Chapter 6: The story of Dr.

Joseph Michael Swango

Often, we put our trust in doctors to help us live hale and healthy. Our faith in the
medical system is so impeccable that we seldom doubt the credibility of the doctors who
treat us. This is because we seldom come across doctors who abuse this trust. Heres the
story of a physician, who was and is still considered as one of the botches on the pride of
the medical fraternity. Joseph Michael Swango, born on 21 st October, 1954, was not just
another American physician. He was the devil donning the white garbs and was
responsible for claiming the lives of close to 60 people, although he was convicted only
for the murder of four people. So how did it all begin? Let us look at how this pleasant
looking physician was responsible for the death of so many people, with poison up his
sleeve.

Early life
He was born as a middle child into the family of John Virgil Swango and Muriel Swango.
Though he was born in Tacoma, Washington, he was raised in Quincy, Illinois. His
father had served as an officer of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Despite his
glorious and proud career, his life was blemished by alcoholism. The war had only
worsened his depression, which ultimately lead to his marriage falling apart. When
things hit rock bottom, his wife divorced him and moved out to Quincy. This resulted in
Michael growing up with his mother. It is believed that he was the closest to his mother.
And perhaps, she might be the only person who was not harmed by him, despite living
in close proximity to him for so many years.
As he grew up, he proved to be a bright student. He graduated as valedictorian from
Quincy Catholic Boys High School in the year of 1972. He was not only good in studies
but was also an excellent clarinet player. This gained him a seat in the Quincy Notre
Dame band. His classmates remember him as a studious and an energetic boy.
After graduating from High school, he went on to serve in the Marine Corps. He
received an honorable discharge in the year of 1980. His service in the Marine Corps
made him get committed to consistent physical exercise. This commitment continued
even after he joined the Quincy College, subsequent to his discharge. When he was not
busy studying, he was often seen performing calisthenics or jogging inside the campus.
Some students also stated that Michael resorted to performing pushups, whenever he
felt like punishing himself. Amidst all this exercise regime, he was still a bright student
and aspired to succeed. He graduated, yet again with flying colors, garnering the
American Chemical Society Award.
After graduating, he went on to enroll himself at the Southern Illinois University School
of Medicine. Things started taking a drastic turn since this point in his life. Michael, who
was always a bright student all those years, started losing interest in his studies. His
college mates remember him as a lazy person. He started showing interest in being an
ambulance attendant, as opposed to devoting time for his studies. He was observed to
have shown a special interest and fascination towards patients who were dying.

However, not many people gave him much attention for this weird behavior of his. Soon
enough, all the patients assigned to him started coding or suffering from emergencies,
which were life threatening in nature. Five of his patients died eventually.
He was able to get away with his lack of interest in studies for a very long time.
However, he had to pay the price for this lack of interest, in the last month of his college.
Just when he was about to graduate, his lies came to surface. His fake checkups during
his obstetrics and gynecology shift were discovered. One thing lead to another and there
were many students who voiced their suspicions about Michael faking his checkups
since the second year of college. His fate in the college rested in the hands of the college
committee. Everybody, except one, had voted for his dismissal. This person wanted to
give Michael a second chance, given his excellent track record in the past. Since the
college rules permitted the dismissal of a student only if the committee unanimously
voted for it, Michael was given a second chance. However, there were several people
who voiced serious concerns about Michaels competence. Nevertheless, he was given a
chance to graduate a year after his class, provided he repeated the obstetrics and
gynecology shift and submit assignments with respect to several other specialties. He
finally graduated from SIU.

