Russian police are hunting a suspected serial killer preying on senior citizens in the Urals and Volga federal districts, Sverdlovsk region police said on Thursday.
Several elderly women were recently strangled in their homes across Sverdlovsk and neighboring regions, a police spokesman said.
Police believe the killer is travelling from city to city, winning pensioners’ trust by posing as a social worker and then robbing and killing them, the spokesman said.
In one case in Yekaterinburg, the killer unsuccessfully tried to erase traces of their actions by staging a fire, the police said.
A female serial killer was convicted in 2010 for the murders of 17 elderly women in Sverdlovsk region. The killer, Irina Gaidamak, who received a 20-year prison sentence, was murdering the women to rob them, investigators said at the time. Police did not comment on the similarities between Gaidamak’s crimes and the latest spate of killings.
