Russian serial killer cop convicted of 56 more murders

Published December 11, 2018
Mikhail Popkov in Irkutsk.—AFP
Mikhail Popkov in Irkutsk.—AFP

IRKUTSK: A Siberian policeman who raped and killed women after offering them late-night rides was found guilty of dozens more murders on Monday, making him Russia’s worst serial killer of recent times. A court in the city of Irkutsk found Mikhail Popkov guilty of 56 murders between 1992 and 2007, sentencing him to a second life term. He was already in prison after being convicted of killing 22 women in 2015.

Popkov offered rides, sometimes in his police car, while off-duty around his city of Angarsk near Irkutsk, 4,200 kilometres east of Moscow. His murderous spree initially went unnoticed during a period of rampant mafia killings in the crime-ridden city. He killed his victims using weapons including a hammer and an axe, then dumped their bodies in the woods, at the side of the road and in a cemetery.

He was also found guilty of raping 11 of the women.

Popkov described himself as a “cleaner” who was purging his home city of prostitutes but his victims included shop assistants and a school teacher. All but one were women between the ages of 16 and 40. His sole male victim was a policeman he gave a ride to late at night and killed in a forest.

As part of his sentence — a rare case in Russia of a convicted murderer being given a second life sentence — Popkov was also deprived of his police pension.

Investigators had suspected a policeman because of the way the killer carefully covered his tracks. The murders took place while he was a serving police officer and after he left the force in 1998. Popkov was caught in 2012 after investigators re-examined the case and carried out DNA testing of residents, focusing on those who drove a make of car that matched tracks found at crime scenes.

World’s worst serial killers

Ex-russian policeman Mikhail Popkov, found guilty on Monday of 56 murders while already in jail for 22, is one of the most prolific serial killers of recent times. Here is a recap of some of the others.

‘CHESSBOARD KIL­LER’: Alexander Pichu­shkin was sentenced to life in prison in Moscow in 2007 for 48 murders, most between 2002 and 2006. Aged 33 at his trial, Pichushkin said he wanted to kill one person for each of the 64 squares on a chessboard, and crossed out a square for every kill, earning him his nickname. His victims were mainly elderly alcoholic men whom he met in a park outside Moscow.

‘BUTCHER OF ROSTOV’: In 1992 Russian Andrei Chikatilo, 56, was sentenced to death for 52 sexually motivated killings of women, children and young people between 1978 and 1990. The former teacher, known as the “Butcher of Rostov” after the area in southern Russia where he was particularly active, was executed in 1994.

AMERICA’S WORST?: A 78-year-old drifter in prison in Texas confessed in November 2018 to 90 murders and is being investigated as possibly the most prolific serial killer in US history. Samuel Little preyed mainly on drug addicts and prostitutes during a decades-long murder spree, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Law enforcement have so far verified 34 killings.

GERMAN NURSE: Former hospital nurse Niels Hoegel admitted at his trial in October 2018 to having killed 100 patients on top of six for whose murders he had already been convicted. Hoegel, 41, confessed to giving patients drug overdoses because he enjoyed the thrill of trying to reanimate them at the last moment. Investigators say the final toll could top 200.

‘GREEN RIVER KILLER’: US truck painter Gary Ridgway confessed in 2003 to the murders of 48 prostitutes and runaways from 1982-1984 but he is suspected of around 90 killings. Nicknamed the “Green River Killer” after the Seattle waterway where his first victims were found, he was 54 years old at his conviction and jailing.

‘DOCTOR DEATH’: Family doctor Harold Shipman was sentenced to life in 2000 after being convicted of killing 15 of his elderly patients by giving them fatal doses of morphine. He hanged himself in prison in 2004, aged 57. An inquiry found that Shipman, nicknamed “Doctor Death”, had killed around 250 patients between 1971 and 1998, making him the country’s worst-ever serial killer.

‘THE MONSTER OF GENOVA’: Luis Alfredo Garavito, a travelling salesman, was jailed for 835 years in 2000 aged 42 for murdering 189 boys over a five-year span until 1996. Known as “The Monster of Genova” after his birthplace in Colombia, Garavito met his victims by posing as a charity worker, salesman, monk or disabled person, among other disguises.

‘MONSTER OF THE ANDES’: In 1980 Colombian Pedro Lopez Monsalve was arrested at a market in Ecuador after attempting to abduct a young girl. He later confessed to having strangled at least 310 children from poor backgrounds in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The “Monster of the Andes” was first sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum term in Ecuador, and then extradited in 1994 to Colombia where he was interned in a psychiatric hospital. Freed several years later, he disappeared and would today be aged around 70.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2018

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