A court in Siberia has convicted a former police officer of raping and killing a further 56 women, making him Russia’s worst serial killer in the last century. Mikhail Popkov, 54, terrorised his home city of Angarsk in the Irkutsk region for nearly two decades, luring women into his car late at night and then assaulting them with tools such as axes and shovels.

In 2015, he was sentenced to life for 22 murders. All the killings were committed between 1992 and 2010. Aleksandr Shkinev, a regional prosecutor, said: “There is no doubt that Popkov committed these murders. He clearly showed the places where the bodies were buried, and, by an earring, tattoo or some other feature, described the murders and victims in detail.” Investigators finally linked Popkov to the crimes in 2012 using DNA evidence and descriptions of his car.

Called the “Angarsk maniac” by the Russian media and interviewed on national television, Popkov dumped the bodies on roadsides or in woods near the eastern Siberian city. When the bodies were discovered, he sometimes returned to the scene of the crime as a police officer. Shkinev said 14 of the victims remained unidentified.(theguardian)…[+]