In the Irkutsk region, the investigation into crimes committed by the maniac from the Ministry of Internal Affairs Mikhail Popkov continues. For many years, law enforcement officers raped and killed women. Popkov was sentenced to life imprisonment for two dozen murders and attempts. However, later the convict took upon himself four times as many victims.
To date, Mikhail Popkov has confessed to 60 murders committed between 1992 and 2007. Moreover, this number did not include the crimes for which he was convicted on January 14, 2015.
In late December 2016, a court hearing was held at which judge Pavel Rukavishnikov extended Mikhail Popkov’s period of detention until April 29, 2017. A pensioner from the village of Mikhailovka, Cheremkhovo district, was also present at the meeting. Her 20-year-old daughter and her friend became another victim of the maniac. The bodies of the victims were found in December 1998 near the highway.
Popkov said during the investigation that he offered to give the girls a ride. They lived in the same block with him and knew about his service in the police, and therefore, without hesitation, they trusted the man. Popkov immediately killed both passengers.
“How could he kill two healthy girls at once? My daughter was strong,” the pensioner is surprised.
Moreover, two such double murders were collected in the criminal case, and three more similar episodes were examined at the first trial. Investigators claim that the maniac policeman is very strong, since in his youth he worked as a gravedigger, went in for skiing and became a candidate for master of sports in biathlon. In his pre-trial detention cell, Popkov maintains physical fitness and can do 50 push-ups in a row.
Best Investigator
The investigation into the case of Mikhail Popkov is being conducted by investigator for particularly important cases Evgeny Karchevsky, one of the most experienced and highly qualified employees of the regional department of the RF IC. In 2012, for his work on the case of the “Academy Hammermen,” which also ended in a life sentence, Karchevsky received the title “Best Investigator of the Irkutsk Region” and the car keys from the hands of the governor.
In December 2016, Karchevsky petitioned the court to extend the arrest period by four months for the accused Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov, born in 1967. The documents attached to the case say that the defendant is married and has a secondary technical education. Popkov’s involvement in the incriminated murders is confirmed by various evidence, including the results of forensic and forensic examinations, and the exhumation of the victims’ remains.
If you believe Popkov’s testimony, then he is perhaps the most terrible maniac killer in the criminal history of Russia. In terms of the number of victims, it may have surpassed those considered to be of Soviet scale. Popkov speaks with pleasure about his similarities with him, boasting to his cellmates that his criminal case is as “plump” as Chikatilo’s (it contains more than 300 volumes).
Popkov writes petitions non-stop, reporting new criminal episodes. Because of this, his transfer to a special regime colony is postponed.
In December 2015, during the next extension of the period of detention, Popkov was charged with 38 new criminal episodes. But to date, the charges have already included 47 murders. And according to a TASS source in the region’s law enforcement agencies, Popkov himself confessed to 59 murders as part of a new investigation.
Angarsk maniac
In police uniform, Mikhail Popkov terrified Angarsk for more than 20 years. As follows from the results of the first investigation, in 1994-2000, “women disappeared in public places in Angarsk under unknown circumstances in the evening and at night.” Subsequently, their bodies with signs of rape and violent death were found in the city, as well as in the Angarsk, Usolsky and Irkutsk regions.
The dead were mostly young women aged 18 to 28 years. Almost all the victims were drunk at the time of the murder, the police emphasized. Their naked bodies were found near Angarsk in forests adjacent to country roads and in city cemeteries.
Most of the victims died from their wounds on the spot, three more died in the hospital. The “Angara maniac” killed the girls with an axe, knife, awl or screwdriver, inflicting at least a dozen blows. He also used a noose. The maniac policeman cut out the heart of one of the victims.
Typically, the victims of the criminal were women returning late at night from guests or bars, as well as those leaving home to go to the store to buy alcohol.
“In the only case where the victim was sober, she was not raped. The victim was first strangled with a scarf, and was stabbed when she was already dead,” the police noted.
The policeman was involved in three double murders, and he committed eight more crimes while on duty. In one of the episodes, Popkov left a police badge at the crime scene, returned for it and finished off the victim.
