Tamara Samsonova was a retired hotel worker who lived alone in a first-floor apartment in Kupchino, a district of high-rise housing on the southern edge of St. Petersburg. In July 2015, when she was 68, she was detained in the apartment of Valentina Ulanova, a 79-year-old woman who had taken her in, and charged with killing her. Investigators said she had poisoned Ulanova and cut up the body, then carried the remains out of the building in bags. Police also said she was implicated in the killing of a lodger in her own apartment in 2003.
The case drew wide attention in Russia and abroad. Reporters wrote about diaries in three languages found in her home, and some press reports claimed she might be linked to ten or more deaths. Investigators answered that they had no objective data on any killings beyond the ones they named. She was never tried. A forensic psychiatric examination found that she had chronic paranoid schizophrenia, and in March 2017 a court released her from criminal liability and sent her for compulsory psychiatric treatment. She was not convicted of any crime.
Samsonova was born in the spring of 1947 in Uzhur, a town in Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia, according to a 2025 account of the case by the Russian news site 360.ru. Her father worked in the police and her mother in retail. Her patronymic, Mitrofanovna, appears in Moskovsky Komsomolets coverage of the case in 2015.
After school she moved to Moscow and graduated from what is now Moscow State Linguistic University, 360.ru reported. She later settled in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then called, and married there. Neighbors told Moskovsky Komsomolets that the apartment in Kupchino had first been obtained by her husband's parents, and that her husband had brought his wife to the city from Moscow. The couple had no children.
She spoke several languages. Business FM described her as fluent in three. She told police that in the Soviet era she had worked at a hotel popular with foreign visitors, the one now known as the Grand Hotel Europe, which Agence France-Presse said might explain her language skills. According to 360.ru, she worked for Intourist, the Soviet state travel company, in hotels that served foreign guests, moving to a new hotel every two or three years, and retired with 16 years of service.
Neighbors described a reclusive and suspicious woman. One neighbor in her building told Moskovsky Komsomolets that she rarely opened her door, went out mostly at night and was afraid of being robbed; the same neighbor said she had helped with housework and had replaced Samsonova's locks several times. A family living above her said she banged on the heating pipes and filed many complaints against them, including one to the presidential administration. She complained about money, and to add to a small pension she let out one of the apartment's two rooms. Neighbors said none of her tenants stayed more than about a month.
Business FM reported that she had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic three times. Neighbors told the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, as reported by AFP, that she had recently spent several months in a psychiatric hospital.
Her husband vanished in 2000. According to 360.ru, he left one day to go to a savings bank and never came back, leaving his passport and savings book at home. Neighbors remembered him as a thin man who often sat on a bench outside the building.
Samsonova reported him missing. The investigator later assigned to the Ulanova case, Artur Nakhshunov, told NTV in August 2015 that she had once come to his office to report that her husband had gone missing about 15 years earlier, after earlier approaches to the police had led nowhere. He said she was one of several people who came to him with such reports that day and that nothing about her had stood out. He was never found.
Accounts differ on the date. The Moscow Times and Vesti.ru wrote in July 2015 that she had reported him missing in 2005, and CNN reported that she had reported him missing about ten years before her arrest. The investigator's account and 360.ru give 2000 as the year he disappeared.
After her arrest, some Russian media claimed that his remains had been found. On August 5, 2015, the press service of the St. Petersburg Investigative Committee denied those reports, Interfax said. No official source has ever said that she harmed him.
360.ru reported that her first lodger, a man about 25 years younger than she was, became her lover in the summer of 2001. After a few months he ended the relationship, fell ill with symptoms that looked like poisoning, which doctors could not explain, and moved out once he had recovered. He was alive in 2025 and did not want to talk about her, 360.ru said. NTV reported in August 2015 that one of the men she had claimed to have killed, reportedly a former lover, had been found alive and well.
On September 6, 2003, according to the press service of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region police, Samsonova killed a 44-year-old man from Norilsk who was renting a room in her apartment. The police statement, released on July 29, 2015, and reported by Interfax and Vesti.ru, said the killing happened during a sudden quarrel, and that she then dismembered the body and carried it outside. AFP and 360.ru gave the man's age as 32.
