← Murder, Mystery & Makeup
Murder, Mystery & Makeup
Grandma is secretly a serial killer and CANNIBAL?? The shocking crimes of the Granny Ripper
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Bailey Sarian
Hi, friends. How are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian, and today is Monday, which means it's murder mystery and makeup Monday. Okay, so let me tell you a little bit, a little introduction for you. Quiet city of Petersburg, Russia. Now, police. They made a chilling discovery in 2015 that would shock the nation and earn one elderly woman the infamous title of. Of the killer Granny. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. What was her name, you ask? Tamara Samsonova. An unassuming, soft spoken senior known to her neighbors as a polite and gentle woman. But behind her kind face lurked a horrifying truth. One that would eventually, like, reveal her as a suspected serial killer with a taste for murder, dismemberment, and dark ritual. I know. I mean, imagine like opening a dusty old diary and finding pages upon pages describing brutal killings written by the very grandmother who lived down the hall. Today we dive into the twisted mind and gruesome acts of Tamara Samsonova. I mean, what drove her to commit these heinous crimes? And how did she manage to go unnoticed for decades? So buckle in, kitty cats, because today's story is just like, what? What? Grandma? Grandma? No. So Tamara was born on April 25, 1947, in the city of Ozhur, I think is, how you say Ozhur, which is a government town in central Russia now. It wasn't like a super big place back then. From what I understood online was that like 20,000 people were living there at the time that she was living there. Tamara grows up there, but there's really not, like, much else that we know about her childhood, but it is Russia, so, you know, I'm sure it wasn't rainbows and lollipops, but that's just my assumption. So Tamara, when she graduates high school, she ends up moving like 14 hours across the country to attend college in March. Moscow. So in Moscow, Tamara, she enrolls at Moscow State Linguistic University. So she's like, learning languages. She's living the city life, and she seems to be good at it. Learning languages. I wish I could. And then once she graduates from college, she moves to Leningrad, which eventually turns into St. Petersburg. So we'll just call it St. Petersburg because that's what it is now. So at this time, it's the early 70s, and she's living in St. Petersburg. It's a big city. There's like almost 4 million people who live there. And, you know, amongst all these people out there, she meets a guy named Alexei, not the one who invented Tetris. Do you know that story? Should I tell you the history of Tetris? Cause it's actually really interesting. But I should focus. I am distracted. I had a Red Bull. So the two hit it off, and she eventually mar. She marries Alexi. So the newlyweds soon move into a newly built panel house in the kubechina area. Okay, shut up. I'm trying. But panel houses were like these low cost buildings that popped up all over the Soviet Union after World War II. They were cheap and, like, easy to build. So, you know, when the city was growing, they built these quickly to accommodate the growing population. So she gets into one of those. After that, she ends up getting a job working as a travel agent. She was putting her linguistics degree to good use. So she's working as a travel agent. She's like, great with people. She's a sweet, nice lady who speaks, again, a lot of languages, so people just like her. Then she gets a job working at the Grand Hotel Europe, which was like this fancy hotel that got a lot of foreign visitors. And it turns out Tamara was like, really good at this fancy hotel job because she ended up working there for 16 years before retiring. So she retires and nobody really knows what she was up to at this time. But what we do know is that shortly after she retired, Tamara's husband, Alexi, he just like, goes missing. Now listen, him and Tamara had been together for like 30 years at this point, and then suddenly, poof, he's gone. So Tamara goes to authorities and she reports Alexei missing. She's like, my husband's missing. Like, I don't know what to do. And then she tells him, I think he ran off with another woman. Yeah. She tells the police that Alexi ran off with some other lady, so there wasn't much urgency to go looking for him because, like, it. That sounds like a marital problem. You know, they don't really care. So now that Alexi is gone, Tamara, she decided to start renting out her room in her apartment. You know, extra income. That's great. Where it turns out she had, like, a really hard time keeping them around. I wonder why. It was said that Tamara was kind of difficult to Live with her neighbors, actually would later say they remembered hearing a lot of like, loud banging on the radiator. They would hear yelling and all sorts of just like loud noises coming from her, her apartment pretty often. So as soon as like a new roommate would come in, they would quickly move out. As a neighbor, they're like, of course they're watching. They're like, this lady's crazy. Watch. I give him five days, he'll be out. But Tamara, she didn't just, like, let her feelings out on her roommates. No. She also kept like, details of her life in her diary. She