In the far East of Russia, on the Irkutsk Oblast, lies a small city called Angarsk. Built in the 1940s, it’s another one of those wondrous planned Soviet cities, the kind of city that serves as more of a monument to the gulag system than any political doctrine. During the winters temperatures get as low as -27 degrees Celsius and in the summer it crests at 25 degrees. Reversing the clocks to 1997, you would see a city housing some 200,000 people.
And one of those people was a 5-year-old girl called Natasha Gorelina.
Earlier that year Natasha had fallen ill and been transported to a hospital for preschoolers on the outskirts of the city. Every week, parents were allowed to come visit their children and every week, Natasha’s mother, Tatyana, would come visit her. Her father was no longer around and Tatyana was trying to provide for her daughter on her own. Though she couldn’t give a lot, she would still bring snacks on the days she visited.
And then, one day, without explanation, her mother wasn’t there anymore and several days later Natasha got sent home. She recalls that, when she got home, there were a lot of very sad people all standing around her grandmother’s living room. Then a family member took her aside and told her that her mother had gone away and she wouldn’t be coming back.
It’s often difficult to remember that the victims of a serial killer are not just the ones that they kill. From then on Natasha would have to grow up without a mother. On the day of her death, Tatyana had gone to the market, bought some clothes and some alcohol and went drinking with a friend. The main reason why Natasha had never known her father was that her mother lived what she called a ‘free’ lifestyle.
On the night of her death, June 17th, 1997, Tatyana Gorelina was partying with her friends and by 1 AM, her friends were ready to call it a night. Unfortunately Tatiana wasn’t; she got a taxi home with her cousin, went inside, got changed into some white high heels and returned to the night. She would not be seen again for 2 days.
She was found, lying by the side of the road, in a forest several miles out of town. The attacker had sexually assaulted her and then killed her by swinging a hammer into her face. The family would identify Tatiana by those same white high-heels.
When the police searched Tatiana’s home, they found a notebook with the names of 70 or so men in it, along with locations, times and dates. Some men had multiple dates, others had only one. It was clear that Tatiana’s free lifestyle included regular relations with strangers.
The autopsy showed that the only drug in her system was alcohol and not in high enough levels to cause her to black out. There were no signs of a fight or restraints around her wrists. Other than the wounds on her face, the only other marks found on her were strangulation marks around her neck.
From all this the investigators surmised that she hadn’t been brought to that forest against her will; she had gotten into someone’s car and willingly gone with them to the forest to have sex. This was confirmed by her family who said that she made a habit of getting into cars with strangers. There were no witnesses, no murder weapon was found and no other clues were detected.
Though the police didn’t say it to the family, it was their feeling that this was an isolated incident. Whomever had done it was an opportunist. The chance to commit the perfect crime had fallen into his lap and he had taken it.
It was unlikely that such rare circumstances would fall into their lap again and with little hope of finding the culprit they shelved the evidence, logged the incident and moved on.
Angarsk was not a peaceful city; it was no stranger to dead bodies. When it was built, back in the 1940s, the city was intended to be the hub of uranium refinement for the USSR, and that still is the city’s primary economy, that and petrochemicals. When the gulags opened and the prisoners were released, many had no families left and so they returned to the city that they had built.
It was this high proportion of prison convicts and the chronic underfunding of police services that led to an unusually high crime rate in the city. To a police officer, barely a day would go by without at least one report of a dead body coming in over the radio. So finding the body of a woman who spent her evenings propositioning strangers in cars wasn’t going to make the top of their priority list.
As one officer put it, ‘What did she expect? Going out like that, she was asking for trouble.’ Now, granted, that is quoting one particularly nasty officer but you get the gist.
To put it another way, you’d be hard put to find a city better suited for a serial killer to ply their trade. With a police force ill-equipped to even deal with a pub brawl, it would make avoiding detection that bit easier.
The death of Tatyana Gorelina serves as an example of just how ill-equipped this police force was to deal with the protagonist of this story. A cold-blooded killer that ranks as possibly the most competent serial killer covered in this account and the most prolific serial killer in modern Russian history.
The Werewolf of Angarsk
The topic of this article is Russia’s most prolific serial killer; however, for whatever reason, the macabre interest that draws true crime enthusiasts to topics such as this doesn’t seem to have translated to the English-speaking world. As such, there really isn’t all that much information about this case available to English speakers. Fortunately, the author has a passable understanding of the Russian language, as well as a very helpful friend, and as such has compiled what is believed to be the most comprehensive compendium of this man’s crimes that can be found anywhere on the English-speaking internet.
It’s also worth mentioning that, for some reason, details on precisely who the victims were are incredibly sparse. Many articles just skate over the victims and still others will make stuff up altogether. The author did their best to gather an accurate timeline and use only verifiable details and sources on the victims that are known about because it’s important they are remembered.
But even so there are large chunks of the timeline that are just unaccounted for. Attempts were made to contact the relevant authorities but it seems that most Russian investigators aren’t in the mood to talk with an English researcher who emails them at 4 in the morning.
But as far as is known, the killings began on a cold January morning in 1992. A woman known only as Ms. Dorogova had just left her apartment and was on the way to the train station to pick up her mother.
The time was just before 5 AM and the sun wasn’t far off from rising. As she made her way down the street, a car pulled over in front of her. As she approached, the window rolled down and the driver offered her a lift, which she gratefully accepted.
He asked where she was going and she said the train station. While they drove, he started up a conversation, asking what she did for a living and if she was married. Although it started light-heartedly enough, the conversation began getting heated and they began arguing.
By that point they were nearly at the train station, but unfortunately she was never going to make it. In a moment of blind fury the driver grabbed a bottle of sparkling wine and cracked it over her head. The driver began panicking, and pulled over at an abandoned train terminal.
He pulled his victim out of the car, into the abandoned building and proceeded to rape her. Once he was done, he put his hands around her neck and squeezed until he no longer felt a pulse. Only 500 metres away her mother was waiting at the train station for her daughter to arrive and the driver fled the scene, leaving no useful evidence.
The following year, on the 28th of August, the police received a call that a body had been found in some bushes by the side of the road, in the suburbs of Angarsk. Upon their arrival, they found the charred corpse of Tamara Sheveleva and again, there was no evidence that could be pulled from the scene. The police ruled it a killing related to the gangs operating in the city and put no more into investigating the matter.
There isn’t a whole lot to connect this killing and the 1992 killing, which makes it excusable that the police didn’t connect the two. Not so with the next murder though. Almost exactly one year later, to the day, on the 30th of August 1994, the body of 15-year-old Irina Shodorova was discovered lying in a forest, next to a dirt road that itself connected to the city bypass.
She had gone missing 16 days prior, when she left school. The cause of death wasn’t clear but she too had been set on fire. What little information they could pull from the body suggested that burning was not the cause of death though, meaning she had been burned post-mortem simply as a means to hide the evidence.
Two bodies, left by the side of the road, both were known to enjoy partying, both had been burned to hide evidence. The best that can be said is that the investigators didn’t just brush it off as a gangland killing and accepted that this must have been done by a person or persons operating independently. Even so they didn’t connect this killing and the killing from the previous year.
That also doesn’t mean that they knew they had a serial killer on the loose; that just means they knew someone in the city was willing to kill for some other reason than gang violence.
