Russian Ex-Cop Jailed For Life a Second Time
Mikhail
Popkov, 53, murdered 55 women and a policeman near Irkutsk between 1992 and 2007.
He was already in jail for 22 other murders.
He
killed the victims after offering them late-night rides in his car. At least 10
were also raped.
Popkov
was caught in 2012 after a DNA match identified his car.
The
victims were all women between the ages of 16 and 40 apart from one male, a
policeman. In three cases he was on duty in his police car.
Popkov
killed them around the city of Angarsk, near Irkutsk, with an axe and hammer.
He dumped their mutilated bodies in forests, by the roadside and in a local
cemetery.
He
claimed to be "purging" Angarsk of what he saw as immoral women.
The
death toll exceeds the 48 murdered by "chessboard killer" Alexander
Pichushkin, and the 52 murdered by Andrei Chikatilo during the Soviet era.
Tyre marks from
Popkov's Niva car were found next to some of the bodies, which led police to
check all owners of that Niva type in Angarsk.
The
owners' DNA was checked against DNA found on the victims, and that enabled
police to identify Popkov.
He
was arrested en route to Vladivostok, in the far east, where he had gone to buy
a new car. He later confessed to 20 murders. His youngest victim was a
15-year-old girl.
An Irkutsk court
found him guilty of 22 murders in 2015 and sentenced him to life, but he was kept
on remand as the investigation had already started into the other murders.
Interfax
news agency says he told a cellmate that he had killed more people than
Chikatilo.
Popkov
was found to be sane but with a "pathological attraction to killing
people", according to prosecutors.
Some
of his victims were found alive but died later in hospital.
State
Prosecutor Alexander Shkinev said Popkov would now appeal in the hope of
retaining his police pension, worth 24,000 roubles a month (£284; $361), on the
grounds that he had co-operated with the investigators.
FROM .bbc.com/news/world-europe
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