was. She had diaries for years, but she would write in her diaries in like Russian, English, and sometimes German. It was just like where she expressed her thoughts on life. And, you know, she'd like, write down things like she slept badly, she drank coffee, took medicine, normal diary stuff. And Tamara, she had like a lot of interest. She liked writing songs, music. Apparently she had lots of like, books about black magic and astrology. Like, she loved that shit. Okay. So a few years go by and it's like 2014. Tamara decides to renovate her apartment. And it was great timing because she had just been introduced to 79 year old Valentina Nikolaevina Nailedat. Valentina, she's almost 80, right? So she was looking for someone to like, move into her place who could help around with chores and around the, the house or whatever. Tamara at this point is 68, and Tamara tells Valentina she'll move in and like, help her with the housework and whatever. So it's like, great arrangement. While Tamara's apartment's getting renovated, she can stay with this lady. Well, it turns out, like, what's her name? Tamara. She like really loved this new little setup she had going on. She loved Valentina's place. Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual. I guess, like, over time, the relationship between Tamara and Valentina started to just go south. And Valentina, like, asked Tamara to move out. And Tamara's like, no, I'm not moving out. Actually, that's crazy. Crazy you bring that up because that's not happening. Valentina told her that she was pretty much tired of her. It's like she wasn't really keeping up with housework or anything like that. She was just pretty much being a squatter. Okay. Either way, Valentina was like, please leave. And Tamara just like, kept refusing. Then In July of 2015, they got into a bad fight over unwashed dishes. I get it. No one likes doing the dishes. So apparently neither of them wanted to clean the dirty, dirty Dishes. Which is fair, you know, except the whole reason that Tamara was living there was to help Valentina with her housework. So it was, you know, annoying, right? Tamara couldn't keep up with the bargain. And once again, she was just being an inconvenience to Valentina. So instead of Tamara moving out, like, you know, she was asked. Tamara decides, I need to get rid of Valentina. She's a problem. So she decides. Tamara, she decides she's going to poison her. I know. Big, big jump here. I was like, okay, all right. She was about to get Aqua Tofanad. So. So Tamara, she later said that she panicked because she was scared to live at her home. Which I was like, okay, okay. And if she killed Valentina, she could live in peace for another five months. Cause that's when the renovation would be done. So, okay. All right. So anyways, the two of them fight over unwashed cups. And Tamara, you know, she's had enough. So she goes out and. And she buys some drugs for the poisoning. She drives to a nearby city, and she somehow convinces a pharmacist to sell her a prescription drug called phonazepam, which, according to the Internet, is like a Xanax type of drug. It has a very calming effect. Make you knock you out, I guess. This drug was actually developed in Russia to treat neurological disorders like insomnia and anxiety. So the pharmacist ends up handing over 50 pills to Tamara. She's like, thank you. And she goes back to Valentina's. When she's back at Valentina's, Tamara, she ends up cooking one of Valentina's favorite meals, an Olivier salad, which I guess is like a traditional Russian dish. I'm sorry if I butchered the name, but it's made with peas, potatoes, carrots, onions, pickles, eggs, and, like, some sort of meat. And they mix it all together with May. So it was, like the perfect meal to sprinkle in some pills. And by sprinkle in, I mean Tamara literally put all 50 pills into the salad. And then she served it to poor Valentina, who had no clue what was going on. So Tamara gives Valentina her food and then ends up, like, going to bed waiting for the pills to kick in. But around 2am tomorrow, she wakes up and she goes down to the kitchen, and that's where she finds Valentina's body just laying on the kitchen floor. Now, this is where, like, reports get a little wonky. But some say that Valentina was still alive when Tamara found her. But either way, it didn't Stop Tamara from doing what she did next. Dismember Valentina. Tamara later told police she did all this in the kitchen because Valentina was too heavy to carry into the bathroom. So it's unclear what Tamara did with the. The body parts and the organs. But we do know she wrapped the rest of the body parts in pieces of a. Like a shower curtain. Yeah. And then she placed them in plastic bags before dumping them in a pond near. Near her neighborhood. CCTV footage actually, like, caught Tamara dragging plastic bags to the pond seven different times. I mean, okay, all right, now, it's about three days later. It's like, July 26, 2015, and there's a couple who's out walking their dog, just minding their own business by the pond. And this dog became very interested in a bag that had, you know, come ashore. So the couple, they decide to open the bag. What's in the box? Only to see a headless and limbless torso. Could you imagine? No. So, of course, they called the police right away, and police, actually, the night of Tamara's