According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Russian investigators announced that the perpetrators of 25 murders have been arrested – the suspect has been called “Volga madman” for many years.
According to the Russian commission of inquiry, the suspect is a 38-year-old man named Radik Tagirov, who confessed to 26 consecutive murders of elderly women between 2011 and 2012, which caused panic in central Russia. Investigators said that he had been identified through DNA evidence, shoe prints and other crime scene evidence.
It is reported that Tajirov once cheated charging workers, plumbers or utility workers into the apartments of elderly women living alone.
Once in, he would subdue the women and strangle the victim with bare hands or using nearby objects, including aprons and clotheslines. The vast majority of victims are over 70 years old.
The killers in these cases often robbed the victims, but in some cases, he did not take valuables. He wears gloves and will deal with the crime scene before leaving to hinder the investigation of law enforcement officials.
According to the report, most of these murders occurred between 2011 and 2012, and were recorded in Kazan, Samara, Tauriati, Izhevsk, Ufa and other cities in Russia. Other cases are suspected to have occurred in Urals, but the exact number of victims has not yet been determined.
The serial killer appears to have calmed down after 2013, but the 2017 killing frenzy that took place in the area again caused public concern.
In 2019, Russian police offered a reward of about 30,000 pounds to collect clues that could arrest him.
