The Chilling Case of Tamara Samsonova: Russia’s Granny Ripper
- dthholland
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
In the quiet suburbs of St Petersburg, the image of a shawl-wrapped babushka rarely raises suspicion. Yet behind the door of one unremarkable flat in Dimitrov Street, police uncovered a story so macabre and bewildering that it would grip the nation and confound investigators. This was the home of Tamara Samsonova, a retired hotel worker with a warm smile, fluent in several languages and seemingly harmless. She also happens to be suspected of up to 14 gruesome murders.
This is the true story of the woman who came to be known as Granny Ripper.
A Life That Gave No Warning
Tamara Mitrofanovna Samsonova was born on 25 April 1947 in the Siberian town of Uzhur. She later moved to Moscow to study at the Moscow State Linguistic University before settling in St Petersburg with her husband, Alexei Samsonov, in 1971. Their home was in a newly built panelled housing block on Dimitrov Street, where they would live for decades.
For many years, Tamara held down a respectable job. She worked for Intourist, a government-run travel agency that catered to foreigners visiting the Soviet Union. Her workplace was the Grand Hotel Europe, one of the most prestigious addresses in the city. By the time she retired, she had clocked up 16 years of service. Nothing in her professional life hinted at the horrors that would later emerge.
Her personal life, however, was marked by oddities and absences. In 2000, her husband vanished. Tamara reported him missing but the case went cold. Fifteen years later, she resurfaced with a renewed interest in the case, contacting investigators to file another report. Whether this was genuine or a diversion remains unclear.
Murder Comes to Dimitrov Street
By 2003, Tamara Samsonova had already been living in her flat on Dimitrov Street for over three decades. Her quiet, solitary presence did not arouse suspicion. Yet behind the walls of her modest flat, a disturbing transformation had begun. That year, her tenant, Sergei Potanin, a 44-year-old man from Norilsk, became the first confirmed victim. The two had a heated argument, the details of which remain unclear. What is known, however, is that it ended with Sergei dead and dismembered.
Tamara disposed of his remains in a calculated and methodical manner. Body parts were scattered around the streets of the Frunzensky District, including on Desyhis Way. At the time, the murder went undetected. Potanin’s remains were never conclusively linked to her until years later, when forensic evidence and her own writings suggested a pattern. She continued living in the same flat without further official suspicion for another 12 years.
Then came 2015, and with it, the murder that would unravel everything.
That spring, renovations in Tamara’s apartment required her to seek temporary shelter. A mutual friend arranged for her to stay with 79-year-old Valentina Nikolaevna Ulanova, a retired woman who lived alone on the third floor of the same building. Valentina agreed, believing it to be a short arrangement. But what began as a courteous act soon turned sour. Tamara overstayed her welcome. Their relationship, strained from the outset, deteriorated quickly. Valentina wanted her out. Tamara refused to leave.
Driven by resentment and perhaps by deeper psychological issues, Tamara plotted Valentina’s end. She travelled to Pushkin and convinced a pharmacist to sell her phenazepam, a powerful sedative developed in the Soviet era, known for its potency and high risk of misuse. Returning home, Tamara crushed dozens of pills and stirred them into an Olivier salad, a traditional Russian dish made with potatoes, carrots, peas, and pickles—Valentina’s favourite.
They sat down to eat. Tamara’s plan was precise and deliberate.
Later that night, the flat fell silent. Tamara awoke, noticing Valentina was absent. She discovered her housemate collapsed on the kitchen floor, still breathing but unresponsive. Calmly, she collected two knives and a saw and began dismembering the body. First in the kitchen, then continuing in the bathroom, she worked methodically through the early hours.
Over the next several nights, neighbours noticed nothing unusual. Tamara made repeated trips in and out of the flat, calmly carrying plastic bags. Some of the body parts were wrapped in a shower curtain. Others were placed in nylon sacks and dropped around the local area, including by a nearby pond.
On 26 July, a resident walking near the pond discovered a package that had been sitting unnoticed for days. When opened, it revealed a partial human torso, an arm still attached. A plastic bag nearby contained hips and thighs. The quiet suburb of Dimitrov Street was about to become the centre of a national scandal.
The Woman Behind the Killings
When police visited the flat to investigate the discovery, it was Tamara Samsonova who opened the door. She calmly explained that she was simply checking in on her elderly neighbour, Valentina, and was unaware of her sudden disappearance. But detectives quickly spotted inconsistencies. There were blood stains in the bathroom. A shower curtain was missing its fittings. Surveillance footage from the apartment building sealed the matter.
Tamara had been caught on camera seven times that week, each time in the early hours, carrying bags down the stairs and out into the night. On one occasion, she was seen holding a large cooking pot. Investigators would later believe that the pot contained Valentina’s head and hands, though those were never recovered.
Inside Tamara’s flat, a further revelation awaited. Police uncovered several notebooks—personal diaries written in a chaotic mixture of Russian, English and German. Within those pages were confessions to at least ten murders, possibly more. She described dismemberments in chilling detail, noting how she disposed of each body part. One entry told of a man named Volodya, another tenant, who she cut up in the bathroom and scattered across the Frunzensky District. She even described her preferred organs to consume, stating a fondness for lungs.
The flat also contained a private library of esoteric texts, from which several pages had been torn. Those pages matched ones found years earlier near the dismembered body of an unidentified male in the same neighbourhood. The implications were clear. Samsonova may have been killing for over a decade, her crimes concealed by the anonymity of a large city and the stereotype of an elderly woman as non-threatening.
Her diary entries were not just mechanical lists of crimes. They were emotional. She wrote about her wish to become infamous before dying. She expressed her feelings towards Valentina, claiming to be in love with her. “I’m in love with Valya,” she wrote in one entry. But it was an obsessive and one-sided love, rejected by Valentina. That rejection, according to investigators, may have been the ultimate catalyst for her death.
Even Valentina’s position as Samsonova’s former boss at the Intourist agency may have played a part. The resentment, possibly brewing for years, manifested in what would become Tamara’s most thoroughly documented and fatal act.
Psychiatric Commitment and Unanswered Questions
Tamara was swiftly arrested and brought before the Frunze District Court of St Petersburg. In November 2015, a psychiatric evaluation found her unfit to stand trial. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital indefinitely.
Despite confessing to Valentina’s murder, Tamara later retracted claims of the others, saying the diary was a work of fiction. But the police continue to investigate. Her husband’s body has never been found. Other victims described in her journal bear similarities to unsolved cases going back to the 1990s. Neighbours recalled strange smells, late-night movements, and a disturbing calmness that now seems ominous in retrospect.
A Legacy of Horror
In Russian folklore, Baba Yaga is an old woman who lives in the woods and devours her victims. Samsonova’s case led many to compare her to this mythical figure. Her nickname, Granny Ripper, evokes images of Jack the Ripper, but what is perhaps more unsettling is how ordinary she seemed. A friendly pensioner, fluent in multiple languages, helpful around the flat, always with a polite smile.
But beneath the surface lay a violent compulsion, perhaps madness, and a deep loneliness. Whether driven by revenge, obsession, or delusion, Tamara Samsonova became one of Russia’s most unsettling modern figures. A woman who may have loved, who certainly killed, and who wrote down her terrible secrets in a tidy, multilingual script.
The full truth may never be known. The bodies may never all be found. But what is certain is that the quiet life of this seemingly unremarkable grandmother concealed a story far darker than anyone could have imagined.
