Granny the Ripper of St Pete? Body parts & book of spells expose pensioner

Police investigating a horrible murder and mutilation case in St. Petersburg may have caught a killer with 10 victims on her conscience. The old woman reportedly logged her crimes in a diary, with at least one account matching a cold murder case.

The string of events that led to a discovery straight out of horror novels started on Monday, when two packages containing human body parts were discovered in southern St. Petersburg. The elderly victim had been sawn into pieces and dumped. First the upper torso, missing the head and one hand, was found wrapped in a shower curtain. Shortly afterwards a plastic bag with hips and thighs was discovered.

The investigation quickly led to a flat in a nearby condominium, where two elderly women lived. Neighbors said one of the residents had not been seen for several days, so police decided to check. The woman who responded the call was quick to confess to murdering her companion, saying she’d become tired of her, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid.

Tamara Samsonova, 68, is suspected of poisoning her friend Valentina, who was 79 at the time of her death, police reported. After killing her long-time companion on Thursday night last week she dragged the body to the bathroom and butchered it, dumping the parts around the neighborhood.

Investigators found blood in the bathroom that they believe belongs to the victim. The room was also missing a curtain.

“I knew both women for more than 40 years and saw them many times. I could have never imagined that something like this would happen,” said Nikolay, the murderer’s neighbor.

But the search also produced evidence alleging that this was not the first violent crime committed by Samsonova, reported Fontanka newspaper. The woman had kept a detailed diary for quite some years, the report said, and investigators found accounts of a dozen of murders since late 1990s.

One of them described a murder of a man who rented a room in the apartment. Among the grisly details mentioned in the diary was a specific tattoo. In 2003, a mutilated male body with a matching tattoo was found in the same neighborhood. The victim was never identified and the crime went unsolved.

Linking the old murder to the suspect was also a ‘book of spells’, an esoteric book with several pages torn out found by the police. Pages from the same book were found along with the body parts of the 2003 murder victim. There was also some old blood covered by a baseboard in the flat.

Given that, police now suspect that all episodes in the diary – which is interestingly written alternately in Russian, English and German – may be truthful and not fiction. If true, Samsonova killed her own husband, whom she reported missing in 2005.

Investigators are reportedly puzzled about the motive for the killings, saying they don’t appear to be crimes of passion and didn’t bring any financial gain to the alleged perpetrator.

Samsonova will be subjected to a psychiatric examination to determine if she is fit to stand trial for premeditated murder or murders.