In 1987, the entire USSR was shocked by the case serial poisoner Tamara Ivanyutina, who poisoned 40 people with the most dangerous thallium. Among the dead were small children.
Tamara Antonovna Ivanyutina (maiden name Maslenko) (1941-1987)
The motives of the serial killer Tamara Ivanyutina were revenge and self-interest. She had grandiose fantasies about a thriving pigsty, “mountains of gold” and a black Volga. In addition, she “did not want to breed poverty” - in the person of other people’s children. Very modern and well-known “trends” to us.
Psychiatrists declared Ivanyutina absolutely sane. At the same time, three main features of her personality were identified: extremely inflated self-esteem, over-touchiness and vindictiveness. All these traits are characteristic of sociopaths, paranoids and narcissists.
Tamara was born into the family of Anton Mitrofanovich and Maria Fedorovna Maslenko, and was the fourth child out of six in this large family. The main deity, the supreme idol and the main measure of success in the family was wealth.
The father did not hesitate to pour poison into a person he didn’t like, and the mother professed the following life wisdom: “You shouldn’t write complaints, but be friends with everyone and treat them. But adding poison to food is especially harmful.”
Maslenko’s old men, without hesitation, poisoned to death their neighbor in a communal apartment, who turned on the TV too loudly and interfered with sleep. And even a relative who reprimanded them about the puddle in the toilet. This is their way of “revenge for insults.” They added rat poison to pilaf and pancakes prepared for the treat, and stuffed oranges and gingerbread with poison...
And at the same time they were very proud of their ingenuity.
How I “went to success”
Having matured, Tamara married a representative of one of the most successful professions of that time - a truck driver. People who lived in the USSR remember that “long-distance drivers,” along with sailors, were always extremely successful - it’s no joke, they traveled around all the republics of the Union, traveled to the CMEA countries, and sometimes, lo and behold, even to capitalist countries! Live and be happy! But that wasn't Tom's girlfriend. Money and an apartment, that's what you need right now. And so she began to poison her husband. Little by little, but gradually increasing the dose.
His partner, during the investigation, described the last flight this way. Tamara's husband became ill during the flight. His legs hurt badly; he couldn’t feel the pedals. I asked to replace him for an hour or two, but the poor fellow’s health was getting worse. Neither two nor three hours later the driver was able to get behind the wheel. Driving past a village stream, I asked my partner: “Maybe I should take a swim to cheer myself up? I’ll quickly douse myself with some water, get back to normal, and move on. Tomka prepared a clean towel for me...”
When the driver was drying his head, his partner was horrified to see that the entire towel was covered in hair. He refused to help himself to the sandwiches that his wife provided him with: not because he suspected anything was wrong, but simply because he was afraid to doze off after a hearty snack while driving. Soon after returning from the flight, Tamara Ivanyutina’s first husband died from heart attack.
Through a short time Tamara married Oleg Ivanyutin and took his last name. Having seen the house and plot of her parents, Ivanyutina immediately made a decision - use the old people, the plot for a small pig farm, pigs for meat and lard and get rich, get rich, get rich.
One terrible day for the elderly, Tamara and her mother-in-law prepared dinner. We sat at the table together, but only in the evening the old man began to feel ill. The next morning, his mother called Oleg and said that something bad had happened to his father: his legs were losing weight, his feet were going numb. He says he can’t put on socks himself. And when the grandmother began to help him, he roared in pain, as if he were being cut into pieces. Oleg advised calling an ambulance, but at the emergency hospital, doctors examined my grandfather and said that polyarthritis had worsened. They prescribed meds and sent me home.
Tamara became very concerned about her father’s health and insisted on going to her parents immediately. She applied a heating pad to his feet and spoon-fed him soup. In general, Oleg praised her as the most caring daughter-in-law in the world... Apparently, she just splashed this liquid into the soup. That same night, my grandfather died in the hospital.
At her husband's funeral, the widow became ill with her heart. Oleg asked Tamara to bring medicine from home. She returned with a glass of Valocordin and a glass of water. As soon as she drank the medicine, the mother began to stagger. appeared on her lips white coating, and she immediately vomited. Panic began among those present. The widow began to cry out that she had been given poison. Some woman swore that she saw with her own eyes how Tamara dripped some liquid from a bottle into the medicine, taking it out of her jacket pocket. The men began to demand the police, someone suggested taking the contents of the glass for examination. And then Tamara threw both the glass of medicine and the glass of water to the ground. Oleg Ivanyutin shielded his wife from the angry crowd and began to calm his mother. Oleg’s mother began to have the same symptoms: her arms and legs hurt, her feet went numb. She could not move her tongue and almost did not speak. By evening an ambulance took her, and two days later she died.