Murders
Because of his poor track record at SIU, his evaluation letter from the colleges Dean was
not as flashy as he would have expected it to be. Despite the shoddy evaluation letter, he
managed to get a surgical internship in 1983 at the Ohio State University Medical
Center, which was supposed to be followed by a residency in neurosurgery. Soon
enough, the nurses assigned to the Rhodes hall, where Michael was also assigned shifts,
started noticing that the patients in this wing started dying without any warning. The
numbers grew as the days passed by. The one thing that connected all these deaths was
the fact that Michael was the surgical intern who was assigned to this floor at the time of
their deaths. He was caught by one of the nurses, when he tried injecting something into
a patient assigned to him. The patient, who was stable till then, mysteriously grew
seriously ill. When the nurses voiced their suspicions, it fell into deaf ears. The
management accused the nurses of being paranoid and brushed aside these suspicions.
An investigation conducted in 1984 cleared Michael of all suspicions. However, he was
not offered the residency in neurosurgery, which lead to his internship ending in June.
Michael, shortly following his internship, went on to work at Quincy in July 1984. He
started working with the Adams County Ambulance Corps, as an emergency medical
technician. This appointment was despite him getting fired by another ambulance
company, when he had let a heart patient drive the ambulance to the hospital. It was
later observed that several paramedics fell ill on the days, when Michael brought in food
for the team or prepared coffee. The paramedics suffered from sudden and serious
illness and nobody was able to identify the cause of it. Michael was subsequently
arrested in October, 1984, when the Quincy police department discovered arsenic and
other poisons in his possession.

Almost a year later, he was convicted in the August of 1985 for poisoning his coworkers.
His punishment included five years of imprisonment. This also brought his experiments
at Ohio State University Medical Center to surface. The hospital management was
severely criticized for not involving the police early in this. The shortcomings in the
investigation conducted by the hospital were also revealed during this probe. The Ohio
prosecutors were not able to press charges of murder against Michael, owing to the lack
of physical evidence, linking Michael to the deaths that occurred in the hospital. Hence,
Michael was condemned to only five years of imprisonment.
Michael was released from the prison in 1989. Subsequent to his release, he shifted base
to Virginia. He found employment at the State career development center in Newport
News, as a counselor. However, he did not sustain this job for a long time. He was
eventually fired, when he was caught working on a scrapbook of disasters, during the
official hours. He later found job as a laboratory technician. History repeated itself and
his colleagues started suffering from strange illnesses and continuous stomach pain. It
was around this time, when Michael came in contact with Kristin Kinney. She was
working as a nurse in the Riverside hospital. One thing lead to another and the two
eventually fell in love. During his employment at the lab, nobody linked the persistent
illnesses to him. He continued working there till 1991, after which he aspired to become
a doctor. He resigned and went on to seek employment as a doctor. FBI started
investigating these illnesses, only months after Michael had resigned.
Given his past track record, Michael was well aware that he would not be able to find
employment as a doctor. He changed his name legally to Daniel J. Adams in 1991 and
applied for a position at the Ohio Valley Medical Center in West Virginia. He later
moved to Sanford USD Medical Center, situated in Sioux Falls, in the year 1992. With
the help of fake documents and forged track records, he was able to gain a reputation as
a good physician in both these institutions. Soon, he was revered as a respectable
member of the medical fraternity, by his colleagues. He was able to pull some strings in
the Illinois Department of Corrections and successfully forged a fact sheet. This fact
sheet claimed that Michael had gone to the prison for six months, for getting involved in
a fist fight with a colleague as opposed to his five years of imprisonment against the
charges of battery. This was because most states denied medical license to a convicted
felon. Hence, this forged fact sheet was instrumental in him acquiring medical license.
However, the forging of documents didnt stop there. He went on to forge a letter from
the then Virginian governor, Gerald L. Baliles, which went to restore Michaels right to
vote. The letter also stated that he was permitted to serve as part of jury, given his good
conduct in the last few months and based on the testaments of his friends and family.
Michael was able to make a good name for himself, during his time at Sanford. His
downfall started when he decided to be part of the American Medical Association. He
had expected the AMA to be as timid as the Sanford center, when it came to background
checks. The AMA dug more into his past, than Sanford and found out about his poison
conviction charges. Another thing that tore his mask, apart from the AMAs research,
was the episode of Justice Files, which was aired on Discovery Channel during

