Kaspars Petrovs was born in Grobina in Latvia in 1978, the son of a doctor, and had been living homeless on the streets of Riga for about three years by the time of the killings. He had a conviction for theft from 1998.
Between 2000 and 2003 he followed elderly women home in Riga and got into their flats, either by force or by presenting himself as a technician from Latvijas Gaze, the state gas company. Once inside he strangled them and took what was there. The total taken across the series was put at about eighteen thousand lats, then roughly twenty-six thousand euros.
He was arrested on February 3, 2003, initially in connection with five deaths, and went on to admit more than thirty. The prosecution charged him with thirty-eight murders and eight attempted murders along with a string of thefts and robberies.
The court convicted him of thirteen. The reason for the gap is the most important thing in this case, and it is not doubt about what he did: at many of the scenes there had been no sign of a struggle, the deaths of elderly women had been recorded as natural, and the bodies had been buried without an autopsy. There was no forensic evidence left to bring. The prosecution spokeswoman, Dzintra Vitolina, said murder could only be proved in thirteen of the cases.
His own account at trial was that he had not meant to kill. He said he strangled the women only to make them lose consciousness so that he could rob them, and that they were often still breathing when he left. He also blamed what his family had expected of him: he said he understood he would never earn what was demanded of him, and so turned to crime. After conviction he apologised to the victims' families in court and asked their forgiveness.
The Riga Regional Court sentenced him to life imprisonment on May 12, 2005. He was twenty-seven. The figure of thirty-eight is the charge sheet, not the verdict.