Granny Ripper

GRANNY RIPPER

SARAH THOMERSON

TABLE OF CONTENTS

GRANNY RIPPER

JANE DOROTIK

KELLY GISSENDANER

WENDI ANDRIANO

LARISSA SCHUSTER

ALICIA SHAYNE LOVERA

MARY WINKLER

TRACEY GRISSOM

MICHELLE REYNOLDS

THE GRANNY RIPPER

SARAH THOMERSON

Statistics are likely to show us that serial killers tend to be overtly white males in their mid to late 30s. This is not always the case, but this is the demographic that police investigators often look to when determining the suspect of an alleged serial killing. Law enforcement do not often look to older women when they are seeking out suspects. For two decades, this fact kept Tamara Samsonova off the radar of police investigators.

In photographs, she’s a thin, frail woman with a mess of blond-brown hair and watery brown eyes. The wrinkles on her face and hands and reminiscent of any innocent old woman off the street. Tamara Samsonova looks as benign as the old woman next door who used to let you play in her yard when you were a child. The shocking reality of Tamara Samsonova, however, is much darker and more twisted than investigators and the general public could possibly imagine. The media took to calling her The Granny Ripper, and the nickname is not unwarranted.

Born on the 5th of February in 1947, Tamara Samsonova grew up and lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia. There is not much known about her early life, or what first lead her down the dark path that she now walks. What is known about Samsonova is that she studied English and German while attending the Moscow State Linguistic University, and that she has been previously hospitalized at least three times for varying histories of mental illness. Her life before becoming a serial-killer sensation is relatively unknown. She refused to speak truthfully with the police, and even lied about her life before this, saying that she used to be an actress and that she had graduated from the Vaganov Ballet Academy. However, the only information on Samsonova’s past that can be found was her previous employment as a monitor of surveillance for hotel guests at the Grand Hotel Europe.

The details of Samsonova’s employment describe a form of prostitution. Though illegal in the Soviet era, where Samsonova lived and worked, the KGB would employ prostitutes as informants. It was likely that Samsonova was used by the KGB as a prostitute to collect information on guests from foreign countries.

Samsonova was 68 by the time that her crimes came to light. Police investigators suspected at least two decades of activity, with her span of killings starting in 1995 and ending in 2015 when the police finally apprehended her. Because there is so little known about Samsonova’s past, including her childhood and adulthood, there is no way to tell how she came to be the prolific serial killer she is today. What happened during her childhood that could have caused Samsonova’s ability to turn off all empathy for other human beings, and allow her to commit the heinous crimes that she is accused of?

A picture can be drawn of Samsonova’s life, however, from those who knew her. Maria Krivenko was a music teacher, and was the closest neighbor to Samsonova for at least fifteen years - almost the entire span of Samsonova’s active killing spree. Krivenko could recall that Samsonova would rent out a room in her home, and had regular clientele who would stay as her tenants. Krivenko is able to give us insight into Samsonova’s strange way of life. She attests that Samsonova was a bit strange, and could often be see going outside without her shoes and socks on, even in the Russian winters. Samsonova would also leave her house in the middle of the night to do grocery shopping, explaining to Krivenko that she would buy food during the night because that was when she liked to eat it.

Samsonova was known to have an erratic train of thought. Krivenko claimed that she was capable of holding a normal conversation, but would suddenly and quickly switch to unintelligible thoughts, and would become to sound crazy.

Having known been her neighbor for 15 years, Krivenko knew Samsonova when she was younger, and describes her as having kept up with her appearance. Krivenko describes instances where Samsonova would take great joy in sitting topless with her back turned to the windows for the neighbors to see. Krivenko even describes her own husband as having enjoyed these displays that Samsonova would put on.

Krivenko stated that Samsonova was uniquely interested in Andrei Chikatilo, also known as The Red Ripper. Chikatilo was the Soviet Union’s most prolific serial killer, described as a ‘maniac’ who would torture his victims while they were still alive by cutting their tongues out, bursting their eardrums, and even ripping out their eyes for fear of them memorizing what he looked like. Over the span of 12 years, Chikatilo terrorized the Soviet Union and tortured, raped and killed over 52 victims. Chikatilo was sentenced to death and executed in 1994, but Krivenko told investigators that Samsonova showed a obsessive interested in Chikatilo. She would collect information about him, and most especially information on how he committed his murders.