In 1998, the authorities finally formed an investigative team consisting of employees of the prosecutor’s office, the Internal Affairs Directorate and the RUBOP (district department for combating organized crime), which was searching for the “Angara maniac.” However, it was not the law enforcement officers who put an end to the crimes, but chance.
As Mikhail Popkov himself later admitted during interrogation, he contracted a venereal disease, which freed him from his manic desire to kill women.
“I just neglected the disease, tried to treat myself, I was afraid to go to the hospital. The consequences made themselves felt, I became impotent,” the suspect told investigators. “After that, the desire to rape and kill was lost.”
Further investigation
In the summer of 2000, forensic prosecutor Nikolai Kitaev began investigating unsolved murders in Angarsk. He concluded that the investigation was conducted poorly. In particular, on January 28, 1998, a naked minor girl was found unconscious near the village of Baykalsk. She was hospitalized with head injuries caused by an unknown assailant.
The victim Svetlana M. identified the policeman-driver of the Angarsk Internal Affairs Directorate with the rank of senior sergeant. The next day, of the three UAZ-469 cars presented to her, Svetlana confidently pointed to the sergeant’s official car: she remembered several characteristic details of the interior.
However, investigators limited themselves to the sergeant's explanation, according to which he simply looked like a criminal. The policeman's alibi was formally confirmed by his partner.
Kitaev noted that the sergeant “was drunk and debauched, infecting his wife with syphilis, for which both were treated.” And their marriage was dissolved.
Kitaev reported his findings to the prosecutor of the Irkutsk region, Merzlyakov, and promised to find the killer within six months if he was allowed to lead the investigation. However, management decided to put the brakes on things. “Everything that was said here should not go beyond the boundaries of this office. Otherwise, Moscow will kick us all out,” Merzlyakov said.
A year later, Kitaev was fired. Formally, this was due to the disbandment of transport prosecutors' offices.
The Killer's Trail
It was only in 2012 that the killer was traced. Detectives noticed that near the places where several corpses were found, traces of the wheels of a Niva car were found. In this regard, they decided to check all owners of cars of this brand for involvement in the murders. Genetic samples were taken from them and compared with biomaterials left on the bodies of the victims. Thus, it was possible to establish the involvement in the massacres of Mikhail Popkov, who by that time was already the former operational duty officer of the Department of Internal Affairs for the Central District of Angarsk.
On June 23, 2012, Popkov was detained in Vladivostok, where he went to buy a new car. He was transferred to Angarsk, where on June 25, 2012, the city court authorized his arrest. Soon Popkov attempted suicide.
Popkov resigned from the internal affairs bodies in 1998, as soon as he received the rank of junior lieutenant. While retired, the officer worked for a private security company. He left there in 2011, after which he worked as a gravedigger and private taxi driver.
According to one version, Popkov could have accomplices. In particular, the wife of the ex-policeman, Elena, came under suspicion. The defendant himself also said that he allegedly did not act alone. However, he refused to name the accomplice.
After Popkov was detained, the police decided not to attach much importance to the fact that the maniac worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Now it is not so important who the criminal ultimately turns out to be: a former policeman, a military man, a doctor or someone else. The main thing is that the principle of inevitability of punishment works,” the department’s press release said.
Society orderly
It is difficult to talk about the motives of the killer policeman. Popkov himself said at the next court hearing: “When committing murders, I was guided by my inner convictions.”
During the first trial, he also tried to present himself as a “orderly” who rids society of immoral women. As a result, Popkov was nicknamed the “cleaner.” However, many of the maniac’s victims did not look like prostitutes.
During the first investigation, medical experts identified the defendant as having homicidomania (an irresistible urge to kill, characteristic of psychopaths) with sadistic elements. After the reprisals, police officer Mikhail Popkov “detente, his mood, sleep and appetite improved.”
At the meeting, Judge Rukavishnikov read out references from Popkov’s place of service in the police and from neighbors. Both were positive. Popkov served in the Central Regional Department of Internal Affairs of Angarsk for about ten years - first as an assistant to the operational duty officer, then for his conscientiousness and literacy he was promoted and appointed shift duty officer.
