The Siberian Ripper

The Siberian Ripper

Who was the Siberian Ripper?

Also known as Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev was a Russian serial killer convicted for killing 4 people in Novokuznetsk in 1996.

Spesivtsev, with the assistance of his mother Lyudmila, targeted street children and young women across Novokuznetsk by luring them into their apartment, where they would be tortured and killed, and sometimes cannibalized. Despite only being convicted for 4 murders, Spesivtsev confessed to 19 murders that he was accused of by police, and based on evidence is believed to have committed over 80 killings as early as 1991.

During Childhood, Spesivtsev was considered unsocial, did not have any friends and was bullied while school. Spesivtsev and his mother held a strong but unusual relationship, as Lyudmila would regularly show her son photographs of corpses from books about criminal cases at a very young age, and the two shared a bed until Spesivtsev was 12. Growing up Spesivtsev showed increasing sadistic tendencies, and in 1988 met his first girlfriend. Ostensibly poetic by nature, they often went for walks together; but the façade didn't last. Arguments led to her breaking up with him, which Spesivstev did not accept. He kidnapped her and tortured her for a month in his apartment until she died of Sepsis. For this, at the age of 18 Spesivstev was assigned to the Oryol Special Psychiatric Hospital.

Crimes

Though in official databases he was (then) still listed as undergoing treatment, in 1991 he was discharged. Once out, he began associating with transients and beggars and fermented a deep-seated hatred of street children; whom he viewed as a byproduct of Russia's emerging democracy. Spesivstev was likewise particularly embittered by an episode during his commitment at the Oryol Hospital, in which he asked another patient to insert a metal ball into his urethra to make him more virile. This had the opposite effect, causing erectile dysfunction and genital pains.

Alexander, then Lyudmila began to lure victims into their apartment, chosen at random, where Alexander would torture and eventually kill them. Unaccompanied street children, attending discothèques and playing in construction sites had become commonplace in the impoverished city of Novokuznetsk since the collapse of the soviet union, and they became his main target. The bodies of victims would sometimes be cannibalized^[ Lyudmila would dispose of unwanted remains by throwing them from buckets into the Aba River, late at night.

Arrest and Sentencing

He today resides at the Kamyshin Regional Hospital, a facility complete with full meals and metal bars. His mother and his sister have been forced to move from the apartment where the murders occurred.