Tamara Samsonova: The Granny Ripper

Tamara Samsonova

Before we jump into The Granny Ripper, let’s first visit the country she calls home, Russia.  Russia is often viewed or portrayed as a rough and tumble country, full of hard working people doing what they need to in order to survive and make ends meet.  It’s the 9th largest country in the world by population, having just under 146 million citizens.  To put that in perspective, the US is third with around 330 million, India is second with around 1.38 billion, and China is largest by population with just under 1.44 billion.  When we take a look at the largest by land mass though, Russia is easily the largest country.. By like a lot.  With just over 17 million square KM, the second next country is Canada with just under 9.9 million square KM, and the US with around 9.8 million square KM.  

The majority of Russia’s population, almost 70%, lives in what is called the “European” part of the country, which is basically just the western areas, with pockets here and there near the southern border.  The remaining 30 percent live scattered throughout the country.  There are MAJOR, HUGE, MASSIVE areas of the country that are uninhabited or uninhabitable due to the harsh winters and permafrost that has built up.  In these areas, growing and harvesting crops is impossible, so people will not live where they can’t survive.  Some estimates say that roughly 20% of Russia’s land mass is inhabited by its citizens, leaving up to 80% as just empty areas.  That brings us to the subject of our story today, Tamara Samsonova. 

Tamara Samsonova was born on February 5th in1947 in Uzhur, Russia.  If you do any type of research into The Granny Ripper, you will very likely see two dates for her birthday, Feb. 5th as well as April 25th a1947.  In our research, the most cited date of birth was in February of 1947, so we are going with that but also wanted to acknowledge the possibility that it could be in April as well. After high school, she attended the Moscow State Linguistic University.  After university, she moved to St. Petersburg where she worked for a travel agency until getting a job at the Grand Hotel Europe where she worked for 16 years before retiring.  While in St. Petersburg, she met a man named Alexi.  The two married and moved into an apartment on Dimitrova Street where they lived for 30 years together. In regards to her early life or childhood, that’s about all we know.  There are very few details about it.  It’s fair to assume that this is probably due to poor record keeping throughout the years, compounded by the tumultuous history of Russia, and the dissolution of the USSR

While Moscow is the capital of Russia, and has a population of around 13 million people according to a 2021 census, St. Petersburg is the second largest with a population of around 5.6 million people. St. Petersburg is one of Russia’s top tourist destinations and is typically a safe city to visit.  Official statistics show that crime in St. Petersburg is slowly decreasing while the number of solved crimes is slowly rising.  There were a total of 56,000 crimes registered by the police in 2014, stayed the same in 2015, and dropped in both 2016 and 2017.  Murder is also on the decline in Russia according to statistics.  Though, one will have to wonder how many of the murders were committed by Tamara.

After 30 years of being together, Alexi went missing in the early 2000s.  Tamara reported him missing to the authorities and told police he had run off with another woman.  The police had no reason not to believe her, so they didn’t look into it much further.  To this day, Alexi has not been found. 

After Alexi’s alleged disappearance, Tamara didn’t want to live alone, so she decided to get a roommate.  It is reported that she went through several roommates rather quickly because she was difficult to live with.  Neighbors of Tamara said that they would hear loud banging, yelling, and all sorts of loud noises coming from her apartment.  An argument would occur and then the roommate would move out.  Keep that tidbit in your back pocket.  

Fast Forward to 2015

In March of 2015, Tamara moved into Valentina Ulanova’s apartment.  Tamara had needed a place to stay while renovations were being done to her apartment so an agreement was made that she would live with Valentina and help with chores around the apartment as well as help take care of Valentina.  Valentina was 79 years old and lived on the same street as Tamara.  For several months, the two lived together and Tamara did the household chores and took care of Valentina.

After several months of living together, Valentina and Tamara had an argument over unwashed dishes.  Valentina told Tamara that she no longer wanted her to live in her apartment.  Tamara had no intention of moving out of Valentina’s apartment.  She traveled to a nearby city, Pushkin, where she convinced a pharmacist to sell her phenazepam over the counter without a prescription.  Phenazepam is a drug that was developed in Russia and used in the treatment of neurological disorders such as insomnia and anxiety.  It is supposed to only be available via prescription and is typically found in powder form, in a solution in dropper bottles or tablets.  It has recently become more popular for illegal recreational use due to its euphoric effects.  Some users have also reported that it helps to alleviate withdrawal symptoms, to temper cocaine highs and augment the effects of alcohol.  Tamara returned to the apartment and combined the drugs with an Olivier salad for Valentina.  An Olivier salad is a traditional Russian dish made with peas, potatoes, carrots, onions, meat, pickles and eggs all mixed together with mayonnaise. The meat used is usually bologna, chicken or ham.  