Interest in true crime does not a criminal make, and yet there there seems to be few other reasons that Samsonova would take such an interest in one of the worst psychopaths to terrorize the Soviet Union.

True insight into her mind can only be found between the pages of her diaries. The gruesome diaries found by police investigators detail up to 11 victims.  Samsonova’s arrest was made on July 28th in 2015, twenty years after her first known killing. It was only by what seemed to be luck that police investigators were finally able to put a name and face to a decades long spree of serial killings.

A week before Samsonova’s arrest, a close circuit security camera, also known as a CCTV camera, captured images of Samsonova near her home in St. Petersburg. In the captured CCTV footage, Samsonova can be seen dragging a bag that police investigators immediately suspected to be a dismembered body, or parts of a body. She’s dressed in a bright blue raincoat with the hood up over her head, and a black plastic bag down at her feet. The victim that Samsonova can be seen disposing on the footage was suspected to be Valentina Ulanova, a 79 year old woman who was paralytic. Samsonova was Ulanova’s caretaker. Later, on additional CCTV footage, Samsonova can be seen carrying a pot with a lid down from Ulanova’s apartment.

Ulanova’s body was found near a pond on Dimitrova street in St. Petersburg. Her body was found cut into eight separate pieces. Her torso, missing the head, was found along with one of her hands, wrapped up in a shower curtain. Then, not long after, the dark plastic bag that Samsonova was seen carrying was also discovered. Inside, the dismembered hips and thighs were discovered. Because Ulanova’s body was found without her head, police investigators suspect the CCTV footage of Samsonova leaving the apartment with the closed lid saucepan, was footage of her disposing of Ulanova’s head in a separate location.

It was this CCTV footage that lead to Samsonova’s arrest. For two decades, Samsonova killed at least eleven people, as detailed in her own hand by her diaries. The suspected body found, however, is closer to fourteen. Without the luck of having been caught disposing the body on CCTV footage, no one knows how long she would continue to keep killing. Perhaps, she would have kept going until eventually apprehended on another crime, or she would have kept going as long as she was physically able. At 68, Samsonova’s ability to subdue and murder her victims and then subsequently dispose of the body would not last for much longer. This could be a reason that her last victim was Ulanova, who was dependent on Samsonova as her caretaker, and couldn’t conceivably fight back against her killer.

During questioning, Samsonova told police investigators that she and Ulanova had argued about cups that were unwashed, but later revealed that it was an argument about Samsonova continuing to live with Ulanova that lead to the eventual death of the 79 year old woman. Samsonova was told by Ulanova that she no longer wished to have her living in her apartment as her caretaker. Allegedly, Ulanova had told Samsonova that she was tired of her, and wanted her to leave. I was scared to live at home, Samsonova told police investigators, and stated that she panicked.

In chilling detail, Samsonova told investigators during her interrogation how she put 50 pills of Phenazepamum into a salad that she prepared for Ulanova after coming home one day following the exchange. Later, at two in the morning, Samsonova came into the kitchen to find Ulanova lying unconscious on the floor. Because she was heavier and larger than Samsonova, she proceeded to cut up Ulanova’s body right there in the kitchen. During a re-enactment of the crime, Samsonova demonstrated to police how she had removed Ulanova’s head and put it in the saucepan that would later be seen on the CCTV footage. Samsonova then began cooking Ulanova’s head, perhaps in an attempt to disguise her identity should her head be found.

The way in which Ulanova was discovered and what had been done to the body speaks volumes to Samsonova’s intentions. It also speaks more into the insight of her mind than any speculation can achieve. Samsonova’s reluctance to speak with the police, or to give them correct information, leaves her diaries to do most of the talking for her. Photographs of Samsonova’s apartment show a small, cramped space in utter disarray. Bags, clothes, old boxes and papers are scattered all over the floor and the furniture. It was in this mess that police investigators discovered the diaries.

Photographs of the diaries show an almost illegible handwriting, words cramped together on lineless paper. The diaries themselves are written in English, German and Russian. These diaries were found kept among black