His remains were found in the neighborhood, 360.ru reported. The man was not identified at the time, and the cause of death was never established. The case remained unsolved for 12 years.
360.ru reported that the man was given a sedative in his food after a quarrel, without saying how that was established. The outlet also reported that in 2015 investigators found a physical link between her apartment and the 2003 case. Investigator Nakhshunov told NTV that she described the 2003 killing in detail, without visible emotion, during the investigation.
That killing was attributed to her by the police. No charge over it was reported, and no court ruled on it.
Valentina Nikolaevna Ulanova was 79 and lived in a nearby building in Kupchino. A neighbor told Moskovsky Komsomolets that she was a kind woman who often helped other people with money. CNN reported that neighbors described her as a kind veteran, and that after her death residents left flowers at her door.
According to 360.ru, the two women became acquainted in March 2015. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that Ulanova took Samsonova in after a social worker described her as lonely and in need of a place to stay, and CNN also said Ulanova had taken her in on the advice of social workers. Samsonova lived in Ulanova's apartment for several months and looked after her, according to Vesti.ru and other reports. Investigator Nakhshunov told NTV that Samsonova described her time there as living "like in a fairy tale." When Ulanova grew tired of supporting her and asked her to go home, the two quarreled.
The Investigative Committee's account was brief. On the night of July 23, 2015, in Ulanova's apartment, Samsonova poisoned her 79-year-old acquaintance with an unidentified substance, acting out of personal hostility. She then dismembered the body and left the remains in a neighboring residential area. That is the account the St. Petersburg investigators gave to Interfax and RIA Novosti on July 29, and the one Vesti.ru repeated when the court ruled in 2017.
Samsonova's own account, as investigators described it and as 360.ru summarized it in 2025, was more detailed. She said she went to the town of Pushkin, outside St. Petersburg, and persuaded a pharmacist to sell her the prescription sedative phenazepam without a prescription. She said she put the drug in Ulanova's food. She told investigators that she wanted to stay in the apartment for some months, and that Ulanova had told her she was tired of her and asked her to leave. NTV reported that investigators said she had put pills into Ulanova's food after the quarrel.
The forensic evidence did not confirm her story. According to 360.ru, tests found no phenazepam and no alcohol, and the cause of death was recorded as not established. 360.ru noted that every detail about the pills came from Samsonova herself.
Investigators told NTV that video footage showed her carrying bags out of the building, and AFP reported that the footage was aired on state television.
On July 26, 2015, remains were found near a residential building in the neighborhood, according to the prosecutor's office as reported by Vesti.ru.
The missing woman's absence had already been noticed. A friend of Ulanova told Moskovsky Komsomolets that she raised the alarm after Ulanova stopped answering her calls for three days. Samsonova, who was still in the apartment, told her that Ulanova had gone missing after a night of drinking. The friend noticed that Ulanova's phones and documents had been left behind, and she said Samsonova grabbed her arm and begged her not to call the police. The friend told CNN that officers later told her she had been lucky.
Police soon identified the victim and traced her to the apartment, where they found Samsonova. Investigators reported finding evidence in the apartment, according to 360.ru and Business FM. She was detained on July 27, according to RIA Novosti, which cited the St. Petersburg city prosecutor's office. CNN reported the arrest as July 28.
A source at the Investigative Committee's main directorate in St. Petersburg told Interfax that Samsonova was charged with the murder of the elderly woman on July 28. RIA Novosti reported that the charge was brought under Part 1 of Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers intentional killing, and that the Frunzensky District prosecutor's office had found the opening of the case lawful and well founded.
On July 29, 2015, the Frunzensky District Court of St. Petersburg granted the investigator's request and ordered her held in custody for two months. A representative of the Investigative Committee told the court that investigators were checking whether she had been involved in other crimes, and that a psychological and psychiatric examination had been ordered, Interfax reported. An investigator told the court she was a huge danger to people around her, AFP reported.
