The stepping into force on Wednesday of the life sentence handed down to Oleg Pitjukov by a court in the southwestern resort town Parnu for murder and causing of serious physical harm in January brings the number of convicts serving a life sentence in Estonian jails to 41.
Pitjukov, 39, stood trial in the Parnu court for murder and causing of serious physical harm for stabbing and causing life-threatening injuries to a man eight years his junior in the corridor of an apartment house in Parnu on the afternoon of Feb. 10 this year. Five days later he stabbed and killed another man aged 39 in a Parnu apartment, according to the charge sheet.
He was apprehended by the police shortly after the second stabbing.
The life sentence handed to Pitjukov was upheld by the Tallinn appeals court and became final when the Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the defense's appeal.
Pitjukov was previously sentenced to death by the Parnu city court in 1996 for killing two people and cutting up the body of one of them in April 1995. In 1997, the Parnu county court commuted Pitjukov's sentence to life in prison and in the following year the Supreme Court cut the length of his jail term to 15 years.
According to the charges filed against Pitjukov in the trial that ended with the death sentence in 1996, in April 1995 Pitjukov and some other persons killed a man, took the body to a forest, cut it into pieces and tried to burn the pieces. After that Pitjukov killed another man who knew about the crime by cutting his throat and then inflicting 54 cut and stab wounds to the victim.