Becomes the third worst serial
killer in history as it is confirmed he murdered 81 women
Mikhail Popkov, 52, is already serving life in prison for killing
22 Russian women He has now confessed to slaughtering another 59
between 1992 and 2007 A former policeman in Angarsk, Siberia, he had a
grudge against prostitutes If he killed 81 Popkov would be former Soviet
Union's worst ever serial killer The record is held by Andrei Chikatilo,
The Butcher of Rostov, who killed 53 Anatoly Onoprienko, a Ukrainian, was
convicted of a total of 52 murders in 1996
Ruthless rapist
and killer Mikhail Popkov - known as The Werewolf - has confessed to killing a
total of 81 women, Russian state
investigators confirmed. This makes him the third worst known serial
killer in history, and the most prolific in the former Soviet Union, overtaking
his idol Andrei Chikatilo, aka the Butcher of Rostov, who was executed for
committing 53 murders, and the Moscow maniac Alexander Pichushkin, known as the
Chessboard Killer, who killed 49.
His death toll
also outruns Ukrainian Anatoly Onoprienko, who was convicted of a total of 52
murders between 1989 and 1996 and died in jail in 2013.
Popkov is serving a life sentence already for 22 murders. Russia banned
the death penalty in 1996, although some politicians have been calling for it
to be restored Law enforcement
officials acted today to clarify confusion in Russian reports yesterday over the
married father-of-one's gruesome reign of terror.
They say
Popkov, who has already been found guilty of 22 murders, has now admitted
another 59, a toll which is accepted by police. The Siberian beast, a
former policeman, sexually assaulted his young female victims before slaying
them with axes, knives or screwdrivers over an 18 year period immediately
following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
'To clarify the numbers, Popkov has confessed to 59 new
murders,' said Lieutenant Karina Golovacheva, an official of the Russian
Investigative Committee, equivalent of the FBI, in Irkutsk region, told The Siberian Times.
Lieutenant Karina Golovacheva
(pictured, left) said Popkov (right) had confessed to 59 more murders,
taking his total tally up to 81, the third worst serial killer in history
THE
BUTCHER OF ROSTOV
The hunt for Andrei Chikatilo was featured in the
1995 film Citizen X
Andrei Chikatilo was born in 1936 in the Ukraine,
then part of the USSR. As a child he witnessed the horrors of the Second World
War.
Later a medical condition led to bedwetting episodes
and in an inability to maintain an erection. His first sexual episode led to
ridicule, triggering a violent internal rage. A teacher by profession, he spent
most of his life in the southern city of Rostov.
A Soviet detective, Viktor Burakov, suspected him
but was prevented from arrested him because the Russian Communist Party
believed serial killers were a Western phenomenon. Eventually he confessed to
the gruesome murders of 52 people and was executed in 1994, two years before
the death penalty was abolished
She said: 'We
are not counting in this total those 22 for which he was already sentenced.
These cases are already closed.
'So there are
59 new murders. That means, if we add them to the earlier 22, it will be
81 murders in total.'
Of the new 59
cases, he has been charged with 47 so far. But a further dozen charges will be
laid 'in the nearest future', she said.
'We are quite
sure about the 12 other cases,' said Lt Golovacheva.
She said the
investigation is ongoing and his final toll could be even higher.
'When the
investigation is finished, and Popkov has read the case materials, the trial
can begin,' she said.
If he killed
81, only two serial killers in the world would have killed more - Luis Garavito
and Pedro Lopez, both of whom operated in South America.
Garavito -
known as La Bestia (The Beast) - killed 138 young boys in Colombia while Lopez,
the 'Monster of the Andes', raped and murdered 300 girls in Colombia, Ecuador
and Peru.
Experts believe
Popkov deliberately waited to give his full confession to delay the moment when
he is sent from his current prison, with relatively comfortable conditions, to
a harsh penal colony to serve his life sentence.
In a court
appearance in Irkutsk this week, he was asked by judge Pavel Rukavishnikov how
many women he had killed.
As is common with murderers in Russia, Popkov
(pictured) was taken back to the scene of his crimes - in handcuffs - and asked
to reconstruct what happened. He is seen here near the village of Savateevka,
near Angarsk
He shrugged and
replied: 'I can't say exactly, I didn't keep a record.'
But the mass
killer told the court: 'I admit my guilt in full...committing the murders, I
was guided by my inner convictions.'
After he was
detained in 2012, he told police he wanted to 'cleanse' the streets of
'prostitutes'.
