Latvian serial killer gets life imprisonment

A Latvian man was sentenced to life in prison today after being convicted of murdering 13 elderly women, prosecutors said.

Kaspars Petrovs, 27, was also convicted of robbery and inflicting serious bodily injury, prosecution spokeswoman Dzintra Vitolina said. Petrovs had been charged with robbing and strangling 30 women between 2000 and 2003.

During the trial, Petrovs admitted robbing the women but said he strangled them only so they would lose consciousness. It was not immediately clear whether he would appeal.

Investigators said Petrovs, who had been homeless in Riga for three years, followed his victims home and entered their apartments by force or by posing as a worker with the country’s state-owned natural gas company.

Once inside, they said, Petrovs would kill his victims and rob them.

At several of the crime scenes, there were no obvious signs of struggle and police initially assumed some victims had died of natural causes.