(Reuters) - A Russian serial killer known as the "Volga Maniac" was jailed for life on Thursday for murdering 31 elderly women, the TASS state news agency reported.

       Radik Tagirov was arrested in 2020 on suspicion of the killings. They were committed across 15 cities in and around the Tatarstan region, about 730 km (450 miles) east of Moscow, between 2011 and 2012.

       Law enforcement agencies said he had sometimes posed as a social worker, electrician or plumber to enter the women's homes before strangling them and stealing their valuables.

       Tagirov was a locksmith who had previously served prison time for petty theft. The court in the city of Kazan also found him guilty of several attempted murders as well as assaults on 34 more elderly women, TASS said.

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       (Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)