THE BEAST OF
THE UKRAINE
Anatoly Onoprienko died in
prison in 2013
Anatoly
Onoprienko's who mother died when he was four years old and he spent much of
his childhood in an orphanage in the Ukraine.
When he grew up
he studied forestry but drifted through life, earning a living cutting down
trees.
Onoprienko's
murder almost exactly coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1989
he and a friend killed a family of seven - including five children - in a house
in Bratkovychi to eliminate witnesses after breaking in to steal valuables.
But his rate of
killing accelerated for some reason in December 1995. He would often break into
houses in rural Ukraine, looking for something to steal, and would shoot dead
entire families to prevent them identifying him.
In March 1996 Ukrainian
police tortured to death a man they wrongly suspected of committing some of the
murders. A few days later Onoprienko was caught, convicted and jailed for life
for 52 murders.
He died in
prison in 2013
'They abandoned
their husbands and children at home and went out to party as if it was the last
day on Earth,' he said.
He often
offered victims lifts late at night in his police car before taking them to
remote locations where he raped and killed them, leaving their naked bodies in
woods by the roadside.
Despite
detailed evidence of rapes before killing his victims, his is charged only with
murders.
Senior
investigator Andrei Bunayev disclosed last year: 'The investigation will be
very long because there are a lot of cases.
'He names the
places where bodies are hidden. We find these bodies, and check his
involvement.'
He said Popkov
'left biological traces in some cases which were not studied earlier - but now
there is an opportunity to examine them'.
In other cases,
sites were dug up guided by the convicted mass murderer.
'He confidently
guides us to the place where a body is found and explains what happened, what
injuries he caused,' said Mr Bunayev.
When he was a
serving policeman, he was twice called to investigate murder he himself had
committed.
After he quit
the force in 1998, it is known Popkov drove between his home city of Angarsk,
in Irkutsk region, where many of his crimes were committed, and Vladivostok, on
the country's Pacific coast, a distance of some 3,900 kilometres.
Yet a painstaking
search has not found evidence of crimes in other regions - so far.
Popkov was a policeman for many years in
Angarsk (pictured) and after he left the force he began selling cars, which he
brought from Vladivostok
Viktoria Chagaeva (pictured) holds a picture
of her sister. She says: 'The pain does not go away - it was me who gave Tanya
a ticket to go to a concert, and she was killed after attending it'
Two of his
earlier victims were Tanya Martynova, 20, and Yulia Kuprikova, 19, found dead
on 29 October 1998 in an Angarsk suburb following a night out.
'The pain does
not go away - it was me who gave Tanya a ticket to go to a concert, and she was
killed after attending it,' said her sister Viktoria Chagaeva, 49, who owns a
beauty salon in Angarsk.
Popkov's wife
Elena, 51, and daughter Ekaterina, 29, a teacher, initially stood by him,
refusing to believe he was a mass killer.
Mikhail Popkov with his daughter Ekaterina, as
a child. Now 29, she says: 'I do not believe any of this. I always felt myself
as 'Daddy's girl''
But since his
first trial they have moved to another city to begin new lives.
One theory is
that he began his murder spree after - wrongly - suspecting his wife of cheating
on him.
'I just had
some reasons to suspect her,' said Popkov, of his belief that his wife had
slept with another man.
He admitted to
having a negative view of women who went out at night to drink without their
husbands or boyfriends.
Now he says: 'I
had no right to evaluate people, their behaviour ... this is my repentance.'
Popkov's daughter Ekaterina (left) and wife
Elena (right) have moved away from Angarsk
He evaded
capture for years because police could not contemplate that one of their own
officers could be a mass killer.
He daughter at
first refused to believe he could be a mass killer.
'I do not
believe any of this. I always felt myself as 'Daddy's girl',' she said.
'We walked,
rode bikes, went to the shops, and he met me from school.'
Her father
'doesn't look like some maniac', she said.
Popkov has
previous told journalists that he was only caught because of advances in DNA
technology used to tackle crimes.
He said: 'I
could not anticipate the examination of DNA. I was born in another century. Now
there are such modern technologies, methods, but not earlier. If we have not
got to that level of genetic examination, then...I would not be sitting in
front of you.'
Asked he could
turn back time, what he would do differently, he said: 'All initially should
have been changed. Straight from school. Since childhood.'
After he left the police, Popkov began buying
cars in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East and selling them in Angarsk