murder, they got a phone call from someone who saw Tamara out by the pond dropping bags into the pond. So that person called the police. So now the police are like, oh, shit, something's going on here. Right? Hoping that they're putting the pieces together. And then on top of that, talk about a bad day to murder someone, because a social worker had stopped by to see Valentina to make sure everything's okay, you know, and Tamara had refused to let her into the apartment. So all the pieces are coming together very quickly. So the police come out, they start to question people in the neighborhood and realize that nobody had seen Valentina in days. So police, they also. They go out to the pond, they collect the bags. They do all that stuff. And one day, after finding these body parts, police were able to link them to Valentina. So police, they head back to Valentina's house. They go to Valentina's house, and then they knock on the door, and guess who answers? Tamara answers. Of course she does. She's like, this is my house. Now, apparently, Tamara was very welcoming. She told the police officers to come on in. Don't be shy. Come on in. So once the police get inside, you know, police are looking around as they do, and they find traces of blood in the kitchen and the bathroom. And then they realized, hey, wait a minute. The shower curtain has been torn off. Hmm. That's a little odd, ma'am. So the investigators, they confronted Tamara, and they were like, look, babe, listen, there's Blood. There's blood, there's evidence. Plus, no one has seen Valentina in days. And without hesitation, Tamara was like, okay, you got me. Like, she didn't even try and deny, which is good, because, you know, they didn't have to, like, chase her down. I guess the bright side here, she told the officers, like, I murdered Valentina. It was I. So the police, you know, they obviously arrest her. They're like, okay, great. Thank you for confessing. So once she's arrested and in custody, she tells the police the whole fight over the dishes, which must have just sounded ridiculous, right? She tells him about buying the drugs at the. The pharmacy and putting, like, all 50 pills in her salad. And the police then, you know, they search Valentina's apartment, and that's where they ended up finding Tamara's diary. And let me tell you, this lady, she told her diary everything, which is great for investigators, not great for her. Not that I want it to be great for her. You know, it's like, girl, come on. I mean, even though her diary was written in three different languages, they were still able to decipher it and read everything. The investigators, they realized they were not just reading a diary full of songs and poetry. There was handwritten confessions to several other murders. Several other murders. Like, she was a very, very busy lady. She really was. So. Remember how Tamari used to have roommates? Keyword? Used to? Yeah. Well, according to her diary, she killed some of them. She's like, I don't know. They were annoying me. Including one of her earliest tenants. His name was Volodya. Well, she wrote in her diary that she cut him to pieces in the bathroom. She put pieces of him into plastic bags and then threw them away in different parts of FRU A different, like, district area. The name is real, real difficult. Okay. Another diary entry described how she dismembered the body of a 44 year old man named Sergey Bodnavin. I'm so sorry. Sergey or Sergei. Yeah, but she. She did that. Okay. I guess Tamara and him had some kind of argument and murder was the answer. She decided to kill him. She put his body parts in different plastic bags and dumped them around the neighborhood. And it turns out in 2003, a headless, armless and legless man's body had been found on the same street that Tamara had mentioned in her diary, but it had gone unsolved. Damn. I know. She also wrote in her diary about his tattoos. So it was connecting the. The dots for investigators. They didn't have to do much investigating. They just read the diary. And they're like, oh, okay, all the answers are here. After her arrest, Sergi's business card and traces of his blood were also found in her apartment. So it just really solidified the situation. In her diary, she wrote about how much she loved Valentina. So I don't know, but, you know, that didn't work out. There were also things written in the diary that made it sound like Tamara had, like, eaten her. Her victims. Allegedly. She liked cutting out their lungs and eating them, based on her diary. But they were never officially reported, like, in the media or. I don't know. They were never, like, officially reported on, so it's, like, hard to know if that's true or not. But police also never released information about possible cannibalism because there was no physical evidence to prove that Tamara actually ate her victims because she ate the evidence, you know, so they don't really know. But Tamara told the police that her diary entries were real. So she's like, yeah, that happened, and maybe she did. She seems like she tells her diary everything. So at this point, sure, I'd believe it. So according to her, she would eat parts of the lungs, legs, and pieces of the head of her victims before disposing everything else. What was she making? Like, some kind of soup or something? Was she giving it to other people? That's what I was