Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin, also known as The Chessboard Killer and The Bitsa Park Maniac, is a Russian serial killer. He is believed to have killed at least 48 people, and possibly as many as 60, in southwest Moscow's Bitsa Park, where a number of the victims' bodies were found. Pichushkin committed his first known murder as a student in 1992 and stepped up his crimes in 2001. Russian media has speculated that Pichushkin was motivated, in part, by a macabre competition with another notorious Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, the 'Rostov Ripper', who was convicted in 1992 of killing 53 children and young women over a 12-year period. Pichushkin has said his aim was to kill 64 people, the number of squares on a chessboard. He later recanted this statement, saying that he would have continued killing indefinitely had he not been stopped.
He was arrested on 16 June 2006, and convicted on 24 October 2007 of 49 murders and 3 attempted murders. He asked a Russian court to add an additional 11 victims to his body count, bringing his claimed death toll to 60, and 3 surviving victims. During his trial, as with Andrei Chikatilo, Pichushkin was housed in a glass cage for his own protection. It took Judge Vladimir Usov an hour to read the verdict: life in prison with the first 15 years to be spent in solitary confinement.
In the US, the average spent on an engagement ring is $6,351 but how do these figures compare with our favorite celebrities? The answer: they don't. As the diamonds increase in size, obviously the price tag appreciates handsomely. Well, we've compiled a list of some of the most expensive celebrity engagement rings.
This list would be nothing without Kim Kardashian's rock from Kanye, which clocked in at around a cool $4 million when he presented it to her at his stadium proposal in October 2013. Unfortunately, though, the 15-carat sparkler was among the jewelry stolen during Kim's infamous Paris robbery in 2016.
Jennifer Lopez's husband Alex Rodriguez popped the question to the singer, and he really had to step it up to outshine her previous engagement rings—and wow, did he deliver. The baseball star proposed with a reported 15-20 carat emerald cut stunner set on a platinum band that was estimated at $5 million. It's getting harder and harder not to be fooled by the rocks she's got...
It should come as no surprise that Beyonce herself totes one of the world's highest-valued diamonds. Weighing in at 24 carats, Jay reportedly paid around $5 million (now worth $6,047,013) for Bey's flashy emerald-cut ring back in 2008.
Anna Kournikova's relationship Latin music artist Enrique Iglesias since the early '00s has been one of the most lowkey celebrity relationships to date. That is with the exception of her $5,400,000 engagement ring that made headlines in 2004. Now, worth a whopping $7,443,596, the giant yellow stunner was spotted on Kournikova even during her tennis matches. (Pssst! It's rumored she got two rings from Iglesias. Prior to this, she sported an equally giant pink pear-shaped ring.)
Clocking in as the most expensive celebrity engagement ring, Mariah Carey's 35-carat bling from ex-fiancé James Packer reportedly cost a cool $10 million. And the "Obsessed" singer seemed to be a bit, well, obsessed with the jewel. She continued to wear the ring over a year post-breakup, and didn't part ways with the bauble until May 2018, selling it to a Los Angeles jeweler for $2.1 million.