Then in 1995, a dramatic increase in the frequency of bodies turning up could be seen. That summer, the bodies of two young women were found in a forest clearing several kilometres from the 1994 site. The only other thing that could be found out for certain was that they had been missing for months; there was no information on their names or age.
Then there is about a year that is unaccounted for and seems to be entirely unreported. For whatever reason and in spite of best efforts, not a single source giving direct information about the killer’s activity in the year 1996 could be found. There is vague referential information saying that he killed between 2 and 3 dozen people between the years 1996 and 1998 but nothing more than that could be found.
What is known for sure is that every murder during this period followed a similar MO to the one that has just been recounted. A woman is last seen either going home or going out at some time near dark. Then they are found by the side of the road. They were almost always choked unconscious and then attacked with a weapon; each attack saw a different weapon used.
The next credible account that was found was the one that opened this article, with the death of Tatyana Gorelina. If the police chose to investigate a murder, and that is a big if, they would usually find evidence that the woman was considered to be of ill repute. That is to say, the killer seemed to have a knack for only picking up women who would be okay with getting into a stranger’s car and driving with them to a secluded area of the woods, most likely to have sex.
This was quite often a prostitute but not exclusively. During this time, not one member of the police force ever shared a suspicion that these murders may have been the work of a single individual. This is likely because the murderer’s choice of victim often left the police unwilling to commit significant resources to find these, in their words, ‘immoral women.’
Or to quote the officer from earlier, ‘With that kind of behaviour, what did she expect to happen?’
In fact it wasn’t until 1997 that a sneaking suspicion began to emerge among police officers that there might be a serial killer operating in Angarsk. While the police dithered about whether or not they should start investigating the multiple homicides occurring within their city, another body turned up. This time it was Oksana Stroganova who, on the 14th of September 1997, went out to buy food for her family. On the way back, she dropped in on a friend and decided to have a drink.
Several drinks later Oksana decided it was time to go home and began hitchhiking her way back. And that was how she met the killer of Angarsk. Her body was found several days later in a forest clearing; she had been stabbed multiple times with a screwdriver.
1998: The Year of Negligence
It had now been 6 years since the first murder took place, there were supposedly dozens of bodies to this killer’s name, and the police were only now growing suspicious that something might just be amiss. No matter how underfunded you are, not accepting or noticing that there is a serial killer on the loose, when the evidence is so blindingly obvious, is negligence of biblical proportions. And this isn’t just a negligent prosecutor or police chief that won’t accept the facts. We’re talking negligence on every level of the organisation.
Following the murder of Oksana Stroganova, the police searched the area around her body and found tire tracks that could only be from one very particular type of car: a police car. The area had been cordoned off and so it wasn’t from any of the investigators; it was almost certainly from the murderer. Now there is, of course, some doubt to that claim—the car may have driven through a day before the murder—but even so it would be foolish not to follow up on a lead like that.
The police did absolutely nothing with that bit of evidence. It seemed that the killer wasn’t above making mistakes, but the police were not about to hold that against him.
And things were only about to get worse for the women of Angarsk; 1998 would prove to be his most prolific year yet. That year kicked off with no fewer than 13 women turning up on the same 1-kilometre dirt track, over a 6-month period. And if that should make them suspicious, what happened on the 18th of January when Evgenia Protasova turned up in Angarsk hospital was even more remarkable.
On the 18th of January, Evgenia was at a friend’s house, having a small party. As the night drew to a close, her friends offered to let her stay but she insisted on going home and headed outside to find a taxi. As she stood on the curb, waiting, a man pulled up in his car and asked if she needed a lift. ‘What’s your name?’
she asked. ‘Mikhail,’ he responded. At first she was apprehensive but he pulled out a badge and showed it to her, reassuring her that he was a police officer. Mollified, she agreed and got into his car.
As her friends came down to say goodbye, they saw a black Honda Civic pulling away from the curb.
During that journey Mikhail questioned her about why she was out at that time. She explained she was drinking with friends. He asked if she would like to continue the party; she said no and the conversation ended there. As they drove home, she made the mistake of falling asleep.
When she woke again, the car was pulling off the freeway and into a secluded wooded area. Immediately she knew something was wrong and it seemed that Mikhail hadn’t noticed that she was awake yet. Surreptitiously she began taking her high heels off, waiting for the car to come to a stop. As soon as they stopped, she bolted, opening the door and sprinting as fast as she could.
Unfortunately she was still quite inebriated and the only source of light was the car’s headlights, which she had just left behind. In her haste, she ran into a tree and knocked herself out.
The next thing she remembers seeing is Mikhail, standing over her, beating her with a branch before falling to his knees and strangling her. For literally dozens of women before Evgenia, that had been the final thing they ever saw—this man standing over them—and similar to those women, at some point during the attack, she lost consciousness, which for all reasonable people would have been the end of the story. But Evgenia, it seems, was not a reasonable person; many hours later she regained consciousness once again.
Completely naked, lying next to a dirt path in that same forest, with the sun just beginning to rise. There was no sign of her attacker who had already left. When she tried to move, she found that she was physically unable, and it wasn’t long after that before she lost consciousness again, continuing to lie there for several more hours, completely naked, in the Siberian wilderness, in the middle of January.
The next time she regained consciousness, she was lying in the hospital. A retired couple, who were out for a walk, had found her and called an ambulance. Upon arrival at the hospital, it was questionable that she was going to survive; her body was in an advanced state of hypothermia and she was suffering from a massive brain haemorrhage. She had spent the better part of a day receiving emergency surgery and then intensive care for the head trauma.
But by some miracle, she managed to survive the whole ordeal and what was more, she could remember the details of her attack.
This was the first time someone had managed to survive an attack by this man. Not only that, she could remember his first name, his profession, and even the kind of car he drove. This testimony should have brought an end to the killings within a year, or at least confirmed that there was a serial killer on the loose. It did not.
She was, after all, drunk when it happened and moreover she had suffered a severe head trauma. In light of those facts, the police felt her testimony wasn’t reliable enough to afford any sort of investigation. They also insisted that it had nothing to do with the fact that she was accusing a police officer of rape and attempted murder.
The incompetence of the police here is beyond reckoning. In fact, it goes so far beyond incompetence as to stray into corruption and cover-up territory. The only follow-up the police did on her story was to interview the officer in question, one Mikhail Popkov. He, of course, denied any wrongdoing and said that he was at home with his family, and his wife confirmed the alibi. The police accepted this and ruled him out as a suspect from then on.
But the police weren’t done being useless, because at some point in the latter part of the year, it’s unclear exactly when, another witness turned up at the Angarsk hospital. Svetlana Nesyavicheva—her story couldn’t be found in as much detail as Evgenia Protasova’s, but we know that she was so near death when she arrived at the hospital that she was sent to the morgue, but she awoke shortly after arriving. The story she had to tell was much the same as Evgenia’s.
Again, details are sparse on this one but it seems she accused a police officer without using Popkov’s name. Her testimony was also ruled unreliable owing to head trauma.
However, we are finally getting to a point where so many bodies had turned up, and all with identical circumstances of death, that the police could no longer deny that there was maybe something suspicious going on. No, they weren’t yet accepting there was a serial killer; they just thought that something suspicious was going on. The evidence rooms in the Angarsk police station were a literal shit show. As has been seen, murder cases were rarely investigated and if they were, it was always a slap-dash job.
