for a congressional inquiry is desperate. All these victims need to tell their story and have them believed. All predators need to be held accountable if they are still of this world. And all Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals need to be held accountable for covering up the abuse and for enabling the abusers as was the norm for many decades. If it ends up that every single diocese in the USA goes bankrupt - I can't see how that would be a bad thing. The Whore of Babylon will soon come to an end; will we wait for the Lord to do it Himself on His return, or should we start the reckoning now?

The Growing Evil of Russia's Worst Serial Killers and Rapists

3 Gruesome stories, not for the feint of heart.

Sin is progressive and it is never more obvious than in serial murderers and rapists.

How ex-cop accused of butchering 82 women compares to Russia’s most notorious serial killers

Andrei Chikatilo (L), Alexander Pichushkin (С), Mikhail Popkov (R). © Sputnik, © НТВ / YouTube

Mikhail Popkov was this week charged with 60 new murders, in addition to the 22 that have already resulted in convictions. A guilty verdict would make the former cop Russia’s most prolific serial killer, but in terms of relentless brutality, he has "rivals."

Andrei Chikatilo © Vladimir Vyatkin / Sputnik

Beyond the sheer number of victims, Andrei Chikatilo is undoubtedly Russia’s most notorious serial killer. The cat-and-mouse game between a grotesque and cunning killer and the thousands of men who tracked him for years — involving manhunts, traps, lucky escapes, and widespread coverage in the increasingly open Soviet media during Glasnost — was played, while the bodies of gruesomely mutilated victims piled up.

Chikatilo's victims. © Wikipedia

Born in 1936, Chikatilo suffered from an infernally deprived childhood that featured starvation, alleged cannibalism, beatings, and the possible rape of his mother during the Nazi occupation.

As an adult, the academically-gifted Chikatilo led a married life of employed mediocrity that eventually made it easier for him to hide, while harboring a burning resentment and constant sexual frustration. Working as a teacher unable to control his class — the theme of disrespect and bullying by his peers was a constant in the killer’s life story — Chikatilo could have first been stopped in the '70s when he made passes at several of his teenage students. Instead, the future mass murderer was quietly dismissed from a number of schools, easily finding employment each time.

While suspected of a still-unsolved murder of a 9-year-old girl in 1978, Chikatilo relentless murdering streak began in 1982 and did not stop until his arrest.

Chikatilo demonstrates to investigators how he carried out his murders © / Wikipedia

The killer would lure predominantly pre-teen boys and post-pubescent girls from bus stops, train stations, and other unassuming city locations by offering to help them with their bags or offering to show off his stamp collection.

He then walked them into the woods, attacked them, tied them up and stabbed them dozens of times. Unable to reach an erection from normal sexual activity, Chikatilo was wildly aroused from the struggle and pleas of his victims, and the mutilation of their dead bodies. As well as performing imitative sex acts with his knife, Chikatilo, often cut off the victims’ sex organs, bit off nipples, gouged out eyes, and stuffed body parts into the dead youths’ mouths.

The murders represented both a release and an apparent vengeful rage against his own sexual failures, particularly as several victims appeared to have laughed at Chikatilo’s inability to perform, shortly before their deaths.

The hallmarks made it easy to connect the killings and already by 1983 a massive coordinated operation to catch the killer was underway. Over the next several years, the net was cast wide —perhaps too much so, distracting the core investigators from their task — resulting in background checks and blood tests on more than 200,000 individuals, and a vast number of arrests. Investigators reported that they solved nearly 1,100 other unrelated crimes as a result, but the killer slipped through.

In September 1984, a drunk Chikatilo, who was on a business trip and acting suspiciously and making clumsy advances towards both sexes in Rostov, was arrested by a city police patrol. He had a knife, a length of rope and a jar of Vaseline in his briefcase, but was able to explain them away; more importantly, though, his blood type didn’t match that of the semen found at the crime scenes, in what was likely a sample contamination error.

Nonetheless, Chikatilo, an industrial buyer at the time, was arrested and imprisoned for petty theft, but let out after three months.

Chikatilo's booking photos © Vladimir Vyatkin / Sputnik

He killed 21 more people after his release, but after committing several murders in quick succession in the fall of 1990, Chikatilo emerged from a forest, covered in mud and the blood of his last victim, 22-year-old Svetlana Korostik, and was spotted by an officer on duty. Police began surveilling a man that had already featured in their extensive database, and on November 20, 1990, the killer was captured.