Thanksgiving Day. The episode featured Michaels case. This created a lot of unrest and
the employers of Sanford started calling the management, out of fear. All these
discoveries resulted in Sanford firing Michael from their service. In the meantime, his
lover, Kinney, was suffering from unexplained migraines. She left for Virginia in due
course. It was not a surprise to know that her headaches stopped, ever since her
departure from Michael.
Following his firing from Sanford, Michael went on to find a place in the State
University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicines psychiatric residency
program. This helped him escape the AMAs radar for a brief period. As part of his
residency program, he was assigned a rotation at the VA Medical Center, in the internal
medicine department. The patterns began to show up yet again. The patients assigned to
him started dying, for no solid reason. As he was continuing his stint at this center, his
lover killed herself. Subsequent to her death, her mother, Sharon Cooper, became aware
of the tainted track record of Michael. She was appalled when she came to know that he
was still a part of the medicine fraternity. She decided to let the world know about this
monster. Through one of her daughters friends, she was able to get in touch with the
Dean of the Sanford USD Medical Center, Mr. Robert Talley. She informed him about
his current job at Stony Brook. Understanding the gravity of the situation, he called up
the dean of Stony Brook, Mr. Jordan Cohen. The psychiatry department was alerted
soon enough and Michael was put under serious questioning by Alan Miller, the
departments head. In the end, he admitted to have lied about his past. He also divulged
details about his conviction for poisoning and imprisonment in Illinois. This resulted in
him getting fired from Stony Brook. There were numerous protests by the public against
the management for employing the likes of someone as notorious as Michael. Jordan
and Alan stepped down from their posts, after facing a lot of heat from the public.
Jordan made it a point to share the lesson he learnt, with other colleagues in the medical
fraternity, before he resigned. He warned all the 1000 teaching hospitals and 125
medical schools, across the United States, about Michael. This was to effectively curb
Michael from gaining a seat in any medical residency program in the United States.
Michaels last stint at the VA medical center drew the attention of the FBI. This was
enough to send Michael into hiding. He managed to escape FBIs radar for a while, until
1994. FBI found him in the employment of a waste water facility owned by a computer
equipment company in Atlanta. Michael was working as the chemist there. The Feds
alerted the company about Michaels track record. They fired him for lying about his
previous work experience and track record. The FBI did not stop with that. They went
on to obtain a warrant against Michael for gaining entry into a VA hospital, using forged
credentials and papers.
However, the ever elusive Michael, managed to escape the shackles of FBI. He managed
to escape to Zimbabwe. Forged documents became his ally again when they gained him
access into the Mnene Hospital. As you might have already guessed by now, the patients
assigned to him during his tenure at this hospital, started dying suddenly one after
another, due to reasons unknown. The mysterious deaths continued for a long time and

nobody suspected Michael for these deaths. In a years time, the police were able to link
Michael to the deaths in the hospital. They also found out about his murky past and
arrested him against charges of poisoning. Just before his trial date, he managed to
escape from police custody. He went on to hide in Zambia. He remained undetected in
Zambia.
Old habits die hard. That was the case with Michael as well. He went on to apply for a
job at the Royal Hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, yet again with forged documents.
On the other part of the world, an investigation was going on, to discover the
whereabouts of Michael. Tom Valery, Criminal investigator, in consultation with
Charlene Thomesen MD, a forensic psychiatrist, were the lead investigators in this case.
Charlenes expertise added more value to the investigation than Tom would have hoped
to, when he had sought her help. Based on the case history, she was able to build a
psychological profile of Michael. She also tried analyzing the reason behind Michaels
behavior. Impressed with Toms groundwork, the FBI brought him into the case
officially. He got in touch with the Manhattan DEA office and was trying to gather
information about Michaels attempt to get a job at the Department of Veterans affairs.
The team was able to gather more information about Michael and were finally able to
arrest him, when he was on the way to Saudi Arabia, in 1997.
Michael, having understood the implications of his crimes and fearing the repercussions
of FBI discovering his stint at Zimbabwe, pleaded guilty for using forged documents in
his government application, in March 1998. In the same year, he was sentenced to serve
three and a half years in prison. The judge had explicitly prohibited, in his judgment,
Michael from being involved in any chore in the prison, which involved him serving
drugs or preparing food.
Michael was relieved that it was only 3.5 years of imprisonment. However, he was not
aware of what the government had up its sleeve, during his imprisonment. The
government tried hard to gather as much evidence as possible against Michael, while he
was locked up behind the bars. As part of the government investigation, three bodies of
his patients were exhumed, to garner evidence. This lead to the discovery of chemicals
and poisons in their bodies. They also found traces of lethal chemicals in the body of
another patient of his, whom he had paralyzed with an injection. The patient eventually
went into comatose and died. The prosecutors were able to dig up more information
about the patients who had died in the hands of Michael, which were crucial in
convicting Michael for all these murders. For instance, he had said, in his medical report
that his patient Cynthia Ann McGee had died due to heart failure. However, when the
prosecutors examined her body, they found traces of potassium in her body. It was
discovered that he had injected potassium into her body, which had resulted in heart
failure. This way, the prosecutors were piling up one evidence after another, against
Michael.
Michael was due to be released from prison in July, 2000. The FBI pressed charges
against Michael on July 11, 2000, which was not even a week before his release date.
They had pressed charges with one count of assault, three counts of murder, one count