Which meant that the investigations that were actually carried out would rarely be done well enough to bring in enough evidence to warrant a conviction. And that was before the evidence even made it into the evidence lockers.
What little evidence they did have would often be mislabeled, missing, or just entirely undocumented. As in, they had random objects in the locker that had just been put there with no documentation to say it was evidence or the case it was connected to, and there were even cases of evidence that was fully documented but was nowhere to be found in the evidence room. And to top it all off, the evidence room flooded on multiple occasions, destroying the few bits of usable evidence that remained. According to the police, this evidence locker was one of the main reasons they struggled to make the connection between the killings for so many years.
However, something had to click eventually and it took the actions of someone higher up in the chain to get the wheels of justice moving. For that to happen the head justice for the Irkutsk region had to be the one to accept that there was a serial killer on the loose. As 1998 began to draw to a close, head justice Merzlyakov wrote a letter to the lead prosecutor in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow.
In this letter he explained the situation and asked for consultory help. This would be the allocation of specialist investigators to direct and assist the Angarsk police force; they wouldn’t be directly involved with the case but would advise remotely. It was at their recommendation that the information was made public that there was a serial killer operating in Angarsk.
As the public had already figured this out several years ago, there was less a cry of fear and more a collective sigh of exasperation.
The police assembled all the usable evidence on the case which was comparatively miniscule when you consider the body count so far. A psychologist was consulted to assemble a profile of the killer, which was circulated around the police station. One of these made it onto the desk of one Mikhail Popkov and it read as follows: Killer is likely of European descent, has or had a position in government, has a constant source of income, a good knowledge of Angarsk, possibly divorced, very disappointed in wife likely due to affair, is a prolific misogynist, and behaves very confidently. Most of that profile sounds like it was copied from a file titled ‘Generic Angarsk Citizen Number 52’ with only a couple of accurate and specific details contained within.
It was also recommended by the task force that a good approach would be to use a new-fangled technology called DNA sequencing. As nearly all the victims had engaged in sex with, or were raped by, the killer, they were able to gather 3 solid DNA samples and when you consider the state of their evidence system it’s honestly surprising they even had that many. The first conviction to ever involve DNA profiling had taken place in 1988, nearly a decade prior, so it wasn’t an unproven technology, but it was also light-years from where it is today.
They had the funds to sequence the DNA and it showed 3 matches, definitely proving that they were dealing with a serial murderer. But because the cost of DNA sequencing was still in the tens of thousands of dollars for a single sample, they couldn’t go around sampling the whole of Angarsk and so they couldn’t go any further with this information.
Mikhail Popkov
The guy who was named by the attempted murder victim might have something to do with the murders after all. So let’s take a moment to get to know him.
Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov was born on the 7th of March, 1964, in the city of Norilsk. As best can be told his parents were not particularly abusive, but there does seem to be an aspect of negligence and apathy to their style of parenting. The first example of this kind of apathy was when, at the age of 3, his parents moved from their home in Norilsk to Angarsk, leaving him with his grandparents.
He wouldn’t see his parents again for another 3 years, in which time they’d had a daughter. Based on the fact that they were living in the days of the USSR and housing was provided to families based on their size, it would not have been a matter of lacking funds that they left their child with his grandparents. Add the fact that they had another child while he was away and it does begin to appear that his parents may have harboured a certain amount of dislike towards their son.
It was not revealed to him that he even had a little sister until he had moved back in with his parents. Quite reasonably so the young boy felt rather abandoned and overlooked by his parents.
As he got older this perception was reinforced by his parents’ clear preference for their daughter. It’s particularly notable that his mother was cold towards him, seemingly bestowing all her maternal love upon her daughter. As he continued to grow up, Mikhail tried to win the affection of his parents back by focusing on his school work and achieving good grades. This was not effective and he continued to be overlooked but it did bring one very important facet of his personality to light: his phenomenal memory, so good in fact that he would later be diagnosed with an eidetic memory, otherwise known as a photographic memory.
At the age of perhaps 12 or 13, Mikhail was sent to summer camp. This was standard in those days of the Soviet Union and was kind of like the boy scouts with supplementary military education added into their day-to-day activities. Much like the young girl with whom this story started, parents had allocated visitation days which most parents would attend and bring treats for their kids. However, unlike the girl from the start of the story, Mikhail’s parents made no effort to visit him.
After several weeks of missing them, Mikhail ran away from the camp and returned home. When he got there he found out that his parents had their own dirty little secret: it seems his mother was an exhibitionist and his father was a cuckold. This was exactly the scene that met young Mikhail when he entered the family kitchen that summer day.
After witnessing his parents firsthand partaking in their unsavoury, drunken hobby, he was understandably very distressed. This event is often pointed to as one of the more formative moments of his young life, but walking in on your parents, while very distressing, isn’t so traumatic that it would drive you to serial killing. Personally, the prolonged parental apathy he contended with was far more damaging.
After that, there isn’t a lot more to discuss about his childhood. Mikhail continued to achieve highly in school and graduated aged 16. After school he attended a technical college and became qualified as a mechanic.
During his time studying he fell in love with a young woman and they began a relationship of sorts. When he graduated, he returned to Angarsk so as to maintain his relationship with her but shortly after returning, he was conscripted into the military. What is known for certain is that Mikhail didn’t want to end the relationship and he went about maintaining it in one of two ways: he either kept up regular contact with this woman via mail or he sent his military pay to her via mail—it can’t be told which.
Either way he was doing what he could to keep the relationship going. During his service he was sent to Mongolia, applying his skills as a mechanic and serving his time well; his service record was clean, exemplary in fact. His relations with his family during this time, while never excellent, were consistent and had aspects of warmth to them.
The military also inspired a devotion to fitness within him and by the time he left he had built himself up to be very strong and extremely fit. This would remain a central focus for the majority of his life and he would maintain a far above average level of fitness from then on.
After his 2 years of service were up, he returned to Angarsk and to the woman that he loved only to find that she had fallen into the arms of another man and had a child during his absence. Depending on which way that translation went, she either continued contact with him but never informed him of the change, or she continued to accept his military payments but again told him nothing of her marriage and child. Either way, this was a terrible betrayal to Mikhail and he took the hit deeply. When he confronted her she told him that she had never promised to wait for him.
After this, Mikhail settled down in Angarsk and began looking for a job. At first he worked in a factory as a mechanic, fixing the equipment. Then, in 1987, he made the decision to change his career and began working for the Angarsk police force in the duty unit. This mostly amounted to him taking witness statements and transporting other officers around.
It was during his work in the police that he met the woman that would become his wife, who was also an employee at the station. And for all intents and purposes, Mikhail and Elena Popkov truly loved each other and when their daughter came along, they truly loved her too. Their friends and neighbours recall that they were a very happy family; there was rarely an argument to be heard between the two. However, underneath this exterior, things were not quite how they seemed.
In the Popkov household, the marriage was due to take a hit in 1993. One day, Mikhail decided to return home for lunch with Elena and their daughter. But when he got there, he found his 5-year-old outside their house, playing in the snow and not at all dressed for the cold.
