Murder, Mystery & Makeup - Grandma is secretly a serial killer and CANNIBAL?? The shocking crimes of the Granny Ripper

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Hi friends, happy Tuesday! Looks can be deceiving... and deadly. And that's why you never judge a book by its cover. Because if you judged Tamara Samsonova by her cover... you'd think she's just this sweet, lil Russian grannie who makes after-school snacks for the kiddos. But in reality... Tamara was anything but sweet. And instead of preparing after-school snacks... she was preparing flesh... human flesh... to eat. This woman's story is wild and the crazy part is she documented everything. Also, let me know who you want me to talk about next time. Hope you have a great rest of your week, make good choices and I'll be seeing you very soon. xo Bailey Sarian I sometimes talk about my Good Reads in show. So here's the link if you want to check it out. IDK. lol: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/139701263-bailey ________ FOLLOW ME AROUND Tik Tok: https://bit.ly/3e3jL9v Instagram: http://bit.ly/2nbO4PR Facebook: http://bit.ly/2mdZtK6 Twitter: http://bit.ly/2yT4BLV Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2mVpXnY Youtube: http://bit.ly/1HGw3Og Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3cC0V9d Discord: https://discord.gg/BaileySarian RECOMMEND A STORY HERE: [e-mail] Business Related Emails: [e-mail] Business Related Mail: Bailey Sarian 4400 W. Riverside Dr., Ste 110-300 Burbank, CA 91505 _________ Check out at https://www.shopify.com/makeup and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Personal styling for everyone—get started today at https://www.stitchfix.com/makeup.

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo Road Venture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexperts.ca locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there, treadexperts.ca. 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 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 25th, 1947 in the city of Ozhor. I think is how you say Ozhor, 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 moscow so in moscow tomorrow 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 seventies 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? Because 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 marries. She marries Alexei. So the newlyweds soon move into a newly built panel house in the Kupchina 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 at as a travel agent. She's 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 Alexi 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, 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. But 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 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 is 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, nay nay. 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. She was, she had diaries for years, but she would write in her diaries in like Russian, English, and sometimes German.

And 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. Nailed that. 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 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 uh 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 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's about to get aqua divanad 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 because 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 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 finazopam which according to the internet is like um 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 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 made with peas potatoes carrots onions pickles eggs and like some sort of meat and they mix it all together with mayo so it was like the perfect um meal to uh 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 go ends up like going to bed waiting for the pills to kick in but around 2 a.m Tamara 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 um like a shower curtain yeah Yeah. And then she placed them in plastic bags

before dumping them in a pond 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 call 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've just sounded ridiculous

right she tells them 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 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. I was 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 Tamara used to have roommates?

Keyword, used to. Yeah. Well, according to her diary, she killed some of them. She was like, I don't know. They were annoying me. Including one of her earliest tenants. His name was Volodia. 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 through a different like uh 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 Sergei Botnavin. I'm so sorry, Sergei. Or Sergei. Yeah, but 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 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 victims. Allegedly, she liked cutting out their lungs and eating them based on her diary, but they were never officially reported in the media or I don't know, they were never officially reported on, so it's 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 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, mm, I don't know. Go over to grandma's house for dinner and 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 a head. Sorry. I am having a day. So on July 29th, 2015, Tamara is taken to the Fruinzi District Court of St. Petersburg. And they actually put her in a cage in the courtroom. She's like, I 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 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 him to be known as a serial killer, which like goes against how she was behaving. It's like, damn girl, make up your mind. So I guess 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.

Vaganova 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 don't know 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 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 said like Tamara 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 Tamara's body was quite attractive. He was 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 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 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, it turns out police think that Tamara killed him. I mean, why wouldn't she at this point? Jeez, 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, but 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 a passionate uh 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, do you 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 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.