of mail fraud, one count of false statements and one count of conspiracy to commit wire
fraud. This was not the end of the charges. His misdeeds in Zimbabwe followed him
here. The Zimbabwe authorities pressed charges against him for poisoning seven
patients, who were in his care. Five out of the seven patients had died from the
poisoning.
Michael pleaded not guilty to all these charges. However, as the case progressed, he was
aware of the serious implications that awaited him in Zimbabwe. He realized that if he
continued to plead not guilty here, he was sure that he would be subjected to a death
penalty. He subsequently yielded and pleaded guilty to the murder of Cynthia Ann
McGee. The prosecutors read out passages from his personal diary, during his
sentencing hearing. The passages resonated the joy and satisfaction Michael felt when
he killed his patients. The prosecutors went on to describe the events that had
transpired on the day of Cynthias death. She was 19 years old at the time of her death.
On January 14th, 1984, Cynthia had suffered from high fever. Since Michael was the
doctor assigned to her case, he was called in to do a blood test, to identify the reason for
her fever. He went on to take a blood sample from her, for the purpose of the tests, at
around 11:30 p.m. The nurses found her coding at around midnight. Even though
Michael was available at the floor when he was paged, he did not visit Cynthias ward. As
the prosecutors were narrating the sequence of events that occurred on the day of
Cynthias murder, Michaels face showed no emotion. He was almost uninterested in the
process.
During the hearing, the prosecution shared information about his modus operandi.
When it came to his colleagues, Michael had mixed arsenic in their food or beverages. In
some cases, he had mixed other poisons in their food. When it came to his patients, he
had used poisons mostly. In the absence of poisons, he had usually administered an
overdose of the drugs which had been prescribed to the patients. Alternatively, he would
prescribe lethal drugs to his patients. In some cases, he would prescribe unnecessary
medicines to his patients.
Having gone over all the evidence, Judge Jacob Mishler sentenced Michael to three
consecutive life sentences, with no room for parole. He is still alive and spending his
final years in prison.
There have been countless people, who have suffered at the hands of Michael. Doctors
are considered as the angels of life and mercy. But Michael had tainted this and turned
into Satans apprentice. He is considered as one of the most terrible serial killers in the
history of the United States of America. His case was also featured on Unsolved
Mysteries, an American crime show.

Chapter 7: The story of Darya Nikolayevna

Saltykova
There has never been any dearth for tyrants or sadists, when we flip through the pages
of history. Where there is power, there is also scope for abuse. Power has been the most
important factor that unites all sadists and tyrants. Take the case of Adolf Hitler. It was
his power which gave him the freedom to carry out the mass executions of Jews. Here is
another story, where power played an important role in the death of so many people.