Her behavior in court was widely reported. She smiled at reporters and blew them a kiss, AFP said, and CNN reported that she was filmed celebrating when the judge ordered her held. Speaking through the bars of the defendant's cage, she told reporters, according to CNN, that a man living upstairs had forced her to kill. She said she had nowhere else to live and expected to die in prison.
After her arrest Samsonova wrote a formal confession, known in Russian law as a yavka s povinnoy, a source in law enforcement told Interfax. In it she described other killings, among them that of a male lodger in November 2000, whose body she said she had disposed of in the Frunzensky District. Business FM reported that she admitted to three killings in her confession.
Investigator Nakhshunov gave NTV a fuller picture in August 2015. On the day she was detained, he said, she confessed to four killings: Ulanova and three lodgers. She later withdrew two of them and said she had made them up. One of the men she named was found alive and unharmed, and another was still being sought. Investigators had come to believe there were two killings in all: Ulanova in 2015 and the man from Norilsk in 2003.
She also tried to shift the blame. 360.ru reported that she first named a woman neighbor as an accomplice, though the neighbor had been out of the city at the time, and later admitted she had named her out of long dislike. Business FM reported that she told journalists a doctor living in her building had framed her.
Her lawyer, interviewed by NTV, described her as articulate, cultured and very attentive. The lawyer said she had no food, clothing or parcels in the pretrial detention center and asked members of the public to bring her some.
Police who searched Samsonova's apartment found diaries written in Russian, English and German, along with many foreign-language books and works on esoteric subjects, according to Business FM and Moskovsky Komsomolets. Russian outlets reported that the diaries described about ten killings. AFP said it was unclear whether the accounts were based on fact.
NTV obtained part of a diary and described it in August 2015. Most of it was in German and recorded ordinary routines: little sleep, a great deal of coffee and sometimes vodka, reading, regular counting of her money, and trips to the city center to walk and see films. Some entries recorded feeling unwell and crying. The part NTV saw contained no mention of any killing, or of preparing for one. NTV noted that it might have seen only part of the diary.
Investigators did not rely on the diaries. A law enforcement source told Interfax on August 5, 2015, that the case could not be built on her diary entries, and that each episode she described could go to court only if the body or remains of a victim were found. Her statements and notes, the source said, should not be taken seriously until the expert examinations were finished. 360.ru reported in 2025 that the diaries were never added to the case file because investigators regarded them as the writings of a mentally unstable person.
The press coverage of the case moved quickly from one charge to claims of a long series. Interfax noted on July 29, 2015, that media reports were linking her to about ten killings. The Moscow Times reported that Russian media were describing a string of 14. CNN reported that police said they had evidence linking her to at least 11 deaths, were reviewing unsolved cases, and suspected other victims among neighbors, former tenants and her husband.
The St. Petersburg directorate of the Investigative Committee publicly asked reporters not to rush to blame her for a series. "At present, the investigation does not have objective data on Samsonova committing any other murders," its press service said on July 29, Interfax reported. The same position was repeated on August 5, when the committee said she was charged only with the murder of her elderly acquaintance.
Some foreign press reports made further claims about what she had done to her victims. Investigator Nakhshunov told NTV that investigators saw no ritual motive and considered those claims unlikely, and CNN reported that police had released no evidence for them. No official finding supported them.
In early August 2015 the authorities were still deciding whether it could be done while she was held in the pretrial detention center or whether she had to be sent to a hospital, Interfax reported. A forensic psychiatrist, Evgeny Pitin, told NTV that experts had to decide whether a person had a real mental disorder or was pretending, and that conclusions could not be drawn from facial expressions or outbursts.
The examination found that she had chronic paranoid schizophrenia. According to Vesti.ru, which cited the St. Petersburg city prosecutor's office, the experts found that the disorder had developed after the crime and made it impossible to impose or carry out a punishment. 360.ru described the finding differently in 2025, saying the experts found her legally insane and dangerous to herself and to others. The two descriptions have different legal meanings in Russia, and only the first comes from the prosecutor's office.
On March 27, 2017, Vesti.ru reported that a court had released Samsonova from criminal liability and sent her for compulsory psychiatric treatment. The report, based on the St. Petersburg prosecutor's press service and Interfax, said she had been charged under Article 105 with the murder of her 79-year-old acquaintance. It did not name the court or give the date of the ruling.
