samara mitrofinova samsonova was born on april 25th 1947 in the city of uzuru

in krasnoyar's cry russia located approximately 190 miles from krasnoyarsk the
largest city in the district and the third largest city in siberia and i hope i said that
all right it's very hard for us to pronounce so we're gonna do our best this
episode so after graduating from high school she arrived in moscow and entered
the moscow state linguistic university after graduating she moved to st
petersburg where she married alexi samsonov in 1971 she and her husband
settled in the newly built panel house number four on dimitrov street for some
time she worked for in taurus travel agency and also at the grand hotel europe
where she worked for 16 years before she retired so this hotel has now been
renamed the belmont grand hotel europe this is a five-star hotel on art square in
st petersburg it is beautiful it was actually featured in the 1995 movie goldeneye
although no actual filming occurred in the hotel but it's based there in 2000
samsonova's husband disappeared she appealed to the police for help but
searches yielded nothing of substance after her husband's disappearance
samsonova began renting out a room in her apartment so the first border was a
man named vladimir although there's not a ton of information on him this would
have been in 2001 and they became close but he mysteriously just up and left
one day allegedly i have no other information about that the next one where
there's a bit more information is a man named sergey potivan he was from the
northern city of narosk i hope i said that correct they had a falling out because
sam sanova wasn't easy to live with she was strict she was volatile and emotional
she was very sensitive she held serious grudges too so even the very smallest
feeling that you have wronged her she'd just go right off in left field yeah she'd
swear at him from the halls she'd bang on the radiators from another floor when
she was upset so because of this he one day up and left without a word in 2003
but mysteriously nobody could find him or knew where he went not that he was
from the area or had many contacts but most assumed he returned back to his
home city which was quite a long ways away yes he was never heard from again
and this was the last known border for a long time i mean she did have borders
on and off for the next decade or so usually these were men much younger than
her and they were temporary usually a few months at a time but in having these
borders she was able to live comfortably in retirement over the next decade and
it wasn't until march 2015 where things began to change so in march 2015
samsonova met 79 year old valentina nikolaevna olanova who also lived on
dimitrov streets a mutual friend of the two asked oolanova to shelter samsonova
for a time as her apartment was being renovated to which olanova agreed so
basically what she did is they worked out some sort of agreement that she'd act
as a caretaker to ulanova do chores feed her for room and board so samsonova
lived in ulanova's apartment for several months helping with housework like we
mentioned before she began to like living in the apartment and wanted to stay
there for longer than she was supposed to longer than this renovation and then
she refused to move out so over time the relationship between the two
deteriorated and ulanova eventually asked samsonova to leave after a dispute
regarding unwashed cups samsonova decided to poison ulinova samsonova
traveled to pushkin where she managed to persuade a pharmacist to sell her a
prescription drug for nazipam phenazepam is a very potent and long-acting
benzodiazepine in russia and in several ex-soviet states phanazepam is available
only through prescription clinically it is used in the treatment of neurological
disorders such as epilepsy insomnia and during acute alcohol withdrawal recently
finazepam has gained popularity as a recreational drug and misuse has been
reported in the uk finland sweden as well as here in the united states so upon
returning to the city she bought an olivier salad one of ulanova's favorite dishes
and then put the pills in the salad and gave it to the unsuspecting woman so i
had a look into what an olivier salad is so what it is it's a traditional salad dish in
russian cuisine it's also popular in other post-soviet countries it is usually made
with dice boiled potatoes carrots pickles peas eggs celeriac onions different
meats either chicken or sausage apples so really spices it's it's basically a russian
potato salad also dressed in mayonnaise i think it looks yummy it's commonly
referred to as a russian salad and even by that name i hadn't heard of it really
before samson nova later found ulinova lying on the kitchen floor on the night of
july 23rd and proceeded to dismember this poor old woman while she was still
alive with two knives and a saw she first sawed off her head and then sawed her
body in half using the knife she then cut it into further smaller pieces samsonova
then wrapped and dismembered ulanova in bin bags and then a shower curtain
and made several trips in and out of the apartment to dispose of her there's cctv
footage of that there is which we will go ahead and insert into the youtube video
so she left other body parts scattered around the house but the most gruesome
thing i believe when you're watching the cctv video footage is her coming down
the stairs with a pot so she boiled oolanova's head in a pot and then allegedly
because they weren't able to find it later supposedly threw it in the dumpster
and this is the problem and we should probably mention this now is if you found
some body parts or a dismembered body in this city that's actually not an
uncommon thing to find so apparently this had been going on for some time
during this time period just random body parts were just showing up and i mean
it was wasn't an every day or a once a week thing but if it happened people
weren't unfamiliar with it but as far as uh lenova's remains were concerned they
