Serial killer ex-policeman convicted of 56 more murders in Russia

A Siberian policeman, described as Russia's most prolific mass murderer in modern times, has been convicted of killing 56 more people bringing his total number of victims to at least 78.

A court in Siberia found Mikhail Popkov, from the city of Angarsk, guilty of the murders between 1994 and 2000 and sentenced him to life in prison.

He killed the victims after offering them late-night rides in his car.

Popkov, who was arrested in 2012 after a DNA match identified his car, is already serving life for 22 other killings.

The victims were all women between the ages of 15 and 40 apart from one man, a police officer. In three cases he was on duty in his police car.

Popkov killed his victims around Angarsk with an axe and hammer. He dumped their mutilated bodies in forests, by the roadside and in a local cemetery. At least 10 were also raped.

He claimed to be "purging" Angarsk of what he saw as immoral women.

Some of his victims were found alive but died later in hospital.

The verdict makes him Russia’s most prolific serial killer in at least the past century.

Local police have for years been investigating murders in the Irkutsk region.

Psychiatric tests run on Popkov, a police lieutenant who retired in 1998, have concluded that he is sane but with a "pathological attraction to killing people," according to prosecutors.

Popkov's lawyer told Russian news agencies that his 54-year-old client would appeal the verdict as well as the motion to strip him of his police pension, which he has been receiving despite the 2015 guilty verdict.

The death toll exceeds the 48 murdered by "chessboard killer" Alexander Pichushkin, and the 52 murdered by Andrei Chikatilo during the Soviet era.