When he asked her why she was outside, she said that an uncle she’d never met before had arrived at the house and her mother had sent her outside. Mikhail of course knew what this meant and, picking up his daughter, he stormed into the house. What he found was his wife, laid up on the couch, clearly drunk and alone.
Looking around he found a used condom in the bin. His wife tried to explain it away at first but ended up admitting to her affair. Which should have been the end of the marriage.
Mikhail could have divorced his wife then and there and even retained full custody of his daughter. However, he remembered what it was like to be separated from parents. His daughter was about the age that he had been when his parents had taken him back and he did not want his daughter to suffer that same way.
Which brings up the more interesting thing about Mikhail Popkov: he simply does not fit the profile of a psychopathic serial killer. A psychopath would not have been capable of the level of empathy required to see this kind of perspective, much less act on it. And as far as can be told, he has never been diagnosed with psychopathy. After he discovered his wife’s infidelity, Mikhail returned to drinking but even then, he showed restraint, rarely if ever drinking to excess.
He would assist his neighbours where he could and involved himself in the community in various ways. He had carried his love of fitness and exercise over from the military and regularly partook in biathlon events, doing cycling and running.
His first kill was entirely accidental; to hear him tell it he was terrified the first time, he thought people would be looking for him. When the body was discovered, he was one of the first to respond. And it was not uncommon for him to return to his crime scenes as the responding officer.
This gave him a distinct advantage over most serial killers: he would alter witness testimony, ignore protocol, leave or even hide evidence. He would also have easy access to the evidence locker and would remove weapons that had already been impounded by the police. In any competent police force, this would have given him a very strong link to the weapon, but this was the Angarsk Police Force, the same place that would accept a pinkie-promise as verification for an alibi.
As for motive: most killers have something resembling a motive even if it’s irrational and emotion-based. Recall the police officer quoted at the opening: ‘What did she expect? Going out like that, she was asking for trouble.’ That was Popkov’s stated motive.
He wanted to rid the streets of what he called ‘immoral’ women—in other words, women that would be willing to get into a man’s car and have sex with him. According to officials, his discovery of his wife’s affair was the catalysing event that caused his murder spree to begin.
1999: The Slowdown
The year following the intervention of the specialist investigators, Popkov began cutting down on his kill rate. Police checkpoints had been set up around the city and they were given orders to look out for a male transporting an inebriated female passenger. Of course, Popkov was a police officer and knew where all of these were.
On the nights that he killed using his own car, he would just avoid them, and on the nights that he was using a police car, he would just drive straight through. Perhaps out of fear or because he just wanted a change of pace, Popkov decided to quit the police force shortly before 1998 ended and went on to work as a consultant at a security firm. This gave him fewer opportunities to spend the night patrolling around town.
It also meant that he no longer had access to the evidence locker, meaning he no longer had access to untraceable weapons and any evidence that he left behind. As such we see a lull in the killings. He seemed to have taken the cautious route and only killed when it was safe to do so.
But as he saw it, there was only one thing that would bring an end to his crusade against women, and that was getting caught.
The final documented killing that could be found was of two women: Marina Lyzhina and her friend, known only as Pashkovskaya. These two women worked together in a supermarket, one being a supervisor and the other being a checkout assistant. One night after work, the two friends decided to go out drinking. Several hours later they were leaving their chosen drinking establishment and weren’t seen again for 3 days.
That night Marina’s husband had returned home from work to find her missing. He knew she would sometimes go out drinking but she would usually be back before him to look after their children. It shows just how little faith the citizens of Angarsk had for their police force that he didn’t even bother reporting her disappearance, instead electing to search for himself, along with his brother.
When the bodies were found it was clear that they had fallen prey to the Angarsk maniac. However there were a couple of breaks from his usual MO: first was that he hadn’t had sex with them. Second was that one of them had been killed in the early hours of the morning, but her friend had been killed roughly 6 hours later and with a different weapon. The police were baffled and thought that the only reasonable explanation was that the killer had a house near the murder site and had imprisoned one of them.
This was not the case and the real cause was actually far more banal.
When the two friends left the bar, they searched for a taxi to get home but had no luck, so they began flagging down passing cars. Pulling over to the side of the road, they climbed into the back seat of Popkov’s black Honda Civic and the usual questions followed: ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Home.’ ‘Where have you been?’
‘Partying.’ ‘Are you married?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why aren’t you with your husbands?’
‘They are working.’ ‘Would you like to keep the party going?’ ‘Sure.’ That conversation told Popkov everything he needed to know: these women were ‘fallen women’ and so they needed to die.
Popkov drove out to a small campsite where he often brought his family and began plying the women with alcohol. It was clear that both of them were interested in him. Playing on this, Popkov pulled one of them aside, acting like he was choosing which one to have sex with.
Once he had chosen one, he pulled her out of the car and they went into the dark forest. Once out of sight of her friend Popkov strangled his victim until he was satisfied that she wouldn’t get up. Once done he returned to the car and told the friend that they had found a good spot and that she should come join them.
She obliged and began walking in the direction of her friend with Popkov following behind her. Before she could even spot her friend lying on the ground Popkov swung a hatchet into the back of her head. She fell to the ground and Popkov continued attacking her until she stopped moving.
Satisfied with his work, he disposed of the evidence and departed.
By the time he got home the sun was near to rising and he was just about to get ready for bed when he realised that his police badge was missing. He searched his car but of course it wasn’t there. Then he suddenly remembered that one of the women had asked if she could see it while they were drinking in the back of his car. He immediately jumped in his car and made his way back to the campsite.
Upon arrival, he found more than just his badge. His first victim, that he had strangled seemingly to death, was now up and staggering around the campsite. Popkov got out of his car and pulled a shovel from the boot, finishing the job. It’s sad to think that if he had only remembered his badge 15 minutes later, she might have had enough time to regain her senses and find her way to the main road which was only 5 or 6 hundred metres from the campsite.
And as far as can be told that is the last publicly confirmed murder that could be found. It’s safe to assume that there were indeed murders that followed this but no hard evidence of them could be found. Claims have been seen that his murder spree continued for another 2 years and one claiming he continued for another 12 years, but most sources agree that 2000 was his final year.
As it turns out it wasn’t even the police that brought an end to the raping and murdering—it was syphilis. Yes, Mikhail Popkov made a small mistake in his crusade to eradicate the ‘immoral’ women of Angarsk. He hadn’t considered the fact that people willing to engage in unprotected sex with strangers are also the same people who are more likely to carry an STD.
He didn’t die; he just couldn’t get it up anymore and so he lost his motivation to kill. This may be the one time in history that syphilis has actually saved lives. Papers often say that it was the syphilis-induced impotence that stopped him from killing, but seeing as we know he was happy to kill without having sex and that syphilis was perfectly treatable with antibiotics, this probably wasn’t his reason for stopping.
It had more to do with the increased police attention and the fact that he was no longer a police officer.
Whatever the reason for his cessation, it must have been a bit of a shock to the investigators when 2001 came and went without a single Popkov-style death. Months went by and no new bodies turned up; the investigation slowed and the officers turned to different things, likely very pleased that the embarrassing saga was over. The only ones that continued working on the case were those specifically assigned to it. They were told to keep working and thinking of new ways to find him but to no avail.
