Mikhail Popkov

Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov (Russian: Михаи́л Ви́кторович Попко́в; born 7 March 1964) is a Russian serial killer, rapist, and necrophile who committed the sexual assault and murder of eighty-three girls and women between 1992 and 2010 in Angarsk, Irkutsk, in Siberia, and Vladivostok in the Russian Far East, although he has confessed to and is suspected of at least eighty-six in total. He is known as "the Werewolf" and "the Angarsk Maniac" for the particularly brutal nature of his crimes; he would extensively mutilate the bodies of his victims and perform sexual acts on them. Popkov was also known as "the Wednesday Murderer" due to bodies of his victims usually being found on Wednesdays. He is the single most prolific serial killer in Russian history.

Popkov, a former police officer and security guard, was convicted of 22 murders in 2015 and sentenced to life imprisonment, and confessed to an additional 59 three years later; on December 10, 2018, he was convicted for 56 of the 59 additional killings, three of which the police could not find sufficient evidence with which to be proven, and given a second life sentence. There were calls for Popkov to be executed, but this was unavailable as capital punishment in Russia is subject to a formal moratorium.