Aged 29, Natalya, has spoken properly for the first time to explain her obsession with Pichushkin. Picture: Vkontakte

Alexander Pichushkin, 42, is the worst serial killer to emerge in Russia since the end of Soviet times. He aimed to murder one victim for each square on the chessboard - and his trademark signature was to wedge a bottle into the skulls of his victims.

The mass killer was convicted of killing 49 victims, although his own claims suggest his bloody tally is nearer 60.

He now languishes inside 'impossible-to-escape' Polar Owl penal colony at Kharp village in the Arctic north of Siberia serving a life sentence from which he will never be released. In winter it's a furnace of cold, and in the brief, bleak summer, the marshmallowy tundra offers no route out even if an inmate should penetrate the ring of ravenous German Shepherd dogs.

Yet the Bitsa Park Maniac - the name comes from the Moscow park where many of his victims were killed - has become a magnet for women, with around 80 writing to him.

Alexander Pichushkin, 42, is the worst serial killer to emerge in Russia since the end of Soviet times. Picture: NTV

One Siberian woman, who works in a children's shop, has won a special place in his heart, and she even calls herself Natalya Pichushkin, as if they are already married.

He admitted recently in an interview with Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets that he had proposed to her - and she accepted.

Aged 29, Natalya, from Nyagan, also the birthplace of banned tennis champion Maria Sharapova, has spoken properly for the first time to explain her obsession with Pichushkin, even though they have only ever communicated by letter, and never met.

She angrily denied recently reports that she had ditched him, complaining instead that their letters between the pair have been blocked by the authorities for two years.

'Nothing has changed since he proposed to me,' she said, calling him Sasha, the fond name for Alexander, whose image she has tattooed onto her arm. 'Whatever people say, I love him more than life itself. It never crossed my mind to part with him.

'I have not received Sasha's letters in recent years. But we both know that it does not depend on us. Employees of the institution where he is serving his sentence do not want us to communicate.'

'Correspondence followed between us. After two years, I realised that I had fallen in love.' Pictures: NTV

She complained: 'I don't know what have I have done, or why they do this to me. He is my everything. I have nothing in this world without him. I'm dead without him.

'When they cut our correspondence, I sent him dozens of letters. They all remained without answer. I just live in hope that we will be allowed to communicate.'

She had previously written to other jailed killers before striking up a correspondence with Pichushkin starting in 2009 when she was 22. To her surprise, the mass murderer wrote back.

'He replied. Correspondence followed between us. After two years, I realised that I had fallen in love. I have had no special feelings for my other pen friends.'

She claimed: 'Sasha has created such a stir not only in our country but throughout the world. So, I was curious to know what he really is like. It turned out that he was not so bad as he is shown in media.

Nyagan, also the birthplace of banned tennis champion Maria Sharapova, is 520 kilometres from grim 'Polar Owl' penal colony. Pictures: The Siberian Times, 72080.ru

'Every maniac lives two lives. In one body coexist two completely opposite personalities. I managed to get rid - psychologically - of my thoughts that I was dealing with a maniac. And I loved what I see behind this.'

She said: 'He had many women-pen friends. He is very popular among women, especially among those who live abroad. You should have seen what stupidities they write in (social media) communities that are dedicated to him.

'I had been been hiding my feelings. In fact I did not even dare think that such a man would ever pay even some attention to me.

'After all, who am I, and who he is? I do not remember, how and when I confessed my love for the first time. It was me who took the first step, that's for sure.'

Natalya even tattoed the portrait of her beloved one on her arm. Pictures: Vkontakte

What does he say of her? 'I proposed to Natasha (Natalya). It was spontaneous,' he said this year. 'But I proposed to her, like a man should do. She immediately agreed. 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...

'We started communication. And now I know 100% about her... We were not allowed to meet,' he said. 'I am saying, I know her, I feel her. Now they don't allow us to exchange letters. At first they did but not now.'

Divorcee Natalya admitted: 'My relatives were initially shocked. I understand them. Over time, they reconciled and accepted my choice. Its OK now.'

She has also faced outrage from her public comments about her 'love' for the monster, stemming from her participation in a television documentary two years ago. She replies to this criticism: 'I'm not a maniac. I have not the slightest interest in murdering people.'

She implies he has changed, even though Pishuchkin himself denies this. 'I do not share the interests of the old Pichushkin,' she said. I'm not going to hurt anyone. I do not consider myself a bad person, but if you hit me, I would hit back.'

The Beast and the Beast - the new fairytale. Pictures: Vkontakte

Natalya acknowledges: 'He committed terrible things, I admit.' But the she goes on absurdly to argue that 'no-one can blame him except relatives of the victims. 'This is the case just between him and them. All others simply do not have the right to open their mouths.'