Early life
Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, also known as Saltychikha, was born into a Russian noble
family. She was born on November 3, 1730 and her parents were Anna Ivanovna
Davydova and Nikolai Avtonomovich Ivanov. At a very young age, she was married to
another noble, Gleb Alexeyevich Saltykov. Through him, she bore two sons namely
Theodore and Nicholas.
The gods were cruel when she was widowed at a tender age of 26. She inherited her
husbands wealth and emerged as the richest widow in Moscow. She soon became the
owner of the beautiful estate called Troirtskoe, which was situated near Moscow. She
went on to live here, with her two sons and serfs. It is believed that she had close to 600
serfs at her service, when she moved into this estate. Serfs were the Russian term used
to denote peasants, who were slaves. Apart from this glorious estate, she also owned a
good deal of property in Moscow.
Nobody noticed anything amiss, when she was still married. She was seen to be gloomy
and dull, at all times. One remarkable quality of hers, which was well noted by everyone,
was her pious nature. She was extremely generous, when it came to donating money to
monasteries and churches.
Things took a turn in her life when she came in contact with Nikolay Tyutchev. He was
young and good looking, which set off the sparks between the two. Her lonely life in the
estate had made her a gloomy widow. However, she found herself getting excited about
this affair with Tyutchev. He soon became her only source of happiness. However, this
happiness did not last long. Tyutchev was also having another affair with a young girl,
but this affair was more serious and passionate than the one he shared with Saltykova.
He married this fair maiden secretly in a church. When the news reached the ears of
Saltykova, she was mad with rage. Betrayal and fury made her lose her senses and she
almost killed Tyutchev. This violent reaction from Saltykova was enough for Tyutchev
escaped from the estate, along with his wife, to Moscow. What added salt to the injury
was her disappointment for losing the opportunity to kill him.

Tortures and murders

Since her lovers betrayal, she started taking out her anger on her serfs. She hated all the
women serfs in her service. She hated the younger women serfs more than the others.
Every time she looked at a young girl in her service, she could not help but think of the

betrayal of her lover. The fact that he had left her for a younger woman left a very bitter
taste in her mouth and this was hard to ignore. She started regarding these young girls
as her enemies, even though they didnt do anything to offend her or displease her.
Children and pregnant women were not spared either. She tortured them and killed
them, by beating them, throwing them out of her house to let them freeze naked in the
frost, breaking their bones, pouring scalding hot water on them and through various
other means. Men were seldom her victims, although she ended up killing three of them,
by mistake. But she had her own means to torture them. If she ever found that a serf
loved another woman in her service, she would agonize him by killing his lover. The
serfs wives met the same fate as their lovers.
There was no specific reason for Saltykovas anger. She would become furious all of a
sudden and punish her serfs. She initially started killing the younger serfs by throwing
logs at them, when she found that they didnt clean the house properly. She used to whip
them and beat them to death, in some cases. It was said that she used to derive pleasure
by punishing these young girls. She was a sadist who had claimed the lives of close to
139 people.
As Saltykova was well connected, given her station, she was able to get away with all
these murders. Any complaints against her were ignored. People who had complained
against her and her atrocities were mostly punished, because of her connections in the
royal court. Hence, she was able to continue her acts of sadism, without much
hindrance. But there was lot of civil unrest, especially from the families of the victims.
They rose in protest against her. This was too much for the authorities to turn a blind
eye to. They had no choice but to bring Saltykova to justice. However, it was not a fair
trial. Saltykova was tried only for the murder of 38 people, which was way lesser than
the number of people she had actually killed.

