Samsonova was born on February 5, 1947 and lived in a flat in the Kupchino district of Saint Petersburg. She had worked as a hotel service manager, spoke several languages, and took in lodgers.
In July 2015 the dismembered remains of Valentina Ulanova, seventy-nine, who had lodged with her, were found in bags near the building. Samsonova was recorded on camera carrying the bags out. She was arrested and gave an account of the killing.
She had kept diaries over many years, in Russian, English and German, in which she recorded her feelings about people around her, and Russian investigators said these referred to further deaths. Her husband had disappeared in 2005 and a lodger in 2003. The press called her the Granny Ripper and reported that she had eaten parts of the body, which was never established.
The range of one to eleven and more comes from those diaries and from the disappearances. One killing is established.
She was examined and found to be suffering from a serious mental disorder, and the court ordered compulsory psychiatric treatment rather than trial. She was found to be suffering from a serious mental disorder and was made subject to compulsory psychiatric treatment rather than tried.
The entry records one death, a set of diaries that are not evidence of the others, and a woman of sixty-eight in a psychiatric institution.