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Monster Alexander Pichushkin confirmed he had proposed to one of 80 supposed women, but claimed in an interview inside his Siberian penal colony that the authorities have blocked his plans to marry her.

The 42-year-old murdered almost all his victims in a Moscow's Bitsa Park between 1992 and 2006 and is nicknamed the 'Chessboard Killer'.

He aimed to slay one person for every square on the chessboard and while he was convicted of 49, he claims the real total was 60, four short of his target.

He used a hammer to smash the skulls of his victims, mainly homeless or drunk men, but also including women and children.

His signature was to wedge a bottle into their cracked skulls.

Pichushkin, speaking from inside Polar Owl jail in northern Siberia, boasted: "About 80 women wrote to me within these years.

"What did they write? 'Love, want, kiss you'."

One woman, 29-year-old Natalya, uses his surname and revealed her love for him two years ago.

He said: "I proposed to her, like a man should do. She immediately agreed.

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"Maybe if I were free, I would not have paid any attention to her but here she is ideal for me. I have been here since 2008 and I need her."

He told how they wrote to each other but "we were not allowed to meet", adding: "I am saying, I know her, I feel her."

But he claimed their exchange of letters is now being blocked, saying the prison administration "is putting up obstacles".

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Natalya, who once allegedly posed in a bridal dress to highlight her love for Pichushkin, has said previously: "It was love at first sight. He became my ray of sunshine. I began writing, he answered, and we exchanged letters."

She has not commented on her 'relationship' with the mass murderer but it understood to have turned to him after she was beaten by her husband who cheated on her.

According to The Siberian Times, she said: "Everything changed when they showed the Bitsa Maniac on TV."

"In his letters, he told me in detail about the murders he committed, and how it was 'interesting for him to turn the living into the dead'."

She now reportedly has a tattoo of Pichushkin's face on her arm.

The prison denied it had blocked the communication, and newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets claimed she may have ditched him.

But officials confirmed he had received dozens of letters from female admirers.

He insisted Natalya still admired him - "because I am the only one".

But he shows no remorse for his killing spree vowing: "If you let me out now, first of all I will kill couple of people, just to get rid of stress, then I will rape a woman and drink some vodka. And then it will go how it goes."

The sinister misfit denied he deserved the dearth penalty - which is no longer used in Russia - claiming his killings were "not murder" but "the hand of God".

He said: "In my case repentance is not just unnecessary, it is wrongful.

"I killed because I did not have any other choice. It was such a situation, there was no other way."

His final victim Marina Moskalyova, 36, in the spring of 2006: she had left a note for her son with his name and phone number on it when she went on a date with him.

A metro ticket found on her body also led police to track her journey and he was seen with her on surveillance tape footage.

He was convicted on 24 October 2007 of 49 murders and three attempted murders.

He asked for 11 more victims who he confessed to killing to be added to his gruesome death toll.