Arrest
As I mentioned before, the crimes of Saltykova went unnoticed, until the summer of
1762. That was when things started working against her. As I mentioned before, she had
a way of agonizing the men serfs in her service. Ermolay Ilyin was a serf who had lost
three wives consecutively because Saltykova had ordered them to be beaten to death.
Filled with agony and rage, he escaped from the estate. He was not alone in this. His
friend, Sakhvely Martynov, was also his accomplice in this escape act. They both fled to
St. Petersburg. To bring Saltykova to justice, they both submitted a petition before
Empress Catherine II. Appalled by the contents of the petition, she ordered the College
of Justice to probe into the matter. To let the world know about her righteousness,
Catherine decided that the trial of Saltykova will be held public.
Based on the petition, she was arrested in 1762. She was imprisoned for six years. This
was because they were sure that Saltykova would disrupt the investigations, given her
noble status and contacts in the society. This was enough time for the authorities to fish
out more evidence against her. Even though she was locked up safely behind the bars,
her victims were still terrorized by her. They were hesitant to give any evidence against

her, fearing that they would have to face the repercussions if she was released from
prison. Even the witnesses to her crimes were scared to testify against her.
When the investigations didnt yield much information, with all the witnesses and
victims keeping mum, Stepan Volkov, the lead investigator in this case, was
instrumental in allowing an action to proceed. Saltykova seemed to be mentally sound,
hence they ruled out insanity as a cause for her misdeeds. Further questioning showed
that she was not repentant of her mistakes. Given her pious nature, a priest was brought
in. His duty was to get Saltykova to confess to her crimes. However, he was not able to
break her and get a confession out of her. She was unnervingly confident and positive
that she would be able to escape punishment. This was the reason behind her silence
throughout the interrogation.
Forensic experts went on to discover her modus operandi based on the bodies of the
victims. They discovered that she had used different methods of torture to kill her
victims. The research revealed that she had even murdered girls, as young as 11 years
old. As the investigation progressed, more and more evidence were brought to the fore,
against Saltykova. With enough evidence against her, Catherine was wondering how to
come up with a punishment that would justify her misdeeds. This was because the death
penalty was abolished in Russia at that point in time. At the same time, Catherine also
required the support of the noble families, in the years to come. Hence, this was a hard
decision that had to be made, to diffuse the civil unrest.
The judgment was finally given on October 2 nd, 1768. She was sentenced for life. But
before she could be packed off to the prison, there was a civil execution ceremony. She
was chained to a platform in front of a crowd. A sign hung from her neck which read as
this women has tortured and murdered. She was made to stand like this for an hour,
after which she was sent to the prison to serve her sentence. It was not just Saltykova
who suffered as a result of the investigations. There were several police authorities who
had ignored the complaints of the serfs in the initial years of her torture. The
investigators were able to collate the list of officials, who had turned a blind eye to all the
atrocities committed by Saltykova. They were immediately stripped of their titles and
offices.

Imprisonment
As mentioned before, she was subject to imprisonment for life, in place of capital
punishment. As part of her imprisonment, she was confined to the dungeon of a
monastery. It was said that she was kept chained inside the dark dungeon. A room with
no windows was built for her, inside the dungeon. So it was said that she had spent most
of her years of imprisonment in darkness. A guard was posted outside her cell at all
times. Food would be brought in by a nun, who would also bring a candle. The nun
would take away the candle once she finished her meal and she was let to spend the rest
of the time in darkness. It was said that she had spent almost 11 years inside this dark
cell.

The prison, where Saltykova was confined to, was famous for imprisoning women of
noble birth. The families of these women prisoners would pay the monasteries hefty
sums of money, to ensure that these women prisoners were not denied any facilities and
were treated well. However, there was no such relative to back Saltykova, for it would
turn the public against them. After being condemned to the dark dungeon for eleven
years, she was transferred to another room in the monastery, in 1779. Unlike her old
cell, this room had one window with shutters. Her behavior was constantly monitored
and recorded. It was said that her violent and haughty manners didnt desert her, even
after spending so many years at the prison. Whenever a visitor peered at her, through
the window, out of curiosity, she would spit at them. She is also known to have abused at
some of these visitors. At some instances, she would even go to the extent of shoving her
stick through the window, with the intention of attacking them. Nobody was able to
identify the reason for her irrational behavior. Whether it was a result of solitary
confinement inside a dark cell for eleven years or if she was suffering from some sort of
mental illness, the answer remains a mystery. Having spent 33 years in the monastery,
as a prisoner, she died at the age of 71. Her body was buried in the Donskoy Monastery
necropolis, where all her relatives were buried.
This case was capable of shocking everyone. A woman committing such atrocities and
deriving pleasure from it, was completely unheard of. What was more shocking was, her
lack of guilt till the day she died. She did not feel remorse for the 139 murders she had
committed, even after all those years at prison. As I mentioned before, power plays an
important role in molding an individual into a tyrant. Saltykovas station and power
gave her the opportunity to experiment with the lives of so many people. It was her
power, which made the officials turn a deaf ear to all the complaints of the serfs. Had
they taken action then, the number of victims would have considerably decreased. Their
lack of action in this case just facilitated things for Saltykova to go on with her atrocities.
She is still considered as one of the deadliest serial killers, Russia has ever seen.

