A twisted Russian serial killer who murdered at least 49 homeless men and women by pulverizing their skulls with a hammer has broken his silence.

Alexander Pichushkin, 43, who went on a rampage of terror in Moscow’s Bitsevski Park from the 1990s until 2006, likened murder to sex.

“It brought me colossal pleasure. It is comparable to an orgasm,” he told Russian TV. "I would get to work, and everyone was discussing my murders. I was exultant inside."

Dubbed the Chessboard Killer because of his sick determination to murder one person for each of the 64 squares on a board, Pichushkin befriended his victims first.

“I had to get to know the person better, at least to hear his voice, to talk to him, to know his plans and dreams,” the killer mused.

The facts of the case are chilling. One of his frequent markers was wedging a bottle into the cracked skull of his unfortunate victims.

But for all his bravado, his last victim, Marina Moskalyova, 36, left a note with her son naming the man she was going on a date with: Alexander Pichushkin.

Besides being a sexual experience, the blood-thirsty killer told reporters from his Siberian prison it was very nearly religious as well.

"Because it was important for me not to simply kill the flesh. This would be easy. It was important to kill a human being,” he said.

“Death is stronger than love. Although love is considered the strongest feeling. But the strongest is death."

Pichushkin added that it wasn’t really murder but him playing the “hand of God”.

But in a bizarre twist, the Vladimir Putin-hating Pichushkin gets fan mail from Russian women -- and he’s even trying to marry one of the desperate 80 or so groupies.

He remains unrepentant.

"In my case repentance is not just unnecessary, it is wrongful," he said. "I killed because I did not have any other choice. It was such a situation, there was no other way."