(Reuters) — A 68-year-old Russian woman was arrested on Tuesday (July 28) in St. Petersburg suspected of killing and dismembering a pensioner neighbour several days before.
Police suspect Tamara Samsonova may have also killed a 32-year-old lodger in 2003.
The elderly woman’s case drew substantial attention in Russia after police retrieved a diary she kept in three languages – Russian, English and German – detailing 11 other murders.
Samsonova confessed to some of the other murders when speaking to reporters during her court appearance on Tuesday.
“I want to live in prison”, she said from a courtroom cage. “Because I am haunted by a maniac living upstairs, she forced me to kill.”
Russian prosecutors claim that Samsonova killed a 79-year-old paralysed woman she lived with and cared after, hacked her body into eight pieces and scattered plastic bags containing body parts in a nearby residential area next to a pond.
When police came to the victim’s flat, they found Samsonova, blood stains in the bathroom and a saw. Samsonova immediately confessed to the killing, local media said.
The CCTV images broadcast on Russian television show Samsonova making repeated trips from her apartment down stairs in the early hours of Saturday (July 25) carrying large bags and at one point a cooking pot.
Police quickly established a link between Samsonova and a 2003 killing of her 32-year-old lodger. Police say his body was also dismembered and scattered around in bags in a nearby residential area.
During an apartment search investigators found a hand-written diary, placed next to books on themes of magic and astrology, where Samsonova describes in detail at least 11 more killings. Russian media, which has dubbed Samsonova the “Granny Ripper”, claim at least one of those murders described has truly taken place.
Samsonova told reporters in the courtroom that she will finally be at peace in prison rather than to live with the neighbours she said annoy her.
“I have nowhere else to live. I am a very old person, and I put the whole matter to rest deliberately. I have thought 77 times about it and then decided that I must be in prison. I will die there and the state will probably bury me,” she said.
The court in St. Petersburg will hold Samsonova in custody two months, awaiting trial. Samsonova smiled and clapped her hands upon hearing the judge’s decision.