The Task Force
It wasn’t until January 2002 when the investigation got a shot of adrenaline. That month, an article written by journalist Mark Deutsch was published in an online publication called The Moscow Komsomolets. This article was titled ‘The Wednesday Killer,’ owing to most of the bodies coincidentally being found on Wednesdays. This journalist was not one for pulling punches and in this article, he made it very clear just how badly the authorities had botched this murder investigation.
It lit a fire under the investigators and a task force was assembled, pulling some of the best criminal investigators from around Russia. Mark Deutsch died in 2012, by drowning outside his villa—I’ll let you decide if that’s suspicious.
Unlike the first attempt this wasn’t just some outside consultory assistance. Now there were 12 or 13 people solely focused on finding him. However, building a case on just a few bits of useful evidence wasn’t really a viable option; to hear the investigators put it, ‘we weren’t even starting from zero, we were starting from less than zero.’
If we were to put this in Western terms this new task force was like the FBI rolling in on the local police force. Owing to the embarrassing way the case had been handled thus far, all but a few of the Angarsk Police Force were willing to actually assist the new task force investigators, preferring to wash their hands of the case and move on.
With close to nothing to go on the task force were at a bit of a loss for how to proceed. In the end their chosen method was to slowly and painstakingly comb through every possible avenue of investigation that had even the remotest possibility of turning up results. Because the initial investigations had been handled so poorly, any direct evidence had to be discounted immediately.
The only bits of evidence that weren’t completely useless to them were the 3 DNA samples that linked 3 of the murders, one sample of car tire tracks, and several sets of fingerprints. There was also the one bit of evidence that the police couldn’t completely ruin: witnesses and archival information.
Fast forward to 2008 and the investigation had made some headway. After looking over hundreds of murder cases in the area, the investigators had managed to link 22 murders to Popkov. Furthermore their boosted funding and improvements in DNA analysis technology had provided them with a complete genotype of the killer. They also knew that his blood type was B, that he had at one point driven a car called a Niva, and that he had previously or still was working for the Angarsk Police.
For Popkov the only thing that had changed during the intervening years was his job. At some point in the previous 6 years he had quit his position in the security company and was now driving long distances, transporting cars between the port city of Vladivostok in the far East and Angarsk. By the time 2009 had rolled around the investigators had managed to compile a list of 3,500 possible suspects and way down that list, in the P section, was the name Mikhail Popkov.
The only problem was that interviewing wasn’t going to cut it; when the net is that large far too many people slip through. They would need another way to verify potential suspects.
Remember back in 1998 when it was recommended the police begin DNA testing all possible suspects? Well this idea was floated once again by the investigators and this time, it was agreed to be their only viable option. So they began testing, calling in each individual suspect one by one and in alphabetical order. Though Popkov didn’t know it, the clock had finally started ticking down his remaining time as a free man.
Though he didn’t have to worry—it wasn’t until 3 years later that they finally made it to his name on the list.
In March of 2012, Popkov was summoned as a witness. Just before he left, the officers asked Popkov if he would give a sample of his DNA; the stated reason was for vaccine tests on previous military conscripts. This was pretty solid reasoning as most men of around his age were previous military conscripts. They sent the DNA off to the lab and continued their investigation. It wasn’t until 2 months later in early June that the results came back: Mikhail Popkov was a 100% match.
Arrest
By now, Popkov knew that the jig was up. As a police officer he was aware that if he had been called in for questioning on his own case and then had a DNA sample taken, the chances he wouldn’t get caught were already slim to none. As such, the way he responded to the knowledge that he was about to lose his freedom typifies the unusual case that is Mikhail Popkov.
When Ted Bundy escaped from prison, he chose to simply hide his identity and try to get as many murders under his belt as he possibly could before he got caught again. When John Wayne Gacy was being tailed by the police, he resorted to drink-driving, threatening his investigators, and finally having a nervous breakdown in his lawyer’s office. When Mikhail Popkov realised that his time was limited, he took some time off work and went to visit his family. After that he took a train to Moscow and spent some time with his sister and her family.
After that he visited his mother, visited his father’s grave, and then he returned home. Popkov chose to spend the time saying goodbye; he truly is a strange case in the world of serial killers.
The month is June, it’s been about 6 weeks since his interview and Popkov knows his time is nearly up. He has said his goodbyes, he has made his peace with what is about to happen; now all there is left to do is wait. The following day, there is a knock on the door; his time is up, the police are here. Several moments pass but they receive no reply, so they knock again, calling his name—no reply.
The head investigator steps aside and an officer with a battering ram steps forward. On the count of three he gives an almighty swing and the door bursts wide open. Cautiously they step inside, checking every corner, making sure he isn’t hiding somewhere, waiting to attack. First they clear the living room, then the kitchen, then the bedroom, and then the bathroom, but they find nothing; the apartment is deserted.
The investigator is about to put out a call on the radio when he notices the gun cabinet in the living room; the doors are open and the guns are missing. Immediately they start making enquiries, giving orders for all officers to be on the lookout, and descriptions of Popkov are sent out across the city. Meanwhile, the investigation starts searching his computer.
His wife has been told of his arrest and that he is missing and she gives them the password for his computer. It only takes a few minutes to find where he has gone. The previous day, he purchased a train ticket that took him from Angarsk to Vladivostok.
They feared that his plan was to carry out a mass shooting when he made it to the port city. The journey from Angarsk takes 3 days on the train and Popkov already had a day and a half head start on them. And, according to his wife, he was equipped with a semi-automatic hunting rifle and several hundred rounds of ammo.
Stopping the train wasn’t an option as Popkov would be expecting this and if they raised his suspicion they risked him beginning his killing spree on the train. They needed to do it in such a way that they caught him by surprise. The head investigator contacted the prosecution office in Moscow and told them the situation; this put them in contact with an air force general who was able to divert a military transport jet to the Angarsk airport. They got on board and flew off to an airport near Ussuriysk and waited.
They were going to catch Popkov’s train just before he made it to Vladivostok.
12 hours after they arrived, Popkov’s train pulled into the station. 4 officers in plain clothes boarded the train, 2 on either end. They waited for the train to pull off, as he would have been expecting an arrest in the station and so would likely have had his gun close at hand. They waited for 10 minutes after the train had pulled away and then they executed their plan.
At the same time, both officers began closing in from either side of the train; this way he would have no escape route. They knew which seat he was in but they didn’t know if he had moved; fortunately he hadn’t. They entered his train car and spotted him, sitting right in the middle, facing forwards.
They began moving at the same time and as they closed the distance, they noticed a gun bag seated between his legs. When they made it to his seat he looked up. ‘Mikhail Popkov?’
they asked. ‘Yes.’ ‘You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.’
Popkov casts his eyes down but doesn’t move. After a moment he nods and says, ‘Alright… I understand.’ Then he gets up and allows himself to be handcuffed.
How Many?
And just like that, after nearly 20 years at large, they finally had him; the Maniac of Angarsk was indeed just a man. Upon his arrival in the Angarsk Jail, he denied all charges and tried to give it the old charm but the investigators were having none of it. When it became clear that they had some pretty damning evidence on him he switched up his tactic and began prevaricating, neither denying nor admitting his guilt.
There aren’t any official records to be found about what happened next but it seems that his investigators gave him an ultimatum: ‘I told him that we could either do this the easy way or we could do the hard way.’ That wasn’t a quote from an old cop movie; that was one of the head investigators for Popkov’s case. They don’t elaborate as to what precisely the hard way might be. Russia doesn’t have the death penalty so he can’t have been threatening that.