She was married for nine years to an alcoholic, she said. 'I'm 29. I was in a marriage for nine years. But my ex-husband was an alcoholic. He treated me in a way I did not deserve. He now asks me to come back now, and says that he understands everything, but, alas, there is no way back.

'I have never been deprived of male attention. Even after I took on the role of a villain in society (when her obsession with Pichushkin became clear), men continued to pay attention to me.

'Someone else in my place would have committed suicide long ago if they had to cope with my dubious fame. Psychologically it was not easy to endure all this. But Alexander knew that I withstood everything, and this is why, probably, he proposed to me.'

She said: 'He warned me about the negative consequences. He asked to think a lot before I gave an answer to his proposal. All this I knew, but could not refuse him. I am not afraid him. It is worthless to argue with him, so I agreed with everything.'

'I'm 29. I was in a marriage for nine years. But my ex-husband was an alcoholic. He treated me in a way I did not deserve.' Pictures: Vkontakte

Told by a Moskovsky Komsomolets journalist that no woman with a healthy mind could fall for a mass killer, she said: 'Many people think so. I have a lot of enemies, but also a lot of supporters. Many people - there so many opinions. In such cases, I always remember the saying: 'Do what you want - you will be condemned for the rest of your life anyway'.'

She was reminded in his recent interview 'her maniac' had said that if he was released tomorrow he would immediately 'kill couple of people, just to get rid of stress - then I will rape a woman and drink some vodka'.

She replied: 'He does not say anything without a reason. Once he told me that he would never hurt his own family. I believe him. And about rape? I think he was just joking. I have talked to him about it. He has never been a proponent of sexual violence.'

She then said that The Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry had identified disorders in him - 'homicide mania, personality disorders, alcoholism. But this did not prevent him tricking the police for 15 years,' she said.

Natalya has visited Bitsa Park and the house, where Pichushkin lived, during her visit to Moscow in 2014. Pictures: NTV

'He is a very clever and cunning man who thought every action through two steps ahead, and always had at least three fallback positions in case something went wrong. He's a maniac. He cannot in principle be stupid or crazy.'

Almost 30, she now wants a child, she said. She doubts Pichushkin and her 'can ever be physically close, otherwise I could have given birth to his child. 'No-one will ever allow this to me.'

Deprived of the chosen father of her child, she is ready to find a father 'in freedom' for her future baby, and says the mass killer agrees to this. 'I'll have to pick up a man for this here, in freedom,' she said.

'I'm almost 30. I do not want to feel flawed, so I need a child. It's not a problem to find a sperm donor. Sasha understands all this and supports me. I will always belong to Sasha.'

But she complained he was being treated differently to other long-term inmates, including murderers. She blames the TV programme which highlighted on her love for him, which 'created too much noise'.

'Dating, weddings are allowed to all prisoners, but not him. There's too much noise around him. I don't deny that our case is different, but why does the public reacts to this story like savages?'

'In fact maniacs are very interesting people, each of them is unique and original. These are people with a different outlook. They differ from the grey mass. They are better and smarter than any of us.' Pictures: Vkontakte

She claimed her interest in serial killers began from childhood. 'My friends still played with dolls, and I already knew by heart the biography of Chikatilo,' she said.

Andrei Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov and the Red Ripper, who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990. A hero to Pichushkin, he was executed in 1994.

'In high school, I began to correspond with so-called 'one time' murderers, those who killed only once. It was interesting to communicate with them, to learn their world. Then my correspondence with them was not enough for me. I wanted something 'hotter'.

'I began to seek to communicate with real maniacs. I wanted to understand them, talk to them. Many people have asked me if this scared me. No, I was not scared. Over the years, I continued to learn all kinds of stuff about the serial killers.

'Now I'm like a 'walking encyclopedia', I can tell you about any of them. And I have been corresponding with many well-known serial killers. Remember the movie Silence of the Lambs, where the investigator during interviews felt sympathy to the main villain?

'In fact maniacs are very interesting people, each of them is unique and original. These are people with a different outlook. It's interesting with them. They differ from the grey mass. They are better and smarter than any of us.

Natalia Pichushkina, 64, prefers to be deceived into thinking she had never had a son. Picture: NTV

'The story of Alexander caused a great resonance in society, there was a lot of noise. I started looking for everything that was published in the media on this subject. I watched all the TV programs about it. And when everything has been studied, I decided to find the address of the prison where he was sent.

'But to find where he was sent to serve his sentence was unreal. This information was not published anywhere.' When she discovered his jail 'my joy knew no bounds'.

