Relationships are hard. When they don’t work out like we expect, or hope, them to, it’s usually best to cut ties and move on. That’s what the girlfriend of Alexander Spesivtsev tried to do, but he wasn’t so amenable. After the breakup, he decided to kidnap her, lock her in his flat and torture her for three weeks.
Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev was born on March 1, 1970, in the town of Novokuznetsk, the largest city in Kemerovo Oblast, RSFSR, Soviet Union. Born underweight he nearly died, but ultimately survived and was frequently ill. Given the nickname, Sasha, he was the youngest of two children, having an older sister named Nadezhda.
He grew up in an apartment on the 9th floor of Pionerskiy Prospekt 53, unit 357, in central Novokuznetsk. His father was abusive, often violent, known to torture the entire family. Lyudmila, his mother, worked at a nearby school, in charge of the maintenance team.
After about 15 years of abuse, Lyudmila divorced her husband, and when he left he never looked back. She was known to be overly affectionate towards Sasha. Although in a typical Soviet-style apartment parents shared a room and children slept in the living room, with the absence of a husband, she invited her son to sleep in her bed.
They shared a bed until he was 12-years-old.
In school, Sasha was considered to be timid, shy, and antisocial. With no friends, he was a regular target of bullying. But he wasn’t the only one thought to be antisocial. Both his mother and sister chose to spend time with each other at work, and not socialize with coworkers.
In a time when neighbors relied heavily upon one another, the Spesivtsev family stood out. They kept to themselves, never greeting their neighbors. Oddly, they also refused to take the elevator up to their 9th floor apartment, instead choosing to always take the stairs.
After she was caught stealing plumbing supplies from work, Lyudmila was fired, and went on to work as an assistant to a blind lawyer at the public prosecutor’s office. She also took on a job as a legal secretary for a local judge.
Alexander and Lyudmila had, what we would consider to be, an unusual relationship. Much as people now do, she had an interest in true crime, and often brought home not only books on criminal cases, but details about the cases she was learning about at work, and crime scene photos. Some of these photos, as well as those in the books, were photos of corpses, which she readily showed to her son.
Instead of story books, Sasha only read criminal case files. It’s really no surprise that he began to show signs of increasing sadistic tendencies.
He enjoyed tormenting others, placing firecrackers in the elevator of their apartment building, or in the neighbor’s door locks. He painted things on the walls of the apartment building like, “Ha Ha Ha! Heil Hitler!”
But he was never punished. Neighbors and others knew it was Sasha who had done the terrible things, yet his mother defended him wholly. She felt others were being unnecessarily hard on her son.
Sasha openly hated other kids, and his mother did nothing but fan the flames of that hatred.
By 1988, he had become obsessed with murder. Even dinner conversation was filled with talk of case files, circumstances and methods of various brutality killings. The line between right and wrong grew increasingly blurred. Sasha suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to Novokuznetsk’s Hospital Number 12 for psychiatric observation.
Upon his release, Sasha returned home to his mother and sister. His mother was sure he would be in her care, considering his physical and mental fragility. Knowing he was independent enough to live alone, when Sasha turned 21 she and his sister moved out and into an apartment closer to their work. She would return regularly to take Sasha food and money, and see to it that he wanted for nothing.
The Girlfriend
Then, in 1991, he met Evgeny Guslnikova, a 17-year-old girl, while walking his dog. The two became an item, and Sasha found himself the romantic. The couple went on long walks, he gave her flowers and would recite poetry to her.
Sasha’s mother hoped her son had found true love, and began limiting her visits so he could spend time with Evgeny. The couple spent most of their time in his apartment, but after a short time, Sasha’s romantic nature began to change. The tiniest of verbal arguments became physical assaults. Not only had Sasha come from an abusive background, but so had Evgeny.
She decided to break off their relationship, but before she could leave, he locked her in the apartment.
Her parents weren’t concerned at first. After all, she had been practically living with Sasha for some time. At first they attributed the lack of communication with their daughter to this. Then to her, and Sasha’s drinking habits – they were both alcoholics by this time. But eventually her mother grew worried and went to the police.