Apparently Popkov understood what this meant though and he chose the easy way, cooperating from then on.
Overall, it doesn’t seem like he has had too bad of a time at the hands of his old comrades in the Angarsk Police station. Perhaps they were making an effort to look after their old friend or perhaps they were trying to keep him sweet so as to get a bunch of confessions out of him. Either way he had a lot of privileges that allowed him to order food, get cigarettes, drinks, see family, watch TV, and order various parcels. All the while confessing to a plethora of crimes.
As of his arrest, the earliest kill they had linked to Popkov was in 1994. By the time his first hearing was to occur, thanks to his confessions, they pushed it to 1993 and the first burned body to turn up. They also believed his body count to sit around 22 give or take. In the course of 3 years of police custody, Popkov was able to recall all of them and provide extra details that only the killer would know. He also explained to them how he was able to commit a murder so effectively without capture.
To start with, he could avoid witnesses because he would avoid suspicion; he wouldn’t go looking to kill his victims, he would let them come to him. As an officer he would patrol the streets, seek out women who were alone. He would stop, ask them if they needed a lift; if they said no, he would move on, no suspicion raised.
If they said yes, he would allow them into the car. On the way he would talk to them, ask why they were out and why they were unescorted. They would tell him all he needed to know and based on this information he would decide if they should die.
If he thought they were a good person he would simply take them to their destination and move on. If they were drunk and he decided they were immoral or unfaithful, he would ask if they wanted to continue drinking with him, which they almost always did. He would drive them out to the woods and have sex with them.
At some point during the encounter, he would choke the victim until she fell unconscious, which would leave no trace of blood in the car. Then he would drag the body out of the vehicle and use a weapon, lifted from the evidence locker in the police station, to kill the woman. If he used a blunt weapon he would aim for the head and position himself away from the wound, preventing blood splatter on his uniform.
If he used a sharp weapon he would stab the face, head, and shoulders; he was careful to never cut arteries which would cause a blood spatter. Then he would position the body, often to make it appear as though the woman had been killed during sex, and leave them there. After that he would drive 3 to 5 kilometres away and bury any evidence, which would include bags, weapons, and used alcohol bottles.
This wasn’t a half-arsed attempt at hiding the evidence either; he would bury them up to 6 feet deep. The distance and depth guaranteed that the evidence would never be found and indeed not one piece of evidence that he intentionally hid was ever found by the police.
In 2015, after 3 years of interrogation, Popkov was convicted of 22 counts of murder and 2 counts of attempted murder; he was also convicted of rape though it doesn’t say how many counts. For these offences, he was given a life sentence to be served in a special regime colony, which as far as can be told is pretty much a modern gulag. The day following his sentence his lawyer appealed the decision on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of rape, with Popkov insisting that any woman he had sex with did so consensually.
He also said that his sentence should be lighter based upon the fact that he actively cooperated with the investigators following his arrest. Finally they argued that a few of his earliest murders should be ignored as they exceeded the statute of limitations for murder. This appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation but ultimately the ruling was upheld and so Popkov was carted off to a special regime colony, to spend the rest of his days doing compulsory work.
Or so everyone thought. Popkov didn’t really feel like going to the colony. He had grown rather accustomed to the cushy conditions of the regional jail in Irkutsk.
So he decided to let the police in on a little secret: they hadn’t found all of his murders; in fact they hadn’t even found half of them. So the authorities pulled him out of his colony and returned him to his home city to talk to the authorities. There he received his usual helpings of ‘interrogation incentives.’
At first it was 10 new bodies, then it was 20. Then it was 30 and then 40. As the years went on, the body count seemed to endlessly rise.
He would recall his locations of murders, locations of evidence, of murder weapons, and on at least 2 occasions, bodies that the police hadn’t even found. Remember that eidetic memory of Popkov’s? He was making full use of it now.
It seemed as though he had a list of every cold case, murder victim, and missing person’s case in the entire area of Angarsk. When asked he could recall names, dates, locations, conversations, the clothing his victim was wearing, the weather on the night, even the alcohol they were drinking.
By the time the dust settled, Popkov’s total murder count had risen to 81 murders and 2 attempted murders, of which he was convicted and given a second life sentence in 2018. More recently he has been pulled out of his special colony again to give testimony of 2 more murders that he had remembered, and indeed more evidence was found to corroborate this. With so many convictions to his name, Popkov is one of the most prolific serial killers of all time and the most prolific in modern Russian history, even beating out the infamous Andrei Chikatilo. Of course the Maniac of Angarsk was nowhere near as bloodthirsty or outright gruesome as the Rostov Ripper but, in terms of body count, he almost doubles his communist counterpart.
The Conspiracy Theory
First and foremost, the author is not the conspiracy theory type. The most obvious answer is also the most likely answer. That being said, about halfway through researching this case a sneaking suspicion began to develop. As research and writing continued, this suspicion grew and upon completing it, the conclusion has been reached that something really questionable is going on with this case.
As stated, the author is not a conspiracy theorist and would prefer to present this as one might present a case in court—the court of public opinion if you will. In line with that we have to start with the rule that a lack of evidence does not constitute guilt. Across the research, a distinct lack of any primary sources has been found: no police death certificates, no witness statements.
This is partly down to limitations as a researcher—the author’s Russian is a long way away from perfect and so searching the internet for source material is not as effective as it would be for an English case. But even when you consider this, there was only one primary source document that could be found across this entire story, and that was a verification that the letter sent in 1998 was indeed a real thing.
With that said, the accusation is this: the Angarsk Police force facilitated the crimes of Mikhail Popkov. The theory suggests that they not only knew that he was committing murder on a regular basis but facilitated it.
First piece of evidence: How can one police force be that inept? 8 years and no one suspected a thing? 8 years of this man going into the evidence locker and removing weapons and no one saw him. 8 whole years where not one officer even suspected that there was a mass murderer in the city, much less one of their colleagues. Only 3 viable DNA samples were taken from a total of 81 murder scenes. It’s hard to believe that no one, not a single person, even suspected the presence of a serial killer in the city. However, none of that is convincing beyond a reasonable doubt, so here are some hard facts.
First, during an interview, a lead investigator explained that the discovery of his wife’s infidelity caused Popkov to go on his murder spree. The only problem with that is Popkov’s first murder was in 1992, a full year prior to his discovering his wife’s infidelity. The investigator would have known this discrepancy so why would he lie?
Second, the Angarsk Police did not publicly admit there was a serial killer until instructed to do so. An outside organisation was able to correctly conclude that there was a serial killer in Angarsk based only on the information contained within a single letter written by a prosecutor. If they could correctly conclude that from a single letter, why was the police force not able to do the same, considering they had access to all and more relevant information than what was contained within that letter?
