I may have butchered 82 women …but I was a GOOD HUSBAND
EVIL SERIAL KILLER WHO CHOPPED UP HOOKERS BOASTS HE’S A FAMILY MAN
A SERIAL killer who butchered 82 women in a two- decade- long death rampage insisted last night that he was a family man and a good husband.
Mikhail ‘ The Werewolf’ Popkov, 53, was formally charged with 60 new murders last week, adding to the 22 for which he is already convicted and serving a life sentence.
The shocking total makes him the worst serial killer in Russian history.
One cop working on the case said: “To become Russia’s worst serial killer is quite something – our country has many, many such butchers.
“So even though I disagree with what Popkov did, I have a grudging respect for the hours he put in to reach this milestone.”
Popkov, himself a former cop, confessed to all the killings, saying he wanted to “clean up” his Siberian city Angarsk of “prostitutes” and “immoral women”.
Axes
Prosecutors believe 82 to be the ‘ final toll’ of a killer who raped almost all his victims before butchering them with knives, axes or screwdrivers.
The cases date from 1992 – just after the collapse of the Soviet Union – to 2010, and his newly- confirmed victims were aged 17 to 38, according to police reports.
In leaked testimony from the shocking case, he described to criminal investigators how he separated his “ordinary” family life from his other existence as one of history’s worst and most bloodthirsty serial killers.
He explained: “I had a double- life. In one, I was an ordinary person – I was in the service, in the police, having positive feedback on my work.
“I had a family. My wife and daughter considered me a good husband and father, which corresponded to reality.
“In my other life I committed murders, which I carefully concealed from everyone – realising that this was a criminal offence.
“My wife and daughter never knew about the crimes I committed and did not even suspect this.”
Popkov coldly revealed how he cruelly selected women to kill during his 18- year reign of terror in Irkutsk.
He added: “The victims were those who, unaccompanied by men at night, without a certain purpose, were on the streets behaving carelessly, who were not afraid to enter into conversation with me, get into my car, and then go for a drive in search of adventures, for the sake of entertainment, ready to drink alcohol and have sexual intercourse with me.”
Popkov used his police car, offering lifts to some victims, then taking them to remote areas to rape and murder them.
And investigators never believed a policeman could be responsible for such crimes.
“Not all women became victims, but those of a certain negative behaviour, I had a desire to teach and punish,” he said of his decision on who would live and die.
“Others did not behave in such a way, they were afraid,” he said. “The exception was the murder of Elena Dorogova, who was hurrying to the railway station to meet her mother. On this occasion, the woman was sober.”
He later admitted he raided the police station’s store of weapons, confiscated from criminals, to use for his own murders.
Popkov said: “I had the opportunity to take them. Then I threw them away either at the crime scene or nearby, wiping them with something to remove my fingerprints.
Strangulation
“The choice of weapons for killing was always casual. I never prepared beforehand to commit a murder, I could use any object that was in the car – a knife, an axe, a bat.
“I never used rope for strangulation, and I did not have a firearm either. I did not cut out the hearts of the victims.”
On one occasion he murdered a teacher at his daughter Katya’s music school.
Popkov revealed: “Her corpse was found in the forest along with the body of another woman. My daughter asked me to give her money, because the school was collecting to organise funerals. And I gave it to her.”
Once he went back to the crime scene after leaving two women for dead, because he realised he had lost a police identity token at the site, which would identify him as the serial killer.
He said: “I found the token right away, but saw that one of the women was still breathing.
“I was again shocked by the fact that she was still alive. I finished her with a shovel.”
The victims were Maria Lyzhina, 35 and Liliya Pashkovskaya, 37, who were killed back in 2000.
Popkov was judged mentally fit to stand trial.
His wife Elena and daughter Katya have started new lives in different cities after initially refusing to believe he was guilty.
Katya, a teacher, now aged 30, and expecting a child, told how she found it impossible to believe that her “loving” father could be the man who violently raped his victims before butchering them.
She has not seen him since he was convicted of 22 murders in 2015, but said she wants to now “look into his eyes and understand if he really could be that killer”.
Popkov told a court in Irkutsk: “I admit my guilt in full. Committing the murders, I was guided by my inner convictions.”
After he was detained in 2012, he talked of his victims to cops, saying: “They abandoned their husbands and children at home and went out to party as if it was the last day on earth.”