were discovered on july 26th they were found near a pond at house number 10
on dimitrov street so not very far and she's using it just in her neighborhood
yeah this is where we're jumping ahead a little bit but keep this in mind how
easy these remains were to find because it's theorized that she traveled a lot
further to dispose of other people and other alleged victims but in this case the
makeshift shower curtain package initially didn't attract any attention for several
days so even this almost went unnoticed finally somebody took interest in what
was in there and i think it was a dog getting into it yes so the identity of the
deceased olanova was established on july 27th after a survey of apartment
residents when they locked on ullanova's apartment samsonova opened the door
to the authorities having entered inside police officers found traces of blood in
the bathroom and a fastening from the torn off shower curtain after this she was
immediately arrested on july 29th 2015 sam sanova was brought to the franz
district court of saint petersburg with the court issuing an order to detain her
amazingly given the gravity of the charges against her in her latest court
appearance samsonova seemed more concerned that journalists were there to
report her case and that her neighbors in saint petersburg were going to find out
exactly what she was accused of after being remanded in custody she told
journalists quote i knew you would come it's such a disgrace for me all the city
will know end quote and later she blew a kiss to reporters so when judge roman
chipotrof asked her to address the court she replied it's stuffy here can i go out
she then added i was getting ready for this court action for dozens of years it was
all done deliberately there is no way to live with this last murder i closed the
chapter the judge said quote i am asked to arrest you what do you think end
quote and she replied quote you decide your honor after all i am guilty and i
deserve a punishment end quote when he announced she would be held in
custody she smiled and clapped her hands i believe there's a picture of this there
is and she was forced now to take a forensic psychiatric exam and on november
26 2015 the results were determined that she was schizophrenic and a danger to
society and herself and therefore she was placed in a specialized institution until
the end of the investigation in december 2015 samsonova was sent for
compulsory psychiatric treatment in a specialized hospital in kazan i think that's
how you say that she is being investigated in connection with a total of 14
different murders so kind of going back to what druby was saying earlier you
have the borders that allegedly went missing we have her husband who is
missing we have all these body parts that are showing up all over town and
wouldn't it be quite the opportunity for a serial killer to target borders that are
traveling from far away areas she was dubbed the granny ripper by the media or
baba yaga i like that the best if you're familiar with baba yaga is a witch who
appears as a deformed and ferocious looking old woman and slavic culture baba
yaga lived in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs so she entered
details of this secret life in her diaries and not only did she keep a diary of her
alleged kills she kept it in russian german and english this woman could speak
and read and write in three different languages i assume based on her past
career yeah she went to linguistics college right yeah and so she made sure to
keep these accounts written in many different languages which is very
interesting it's as if she wanted to just be memorialized in some sort of way well
they say that she had said from a very young age that she wanted to be famous
so maybe this was how she ended up doing it it's quite possible so i have to
stress her diaries were written and kept alongside black magic and astrological
books and she mentioned things about practicing black magic in interviews and
one of the things that she alleged was she would carve occult symbols into the
bodies as she was butchering them obviously this can't be proved and again
might be getting ahead here but the russian police are very very closed off
about many of the details of this case so you're going to notice that a lot of
things are incomplete these are the only things we know detectives suspect that
she also ate some body parts that she removed from the people she killed it
seemed as if she had a penchant for gouging out and eating lungs of all things
when asked if she was a cannibal a police source said quote it is not excluded
end quote sources in russia's powerful investigative committee basically
equivalent to the fbi we have here in the united states indicates specifically that
she removed the lungs from the bodies of these victims that's insane so whether
she ate them or not we're not exactly sure there was a lot written in her diaries
but we don't have access to those i mean i've seen some pictures of the diaries
obviously i'm not fluent in all of these languages but it would go from citing
murders she allegedly committed to then talking about very mundane parts of
her life like going to the store to buy marshmallows or going to a doctor's
appointment or being bored very very very strange this was like a live journal of
the time yes yes it was so there was one telling line that was released to the
news media regarding some of the alleged killing so one of the passage reads
quote i killed my tenant valodia i cut him to pieces in the bathroom with a knife
put the pieces of his body in plastic bags and threw them away in different parts
of fruzenski district end quote i'm sure there's a lot in there that we don't know
also did you know that she was obsessed with andre chicatillo yes is there was a
quote from samsonova's neighbor marina kravenko who apparently knew the
granny ripper for 15 years and was her friend and said that this old woman was
very interested in andre chicatillo and andre tricatillo i'd like to do a episode on
