March 7, 1964 - Mikhail Popkov
Operating for nearly two decades in Siberia and the Russian Far East, Popkov carried out one of the largest known serial killing campaigns in recorded history, with confirmed victims numbering in the dozens before investigations eventually produced a full accounting. His position as a law enforcement officer afforded him both opportunity and a degree of protection from suspicion, enabling the crimes to continue across multiple cities and an extended timespan.
From Wikipedia
Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov (Russian: Михаи́л Ви́кторович Попко́в; born 7 March 1964) is a Russian serial killer, rapist, and necrophile who committed the sexual assault and murder of eighty-seven girls and women between 1992 and 2011 in Angarsk, Irkutsk, in Siberia, and Vladivostok in the Russian Far East, although he has confessed to and is suspected of at least ninety in total. He is known as "the Werewolf" and "the Angarsk Maniac" for the particularly brutal nature of his crimes; he would extensively mutilate the bodies of his victims and perform sexual acts on them. Popkov was also known as "the Wednesday Murderer" because most of his victims' bodies were found on Wednesdays. He is the single most prolific serial killer in Russian history.
Popkov, a former police officer and security guard, was convicted of 22 murders in 2015 and sentenced to life imprisonment, and confessed to an additional 59 three years later; on December 10, 2018, he was convicted for 56 of the 59 additional killings, three of which the police could not find sufficient evidence with which to be proven, and given a second life sentence. There were calls for Popkov to be executed, but this was unavailable as capital punishment in Russia is subject to a formal moratorium.
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