After making the salad, Tamara presumably gave it to Valentina or told her she could have it, and then went to bed.  She woke up around 2:00 am on July 23, 2015 and found Valentina on the kitchen floor.  She then began dismembering Valentina’s body with a hacksaw and two knives.  Valentina was reported as having still been breathing when Tamara began dismembering her.  It is unclear if she felt any pain.  Tamara then placed Valentina’s head and hands in a saucepan and boiled them on the stove.  She then wrapped the remaining body parts in pieces of a shower curtain and placed them in plastic bags.  She then dumped them near the pond in her neighborhood.  The saucepan containing the head and hands was never found. 

On July 27, 2015, a couple from the neighborhood was walking their dog when the dog became very interested in the pond nearby.  The dog found a plastic bag that it kept trying to get into.  The couple went to see what the fuss was about and discovered that the bag contained a headless and limbless torso.  They contacted the police who immediately got to work.  

The police also got a report from someone who had witnessed Tamara carrying the bags out of her apartment the night of the murder.  Another report came in from a social worker who had stopped by to see Valentina, but Tamara refused to let her into the apartment.  During their investigation, the police took a headcount of the people in the neighborhood and came to the realization that Valentina Ulanova was unaccounted for and no one had actually seen her in days.  

They went to the apartment that the two women shared and Tamara had no problem letting the police inside.  In fact, she was welcoming and kind, answering their questions willingly.  Once they were inside the apartment, the police found traces of blood in the kitchen and bathroom.  They confronted Tamara with the blood evidence and the fact that no one had seen Valentina in days, and she quickly admitted to the murder and dismemberment of Valentina and the murders of three other people.  She was arrested on July 27, 2015.  As the investigation continued, the police found CCTV footage of Tamara making seven different trips from her apartment carrying the plastic bags which they found out were body parts.  They also saw her carrying out the saucepan containing the head and hands.  

Upon her arrest, Tamara told police about her argument with Valentina about the dishes, basically neither of them wanted to clean the dirty dishes.  She then told them, “I came home and put the whole pack of phenazepam, 50 pills, into her Olivier salad.  She liked it very much.  I woke up after 2:00 am and she was lying on the floor.  So, I started cutting her to pieces.  It was very hard for me to carry her to the bathroom, she was fat and heavy.  I did everything at the kitchen where she was lying.”

The police searched the apartment and found Tamara’s diary and it is noted that it was among books about black magic and astrology.  Which, as we know, on its own, means nothing, but can also mean not great things.  Anyway, the diary was written in three languages, Russian, German, and English.  The diary contained many entries, including everyday things and confessions of several murders. 

One entry read, “I killed my tenant, Volodoya, 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 Frunzensky district.”  Another entry described how she dismembered the body of Sergei Potynavin, a 44-year-old man after an argument occurred.  She also put his body parts in plastic bags and dumped them around the neighborhood.  Traces of his blood were found in her bathroom.  The confessions were among entries about how she slept badly, skipped a meal, or took her medicine.  There were songs and poems as well.  There was even an entry about Valentina, who she called, Valya, and it said, “I love Valya.”  There were also things written in the diary that suggested that Tamara ate her victims and had a penchant for gouging out their lungs and eating them. 

It was also noted that during the two decades that Tamara was just out there murdering people, she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital three times and it was believed that she had schizophrenia.  Marina Krivenko, a neighbor of Tamara’s for 15 years, spoke with police.  She said that Tamara was very interested in the serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, also known as the Rostov Ripper or the Butcher of Rostov.  Chikatilo sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated 53 women and children from 1978-1990.  He was executed in 1994 by a bullet to the back of the head.   Tamara reportedly studied him and took note of his methods. 

Cannibalism?

While they were going through the diary they found, they discovered that there were also things written in it that suggested that Tamara ate her victims and had a penchant for gouging out their lungs and eating them. While there is an absence of physical evidence to prove this, it is speculated that Valentina’s lungs were in the cooking pot along with her head and hands.  Also… Samsanova confirmed to the police that what they were reading was factual and happened.  In the pages of her diary, she stated that she would eat parts of the lungs, legs, and pieces of the heads of her victims before disposing of everything else.  

In regards to cannibalism, we already mentioned Chikatilo, and everyone knows about Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish.  Well, we covered Luka Magnotta in our Doc Jam Series when we went watched Dont Fuck With Cats.  After Magnotta was arrested for murder, which he filmed and put online, police obtained another video of him partaking in the act of cannibalism. Then there’s Armin Meiwes who put out an ad on a now shuttered website, The Cannibal Cafe, for a willing victim to cannibalize. The victim came to his home where their night together was recorded.  He gave the victim cough syrup and sleeping pills, which caused him to drift in and out of consciousness.  His genitals were cut off and then consumed by both men.  Meiwes then stabbed the victim to death, and consumed his flesh over the course of the next ten months.  He was arrested after he put up another ad looking for a victim.  He was convicted of manslaughter, then at a retrial murder.  He is currently serving a life sentence in prison. 