Third, a detective in the Angarsk police force showed Popkov a map of the police’s weak spots in the Angarsk area. This was a map literally pointing out the areas where the police presence was weakest—or, from the perspective of a serial killer, a map of the places you could commit a murder and be least likely to be spotted. This event was not only proven but also corroborated by the Angarsk Police force themselves. Not only that but the police officer in question later went on to be the head of Popkov’s investigation. He was one of the few members of the Angarsk Police that joined the task force and he became the lead investigator. Remember that when Popkov was caught, it was based on the connection to the 3 bits of DNA evidence found on his victims. Once Popkov was captured this same investigator tried to stop the task force pursuing any more murder charges, even though it was clear he had committed more. 2 weeks later this lead investigator was dismissed from the case; not only that, he was stripped of his career and was removed outright from the police force. The reason for his dismissal was not due to him impeding Popkov’s conviction but for a different reason altogether.
Fourth, a different member of the Angarsk Police force has gone on live TV to publicly state that there was a conspiracy surrounding the arrest of Popkov. His last appearance was in 2017 and he stated that Popkov had worked with at least one accomplice. He died earlier this year, age 47; his cause of death could not be found.
Fifth, Popkov just stopped killing after he left Angarsk. He spent many, many hours driving back and forth from Vladivostok after he quit the police force, so surely if he was killing of his own volition, he would have struggled to resist the urge to kill, seeing as the opportunity to pick up a hitchhiker would have presented itself many times and it would have been very hard to prove it was him.
Sixth, they literally had 2 witnesses who had spoken to the killer, appeared with similar injuries, found in the same place, and gave similar testimony independently of each other. Even if their testimony was legitimately ruled as unreliable, after 2 of them turned up stating the same thing, one would think they’d at least have kept an eye on Popkov, checked in on him every now and again, perhaps made a quick check of the evidence locker after he went in. Apparently this didn’t cross the mind of a single person at the Angarsk Police station.
Seventh, an employee of the Angarsk Police department literally saw Popkov routing through the handbag of one of his victims, in the evidence locker.
The main argument boils down to this: with so many coincidental and even downright suspicious happenings surrounding this case, it is difficult to believe that there was not at least some intentional incompetence by the Angarsk Police. The theory suggests that the Angarsk Police force knowingly turned a blind eye to Popkov killing the women of Angarsk. A large portion of the people he killed were sex workers.
Perhaps they saw this as a problem and they wished to permit Popkov to solve this problem for them. Then, when the Irkutsk prosecutor wrote that letter to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the police did the minimum amount of investigating they could while not arousing suspicion, but really just tried to brush it under the rug. Popkov was told to quit so as to keep his distance from the investigation.
Then when the 2002 article came out and the Ministry of Internal Affairs took matters into their own hands, the police force set about creating an image of such disorganisation that it would impede the investigation and give an alibi as to why they had no leads.
When Popkov was caught, he was told ahead of time which is why he was able to time his leaving his own apartment so perfectly. Mass shootings don’t fit into his MO; he had no problem with normal everyday people, just women that would cheat on their husbands, so why go shoot up a random city? Plus, he had a full month and a half between his DNA sample and his arrest. If he had left even a day before he would have made it to Vladivostok in time to complete his mission, but he chose the exact right moment to leave.
The theory doesn’t explain why he would choose to do this but it does seem rather suspicious.
It should be stated again that access to information has been limited; it may be possible that the answers to these suspicions are out there and haven’t been found. But it is sceptical that such large amounts of very specific information would be missed. For example, the only missing person reports that could be found were reports of individuals that had close family members, but prostitutes made up the majority of Popkov’s victims and yet there was not one mention of them by the police.
In part this will be because they perhaps didn’t have families to do the filing of the reports and make the information public, but this wasn’t always the case. Remember Popkov’s final murder, the one where he forgot his badge? The families of the two victims didn’t file those reports because they didn’t trust the police; the police were the ones to do that when the bodies were found.
So we know that on at least one occasion, the police made the information about a disappearance public without the input of a family, but still the only reports available are of those of victims who were not sex workers.
However, as conspicuous as all that might be, a lack of evidence doesn’t actually denote guilt, nor does it exonerate. There are at least some very suspicious happenings surrounding the whole affair; unfortunately those suspicions will likely never be laid to rest.
Wrap-up
And there you have it, the story and the conspiracy of Mikhail Popkov. This is one of the strangest cases in true crime research. Popkov just didn’t seem like the serial killing type.
A firsthand account of his psychological examination hasn’t been tracked down, but every mention of his assessment gives no mention of psychopathy. The only diagnosis that has been bestowed upon Popkov regarding his propensity for murder was a diagnosis of Homicide Mania. In essence it is just the desire to kill, nothing more or less.
Usually when you catch a serial killer they have a wide swath of psychological red flags: narcissism, delusions of grandeur, low self-esteem, psychopathy, sociopathy. Popkov had none of that though; he just had a desire to kill. And when you think about it and consider his actions, he has given several notable examples of empathy across his life.
Consider his treatment of his family, the empathy he showed his daughter, the fact that he chose to go see his family during his final moments of freedom. Of course he did also kill people. But he seemed to have a lot of empathy for the ones he loved, even if it was only for them.
Whether you believe the conspiracy or not though, there is no getting around the fact that Popkov was a cold-blooded killer who used a flimsy excuse to justify snuffing out the lives of scores of women. Thanks to his actions, many children had to grow up without a mother, many parents had to go to the morgue and identify their own daughters, and countless other unnamed but no less innocent women had their chance at life taken away from them by this one man and his fatuous crusade. He didn’t really want to make a change; he didn’t want to cleanse the streets of so-called ‘immoral’ women.
If he truly wanted to make a difference in his city, he would have done his job as a police officer, he would have actually listened to the responses that his victims gave and helped them, he would have checked in and made sure they were safe, he would have tried to make sure their kids were cared for, he would have been a member of the community. But instead he chose to kill those women and in doing so he destroyed families and destabilised the lives of many children.
Natasha Gorelina, the girl who opened this account, recalled her mother’s funeral. She spoke about seeing her mother lying in her casket; even through the thick makeup you could see the purple bruising around the areas where Popkov had ferociously broken her skull open. Natasha was only 5 when her mother died. That means she was the same age as Popkov when he returned home and found that his parents had replaced him with a daughter. So it’s true what they say: trauma and neglect really do exist in a cycle.
Author’s Note: On Narrative Fabrications
The following disclosure is reproduced directly from the original source material and is essential for understanding the integrity of this account.
The original author of this story included a critical disclaimer that must be shared: there are several parts of this story that are fabricated by the author. There were no major alterations made to the course of events; these were all minor points or facts about the case. The author did this primarily when there was missing or conflicting information and used it as a means of maintaining continuity in the flow of the story.
The specific fabricated elements include:
- The camping trip: There is no significant proof that Popkov went camping with his family following his DNA sampling. He did visit his mother and his sister; however, there were several weeks of this time unaccounted for. Based on the fact that he regularly went camping with his family and he very likely took the time to say goodbye to them, this was presented as fact.
- Internal monologue before arrest: There is no way to know if Popkov really thought about whether he regretted what he had done, how people would look at him, or whether he formulated a plan for a mass shooting while sitting on his couch prior to the police breaking down his door. This was added for dramatic effect.
- The mass shooting plan: There is no confirmed reason for why Popkov was travelling to Vladivostok when he was arrested on the train. The mass shooting motive was presented as the most obvious answer but cannot be verified.
- Some murder weapons: Several of the murder weapons listed were not confirmed. There were so many random reports that altered the type of weapon used on a victim that the author just decided to state one that worked well with the narrative.