Evgeny’s mother did not know where Sasha lived, so it took the police to find him. When they finally knocked on his door, he refused to open it. Police had to force their way in, where they found Evgeny, beaten and bruised. Even worse, she was barely alive.
A physical examination of Evgeny revealed abscesses in addition to her other physical wounds. She had been tortured for weeks. Unfortunately, she succumbed to her injuries at the hospital. Her official cause of death was Sepsis, a condition that occurs when the body’s response to an infection damages its own tissues.
Sasha was arrested, and was charged with Evgeny’s murder. He was then sentenced to serve time at Oryol Psychiatric Clinic (Орловской психиатрической спецлечебнице). There he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, though his IQ was tested and reportedly high. Staff at the clinic encouraged him to write.
But that wasn’t all that happened. Eager to increase his sexual prowess, Sasha convinced another inmate to sew a metal ball into his urethra. However, instead of the results he was hoping for, he ended up with erectile dysfunction and a severe inflammation in his genitals.
His anger and hatred for people grew exponentially, and in his head he began to plot revenge on everyone, believing that the only way to set things right would be by punishing others.
After about three years, Sasha was released. Unfortunately the hospital failed to file the proper paperwork, so his release went unnoticed by law enforcement. If you were to look in the official databases, it would appear as though he was still receiving treatment.
He moved back into his old apartment. He got a tattoo of the letter “E” on his ring finger. When asked about it, he responded that it was in memory of his wife.
Sasha was unable to obtain regular employment, much as his mother had feared, and turned to stealing. He observed the growing number of children living on the streets. He noticed that even kids with homes would roam the streets unsupervised, because both their parents had to work. He grew to hate capitalism. He began to hate the children he met on the streets.
The Siberian Ripper
In February 1996, Sasha met 20-year-old Elena Trunova at a train station. He convinced her to go home with him, promising her a warm meal and some comfort. Inside his apartment, they had sex, but he couldn’t finish, thanks to his erectile dysfunction. She made a grave mistake when she laughed and asked if he was impotent.
He allowed her to go to the bathroom, but followed her. Sasha tortured and killed Elena Trunova.
Then he met another girl, also named Elena. Back in his apartment, neighbors heard screaming, but assumed it was Sasha, knowing he was struggling with his mental health. It didn’t help that he was playing loud music.
Sasha later admitted that it was boring to kill only women, so he changed things up. That spring, Sasha found six 12-year-old boys playing at a construction site of a department store. He lured them back to his apartment with the promise of cigarettes and a lie. He told them he would pay them if they burglarized an apartment.
“We went all the way into the apartment, and the last kid closed the door behind him. I suggested they go into my bedroom. They became agitated, suspected something was wrong… One of them screamed. I took a knife that was lying on the table in the bedroom and hit him in the chest, the others began to scream too. Then I stabbed them, once in the chest – each of them. I realized that they all died immediately. Then I moved them all to one side in my bedroom – I used a rag I found near the wardrobe to cover them. They lay like this for four days. Then I carried them into the hallway. About a week later my mother Lyudmila Yakolevna dropped by. I made her carry the bodies and I went to sleep in the bedroom. In the morning when I woke up, there was nothing in the corridor. What Mother did to them, I don’t know, I didn’t touch on the subject.”
Sasha literally slept while the bodies of six boys decomposed under a rag on the side of his bedroom. His mother didn’t even ask him for an explanation as to why she had to clean up the deceased, she just did it, helping him to first dismember their bodies and then loaded them into buckets. Lyudmila carried their bodies away, down the nine flights of stairs and dumped them into the Aba River.
With that mess cleaned up, Sasha was ready to kill. He met two girls, ages 12 and 14. He told them about an opportunity he had to make some money. He had “wholesale soap bars” that they could sell and then keep some of the profit. He just needed them to follow him to his apartment to collect them.
The girls were never seen alive again.
In June, he killed 13-year-old Elena Sachkova, 15-year-old Nikolaeva Gennadievna, a 40-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man; the older two’s remains could not be identified.