The road to the personal pig farm was open. But where to get food? There is only one answer - at school!
School No. 16 of the Minsk district of Kyiv.
In March 1987, three sixth-graders and 11 employees were brought to the hospital by ambulance from a Kyiv school with a diagnosis of influenza. Everyone had the same symptoms: weakness, nausea, leg pain, baldness. Despite intensive treatment, two children - Sergey Panibrat and Andrey Kuzmenko and two adults died almost immediately, the remaining 9 people were in intensive care. For that time, four deaths in a row was a real emergency. The prosecutor's office took over the case. Hospital doctors, summoned to an emergency meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, suggested that the cause of death was an unknown form of influenza, so standard treatment was ineffective. The following opinion was also voiced: people were poisoned by strong toxic substances through food or water. At first this version was not even considered, but after investigative authorities They interviewed the victims and it turned out that they all ate what was left of lunch in the school cafeteria: chicken soup And chicken liver. Moreover, those who had lunch on time were not harmed.
Dietician Natalya Kukharenko
The first to fall at her hands was nurse Kukharenko, who had the imprudence to make comments to Ivanyutina, including for non-compliance with hygiene rules, rudeness and rudeness. Tamara did not skimp on comments to children and even teachers; she constantly hovered around the stove and looked into the pots. But it was difficult to find another dishwasher with a meager salary, so Ivanyutin was kept at work.
When Kukharenko was hospitalized, the patient complained of numbness and coldness in her legs, and doctors diagnosed her with heart failure. But just the day before the woman looked healthy, active and cheerful. Six months earlier, two schoolchildren and two teachers were hospitalized with the same symptoms. One of them told investigators that he had strangely gone bald, but the reason could not be determined.
All these facts showed that the “diseases” were not an accident. A decision was made to exhume Kukharenko’s remains. It was then that the presence of thallium in the tissues was discovered. But no one even thought about the deliberate use of this heavy metal for poisoning purposes. A request to the sanitary and epidemiological station to carry out measures to exterminate insects and rodents in the catering unit received a negative response. Experts checked all school premises, food, pots, containers for cereals and the buckwheat itself remaining in them. To no avail. But investigators paid attention to strange behavior dishwashers Ivanyutina. She obstructed the inspection in every possible way and was rude.
“I concluded that they don’t like us at this school,” recalled chemist expert Valentina Kalachikova. - The dishwasher Ivanyutina followed me on my heels like a warden. She probably decided that I would steal the pan from them or pour cereal into their pockets. It's a terrible feeling, honestly. The look is unkind, heavy... How was this vixen even allowed to work with children?!”
The next step was to check all the personal files of the canteen workers. And then it turned out that Ivanyutina’s work book was false, since she had a criminal record for profiteering, which means she did not have the right to work in children’s institutions. This was the reason to study the life of a dishwasher in more detail. This is where the deaths of the first husband and the parents of the second came to light. They all complained of nausea and numbness in their limbs. Oleg himself had been ill for a long time (general weakness, joint pain, baldness), but doctors could not establish a diagnosis. Thus, Ivanyutina became suspect number one.
Consequence
During a search in Ivanyutina’s house, the necessary thing was found literally at the last moment.
When they had examined everything that was possible, Valentina Petrovna Kalachikova suddenly approached the bedside table, which stood by the window, and asked to open the door. Ivanyutina, who watched everything that happened with contempt, took an uncertain step towards the bedside table:
- This sewing machine, I got it from my mother-in-law. Will you take a look?
- We'll take a look, open it, or give me the key, I'll open it myself.
Ivanyutina threw the keys on the floor and almost hissed: “Open it yourself, seamstress!”
Kalachikova examined the contents of the boxes. Bobbins with threads, needles in boxes, a set of tools for embroidery, a bottle of machine oil for lubricating mechanisms... She picked up the bottle and suddenly realized that the utensils were too heavy for oil. And she put the bottle in her pocket. Analysis in the laboratory showed that the container contained Clerici liquid - the so-called aqueous solution of thallium. It is used in geology to separate minerals by density. Therefore, first of all, all organizations of the Ministry of Geology of Ukraine were subjected to inspection. And almost immediately they found a supplier. One of the laboratory assistants of the geological exploration expedition regularly supplied the Maslenko family with thallium, allegedly for baiting rats. During the entire time they received about 500 mg of poison.