like. I don't know. Go over to grandma's house for dinner. She's giving you head. Oh, sorry. Not like that. Actual head. You know, sorry flagged. It's over for me. Grandma's not giving you head. Sorry. I am having a day. So on July 29, 2015, Tamara is taken to the Frunze District Court of St. Petersburg. And they actually put her in a cage in the courtroom. She's like, I'm being treated like an animal. It's like, girl, you ate people. It's valid. I think you need to be in a cage. Even though Tamara's in a cage, she's still able to talk to journalists. So she turns to the media, and she's telling them, kind of like, I knew this day would come. I don't know why she has a Southern accent, but she does. In my mind, she doesn't. She's a Russian. Okay. And that, you know, it's such a disgrace that the whole city will know what I did. But she also told reporters that she was being haunted by a maniac upstairs who forced her to kill People were assuming she meant that, like, she was hearing VO voices in her head, but not fully sure. There. There was no clarification. Most of the time in court, she was, like, behaving quite strangely. They said, I wonder why. She either had her head in her hands and she'd be, like, hiding from the camera. I think she was more ashamed of being caught. Like, oh, my God, everyone's gonna know. Like, she was embarrassed of that. Or there were other times when she was crying, which, again, I just think, like, she was embarrassed to be caught and, like, have her name ruined, which is like, okay, then why'd you do it, girl? But then there were other times where she'd be sitting up proudly and even flirting with the court and the media. She's, like, blowing kisses. Hi. And, like, fixing her hair for them, trying to act all cute. And then there was another time where she acted like she didn't know where she was. So people were like, is she putting on an act, or is she like, what's going on? In one translation of what she told the judge, Tamara said all of the killings were deliberate. That for the last 10 years, she had been preparing for this day. And to quote, close the chapter with the murder of Valentina, this is what she said. Allegedly, she wanted to be known as a serial killer, which, like, goes against what, how she was behaving. Said, damn, girl, make up your mind. So I guess once when she killed Valentina, she realized she had nowhere to live. And she was like, I should just live in prison, so I'll just confess. Which is weird, because I thought she was getting her place renovated, but maybe that was just all a lie. I don't know what to believe with this lady. So Tamara, she ended up telling the judge that she was indeed guilty and that she deserved the punishment. Good for her. The judge announced to the court that Tamara would be held in custody, to which Tamara smiled and clapped her hands. So she gets put in jail while she's awaiting trial, and also while the police, like, continue their investigation. Even though she had confessed to all sorts of murders, it was kind of hard to take Tamara's word on things because she had told the police just lots of, like, very colorful stories, you know, and many of them were, like, contradicting each other. So it was like, I don't know. They didn't know what to believe. She also told police that she was an actress and a graduate of a very, like, well known, ooh la la type of school. Vaganova, I think it's called. Academy of Russian Ballet. And then she changed her story, saying she worked at one of the city's most Prestigious hotels. So police obviously had a hard time trying to, like, piece the story together on their own, because she was just talking, just saying shit. I don't know, maybe she was trying to come off. Like she didn't know what she was doing. You know, she's like, I'm done now. I'm just like a little old lady. Help me. I don't know what I'm talking about. But, you know, police, they reviewed all the CCTV footage they got of her dumping the bags into the pond, and at least they had that. And they also had CCTV footage of Tamara carrying, like, the saucepan pan, which was believed to have the hands and the head, but they never found it. So I don't know where she put that. So now It's November of 2015, and tomorrow, Tamara's been in custody for a few months again, waiting for trial, and the court has her undergo a psych exam. I mean, this may not be surprising because the psych came back and that said, like, Tamara would is a danger to herself and society. So, yeah, that was the review. So a month later, In December of 2015, she moved to a special psychiatric prison in Kazan until police finished the full investigation. At one point during the investigation, they had talked to Tamara's family and neighbors and friends, you know, and according to a lot of them, they said that Tamara would brag that one day she would be famous and popular. Yeah, Tamara was telling everyone that she would eventually cause a sensation. I don't know. What sensation? Tingling, stabbing sensation. I don't know. She never said, like, why or how, but, like, that's what she always told people. And then Tamara's neighbor, who, like, knew. Knew Tamara for, like, 15 years, said that Tamara was really interested in the serial killer Andre Chikatilo, AKA the Red Ripper, which I did an episode on him many moons ago, a long time ago. But she kind of