Tamara Samsonova allegedly confessed in her diary to at least 10 murders (Picture: Will Stewart)

An elderly woman has confessed in her diary to killing at least 10 people over the last 20 years.

Tamara Samsonova, 68, is alleged to have dismembered her victims after killing them and was described as a ‘huge danger to those around her’.

She’s been arrested over the death of a woman, 79, she allegedly poisoned after they quarrelled.

She’s also suspected of killing a former lodger, 32, at her apartment in 2003 following a row in 2003, police said.


It is not currently clear whether the claims in her diary in English, Russian and German are genuine – police have speculated some of the confessions may be fantasy – but she has been given the nickname Babushka Yaga – a terrifying old woman from fairytales.



Some have called her crimes ‘Nightmare on Dimitrova Street’.

She’s been arrested over the death of a 79-year-old woman

One Russian website said: ‘If the memoirs are correct, the babushka will turn out to be a serial killer on a scale rare for Russia, and her diary a real version of Stephen King.’

Security camera footage aired on state television showed Samsonova, wrapped in a hooded raincoat, dragging a black plastic sack out of an apartment, apparently containing the body parts of her victim, which police found on Saturday.

She cut up the body with a saw and knife and dumped it in her Saint Petersburg suburb, investigators said.

Police found a sack containing the body without a head or limbs next to a pond.

Neighbours told the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda that Samsonova had recently spent several months in a psychiatric hospital.

Samsonova told police she used to work in the Soviet era at a hotel frequented by foreign visitors, now known as the Grand Hotel Europe, Life News website reported, perhaps explaining her familiarity with foreign languages.