Sometimes people turn to cannibalism out of pure survival.  The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donner-Reed party), is perhaps the most famous instance of cannibalism.  Basically in the mid-1800s, a group of pioneers set out to migrate from the midwest to California.  What followed was a series of mistakes and mishaps that led to the party being stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains for the winter of 1846 to 1847.  Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, primarily eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, or extreme cold.  In one instance though, members of the party murdered two Native American guides who were trying to help them cross the mountain range.  

In October of 1972, a chartered plane crashed in the Andes Mountains.  At the time of the crash, the co-pilot, who was inexperienced, thought they had reached Curicó, a city in Chile.  They hadn’t though, they were in fact 3t to 43 miles away, something he would have known if he looked at his flight instruments.  Thinking they had to descend inorder to land at the nearby airport, he decreased altitude, and the aircraft struck a mountain, shearing off both wings and the tail section.  On board was an amateur rugby team and some of their family and fans; there were 45 passengers and crew.  Three crew members and 9 passengers died in the wreck, and several more over the course of the next few days due to the frigid temperatures and the severity of their injuries from the crash.  For eight days, authorities searched for the plane, flying over the crash site several times, but they were unable to see it due to large amounts of snow accumulation after the incident.  After eight days of searching, the efforts were called off and everyone aboard was assumed to be dead.  

For 72 days, the remaining passengers suffered extreme hardships, including exposure, starvation, and an avalanche, which led to the deaths of thirteen more passengers.  During this time, they made the decision that they needed to eat the deceased in order to survive.  The decision was a difficult one; many of the passengers were religious and believed it to be a sin to consume another person.  Others thought that their deceased friends and family would want them to eat them in order to survive.  They knew that the search had been called off because they managed to get a small am/fm radio to work and heard it on the news.   As the weather improved somewhat, two survivors climbed a 15,260 foot mountain peak without gear and hiked for 10 days into Chile to seek help, 38 miles. On December 23rd 1972, two months after the crash, the last of the 16 survivors were rescued.

Apologies for our detour into the world of cannibalism, getting back to The Granny Ripper.  When the authorities spoke with neighbors, it was often said that Tamara would boast to her friends that she would be famous and popular someday and that she would eventually cause a sensation, but she would never say why.  Marina (the neighbor who told the cops about Tamara’s fascination with Chikatilo) also stated that Tamara would sit topless with her back to her window so that her silhouette was seen by neighbors.  She said that both Tamara and her apartment used to be more attractive and her husband found Tamara appealing.  She said that Tamara would boast about her fluency in both German and English.  She also told police that she had let Tamara borrow a hack saw several years prior that was never returned. 

After the arrest, Tamara was quick to confess to multiple murders after the evidence had been found.  She was glad that she had been caught and was more concerned about the publicity than the fact that she was facing the death penalty.  

The Hearing

Tamara’s first hearing was on July 29, 2015, two days after her arrest.  She admitted to killing Valentina and was very calm in the courtroom.  She told Judge Roman Chebotaryov that she was guilty and that she deserved punishment.  Tamara said that she had been waiting ten years for the police to show up and arrest her.  She also told him that by murdering Valentina, she could close this chapter.  At one point she said to the judge, “It’s stuffy in here.  Can I go out?”  The judge told her that she was to be detained for life and she smiled and clapped her hands.  Tamara also spoke with the media telling them that she was haunted by the maniac upstairs and that was why she had committed these murders.  She is also seen blowing kisses to the press.  She was taken back to the apartment with police and showed them step-by-step how she killed Valentina. 

The diary was still being reviewed and it was found that it contained confessions for ten murders.  The police began researching people who had gone missing and crossed them with more body parts found in her neighborhood and they believe that she murdered closer to 21 people.  

Police also discovered that Tamara’s first roommate, Vladimir, had been admitted to the hospital for poisoning, but had survived.  Tamara never admitted to killing her husband, Alexi, but the police believe that she is responsible for his death.  It was also found out that there were no renovations being done to her apartment.  She had moved in with Valentina to escape the voices in her head.  

In December of 2015, Tamara was sent to a psychiatric prison in Kazan, the Kazan Psychiatric Hospital of Special Purpose with Intensive Guarding, for an assessment.  It was found that she was unfit to stand trial and Judge Pavel Smirnov ruled that she would spend the rest of her life in a mental institution.  She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and it was decided that she was a threat to those around her and herself and that she required “intensive monitoring.”   

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects how a person thinks, feels and behaves.  Schizophrenia typically comes on between the ages of 16 and 30, so Tamara likely had been living with this disease for quite some time.  Some of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder and movement disorder.  Tamara said that she was haunted by the maniac upstairs and this suggests that she suffered from delusions and likely hallucinations as well.  

A source close to the investigation said, “We may never know the extent of the granny’s killings.  She’s either much more stupid or much smarter than she seems.”