Tamara Mitrofanovna Samsonova was dubbed ‘Grjsonnny Ripper’ after a spate of gruesome crimes against up to 11 victims, including her husband and mother-in-law who vanished
An elderly Russian woman earned the moniker ‘Granny Ripper’ following a string of vile acts perpetrated against as many as 11 people. Tamara Mitrofanovna Samsonova, known for poisoning her friend’s salad with drugs, decapitating her and boiling her head, is linked to various other heinous deeds.
Samsonova was born in 1947 in Uzhur and for the early part of her life appeared to follow an ordinary path. After completing her secondary education, she pursued higher studies at Moscow State Linguistic University, before relocating to St. Petersburg, where she wed Alexei Samsonov and spent 16 years employed by a travel agency.
The year 2000 marked a peculiar twist when her spouse Alexei went missing, leading Samsonova to seek police help without success. He seemed to have disappeared without trace. In a curious turn of events, she reached out to the Fruzensky District investigative unit in St. Petersburg in 2015 to file a report about her husband’s unexplained disappearance.
However, 2015 also laid bare the gruesome reality behind Samsonova’s deceptively serene exterior when someone happened upon the dismembered remains of her tenant. At the age of 68, Samsonova was filmed on CCTV late at night, disposing of unwieldy plastic bags from her apartment.
Horrifically, she was also spotted holding a pot which allegedly contained the severed head of a human, reports the Mirror US.
These dreadful discoveries were believed to be the pieces of Valentina Ulanova, 79, her boarder who faced a chilling end. The Russian Investigative Committee stated that Ulanova died “on the spot” after Samsonova spiked her salad with a lethal dose of over 50 sleep aids in July 2015 and then proceeded to mutilate her body.
Samsonova journeyed to Pushkin and convinced a pharmacist to hand over phenazepam, which she slipped into Valentina’s beloved Olivier salad.
Not long after, Valentina’s dismembered body was discovered wrapped in a shower curtain, discarded on the street.
The investigation team released a statement: “Then, in order to conceal the committed crime, she dismembered the body of her victim and placed the parts in different places near the apartment block.”
Allegedly, Samsonova sawed apart her lodger due to “personal hostile relations” following a “conflict with her friend”. It’s believed she even boiled Valentina’s head in a pot.
In court, Samsonova’s antics were unsettling as she blew kisses at reporters and admitted to killing Valentina. Yet, a chilling diary entry hints she might be responsible for up to 11 more deaths, including her vanished husband and mother-in-law.
Her deteriorating health, uncooperative attitude, and absence of further remains meant no additional charges could be pursued.
A source told The Sun: “We may never know the extent of this granny’s killings.”
Back in 2015, upon her arrest, there were also claims that in 2003 she murdered her tenant Sergei Potanin.
Sergei, a 44-year-old from Norilsk, met a grisly end as Samsonova is accused of chopping up his body and scattering it across the streets.
Samsonova was under investigation for an astonishing 15 deaths when detectives stumbled upon a diary entry shockingly revealing, “killed my tenant Volodya, cut him to pieces in the bathroom with a knife and put the pieces of his body in plastic bags and threw them away in the different parts of Frunzensky District.”
It emerged that Samsonova had drawn dark inspiration from Andrei Chikatilo, a horrific serial killer responsible for nearly 50 murders between 1978 and 1990.
A neighbour who knew her for over a decade recalled her obsession with Chikatilo, commenting, “She gathered information about him and how he committed his murders.”
During her court session for Valentina’s murder, she expressed no remorse, stating to the judge: “I am guilty and I deserve to be punished.”
At 78-years-old, she even applauded and grinned at the decision to keep her detained.
But in 2015, a forensic psychiatric evaluation flagged Samsonova as a menace both to the public and herself, resulting in her confinement to a special-care institution before a move to obligatory psychiatric care in Kazan.
By 2017, she faced a life sentence in a mental health facility after the court concluded that her mental disorder exonerated her from culpability in Valentina’s death.