The following month he killed 19-year-old Natalya Voinova, her body was dumped in the Aba River.
In August, he killed 12-year-old Olga Tsvetaeva and 12-year-old Shatalina Galina.
Lyudmila continued to help clean up after her son, and even moved on to helping lure victims to the apartment. As for his sister, she chose to visit, but nothing more, preferring to stay out of it.
As time wore on, and more bodies began to stack up, Sasha and Lyudmila grew tired of hauling body parts down the stairs and to the river. They moved on to cooking and eating their bodies. He would make soups, stews, and even made sure his dog was always well taken care of.
Bodies Found
In the summer of 1996, body parts began turning up. Women washing carpets in the Aba River discovered a severed head in the water. One of them ran to a nearby bridge to tell a patrol officer who went to the site and fished it out.
In the weeks that followed, more body parts washed up. It took time, but eventually some body parts were able to be linked to missing person’s reports – children who had been playing on the streets, unsupervised.
Police weren’t sure what to think, though they had their theories. One theory suggested that these body parts were all that was left of people who had fallen victim to organ trafficking. Another believed the victims were those of Oleg Rylkov, the Tolyatti Ripper.
The Tolyatti Ripper had raped between 37 and 39 women in the 1990’s and killed four of them. He was caught and arrested in 1996, though he denied any involvement with these particular killings.
Investigators went to the psychiatric institutions in the area to determine who had been released that could possibly have fit the profile of their killer. Unfortunately, since the paperwork hadn’t been completed for Sasha Spesivtsev, he never came up as a possible suspect.
The killer was given the name, the Novokuznetsk Monster. But the trail to find him had gone cold. The killings had stopped, no more body parts had washed up on shore.
Then, on October 26, 1996, a plumber knocked on Sasha’s door. He needed to access his apartment to unlock a drain pipe, as neighbors had reported issues. Sasha refused him entry, shouting. “I am mentally unwell! Mother locked me in!”
The plumber went to the police as Sasha was sabotaging his work, which was an offense. Police arrived and kicked down the door to the apartment, and Sasha ran to the balcony where he used the fire escape to get to the roof.
Sasha escaped before police could catch up with him.
Then the police got a break. In his apartment, they found blood spatter on the walls. Human flesh in cereal bowls in the kitchen. In the bath was the torso of a young girl – her head inside the water tank in the apartment.
On the living room floor they found a discarded human rib cage. Sasha’s dog was happily chewing on a piece of human bone.
Alexander Spesivtsev Arrested
Lyudmila had been seen with the last three victims, and was arrested. Sasha was arrested three days later near his apartment. It didn’t take long to link him to the dismembered body parts that had been found in the Aba River.
Police had also found 82 sets of blood stained clothes, 40 pieces of jewelry belonging to women and children, and polaroid pictures of naked victims, from inside the apartment. The photos showed the victim handcuffed to the radiator.
They found two pairs of very small, children’s boots.
So much evidence, yet they were unable to definitively link it to any of Sasha’s known victims. They did, however, locate one – 15-year-old Olga Galtseva. At her apartment they found her lying on the sofa with a broken arm. She had been stabbed multiple times in the chest. Fortunately it wasn’t too late for her. She recovered in the hospital well enough to give a detailed testimony of what she had suffered.
Her statement, given from her hospital bed, was taped. When asked how it happened that she found herself inside apartment number 357, she whispered, “Babuska” (Russian for elderly woman). The prosecutor gasped, “Babuska…” and Olga looked intently at him as she nodded.
Olga went on to explain that on September 24, Lyudmila asked her and two of her friends to help her carry shopping bags to the apartment. As soon as they entered, Sasha attacked them with a knife. One of the girls, 15-year-old Nastya, retaliated and hit him pretty hard. He was so angry he killed her immediately, in front of all of them.
Sasha kept Olga and the other girl, 13-year-old Zhenya, chained up to the radiator for about a month. He taunted and teased them. He would burn them with cigarette butts. He raped them and forced them to beg God for mercy before he raped them again.