The profile from the police department noted that Popkov enjoyed authority in the team, he was known as a good family man, a calm, balanced person. The authorities did not forget to mention that, as an employee of the police duty unit, Popkov worked at night as a taxi driver, and during vacations and after leaving law enforcement agencies, he drove cars from Vladivostok for sale.
Popkov made about a dozen trips to the Far East. It can be assumed that during them he also committed murders. But Popkov himself is silent about this for now.
During the first trial and immediately after the verdict, Popkov’s wife and adult daughter supported him, went on dates, and carried packages. They also performed on the television show “Let Them Talk” on Channel One. The wife and daughter confessed their love for Popkov and demonstrated faith in his innocence.
By now, both women had left Angarsk, where Popkov’s daughter worked as a school teacher.
At the regional court hearing, where the issue of extending the period of detention was being decided, the accused was brought into the courtroom by two officers in uniforms with the OMON logo. Even in the so-called “swan” pose, face down, with his hands raised behind his back, as a man sentenced to life should move, the maniac looked healthy and strong. He answered judge Pavel Rukavishnikov’s questions calmly and did not experience the slightest emotion when the presiding judge listed dozens of names of the women he had killed, mostly young ones.
But in the courtroom the victim felt bad, who decided to attend this meeting and specially came for this from the village of Mikhailovka, Cheremkhovo district. Pensioner Ekaterina Ilyinichna works part-time as a cleaner in a store and still does not understand how such a misfortune could happen. After all, nothing foreshadowed it. My daughter and her friend went to meet their future mother-in-law; it was not too late. “I’m going home, mommy, don’t worry,” these were the last words that Ekaterina Ilyinichna heard from her 20-year-old daughter on the phone. The girls did not return home; in December 1998, their corpses were discovered a little to the side of the road. Popkov said during the investigation that he offered to give the girls a ride. They lived in the same block with him and knew about his service in the police, and therefore, without hesitation, they trusted the friendly, respectable man. He solved both of them at once.
This is just one episode from a new series of murders, which are being investigated by Evgeniy Karchevsky, investigator for particularly important cases of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Investigative Committee for the Irkutsk Region. He petitioned the court to extend the term of custody by four months for the accused Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov, born in 1967, married, with a secondary technical education. In the attached documents, read out by the judge, involvement in a series of particularly serious crimes is substantiated, the accusation is confirmed by the evidence collected in the case, for which the investigators had to open graves, exhume corpses, and order forensic, forensic and other examinations.
Evgeny Karchevsky is one of the most experienced and highly qualified employees of the regional department of the Investigative Committee of Russia
The term of detention, according to the investigator, was extended several times. This is primarily due to the fact that Popkov, while in a cell in pre-trial detention center-6, writes one confession after another, talking about previously unknown corpses. The first verdict on the attack on 24 women had not yet been announced when the maniac began to confess to new crimes. They continued to talk about the night “hunt” for women in Angarsk and its environs, right up to the outskirts of the Usolsky district. And the murder weapons were all the same objects that appeared in the first series of crimes, for which the maniac had already received the highest punishment to date. They used an axe, a shovel, knives, hammers, ropes, belts, a bat, even screwdrivers from the toolbox that Popkov constantly carried in his car. However, sometimes he strangled women with his own hands and beat them with his fists. The corpses were either covered with earth, leaves or snow, or simply thrown in the forest, on the side of the bypass road, near the M-53 highway, behind the city cemetery.
Popkov’s letter with confessions, dated November 17, 2014, has already been included in the materials of the current criminal case. Preparing to hear a sentence of life imprisonment, the maniac in December 2014, during interrogation by an investigator, listed the signs of victims who were undeservedly ignored during the final trial. He decided, so to speak, to restore justice, not wanting his killer work to be underestimated by his descendants.
The former operational duty officer of the Central District Department of Internal Affairs of Angarsk, a veteran of internal affairs bodies who combined fighting crime and committing brutal murders, did not demonstrate any remorse when extending his term of custody. When judge Pavel Rukavishnikov asked him how many murders he actually had, he just shrugged: “I can’t say for sure, I didn’t write them down.” Experts characterized this personality trait of a sadist with the term “emotional coldness.”