Her sister Nina Matsibora, who sent her to the next world, did not lag behind Tamara. legal spouse. Nina married a man much older than her. Having registered his young wife in his apartment, the elderly husband signed his own death sentence. A week after the wedding, he was admitted to the hospital complaining of weakness and pain in his legs. His death was attributed to age.
In November 1980, mother Maria Fedorovna fell ill and went to the hospital. Her husband Anton Mitrofanovich was very worried about her health. At some point, the matchmaker decided to visit her. After the hospital, she went to Anton Mitrofanovich and expressed concerns about the matchmaker’s health. Like, she is the heaviest of the entire ward. I'm afraid it won't work. "That is?" - the matchmaker asked in bewilderment. “The truth is that there is little hope. We must prepare to have a human burial.” This phrase became a death sentence for her. Maslenko suggested that the matchmaker should not say nonsense, but rather drink to the health of his sick wife. While a relative was pouring moonshine and preparing food for the table, he seized the moment and poured poison into a glass. At night, the ambulance doctors, at a loss, gave her injections, either for the heart or to lower the blood pressure, but all in vain - by the morning the woman died.” By the way, the patient told the doctors that she was poisoned by a boiled egg. Like, when they were having a snack, Maslenko began to peel the egg, and it turned black right in his hands. He declared that the egg was spoiled and threw it aside. But when he left, the matchmaker felt sorry to throw him away, and she finished the egg. Unfortunately, the doctors considered it a dying delirium.
During the searches, no poison was found on Maslenko. But the poisoners gave themselves away! When Tamara was already in the pre-trial detention center, Maria Maslenko baked pancakes and went to treat her neighbor. She had a large disability pension, which was the subject of Maslenko’s black envy. But the neighbor did not eat the pancakes, because she had heard that the old woman’s daughter was suspected of poisoning. She threw one pancake to the cat, and by evening the animal began to convulse, and died three hours later. A neighbor reported this to the police, and the Maslenko couple were arrested. Just like Tamara, they told in detail and with gusto who, when, how and why they were poisoned.
Initially, Ivanyutina wrote a confession. The time has come for a psychopathic benefit performance. Being in grandiosity, she goes into detail - I think with great pleasure! - told about her crimes. It turned out that she treated two sixth-graders to poison only because they refused to arrange tables and chairs. “I decided to punish them,” Tamara said.
“Ivanyutina also said that she first tested the effect of the poison on the neighbor’s chickens and cats. She experimented with quantities - she knew what dose to give to make a person slightly ill, and what dose to make sure he died. At the same time, she did not care at all about the pain in which her victims died. “There should be no accidents in such a matter,” Ivanyutina explained smugly. - My friend almost got burned in the usual chicken egg. It’s good that the doctors turned out to be mugs...”
However, Ivanyutina later stated that she confessed under pressure from the investigation and refused to give further testimony. Apparently, when the “suckers” didn’t buy her “lots of gold,” she for the first time soberly assessed reality and realized that she was really in trouble.
But the whole picture of the crime was already clear to the investigation. So, in the fall of 1986, Ivanyutin poisoned the school party organizer to death - the woman prevented the theft of food from the canteen. Then Tamara treated two students in the first and fifth grades with thallium, who dared to ask her for the leftover cutlets for their dog. Fortunately, the guys survived, but such poisoning does not leave its mark on the body.
After the March death of dietitian Kukharenko, the head of the canteen, whose last name was Noga, sensed something was wrong and began locking the back room at night so that Ivanyutina would not have access to food. The presumptuous psychopath openly declared that “The Leg will follow Kukharenko.” Then the poisoner, using a syringe, filled the orange with a solution of thallium and treated the “enemy”, but he, fortunately, did not accept the offering. On that ill-fated March day when the children were poisoned, the liver with thallium was also intended for the manager. It was just by chance that because of a meeting of the trade union committee, some school workers were late for lunch. As witnesses later said, Ivanyutina watched with a satisfied smile as innocent people consumed poisoned dishes.
The end of the Kyiv Borgia family
In total, the family has 40 proven poisonings, 13 from fatal. Surprisingly, the entire family was found sane by the results of a forensic psychiatric examination. Tamara Ivanyutina succeeded the most in terms of poisoning - 20 poisonings, 9 of which were fatal.
