Overview
Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov, born in 1964, is a Russian serial killer known as "the Angarsk Maniac" and "the Werewolf." A former police officer based in the Angarsk and Irkutsk region of Siberia, he murdered dozens of women over nearly two decades, with crimes documented between 1992 and 2010. He was convicted of 22 murders in 2015 and of dozens more in 2018, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in modern Russian history.
Popkov targeted women he encountered at night, often using his position and a vehicle to gain their trust before driving them to isolated locations. The case drew international attention both for the scale of the killings and for the fact that the perpetrator was a serving police officer, which complicated and delayed the investigation for years.
The Crimes
Popkov's killings centered on Angarsk, a city in the Irkutsk Oblast of Siberia, with additional crimes attributed to other locations including the Russian Far East. According to investigators and his own confessions, he approached women at night, frequently offering them a ride in his car, sometimes while presenting himself in connection with his police role. He then drove victims to remote, wooded arefor the killings.
The murders were marked by extreme violence. Investigators reported that Popkov used a range of implements, including knives, axes, and other tools, and that he mutilated many of the bodies. The brutality of the attacks, combined with their frequency over many years, contributed to the "Werewolf" nickname used in Russian and international media coverage.
Investigation and Capture
The Angarsk killings spanned years and initially baffled investigators, in part because the perpetrator was himself a member of law enforcement and understood how investigations were conducted. A significant breakthrough came from forensic evidence linking vehicle tracks at crime scenes to a type of off-road vehicle associated with police use.
To identify the killer, authorities undertook a large-scale DNA screening of current and former police officers in the Irkutsk region, reportedly testing thousands of individuals. This effort led to Popkov, who was arrested in 2012. By that point he had left the police force. After his arrest, he confessed to a large number of killings, and subsequent investigation expanded the list of attributed victims well beyond the initial cases.
Trials and Convictions
In January 2015, Popkov was convicted of 22 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. Following his initial conviction, he continued to confess to additional killings, and investigators worked to corroborate these admissions against unsolved cases stretching back to the 1990s.
On December 10, 2018, a court convicted Popkov of dozens of additional murders, and he received a second life sentence. Across the two trials he was found responsible for a number of killings that placed him among the most prolific convicted murderers in Russian criminal history. Officials and reporting have stated his total confirmed victim count rose further as he admitted to more crimes in later years.
Victim Count and Disputed Figures
The precise number of Popkov's victims is reported differently across sources, reflecting the staged nature of his convictions and ongoing confessions. He was convicted of 22 murders in 2015 and of a further large group of killings in 2018, with reporting citing confirmed totals in the range of roughly 78 to over 90 women as additional cases were corroborated.
Investigators have suggested the true figure may be higher than the number formally proven in court, with some estimates extending well beyond his confirmed convictions. Because such higher figures are based on suspicion and partial confessions rather than completed legal proceedings, they should be treated as estimates. Nearly all of his identified victims were women.
Motive and Aftermath
Popkov offered varying explanations for his crimes in interviews and confessions. Reporting has described him as expressing misogynistic justifications, including claims that he was targeting women he viewed as immoral, and statements tied to his personal life. Such stated motives come from the perpetrator himself and should be read with caution rather than taken as objective fact.
Popkov is serving life imprisonment in Russia. The case remains a reference point in discussions of how a serving police officer was able to evade detection for so long, and of the forensic and DNA-screening methods ultimately used to identify him. Coverage has continued in later years as authorities attributed further killings to him.