Chapter 8: The story of Satan in a skirt

Here is another story about a blood curdling Russian serial killer, Irina Viktorovna
Gaidamachuk. She was dubbed as the Satan in a skirt and is considered as one of the
deadliest serial killers of Russia.

Early life
She was born in the year 1972, in the town of Nyagan. She became addicted to alcohol at
a very young age and this addiction followed her through the years. She got into trouble
all the time, as a teenager. Alcohol addiction was not the only problem she had. When
she was a teenager, she was gang raped by a bunch of boys. One of the rapists had
videotaped the entire rape. When this piece of evidence was played out in the court, she
noticed an elderly woman who was walking by and was laughing at her while she was
getting raped. She assumed that she was the relative of one of the rapists. This was the
first incident that had sown the seeds of hatred for older people, in the minds of Irina.
When she was twenty years old, she shifted base to Krasnoufimsk in the Sverdlovsk
region, in the year 1990. This is where she met the prospective father of her two
children.

Murders
As I mentioned before, her alcohol addiction followed her through the years. It was her
alcohol addiction that turned her into a murderer as well. Knowing very well that she is
an alcohol addict, her husband never gave her much money. But he never would have
imagined that she would take such drastic measures to meet her alcohol needs.
Irina would pose as a social worker and gain access into the homes of elderly women.
Her targets were majorly old women, aging between 61 and 89. One of the reasons why
she chose old women could be attributed to her hatred towards old women from when
she was a teenager. She would observe the activities of her victims for days together.
Once she has gathered information such as when they left their houses, where they went
and how frequently they were visited by relatives and friends, she would try to gain
access. She would then go on and knock their doors and introduce herself as a social
worker. After gaining access, she would slowly gain their trust. Once she was sure that
she has gained their trust, she would deem it fit to attack. She always used an axe or a
hammer to attack her victims. She would kill them by smashing open their skulls. Once
they were dead, she would steal money from the houses of these victims and use it for
buying vodka. She had not stolen more than 1000 pounds from all her victims. The
police reports say that she had stolen as little as 20 pounds as well, to buy alcohol. In
some of the cases, she had even set the apartments on fire, to wipe out any traces that
would link her to the murder. However, these fires were soon put out, thanks to the
neighbors who were vigilant enough to catch the fire early.
Her first murder was in 2003. But it took the police close to seven years to get their
hands on her. This was because they were having troubles in identifying the gender of
the murderer. For a very long time, they were carrying on the investigation, based on the