It is clear that Popkov has already adapted to life in captivity. It is known that shortly after his arrest in June 2012, while being placed in pre-trial detention center No. 6, he tried to commit suicide. And after a while he already boasted to his cellmates that his case was in no way inferior in volume to the case of the record holder for murders, Chikatilo.
(The Rostov ripper has 53 proven murders to his name).
In December 2015, during the next extension of the period of detention, Popkov was charged with 38 criminal episodes. To date, charges have been brought against 47 murders. The defendant, answering the questions of Judge Pavel Rukavishnikov, invariably answered with confidence: “I admit my guilt in full.” There was even the following phrase: “When committing murders, I was guided by my inner convictions.” And if, speaking in a trial in a previous criminal case, he tried to present himself as a kind of “society orderly”, freeing him from immoral women, and even earned the nickname Cleaner, now, as far as I understand, the maniac has discarded this mask of a fighter for the purity of morals. Many of his victims were not at all like “moths” looking for adventure. Ordinary girls, like the same daughter of Ekaterina Ilyinichna, who was sitting next to me in the courtroom. At the beginning of the hearing, Pavel Rukavishnikov warned that if the conversation turns to intimate aspects of the defendant’s life or sexual violence, the public will be asked to leave the court hearing. But it didn’t come to that. This time the investigation charges Mikhail Popkov only with numerous murders of women.
Where the former police officer, a family man, got such hatred for the female sex was not discussed in court when extending his sentence. From the first criminal case it is already known that experts revealed that he had homicidomania with sadistic elements, that is, an attraction to killing people. After brutal violence, the law enforcement officer experienced relaxation and improved mood, sleep and appetite. Judge Rukavishnikov read out references from Popkov’s place of service in the police and from neighbors. Both were positive, despite the shocking reason why they were requested. Apparently, the maniac did not show his monstrous tendencies among his colleagues and neighbors. He served in the Central Regional Department of Internal Affairs of Angarsk for about ten years - first as an assistant to the operational duty officer, then for his conscientiousness and literacy he was promoted and appointed shift duty officer. The profile from the police department noted that Popkov enjoyed authority in the team, he was known as a good family man, a calm, balanced person. The authorities did not forget to mention that, while working in the police duty station, the employee worked as a taxi driver at night, and during vacations and after leaving the police, he drove cars from Vladivostok for sale. This was explained by the desire to achieve prosperity in the family. By the way, Popkov made about a dozen trips to the Far East. It can be assumed that the maniac also marked his trade route with corpses. But he is still silent about them. Probably leaves it for later, for the third criminal case. After all, he will have to do something while in prison for life. Confessions, interrogations, verification of evidence at crime scenes - these events have filled the killer’s life for the fifth year now.
Popkov either covered the corpses with earth, leaves or snow, or simply threw them in the forest,
on the side of the bypass road, near the M-53 highway, behind the city cemetery
During the first trial, and immediately after the sentence to life imprisonment in 2015, Popkov’s wife and adult daughter supported him, went on dates, and carried packages. And in the television show “Let Them Talk” on Channel One they stated that they believed in his innocence and continued to love him. But time passes, the ex-wife has now settled in another region, she has a new life there, and, according to rumors, another family. Popkov’s daughter, who worked as a school teacher, also left Angarsk. They no longer provide support to a relative who is stuck confessing to brutal murders committed over 15 years, allegedly living in perfect harmony with loving family members.
In the last two years, the maniac has had to communicate more with the investigator for especially important cases, Evgeniy Karchevsky. By the way, this is one of the most experienced and highly qualified employees of the regional department of the Investigative Committee of Russia. In 2012, for the case of the so-called “Academy Hammermen,” which also ended in a life sentence, Karchevsky received the title “Best Investigator of the Irkutsk Region” and the car keys from the hands of the governor. The case of the Angarsk maniac is even more complex and resonant.
Evgeny Karchevsky is sure that it is not possible to change the accused’s preventive measure and release him from the pre-trial prison before trial: Popkov is too dangerous. In addition, the request to once again extend the detention of the person under investigation is motivated by the need to carry out a large number of procedural actions and commission forensic medical examinations of corpses. After all, it is necessary to additionally collect and document evidence on more than ten episodes that the maniac suddenly decided to “remember” recently. It will also take time to familiarize yourself with the materials of the criminal case of numerous victims - relatives of the murdered women, and prepare an indictment for submission to the prosecutor. There is still a lot of work ahead. The criminal case already contains more than 300 volumes, and by the end of the preliminary investigation its volume will increase significantly.