She also got to know the maniac's mother. 'I remember when we met for the first time in the subway, she grabbed my hand, and immediately pulled me to her home,' said Natalya.

'I was so touched... She hugged me, open up, I immediately became kind of relative for her. She's a wonderful person, her love would be enough for children, grandchildren, daughters-in-law. From our conversation, I realised that she still loved her son.'

Yet she also said that Pichushkin's mother Natalia, 64, had stopped writing to her son. 'She explained it saying it was heavy for her to receive his letters. It is better to be deceived into thinking she had never had a son. And none of this had happened. It is much easier.'

Natalya said: 'She never opposed our marriage.'

In the 2014 documentary she posed in a wedding dress as Pichushkin's bride, highlighting her love for the savage mass murderer. Picture: NTV

But Natalya admits she faced a barrage of abuse for her love choice. In the 2014 documentary she posed in a wedding dress as Pichushkin's bride, highlighting her love for the savage mass murderer.

'Everything changed (for me) when they showed the Bitsa Maniac on TV,' she said. 'It was love from first sight. He became my ray of sunshine. I began writing, he answered, and we exchanged letters.

'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 added: 'I go to bed thinking about him, I wake up thinking about him.' To her, he was like 'a Hollywood star'.

After the TV show she said: 'When I returned home, I was showered with numerous threats, insults. Tons of mud from around the country poured out on my head. Before my public confession everyone treated me normally, even though at that time I had been corresponding with Sasha for a few years.

'I did not change after I met him. And, of course, I did not expect that the people would be against me so much. Our city [Nyagan] is not evil in general. Only a handful of my friends turned away from me... but I do not need friends like them.

'Believe me, I did not become worse because I love the man who is believed to be a devil. I knew that neither me, nor my choice, would be approved. But it was a surprise to get such a dramatic wave of negativity. At some point I was afraid to go out. But I got used to it over time.

'I remember people were shouting in the social networks that they are afraid to live in the same city as me, and that I should be isolated from society.'

Alexander Pichushkin:

Bullied and taunted as a 'retard' when he was at school, he was taught chess by a grandfather who he loved and whose death may have triggered his fearsome killing spree. His victims were often killed with repeated hammer blows to the skull.

Pichushkin killed women and children but most of his victims were elderly men he befriended often using chess or vodka in Bitsa Park. Pictures: The Siberian Times

Pichushkin killed women and children but most of his victims were elderly men he befriended often using chess or vodka in Bitsa Park. Often he would leave them for dead with a bottle wedged into their cracked skulls, which is saw as his signature.

Notoriously, he said: 'For me, life without killing is like life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world.'

He added: 'In all cases I killed for only one reason. I killed in order to live, because when you kill, you want to live.'

His final victim Marina Moskalyova, 36, who he took on a date in the spring of 2006, was his last. She had left a note for her son with his name and phone number on it. 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 confessed at once, his only condition was doing it in front of TV camera, which investigators staged for him. The confession was then shown on NTV channel. He was convicted on 24 October 2007 of 49 murders and three attempted murders. He claimed 11 more victims who he confessed to killing, which would take his gruesome death toll to 60.

He was convicted on 24 October 2007 of 49 murders and three attempted murders and got the life sentence. Pictures: NTV

QUOTES OF A MONSTER:

'About 80 women wrote to me within these years. What did they write? 'Love, want, kiss you'.'

About life in jail: 'Grey days. All impressions are bleak. All bright impressions were left outside.'

The hardest thing? 'The inability to be in charge of myself. A slave dependence on Mr Commander. It is hard to accept that it is a life sentence. My opinion is an illusory one but I think that a life sentence is unnatural.'

'I felt myself a stranger. And I was alive, I wanted some fun. But everyone pushed me away. Pictures: Eva Merkacheva

His crimes were 'not murder. It was fate, the hand of God... I killed because I did not have any other choice.'

'If I could have improved my childhood and youth, I would not have committed murders, it would not have been necessary... it is not about family. My family was basically normal, although there were difficulties. It was the society that damaged me.'

'I felt myself a stranger. And I was alive, I wanted some fun. But everyone pushed me away. I have beautiful dreams and all is so wonderful there that I can hardly describe it. I saw nightmares only in Moscow.'

He now languishes inside 'impossible-to-escape' Polar Owl penal colony at Kharp village in the Arctic north of Siberia serving a life sentence from which he will never be released. Pictures: The Siberian Times, Zoxevivo

He sees his murder victims in his dreams: 'I am surprised that they are alive. I am talking to them in the same way I was talking in real life and then kill them. There is no repentance, I am saying to you.'

'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.

'All your religions are a lie. Evil rules this world. I am realistic about the things.'