"Russia registered over 500 serial murders in the past three years. Investigators solved 132 murders in 11 serial killer cases in 2007-2008," Alexander Bastyrkin said in an interview published on the Prosecutor General's Investigation Committee website.
He said these crimes posed a particularly serious threat to society because of their deliberate and inhumane nature.
In the most notorious recent case, Alexander Pichushkin, 33, nicknamed the 'chessboard killer' for his habit of marking off his victims on the squares of a chessboard, was convicted in 2007 of 48 murders.
Bastyrkin said that Investigation Committee was joining efforts with other federal law enforcement agencies to develop preventive measures to deal with serial killers in Russia.
