Moment Russia's worst serial killer confesses to axing 90th female victim

Russia’s worst Mikhail ‘Werewolf’ Popkov, 61, showed how he murdered his 90th female victim with an axe and then setting her on fire. He has been charged with using an axe to take the life of Tatyana S, a cleaner, and burning her body, in Angarsk, in 2011.

While his total is now 90 police sources fear the ex-police officer’s eventual toll will be “closer to 200”. The sex attacker raped most of his victims - all female and aged 18 to 50 - before killing them with axes, hammers, knives, screwdrivers and spades. At the latest scene near a disused water pumping station, a handcuffed Popkov says: "I committed the .

“I was on a bicycle, about to cross the park… I met this woman I didn't know, or she asked me something, and some conversation ensued.” Police say this turned into an argument, and he struck her with a small axe. He was asked: “And after she fell, did you strike her any more with the axe?” He replied: “No, I think I just pushed her over there and she fell over there. Then I stepped back, took out a match, threw a match, it went up in flames.”

READ MORE:

Police say he doused her in solvent before striking the match. “And I just got on my bike and took off," he said. “I put the axe right on the grass. Who will be looking for her at that time?” If convicted after his confession, it will take Popkov’s death toll to 90.

Known as the “Angarsk Maniac”, he is already serving two life sentences plus another ten years for his brutal reign of terror against women. Her remains were found in 2011, but the case was not initially linked to Popkov. It is alleged to be his most recent known murder.

The Russian Investigative Committee said: “Popkov has admitted his guilt and testified to committing the crime, after which he was transferred [from his high security jail] to the Irkutsk region for the necessary investigative procedures. He has now been charged.”

Last year, Popkov confessed to three new murders in the Primorsky region of , some 2,400 miles from Angarsk in the Irkutsk region of Siberia where most of his brutal murders took place. They were committed when - after leaving the police - he travelled to the Russian Pacific port Vladivostok where he bought second hand Japanese cars which he drove back to sell in his home region.

A police source believes his true toll is “closer to 200”, but that each year he makes new admissions to improve his jail conditions while he is taken to the scene for investigations. Married father-of-one Popkov conducted a reign of terror against lone women between 1992 and 2011 mainly in Angarsk which he wanted to “cleanse of prostitutes”.

A psychiatric evaluation diagnosed Popkov with homicidal mania, “a condition when a person has an irrational desire to kill someone”, reported TASS. Nevertheless, the mass murderer was declared sane. Russia has had a moratorium on use of the death penalty since 1996, especially for the most serious criminals.

Before this, the condemned were shot to the back of the head by an executioner. A chilling video from his family archive shows the killer in the 1990s walking towards the camera clutching a knife and reciting a post-war nursery rhyme based on Nazi prisoners of war attacking locals.

“I will slash you. I will beat you. Now it’s your turn,” he says with a sinister smile. He often offered victims night-time lifts in his police car before taking them to remote locations where he raped and killed them, leaving their naked bodies in woods on roadsides. Popkov once told a judge he could not remember his true tally of victims.

"I can't say exactly, I didn't keep a record,” he said. But the mass killer told the court: "I admit my guilt in full…. Committing the murders, I was guided by my inner convictions." After he was detained in 2012, he told police he wanted to "cleanse" the streets of "prostitutes".

"They abandoned their husbands and children at home and went out to party as if it was the last day on earth," he said. One theory is that an affair his wife Elena had with a work colleague drove Popkov to his killing spree.

Alexey Mulyavin, 52, admitted he and Elena had a liaison before her husband began butchering women. "He did not catch us red handed, but he learned about it," said the lover. "You know, it was a very short affair. We were young. And probably everyone has love affairs at work.”

Popkov told previously how he found used condoms at his home, and accused Elena of an affair. She denied it, saying she let some friends use their house for a tryst. "This was the impetus for my future,” Popkov has said. He stressed: "If I had seen the treason with my own eyes, I would perhaps have done everything differently.

"Everyone goes through such things differently. Some take it easily and forget, others take it painfully. What happened to me? The worst-case scenario.” In 2023, Popkov was sentenced to the murder of three hitherto unknown killings in Irkutsk between 1997 and 2003.

Two women aged 25 and 27 were strangled on the banks of the Angara River. The body of one was doused in petrol and set ablaze. The third was a kindergarten teacher, 31, a mother of two. Popkov's request to fight in Vladimir Putin's war against in exchange for freedom has so far been rejected.