[7] Mikhail Popkov was born on 7 March 1964 in Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, in what was then the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and soon moved with his parents to Angarsk, Irkutsk Oblast.

Instead, he drove to remote locations[10] where he forced them to disrobe, killed them with tools including knives, axes, baseball bats, and screwdrivers, and raped their bodies.

[10] However, investigators discovered a pattern: tracks from a Lada 4×4, an off-road vehicle used by law enforcement, were found at numerous crime scenes.

[citation needed] Two years later, Popkov confessed to 59 additional killings, a total victim count which surpasses those of Russian serial killers Andrei Chikatilo and Alexander Pichushkin.

[5][14] On 10 December 2018, after a trial in the regional court of Irkutsk in Siberia, he was convicted of 56 further murders; the three other alleged killings could not be confirmed due to lack of evidence.