- Initial task force evidence: The initial evidence and information that the task force had available to them when they took on the case in 2002 was stated to be only the DNA, fingerprints, and tire tracks. The author was not certain on this point; there may have been more evidence that just could not be found.
Readers should weigh these narrative elements accordingly when evaluating this account.
Dismembered Appendices
On Russian media: During research the author became quite well acquainted with Russian media. One thing learnt is that Russian journalists are just as bad for checking their information as they are in the UK. Another is that Russian authorities love to talk to the press but hate to produce any paperwork that can be used as primary source material. Strangest of all was the discovery of Russian-style talk shows. One favourite was literally called ‘Let them Talk’ and can only be described as a bizarre mash-up of The Jeremy Kyle Show and The Opera Show, in which guests are first interviewed by a shit-stirring host and then get openly roasted by members of the audience. In one episode watched, Popkov’s wife was invited on the show, where she was interviewed by the host, insisting that she knew nothing of her husband’s activities, and then proceeded to get in a shouting match with an elderly member of the audience.
On the lead investigator’s dismissal: Remember the lead investigator that was suspended and then removed from the case in the weeks following Popkov’s arrest? The alleged reason for this was that he had started up a relationship with Popkov’s wife and then moved into Popkov’s apartment only 2 weeks after his arrest. Considering what was already known about him showing Popkov that map and also impeding the investigators from pinning more than 3 murders on him, this was a particularly strange twist. During an interview, the replacement to the lead investigator was being questioned about his predecessor. The journalist asked (in reference to showing Popkov the map): ‘It’s fair to say there was some kind of friendship between these two men.’ The investigator replied: ‘Friendship? What do you mean by friendship? He slept with the man’s wife,’ and proceeded to chuckle.
On Mark Deutsch’s journalism: Remember the journalist who wrote the article in 2002? A look into his other work revealed that in between some very normal-sounding articles were some of the most colourful article titles ever seen, notable examples including: ‘Unintended Joy,’ ‘Erotic Show,’ ‘Daddy’s Pranks,’ ‘Gay Slaves!,’ ‘Return to the Womb,’ and ‘Communists Like It Hot.’ The ‘Gay Slaves!’ article, despite its title, was an exposé piece decrying the Russian invasion of Chechnya and informing on a genocide committed by Russian forces upon Chechen refugees in 1999. 170,000 people were killed in Russian carpet bombing attacks.
On the 2020 TV series: There was a TV series about Popkov released in 2020, called ‘The Good Man.’ It’s said to have a star-studded cast and a very accomplished Russian director attached to it.
Key Takeaways
- Mikhail Popkov, a former Angarsk police officer, is Russia’s most prolific serial killer with at least 81 confirmed murders between 1992 and 2000.
- Popkov exploited his police position to access evidence, alter witness statements, and use untraceable weapons from the evidence locker.
- The Angarsk police displayed extreme negligence, dismissing survivor testimonies and failing to connect murders for years despite obvious patterns.
- A 2012 DNA test finally identified Popkov after a task force systematically tested 3,500 suspects alphabetically over three years.
- The author raises credible suspicions of police complicity, noting an investigator showed Popkov a map of police weak spots and later impeded the case.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Mikhail Popkov and what was his nickname?
Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov was a Russian serial killer born on March 7, 1964, in Norilsk. He was known by several nicknames including ‘The Werewolf of Angarsk,’ ‘The Angarsk Maniac,’ and ‘The Siberian Werewolf.’ He was a former police officer who became the most prolific serial killer in modern Russian history.
How many victims did Mikhail Popkov kill?
Popkov was initially convicted of 22 murders in 2015, but through additional confessions, his confirmed body count rose to 81 murders and 2 attempted murders by 2018. More recently, he confessed to 2 additional murders, bringing his total to 83 victims.
What was Popkov’s stated motive for killing?
Popkov claimed he wanted to rid the streets of what he called ‘immoral’ women—women who would be willing to get into a man’s car and have sex with him. According to officials, his discovery of his wife’s affair in 1993 was the catalyzing event that caused his murder spree to begin, though the article notes his first murder actually occurred in 1992, a year before discovering the affair.
How did Popkov select his victims?
As a police officer, Popkov would patrol the streets and seek out women who were alone. He would offer them a lift; if they refused, he moved on. If they accepted, he would question them about why they were out and unescorted. Based on their answers, he decided if they should die. If he thought they were ‘good’ people, he took them to their destination. If he deemed them drunk and ‘immoral’ or unfaithful, he would ask if they wanted to continue drinking, then drive them to the woods to kill them.
How did Popkov avoid detection for so long?
Popkov had several advantages: he was a police officer who could alter witness testimony, ignore protocol, leave or hide evidence, and access the evidence locker to remove untraceable weapons. He would choke victims unconscious in his car to avoid blood traces, then use weapons from the evidence locker to kill them outside the vehicle. He buried evidence 6 feet deep 3-5 kilometers away. The Angarsk police force was also chronically underfunded, disorganized, and negligent, with flooded evidence rooms and mislabeled evidence.
Who were the two survivors of Popkov’s attacks?
The two known survivors were Evgenia Protasova, attacked on January 18, 1998, and Svetlana Nesyavicheva, attacked later in 1998. Both were found near death, gave similar testimony about a police officer attacker, and were dismissed by police due to their injuries and intoxication. Protasova specifically identified Popkov by name, his profession, and his black Honda Civic, but police accepted his wife’s alibi and ruled him out.
How was Popkov finally caught?
In 2012, investigators began DNA testing suspects alphabetically from a list of 3,500. In March 2012, Popkov was summoned as a witness and asked for a DNA sample under the pretense of vaccine tests for former military conscripts. Two months later, in June 2012, the results came back as a 100% match. When police came to arrest him, he had fled by train toward Vladivostok with weapons, but was apprehended on the train before reaching the city.
What role did journalist Mark Deutsch play in the case?
In January 2002, journalist Mark Deutsch published an article titled ‘The Wednesday Killer’ in The Moscow Komsomolets, exposing how badly authorities had botched the investigation. This public pressure led to the formation of a dedicated task force of 12-13 investigators. The article noted that most bodies were coincidentally found on Wednesdays. Deutsch later died in 2012 by drowning outside his villa.
What conspiracy theory does the article raise about the Angarsk Police?
The article suggests the Angarsk Police may have knowingly facilitated Popkov’s crimes, citing: extreme incompetence over 8 years; an investigator lying about Popkov’s motive timeline; police only admitting a serial killer existed when forced by outside authorities; a detective showing Popkov a map of police weak spots who later became lead investigator and tried to limit charges; another officer claiming on TV that Popkov had an accomplice; Popkov stopping killings after leaving Angarsk despite opportunities; two matching survivor testimonies being ignored; and an officer seeing Popkov searching a victim’s handbag in the evidence locker.
What ultimately stopped Popkov’s killing spree?
While papers often claim syphilis-induced impotence stopped him, the article disputes this since he killed without sex and syphilis was treatable. The author believes it was more likely due to increased police attention and his no longer being a police officer after 1998. His final confirmed murder was in 2000, and by 2001 no more Popkov-style deaths occurred.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: Mikhail Popkov: 83 and Counting…
- Hero image source by Adbh266 / openverse, by-sa.