The maniac is in no hurry to go to a special regime colony. Now he is
under investigation for another series of bloody massacres of women
Judge Pavel Rukavishnikov considered “reasonable and justified” the investigator’s proposal to extend the defendant’s detention in custody for four months, since this time is necessary to complete the proceedings. “At the same time, Popkov’s rights to have his case considered in court within a reasonable time will not be violated,” said Pavel Rukavishnikov. “And release from custody threatens to lead to the fact that he may obstruct the investigation or continue to engage in criminal activity.” Here my neighbor Ekaterina Ilyinichna sighed heavily: “He’s already behind bars, he can’t bear to kill a passion like hunting.” And once again I was surprised: “How could he kill two healthy girls at once? My daughter was strong.” Popkov’s new criminal case, meanwhile, contains evidence of two double murders he committed (there were three in the previous case). It is known that the maniac policeman is very strong, in his youth he worked part-time digging graves in a cemetery, went in for skiing, and is a candidate master of sports in biathlon. In the pre-trial detention center, he maintains physical fitness and can do 50 push-ups in a row. This year he will turn 50 years old and to survive in a special regime zone, he needs good health.
– Do you understand the decision? – the judge asked the man in the cage. – The investigator’s request was granted, your period of detention was extended until April 29, 2017.
The footage, which was filmed in February 1998 by a staff cameraman at the Irkutsk Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is being shown on a TV screen for the first time. The investigative team examines the bodies of Marina Chetverikova and Anna Motofonova. Both young girls are killed by multiple stabbings to the face and neck. Pay attention to the terrible detail: Anna Motofonova’s body is naked from the waist down, while the Angarsk serial killer Mikhail Popkov did not rape the girl. The same will happen to dozens of other victims. The secret of this monstrous pattern was only recently revealed by forensic psychiatrists.
Ekaterina Motofonova remembers that day well in detail. A terrible call from the police and a duty tone: come, your daughter’s body has been found. Twenty-year-old girlfriends Anya Motofonova and Marina Chetverikova were the next victims of the killer policeman. But then, in 1998, the investigation was in no hurry to combine dozens of deaths of young girls and women into a series. There were a lot of murders in general in the 90s.
“Since it’s not far from this area to the station... the girl, seeing that an employee, put her in a car, didn’t take her to the station and killed her, and in the morning, when the body was found, the same Popkov went to find this corpse. That is, that girl’s corpse , which he killed two hours ago"“, said Popkov’s colleague Dmitry Khmylovsky.
The former operative is actively taxiing, the brand new Niva is naughtily prowling the Angarsk ice, minus 26 is a common thing here. Now he calls Mikhail Popkov - a serial killer or a maniac, then, in the mid-90s, Popkov for him, a young opera, was simply Misha, an assistant to the operational duty officer. Smiling, calm, efficient.
Policeman Mikhail Popkov committed his first murder in 1992. He acted according to the same scheme: in a police uniform, in a private car, at night or in the morning, he looked out for single women or a couple of girlfriends. Often near restaurants or nightlife venues. He offered to give me a ride. Then he brought it to the forest or cemetery area. He killed with blows to the face and neck. Afterwards he had sexual intercourse with some of them. One of the victims had his heart cut out. The murder weapons were flat and Phillips screwdrivers, an axe, and a sapper shovel.
“I told Popkov: raise the group, and he asked: can I go to the place first, get my bearings... I said: Mish, of course, no problem, get ready, go. The situation was resolved. It turned out that the murdered woman was his victim. Popkov double-checked “Did he leave any traces at the site?”- says Khmylovsky.
In 2015, Mikhail Popkov was sentenced to life imprisonment for 22 murders. The investigation has now been resumed, and the killer reports new episodes almost every week. Describes in detail the methods of murder and shows the places where the bodies of the victims were hidden. To date, a complete evidence base has been collected for another 59 murdered women. The last murder dates back to 2010.