him sometime but he is one of probably the worst serial killer in soviet history
yeah he was out killing children he ended up getting executed by getting just
shot in the back of the head they're very efficient over there but yeah she uh
basically cataloged everything he did and studied the murders he had done i
mean he evaded police for a very very long time obviously you could understand
why a killer of that magnitude would be well known in the media but apparently
she took a very specific interest in him and his methods and the police have
declined to comment if there was any link to chickatillo himself i mean she
would have been old enough to know him but i think that's just a flimsy link i
think she's just a fan and not really an associate the other thing that is discussed
is how long has she really been doing this for did she kill her husband did her
husband disappear and this started off the spiral she was into she's now
diagnosed schizophrenic was this out in full force at that period of time in some
cases of schizophrenia and again i'm not a mental health professional but i have
known people with schizophrenia and sometimes it doesn't fully manifest itself
until either a certain point in your life or a certain event like a traumatic event
that triggers it so some people wonder well did her husband disappearing just
set her in this downward spiral or did she just kill him and start the process from
there yeah it's been theorized that maybe he just left her for another woman
that has been theorized as well so we we don't know he hasn't been found and i
guess record keeping in russia and the ex-soviet states around that period of
time not very good i'm not sure how it is now and even if he did leave her for
another woman he may not even be alive anymore and then the other borders
nobody knows what happens to them the the two that we mentioned vladimir
and sergey the other borders she had over the 10-year period of time we don't
know anything about them so a lot of things could have happened and the only
things that are going to answer this question is the diaries and the thing is that
diary i don't mean to cut you off or anything like that but she could have just
been being a weird old woman right and just writing this stuff down there could
have been no borders that were killed she could have just been bullying them off
right she could only be responsible for the death of oolanova i do know that
there was a business card that was found in her house that was linked back to a
torso they found yes that is true so you could include that as possibly one of her
borders or just a townsperson one thing i read was that given where she lived
and the fact that it wasn't uncommon to find body parts that unlike around here
if that were to happen where you would just be like oh then this must be her i
guess in that area there are other explanations for those body parts than the
granny ripper so we can't just be like oh well what about all these bodies that
were discovered well it could be other things russian mob maybe i mean there's
things you can speculate on but they can't definitively say it was heard as yergie
said her diaries could be crazy ramblings things she fabricated things she
hallucinated they just don't know that's why the police have said that they look
at these diaries as a puzzle that they're trying to decipher this is more of code to
them in their eyes than anything else this is something we just may never know i
mean it's been years at this point i just wonder if this is going to be quietly
swept away and forgotten about because i don't know how things really work
there in russia as far as killings like this in america yeah things do get cold cased
but there's pressure from the media to at least give statements from time to
time i don't know if that's how that works there so if you're familiar with how
that works in russia or if you're a local yourself i'd love to hear more about it in
the comments section absolutely we do have a russian following so i'd love to
know more yeah absolutely and with that being said i'd still still love to go visit st
petersburg one day yes i would too so one really random bit of trivia before we
we finish this off apparently sam sanova liked to get naked in front of the
window and apparently her neighbor's husbands used to say she had quite an
attractive silhouette you should just sit with her back to the window i'm
assuming there's a curtain up and so her silhouette was showing kind of just like
kind of little boudoiresque type of situation it seems like one of those really old
movies where they have the silhouette of some woman trying to be really
attractive or what have you or very culturally yeah or sultry is a good word
anyways very crazy case and it should also be noted that if samsonova did
commit cannibalism this puts her in one of the very few female serial killers in
modern history and even fewer female cannibals another one we talked about
recently was katherine knight but it's largely disproven she actually ate the food
she made but cannibal adjacent still it's hard enough to envision a female serial
killer female cannibal and then on top of that female cannibal and serial killer
that is at such an advanced age she was apprehended when she was 68 she's in
her 70s now i mean maybe the oldest female serial killer and that's how she got
away with this yeah because she's older she's a woman she's looked like a little
babushka yeah she's very unassuming so hopefully we'll get more information
and be able to put a final stamp on this case in the future i'd love to do andre
chicotilo too yeah absolutely not only has this been requested by a couple
people but he has been especially requested quite a few times over the lifetime
of our podcast and i think that he'd be an important person to cover especially
given people who are interested in you know soviet and russian serial killers so if
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