was, like, really interested in him. You know what I mean? This guy, Andre, he had, like, killed and eaten at least 52 women in the late 70s and 90s. Yeah, he was very busy. And according to the neighbor, Tamara had, like, lots of knowledge about this murderous Andre guy. The neighbor said that back in the day, Tamara would sit topless with her back to the window. He was like, yeah, I don't know how I know that, but I just know that she did that a lot and that tomorrow's body was quite attractive. He's like, okay, you didn't have to give that much information, but all right, guy, I don't know what this has to do with anything, but that's what the neighbor said, that her body was very attractive, and she would sit naked sometimes. I wasn't looking, but I noticed that she was doing that. But this neighbor actually did give a little information that may have been helpful. They said that Tamara asked to borrow their hacksaw years back, and she never returned it. Rude. But now that we know she murdered all these people and, like, cut them up, she probably was using it. It was also revealed in the investigation that Tamara had been in and out of mental institutions at least three times over the past 15 years. I guess the doctors thought that she had schizophrenia. You know, schizophrenia. You know, schizophrenia. You know, her hallucinations, delusions. It's thought disorder, movement disorder. Honestly, it sounds really scary and awful, but remember, Tamara had said that she was haunted by, like, a maniac upstairs, which maybe it was in her head. That doesn't excuse her behavior, but it's like, oh, maybe it was. It was that. So investigators, they also talked to one of Tamara's school friends from back in the day. And this school friend told police that Tamara had apparently killed her own mother in law. I know. I was like, girl, what? Why wouldn't you say anything? Well, Tamara had threatened this friend, saying, look, if you say anything, I'm gonna cut you up into pieces and throw you out to the dogs, so don't make me angry or I'll do it. And so the friend was like, okay, guess I won't say anything. All right, sounds good. So while the police are learning all this stuff from Tamara's friends and neighbors, Tamara is still in treatment at the special hospital. There, she gets officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and it's determined she is unfit to stand trial. So the judge orders Tamara to spend the rest of her life in a mental institution, where for years to come, it showed that she continued to be a threat to those around her and herself, and that she required special monitoring. So remember how I mentioned, like, there's possibly other victims that Tamara had written about in her diary? Well, many investigators believe, like, she killed a lot more people. Some reports say she killed, like, 11. There was 11 murders. And then others say 14 different murders. But we know that some of them were, like, a handful of her tenants who just disappeared. But it's hard to confirm because the police did not have solid evidence Aside from her diary and her own confessions. So, yeah, you know what they say, like, without a body, like, it's hard to prove anything. But her diary did reference both cannibalism and the occult. So people Were like, well, maybe that's why she had all those black magic books in her apartment. Trying to link it to, like that. I don't know. Police also suspect that Tamara killed and dismembered her husband. Yeah. Remember him? Yeah. In the very beginning, the guy who allegedly ran off with another woman. Well, turns out police think that Tamara killed him. I mean, why wouldn't she at this point? Geez. You know? But again, they can't confirm because nobody knows where the bodies are. Now, as for Tamara, guess what? She's still alive. I was kind of surprised. I don't know why, but I was. And she is still continuing to live out her days in the high security psychiatric prison hospital. And as one source to the investigation put it, we may never know the extent of the granny's killings. Maybe one day she will give a full confession. I doubt she will, just because I think she would have done it by now. She's probably not. Well, how about they just release the diary? I'd love to read that. I mean, I wouldn't love it, but, like, you know, I'm just curious. I would read it if it were available. So that is the awful story of Tamara Samsonova. She was a killer who killed for. Who knows why, because she wasn't getting money for it. She was just, like, killing for fun. And you don't. To be fair, you don't really hear a lot of women murderers who just kill for fun. It's always like, the man. Sorry, but it's kind of like it's true, right? Women always kill passion. It's always impassioned killing. So the fact that she did and, like, nobody can figure out why, it's pretty rare. She wasn't gaining anything from it. I don't know how. I don't know what was her motive. Why did she think she's just sick and she was just killing? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, that's really it, Bailey. I think that's it. Could you imagine if one day you wake up and you find out your grandma had killed a bunch of people and was a serial killer and you're like, grandma, Grandma. That must be wild. I hope you have a good day. You make good choices, and I'll be seeing you guys later. Goodbye.