All of this while their friend, Nastya’s body was beside them, decomposing.
As if that all wasn’t horrible enough, Sasha gave the girls a hacksaw and ordered them to slice off pieces of flesh from their friend’s body and eat it.
He disemboweled her in front of them and flushed her intestines down the toilet. When he decided it was time for Zhenya to die, he set his dog on her, who bit her in the neck, severing her trachea.
Olga was the only survivor and he forced her to dismember Zhenya’s body. Sasha used her Zhenya to make soup that he shared with Olga. His mother and sister watched everything and never once tried to intervene or help.
Olga died less than 24 hours after her rescue.
Both Lyudmila and Sasha confessed during their first interrogation. During their initial joint interview, they were recorded arguing about her level of involvement. She claimed she was only guilty of cleaning up, though he disagreed – reminding her that she had been the one to lure victims to the apartment. She claimed she did it because she feared for her life.
Nadezhda Spesivtsev was taken in for questioning and ordered to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. She was found to be competent and since there was no evidence linking her to any of the murders, she was never charged.
In his solo interview, Sasha gave his version of events.
“It’s fun to have three girls at once. I often ran out of ideas, not knowing what I’d like. Then, the angrier I got, the nicer the girls were to me. The girl with the broken leg turned on me a bit, she cried and did not want to participate in our games anymore. She said ‘please wait until my leg is healed, then I will gladly do it again’. Then I got angry. What do you do with such a girl? From the cupboard I took a big piece of paper and wrote: TODAY – SLAUGHERFEST. At first, the girls didn’t understand, but believe me, I explained it to them… Those who don’t love me anymore and won’t do as I say – has to die. They were a little shocked, why I do not know, because I told them Nastya will live on in us, then it’s not so bad. Then I rested on my bed until my mother came in. She peeled the meat off and made something to eat, soup I think it was. When it was done I brought the dog, and I sat down with Olga at the table. Mother brought the food, and the kid did not seem to notice what Mother was serving. So I told her, and she spat it out, all over the place.”
60-year-old Lyudmila Yakovlevna Spesivtseva was found guilty of being her son’s accomplice and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She was released in 2008 after serving only 13 years. She lives with her daughter in a rural village near the city of Osinniki.
26-year-old Alexander “Sasha” Spesivtsev was charged with 19 murders. Although he had initially confessed to the murders, he later recanted. Unfortunately, the evidence in his apartment could only link him to four murders. He was evaluated and found to be insane. He was sent to Kamyshin Regional Hospital, a high-security psychiatric facility in the Kamyshin district of Volgograd.
During his incarceration, Sasha has become somewhat of a poet and a philosopher. He is outspoken against democracy and feels his murderous acts were an effort to cleanse Russia from the evils of democracy. In the diary found in his apartment, he noted how he wanted to clean the streets from ‘debris’. He saw himself as a ‘crusader against capitalism’. He said:
“How many people have our democracy destroyed? If people thought about that, there wouldn’t be any of this filth. But what can you do?”
In his hometown he became an urban legend, the boogeyman of Novokuznetsk known as “Cannibal Sasha.” International media sources have dubbed him “The Siberian Ripper.”
After police processed the crime scene, Apartment 357 was locked and no one has, or will ever live there again. Some believe it to be haunted and anyone who has ever managed to get inside would attest to the dark energy of the place. Maintenance men who had to fix a broken window in the apartment all washed themselves and went straight to church after entering Sasha’s 9th floor dungeon. One witness needed psychiatric help after she was asked to walk through the apartment.
Today, Sasha remains at the Kamyshin Regional Hospital.
In 2016, a concerned citizen’s group was formed, to keep an eye on Lyudmila. The group believes she got off too easily, and they have serious concern that she may hurt others again. The group reports all her movements on social media with their biggest fear being that her son will be released into her care someday, and that the two of them will pick up where they left off.
Another “Ripper” story you might be interested in is that of Tamara Samsonova – The Granny Ripper.