Investigator for especially important cases Evgeny Karchevsky deliberately does not disclose all the details of this truly terrible case before the trial. He only explains that psychological contact was established with the serial killer and he began to show the burials and tell the details of the brutal crimes.
The victim, whom the killer talks about in a recent investigative experiment, was also stripped from the waist down, but did not rape.
“I would classify him as a necrophic nature. Necrophilia is an attraction to the dead, death, gravitation. The desire to make the living dead,”– says Doctor of Law, professor, specialist in the field of criminology and criminal psychology, main developer of the problems of criminal psychiatry Yuri Antonyan.
Photographs from the case materials: the bodies of the murdered women are naked from the waist down and laid out in such a way that they can be clearly seen - Popkov seemed to be looking at them after the murder.
When Mikhail Popkov put on a police uniform in 1994, he did not quit his job at the cemetery. To be fair, they paid well for it, but not everyone could decide to do such hack work. These are biographical facts. But they do not answer one of the main questions: what was the motive, what served as the trigger? Why did the first murder occur in 1992? Perhaps the answer needs to be sought in the difficult relationships in the Popkov family. Only a few people in Angarsk know the piquant details from the life of the wife of a serial killer who hid his true identity for decades. And we managed to find a person who may have become the catalyst that launched the monstrous reaction in Popkov’s brain.
In 1992, Mikhail Popkov found a package of condoms at home. Elena was forced to talk about her relationship with her lover, Alexei Mulyavin. Mikhail then shared his suspicions only with his classmate and friend Sergei Dementiev.
“If Misha had had another woman, if there had been another woman, things could have been different,” Sergey said.
Only those closest to him know that Popkov even tried to strangle his wife; he was stopped by his daughter running into the room.
"He killed them, taking revenge on his wife. He raped them, humiliating his wife, he killed them because he had such a wife. Symbolization is typical for all sex criminals: one symbolizes the entire female sex. It costs them nothing to send a person to the next world, it’s easier how can I slaughter a chicken. I can’t. But they kill people without regret and self-reproach. In Popkov... this is the last scoundrel you can imagine, there is a necrophic desire for death and a psychopathic one. He is indifferent to all people, for him only his wife exists ",– says Professor Yuri Antonyan.
Mikhail Popkov’s sister refused interviews for a long time; she was already on television once in 2015. She still refuses to believe that her brother is guilty. As for the family, he says, Mikhail was an ideal husband and father.
"Why did he love her? He loves her. I'm sure of it. They were everything to him - this is family. Probably, any man, when he grows up, starts his own family, and it becomes more important for him than, unfortunately - not to Unfortunately, than his parents, sister, brother, something else. He has his own family, he protects it, protects it, provides for it. In this understanding, in general, it was like that. He lived for them. He worked for her, "he made money for them. He tried to take them somewhere, give them some gifts, surprises, something nice," Popkov’s sister Elena said.
She says that Mikhail was an ordinary teenager, his mother and father loved him. There was alcohol in the family only on holidays. Popkov started helping his father dig graves after the army and then throughout his life he often worked part-time, mostly in the summer. Elena could not remember what could be so special about her brother’s biography that made him a monster, cold-bloodedly and methodically taking people’s lives.
There are a record 300 volumes on file. In full and after Popkov himself, who is in the Irkutsk pre-trial detention center, gets acquainted with it, it will lie on the judge’s table. And this will not happen until the fall of 2017. In total, 82 women and 1 man became victims of serial killer Mikhail Popkov. Mikhail Popkov killed police captain Yevgeny Shkurikhin. This murder became known just the other day. In 1999, Popkov gave a ride to a heavily drunk Shkurikhin at night, and the men quarreled. Mikhail took Evgeny Shkurikhin into the forest and killed him with several blows of a knife.
He really loves right-hand drive Japanese cars. The photo from the personal archive shows Mikhail Popkov and those very death machines. In each, he took several dozen young women into the forest and killed them. And now, sitting in a cell in the Irkutsk pre-trial detention center, Popkov is only worried about the Subaru baseball cap with the autograph of the rally athlete, which was confiscated as evidence. The former policeman does not repent of the murders, of which there are at least 83 on his hands. There is no point in regretting the past - this is his quote.