Chikatilo broke his silence quickly, and cooperated with police, giving precise locations of the murders he committed and describing his acts with characteristic self-loathing. 

Chikatilo is led to the courtroom © Sergei Kuznetsov / AFP

His trial that began in 1992 in an over-stuffed provincial courtroom — packed with jostling TV crews from around the world and relatives demanding vengeance — was not a dignified scene of justice.

Chikatilo, by then a celebrity monster, clowned around in what appeared to be a blatant imitation of madness at odds with his everyday personality, ranting, and blaming a harsh Soviet upbringing for his behavior, while also claiming that he had cleansed society of “undesirables.”

video 0:34

His death sentence was met with applause, and Andrei Chikatilo was executed on February 14, 1994.

Alexander Pichushkin © Alexey Panov / Sputnik

At first glance, a drab repetitiveness of the circumstances of Alexander Pichushkin’s crimes fails to elicit the dark fascination of more dramatic serial killers. But as you delve deeper, his routine, cold-blooded nature — for five years Pichushkin was allowed to murder one victim after another in a small patch of a popular Moscow park right next to his house entirely unpunished — creates a sense of everyday horror in a world that ignores death on its doorstep.

Pichushkin was born in 1974, the son of an alcoholic father, who abandoned the family when he was an infant. Many outsiders have cited an incident when he was four — he fell off a swing and sustained a brain injury, necessitating a stay at a specialized boarding school that he found traumatic — as an explanation for his crimes.

His earliest murder — which he described at his trial as “like the first time you fall in love,” — happened in 1992 when he was still in college.

Pichushkin recruited another teen, Mikhail Odiychuk, to form a double team of serial killers, and took him into Bitsa Park to search for their first victim. Before they set off, Pichushkin said he realized that Odiychuk was having second thoughts, and asked him to write a suicide note, “as a joke.”

Once in the woods, Odiychuk seemed anxious to leave and handed his fellow student the rope he had brought himself. Pichushkin threw the rope over his neck, and suffocated his victim, breaking his backbone, before throwing him down a manhole. He then went home and burned his clothes.

This was the only time Pichushkin was questioned by the police until he was finally caught fourteen years later. Odiychuk’s body was never found and his death ruled a suicide.

Despite having worked out a location, and a method of disposal, there was a nine-year pause, in which Pichushkin became a loader, and later a shelf stacker, at a large supermarket nearby.

It ended abruptly, though, and without obvious external cause, with Pichushkin simply saying that he “was in a mood to kill someone that day.” He did as he planned, but didn't stop there and over the next 11 weeks claimed 8 more lives. All of the victims were men, most of them middle-aged, or retired, and homeless or alcoholics.

Bitsa Park © A.Savin / Wikipedia

Despite otherwise being a frequent drinker, Pichushkin exercised regularly while killing. He was always sober as he baited his victims with the offer of vodka in a secluded spot in the park, though in reality, only yards away from popular footpaths.

There, he would wait for his victims to become intoxicated, before picking out a lull in the conversation to strike them with a hammer on their heads. At first, multiple blows were needed, but the police said that by the time of his arrest, Pichushkin could kill his victim with one or two blows. Their bodies, sometimes as they struggled, were then dragged and dropped into the flowing sewage canals.

Many of the murders took place near public footpaths © Yandex map

Describing his crimes in court in great detail, Pichushkin only expressed remorse at his sloppy execution, or the lack of excitement if his victims did not resist sufficiently, or the difficulty of getting their bodies to fall down the hole, which occasionally necessitated the killer climbing down into the shaft himself.

Asked about his motivation, Pichushkin reveled in the thrill of the process of setting up the trap for his victims, watching their futile struggles, and finally their helpless, drifting bodies.

video 4:03

He described himself as a "hunter" and the “King of the Forest.” But on a deeper level, Pichuskin, somewhat of a courtroom philosopher, said that he relished the power to decide the fate of his victim. “I liked to listen to their dreams, desires, and plans… Because I already knew that none of them would ever come true,” he told the judge.

But despite calling himself “a professional,” three of Pichushkin’s victims survived, the first who would have been his twelfth victim. Maria Viricheva, a 19-year-old woman managed to escape from a different canal exit, after spending more than an hour in the water. Later, a 14-year-old glue-sniffing orphanage boy did the same. Neither were believed by the police. A third victim suffered from amnesia despite surviving and failed to identify his killer despite passing him in the street.