assumption that the murderer was a male. They had never considered a female
murderer. This was because of the cruelty of these murders. This was perhaps the
reason why it took the police so long to identify Irina as the murderer.
The investigation steered in the right direction only when one of Irinas victims
managed to escape. The lone survivor told the police that the murderer was a woman.
She also described the murderer. The officers also considered the possibility of a man
dressing up as a woman and killing these old women. Despite all these theories, the
police were nowhere close to finding Irina. The interrogation in Krasnoufimsk was so
severe that the women were scared of the police at all times. The survivor had told the
police that the murderer was a neatly dressed woman with dark hair. This was enough to
increase the paranoia of all the women with dark hair in the region. Some of them even
went ahead and dyed their hair blonde, to escape the interrogation of the police.
After the last botched attempt, Irina was extra careful in her next attempts. She started
wearing a wig and continued attacking old women in other regions such as Achit,
Yekaterinburg, Serov. This was done to make the police believe that the murderer had
escaped Krasnoufimsk and would not strike there again. The investigations hence died
in Krasnoufimsk and the police started focusing on the other areas. However, their
attention was drawn back to Krasnoufimsk, when the mother of a local UVD Deputy
Chief was murdered in her house, in 2008. This increased the tension and the police
investigations were being carried out in full swing. They arrested the wrong woman,
Marina Valeeva, within a week of the murder. She confessed to have murdered the old
woman. However, it was later discovered that she had confessed only because she was
tortured by her interrogators. Apparently, the interrogators had covered her head with a
plastic bag and denied her food. They also threatened to rape her with a stick that had
rusty nails attached to it, if she did not confess. Out of fear, she confessed to have
murdered. This was discovered soon enough and the interrogators were seriously
punished for doling out such threats. Three of the investigators were sent to prison for
their threats while two of them were given a conditional sentence in the year 2011.
The police had no leads whatsoever for another two years. They had no word about the
murderer until 2010, when Irina struck again. Irina was getting bolder and confident
that she would never be caught by the police. So, this time, she chose a victim close to
home. She murdered her friend, Aleksandra Povaritsina, who was seventy nine years
old. She had offered to redecorate her house and gained access to it. After gaining
access, she had hit her eighteen times till she died. Aleksandras neighbor had called in
the police when she thought something was wrong. When the police broke into the
house, they found the mutilated body of Aleksandra. They went on to do a background
check, to identify her murderer. And that is how they got their hands on the ever elusive
Irina. She was tracked down and arrested immediately. Nobody would have believed
that Irina was capable of such brutality. Most of her acquaintances knew her as a gentle
mother of two lovely daughters. She was helping out at one of her daughters school. So,
she was respected by the teachers and other parents. Her friend had described her as a
kind mother, who was always eager to help out others, in an interview. Even her

husband was shocked to see Irina getting arrested, because she did nothing to raise his
suspicions in the past 14 years of their marriage.
Her fingerprints were taken and compared with the ones the police had found on a
hammer left at one of the crime scenes. Several experts were looped in to verify her
prints as well as to trace the notes left at some of the crime scenes back to her. The
handwriting tests linked her to the notes easily. She was also tested for psychological
disorders. When interrogated, she calmly confessed to all her crimes. She stated that she
had killed so many people for the want of money. She needed money to buy alcohol, as
her husband wouldnt trust her with money. When the case was brought to the court,
there was sufficient evidence against her. She was accused of 17 murders and 18
robberies. When the trial began, she pleaded not guilty ad withdrew her confessions.
However, before the end of the trial, she pleaded guilty again.
She was sentenced to spend twenty years in the prison. The public felt that this
punishment was not enough, considering the brutality of these murders. However, the
judge was not in a position to award a punishment, which was more severe than this. He
had awarded the maximum sentence to Irina, as per the Russian Criminal Code. The
maximum punishment that can be awarded to a woman was 25 years of imprisonment.
The judge had waived the five years since Irina was the mother of two daughters.
Section 57 of the Russian Criminal Code did not allow the judges to award life
imprisonment to youth, women and people older than sixty five years old.
It is shocking to know that a mentally sound person, such as Irina, would go to such
extremes. And that too, for the sake of alcohol. Alcohol addiction has ruined so many
lives. But Irina has been one of the cruelest victims of alcohol addiction. It was not just
her who was affected by this though. Seventeen innocent old women had lost their lives
for nothing. As I mentioned before, she had murdered an old women and stolen only
twenty pounds from her house. Her daughters had never imagined that their sweet and
gentle mother would be capable of committing such monstrous acts. Irina herself said in
her confessions that she had wanted to be a good and doting mother, for the sake of her
daughters, but she was also helpless when it came to her alcohol problem. Her life has
changed forever since her arrest. Her husband has found a new love interest and has
moved in with her and her daughter. Her daughters are living with her husband now.