Kaspars Petrovs

Kaspars Petrovs (born 1978) is a Latvian national who is a convicted serial killer of the murder of thirteen elderly women by the Riga Regional Court on May 12, 2005 and sentenced to life in prison.

Petrovs, the son of a prominent medical doctor, had been homeless for several years. He was initially held in connection with the murders of five women in February 2003 and would confess to killing upwards of thirty women while being held in custody. He would later be charged with the strangulation murder and robberies of thirty-eight mostly elderly women residents of Riga, Latvia between 2000 and 2003. However, authorities would eventually only pursue charges in the deaths of thirteen of the victims due to a lack of forensic evidence.

Petrovs, who had a previous conviction for theft in 1998, maintained after his arrest and during his 2005 trial that he had not intended to kill his victims, but only to rob them. [ [http://www.latvia.no/index.php?articleid=104&expand=15 "The Baltic Times", May 19-25, 2005] ] Petrovs strangled the women after following them home and forcibly entering their apartments or posing as a gas company employee and later claimed that he had only intended to render them unconscious so that he may rob them. [ [http://www.latvia.no/index.php?articleid=104&expand=15 "The Baltic Times", May 19-25, 2005] ]

After his conviction, Petrovs apologized to his victims' families in court and asked for their forgiveness. [ [http://newsfromrussia.com/hotspots/2005/05/12/59725.html "Pravda"] ]

ources

* [http://www.latvia.no/index.php?articleid=104&expand=15 Latvia.no. May 19-25, 2005]
* [http://www.tvnet.lv/zinas/latvija/kriminalzinas/article.php?id=72186 TVNET Ziņas. Latvijā] (in Latvian.)

External links

* [http://newsfromrussia.com/hotspots/2005/05/12/59725.html "Pravda". May 12, 2005]
* [http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/05/04/2003253111 "Taipei Times". May 4, 2005]
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050503/ai_n14609750 "The (London) Independent"]