The close escapes prompted short pauses, but in the long run Pichushkin began to feel invincible. He started killing his colleagues from the supermarket where he worked. When police eventually sealed the manholes, he simply left their bodies out, after putting sticks or vodka bottles into holes in their skulls to make sure that they were dead.

The chessboard found in Pichushkin's house © Russian Interior Ministry Museum

In a trademark that would eventually get him branded the Chessboard Killer – though he actually preferred checkers – with each kill Pichushkin stuck numbered cards onto the squares of a folding board, keeping mementos, such as bottle caps, inside.

His last murder was so cavalier, it is impossible to conclude that Pichushkin didn’t want to get caught. The killer invited Marina Moskaleva, a 36-year-old woman he worked with, on a date in the woods, knowing that she wrote down his name and home number and left it with his son before setting off.

Only then was he caught. Pichushkin was convicted of killing 49 people but insists the true toll is 61. Initially, the mass killer said he merely wanted to outdo his idol Chikatilo and fill up all the squares on his board, but later admitted that he “never would have stopped, so those who put him up behind bars saved a lot of lives.”

Mikhail Popkov © / Wikipedia

Most serial killers lose control or get caught within a few years, but Mikhail Popkov was able to operate unhindered for two decades. This was not only due to his evasiveness, but also the slow response of the police, notwithstanding that the killer himself was wearing a uniform.

Beyond requisite rumors of a violent childhood, the media has latched onto a betrayal as the origin of his killings — an occasion when Popkov, returning from work to his young wife, found a used condom in his bin, thus losing his trust in women, and venting his anger on others.

But evidence of his virgin-whore complex and mistrust of the opposite sex emerged much earlier. Friends said that almost from the date of his wedding in 1986, he spoke of wanting to surveil his wife and flew off the handle at the mention of “promiscuous” women.

While he killed his first victim in 1992, when he was still a fireman, Popkov’s modus operandi matured when he was re-hired for a second stint as a police sergeant in 1994.

Popkov would cruise the streets of the provincial Siberian city of Angarsk, or linger outside drinking establishments, dressed in his uniform, inviting lone, drunk women into his car where they would consume alcohol. He would then rape and mutilate them with sharp or blunt handheld weapons, and dump their bodies in a forest.

Popkov's victims © Russian Interior Ministry Museum

In his confessions, Popkov called himself, 'The Cleaner,' and his victims,"fallen women.”

His brazenness was astounding. Popkov often picked up women while actually on shift, showed his face in shops together with the future victim, used confiscated weapons for the murders while returning to the scene of his crimes hours later with investigators.

© Irkutsk region police

The killer’s clean-cut image, average demeanor, and outwardly stable home life helped to shield him from suspicion, but don't explain everything. Despite rumors of a serial killer circulating through Angarsk throughout the '90s, and possibly unwilling to involve federal investigators, local police refused to unify the murders into a single case, instead, writing them off as ubiquitous moll killings in a territorial war that had been raging in the city. There had been witnesses and survivors, but their evidence was ignored.

When the murders became too noticeable to overlook, and an outside team was dispatched in 2002, they found that crime site analysis had been sloppy. While investigating the killer over the next seven years — while also battling gang violence — the head of the team said that local officers were suspicious and uncooperative; sometimes more concerned with playing office politics than finding the killer. Popkov had by that time abruptly retired from the force, despite being promoted to lieutenant.

Although Popkov had been interviewed about the murders earlier —his wife provided an alibi, despite forensic evidence — it was DNA analysis that finally exposed the killer. Police narrowed down the suspects to 600. Popkov came in and was forced to supply a saliva sample, and realizing that he was going to be caught, reportedly attempted to flee to China by train, when he was arrested.

Popkov's family, who have now changed names and moved cities © YouTube

His wife and daughter went on prime-time TV to declare that they had no suspicions whatsoever about Mikhail.

video 3:26

In January 2015, Popkov was convicted of killing 22 people, and sentenced to life in jail. He now faces charges of 60 more murders which he has confessed to. As Popkov traveled widely, delivering second-hand cars from Vladivostok to Angarsk and other cities, the true death toll may be higher, and will most likely never be known.

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