C. L. Swinney

This book is about the Russian police officer/serial killer Mikhail Popkov AKA: "the werewolf" or "the Wednesday killer" He only became a serial killer due to falsely believing that his wife had cheated on him several times supposedly which was never proven to be true. I believe he was psychologically damaged due to his alcoholic single-parent upbringing and his alcoholic mother abusing him.
Over time he developed a deep rooted hatred of women and that fact that his father was never a part of his life meant that he never had a positive male role model or "surrogate father figure" to look up to or admire. I believe that he hated women that drank alcohol socially, because they reminded him or his abusive/alcoholic mother and also suspecting his wife of possible adultery were the catalyst for him to lure the victims he was stalking, then raped and murdered.
(Or raped and attempted to murder some of his victims and leaving them to die, only returning to the crime scenes to collect his police badge due to forgetting it.
He then callously beat any surviving victims to death, to ensure they would not survive. Mikhail Popkov's crimes were premeditated, calculated and abusive of the position/status he had in the Russian community in Angarsk, Russia due to his good reputation and respect he earned from colleagues which he used to his advantage to divert any attention away from related to the horrific crimes he committed then "investigated" while covering up the crime scenes, evidence or using evidence from the police locker as a weapon that was related to other crimes that may or may not have been solved.
This would have contaminated the evidence and made it very difficult to find any connection to Mikhail Popkov.
On his days off work he would stalk potential victims in the evening, from bars, restaurants, the train station or he chose to target women that were walking home alone at night.
He specifically chose to wear his police uniform and drove the police car assigned to him, it was proven the car was used due to the late number of miles on the car.
The car was used a lot more than usual for a police car. Mikhail used his police uniform and fat as a way to create a false sense of security, so his female victims would trust him, when he offered to give them a lift home.
However his true intentions were to lure his potential victims
(which he decided were going to live or die depending on his interaction with them or if he considered them to be a "loose woman" and drunk)
Most of his victims looked similar in terms of physique, and a similar youthful look that his daughter possessed, while the other victims were middle-aged and they resembled his wife or mother.
Mikhail was a opportunistic serial killer, serial rapist, sadist and sexual psychopath.
Most of his victims were between 19-38 but one victim that he believed was between 23-24 due to her maturity was actually 15 years old.
It disgusted me that the Russian police force treated the young girl like a insignificant witness and victim of crime, a survivor of rape, and attempted murder.
The blatant disregard of Svetlana and disrespect and victim shaming really pissed me off and offended me.
The testimony of Svetlana and one other surviving victim (that would have solved the case and got Mikhail Popkov convicted a lot sooner but they were not taken seriously and they were ignored)
Due to the ineptitude of the Russian authorities, more women were raped, murdered by Mikhail Popkov, a lot of innocent women's lives could have been saved if only the Russian authorities cared enough to investigate Mikhail Popkov but instead they chose not to due to his reputation as a police officer, his reputation in the community because they didn't want to believe he was capable of savage, rape, and frenzied sadistic behaviour of Mikhail due to his intense hatred of women.
During his 18 year reign of terror (1992-1998) there were two other active serial killers at the same time which were equally despicable and evil.
Andrei Chikatilo (the "Red Ripper")and Alexander Pichushkin
(the "Chessboard Killer")
The fact that Mikhail Popkov was a police officer and a serial killer that used evidence from other crimes to incriminate other murders involvement in his crimes and that her was murdering his victims/then investigating the crime scenes is disgusting and evil. It proves his intelligence, the depths of his manipulation and how he revelled in his crimes and loved the attention of not getting discovered or caught and knowing his colleagues had no idea what his was capable of is truly disturbing.
When the judge asked what he would do if he was given the chance to change the past his behaviour and response says a lot about his personality, behaviour towards woman and if given a chance, if he made his way into China like he planned to he would have continued luring his victims/potential victims & rape and kill hundreds more innocent women unfortunately.
I hope that the surviving family members will get closure and justice for their family members that were cruelly and unfairly targeted, lured, savagely raped, attacked and murdered.
I wish the victims (living and dead) will rest in peace.
You will be remembered and you will be missed, you will not be forgotten.… (mais)

List of 10: The True Story of Serial Killer Joseph Naso may sound like an exciting book for true crime fans like myself. Unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to the high expectations I had for it – some of these inspired by the tag of “Bestselling Author.” What this book needs most is a heavier dose of editing and for that reason, I cannot finish reading it. This marks the fourth novel I’ve had to drop so far this year and, hopefully, it will be the last. (I am simply too sick and have too much to read to waste my time with books that I have to force myself to read.)

The one thing List of 10 accomplishes in what I read is a desire to learn more about Joseph Naso, a serial killer I actually have not encountered prior to this book. Where it fails is in its grossly repetitive wording. As I state in one of my updates on Goodreads, there are several ways to write “dead body.” In addition to this, there are several sentences where words appear tacked onto the end for whatever reason.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing me with a copy free of charged for unbiased review.… (mais)

I read this book via an Amazon-US KINDLE Unlimited download.

While I might be a romance author who naturally enjoys reading books from the various genres of romance, for some reason I also enjoy reading books with deal with True Crimes. Having just read/reviewed entitled “Iron Curtain Killers” I became rather fascinated regarding murders occurring in Russia, lead me to search for another book about serial murderers there, which is how I found this book.

I believe you’ve got to agree with me when I say “How much do we really know about our neighbors and even those who we consider to be about friends?” A prime example of not knowing who they are, and whether or not they might live a double life we know nothing about, can be found in this book.

Looking at Mikhail Popkov from the outside all we would see is a guy with a wonderful family; a guy who worked as a police officer whose work garnered the appreciation and veneration of everyone who he worked with. But with his professional attitude towards his profession, who could have ever expected the dark, heinous individual he hid from everyone.

Knowing who you thought Popkov was, if I told you that he’s a sadistic serial murderer you’d probably say I must be nuts. He’d escaped suspicion due to his service record and alibis from his loving wife. His crimes only came to light after 20 years of his reign of terror when all those who’d been on the police force where he’d worked had to supplied samples of their DNA.

Seeing no way out at this point Popkov finally decided to confess to his deeds, causing all those who knew him to become aghast with horror. He knew although he’d given authorities a list of some of his victims and the sites where their bodies could be found, that in order to not to be sent to the prison where his arrests had been sent, the Black Dolphin, he’d have to give them a more complete listing. Ultimately, Popkov confessed to having committed 81 murders, 22 of which he got convicted of, and got sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

For having researched this individual, Russia’s most notorious serial killer, in the in-depth he has I’m glad to give Mr. Swinney the 5 STARS he’s gotten from this reviewer. I guess his being a narcotic detective involved with homicide investigations for over 17 years is the reason for his commitment in having written this expose in the manner he has.… (mais)