This was not a conviction. The court released her from criminal liability, so she was neither found guilty nor sentenced. The ruling addressed the Ulanova killing only; no court was reported to have considered the 2003 case or any other death.
She had already been moved to Kazan, in Tatarstan, before that report. In January 2017 the Kazan newspaper Business Online reported that she was being held at a psychiatric hospital there, the same hospital that was about to receive a Moscow nanny sent for compulsory treatment in another case. 360.ru reported that she was sent for compulsory treatment at a specialized psychiatric hospital in Kazan.
Two psychiatrists who spoke to the press in 2015 said the case raised questions about how Russia handled people with serious mental illness. Mikhail Vinogradov, a former head of a special research center of the Interior Ministry, told Business FM that she had clearly been ill for many years. He said he did not believe the diary accounts were fantasies, though he added that the evidence still had gaps. He said the case showed problems with the law on involuntary treatment, under which, he said, anyone can write a statement and leave a hospital, and he asked why the disappearance of her tenants and her husband had not been looked into. Alexander Fedorovich told Moskovsky Komsomolets that the case did not fit the usual profile of a serial killer and suggested a disorder in the schizophrenia spectrum. He said that under Russian psychiatric law a person generally has to agree to hospitalization, which made it hard to commit her.
English-language reports called her the Granny Ripper, as CNN did. Russian media called her Babushka Yaga, after Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore, AFP reported. Vesti.ru reported that within about a day of the first coverage, fake fan club accounts in her name appeared on Russian social networks, one posting threats and another offering to sell supposed body parts. A St. Petersburg horror museum told a radio station it was considering using her image in a show. In 2025, ten years after the arrest, 360.ru published a long account of the case asking how the St. Petersburg police had failed to catch her for so long.
Her husband's disappearance in 2000 has never been solved. Neighbors suspected her, and the press linked her to it, but the Investigative Committee denied that his remains had been found, and no official source accused her of harming him.
The November 2000 lodger she described in her confession has never been identified, and no charge followed. Investigators said in 2015 that one man she claimed to have killed was alive, and that she had withdrawn two of her four confessions.
360.ru reported a further unresolved disappearance. A friend of Samsonova said that in 2003 she met her in central St. Petersburg with a male companion, whom Samsonova later said had died. Samsonova then began telephoning the friend's own partner, who left the friend and moved in with Samsonova in Kupchino. After a few calls, all contact with him stopped, and he has not been seen since. No official source has linked this to her.
The claims that she killed ten, eleven or fourteen people rest on press accounts of her diaries and on unnamed sources. The part of a diary seen by NTV contained no account of any killing, and investigators said they had no objective evidence of others. The cannibalism claims were never supported by any official statement.
According to reports in January and March 2017, Samsonova was held at a psychiatric hospital in Kazan under compulsory treatment ordered by a court.
Spring 1947: born in Uzhur, Krasnoyarsk Krai.
2000: her husband disappears; she reports him missing.
Summer 2001: her first lodger becomes her lover; he later leaves and is alive in 2025.
September 6, 2003: a lodger from Norilsk is killed in her apartment, according to police; remains found nearby; the case goes unsolved.
March 2015: she becomes acquainted with Valentina Ulanova and moves into her apartment.
Night of July 23, 2015: Ulanova is killed, according to investigators.
July 26, 2015: remains are found in Kupchino.
July 27, 2015: Samsonova is detained in Ulanova's apartment.
July 28, 2015: charged with murder under Article 105.
July 29, 2015: the Frunzensky District Court orders her held for two months; police announce her link to the 2003 killing; investigators say they have no objective data on other killings.
August 5, 2015: investigators say diary entries cannot support further charges without bodies; the committee denies reports that her husband's remains were found.
August 28, 2015: NTV publishes the investigator's account and extracts from a diary.
January 2017: reported held at a psychiatric hospital in Kazan.
March 27, 2017: reported released from criminal liability and sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment after a diagnosis of chronic paranoid schizophrenia.
September 11, 2025: 360.ru publishes a ten-year retrospective of the case.