Trial serial killers lasted several months. Husband Oleg reported in his testimony that every time Tamara brought more and more waste from school, while rejoicing that the children did not eat well. And the teachers got it precisely because they forced the children to finish their portions. This was not at all in the interests of the criminal, so she decided to poison especially persistent teachers. In addition, poisoning in the school cafeteria, in her opinion, should have caused distrust in school food and thereby increased the amount of waste for her pets.
Tamara Ivanyutina was sentenced to capital punishment and confiscation of property. Her father, mother and sister respectively received 13, 10 and 15 years in prison and an obligation to reimburse all victims for treatment costs.
When she was given the last word, she refused to admit guilt and ask for forgiveness from the relatives of her victims. “I didn’t have the right upbringing,” she said haughtily.
Tamara Ivanyutina was shot at the end of 1987 in the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center in Kyiv, she became the third and last female criminal officially sentenced to death penalty in USSR. The old killers died in custody, sister Nina, having served part of her sentence, was released in Independent Ukraine. Then her traces are lost.
I learned about this woman when I was a teenager. In some central newspaper I read an article with a headline that stuck in my memory: “You don’t understand my sadness...” It was about the Kyiv poisoner Tamara Ivanyutina, who was sentenced to capital punishment and executed in 1987. One of three female criminals in the USSR.
Today I want to tell you the story of this psychopath who for years fed thallium to unwanted people. Her motives were revenge and self-interest. She had grandiose fantasies about a thriving pigsty, “mountains of gold” and a black Volga. In addition, she “did not want to breed poverty” in the form of other people’s children.
Psychiatrists declared Ivanyutina absolutely sane. At the same time, three main features of her personality were identified: extremely inflated self-esteem, over-touchiness and vindictiveness. All these traits are characteristic of sociopaths, paranoids and narcissists. In Tamara, personality disorders merged into a truly explosive mixture...
Energetic and beautiful...sadistic
Ivanyutina was in such a state of grandiosity, she considered everyone so suckers and “big-eared fraers” that didn’t bother to wear a mask of social normality. Chemistry teacher Viktor Stadnik, who almost died at her hands, spoke of her as persistent, arrogant, rude and undisciplined.
“When I asked to characterize Ivanyutina, he said only one word: sadist,” writes Nikolai Poddubny, police lieutenant general, then head of the department for combating organized crime in Ukraine. - Said that if Ivanyutina chose a “victim” for herself, she never retreated" (further quotes from Poddubny)
On the other hand, Ivanyutina married twice. I assume that when she needed it, she easily turned on the deceitful “charisma”. It is no coincidence that her second husband Oleg Ivanyutin painted her image with completely different colors: “Young, energetic, beautiful.”
“Don’t write complaints, but treat people”
The family into which Tamara Maslenko was born was such that, probably, nothing else could have grown out of the girl in principle. Tamara was one of six children who Mom and Dad instilled in me that the most important thing in life is wealth.
Tamara’s dad Anton Mitrofanovich didn’t see anything wrong with sprinkling poison on a person he didn’t like, and mother Maria Feodorovna professed the following life wisdom: “You shouldn’t write complaints, but be friends with everyone and treat them. But adding poison to food is especially harmful.”
“The old Maslenkos, without hesitation, poisoned to death their neighbor in a communal apartment, who turned on the TV too loudly and interfered with sleep. And even a relative who reprimanded them about the puddle in the toilet. This is how they “revenged the insult”! They added rat poison to pilaf and pancakes prepared for the treat, stuffed oranges and gingerbread with poison... And at the same time were very proud of their ingenuity».
Flying out of parental nest, Tamara selflessly served the golden calf. She dreamed of getting rich - probably to make her mom and dad proud of her. So, in order to get a two-room apartment, she poisoned her first husband, a truck driver.
“His partner said that during the next flight Tamara’s husband became ill. His legs hurt badly, he could not feel the gas or brake pedals. I asked to replace him for an hour or two, but the poor fellow’s health was getting worse. Neither two nor three hours later the driver was able to get behind the wheel. Driving past a village stream, I asked my partner: “Maybe I should take a swim to cheer myself up? I’ll quickly douse myself with some water, get back to normal, and move on. Tomka prepared a clean towel for me...”
When the driver was drying his head, his partner was horrified to see that the entire towel was covered in hair. He refused to help himself to the sandwiches that his wife provided him with: not because he suspected anything was wrong, but simply because he was afraid to doze off after a hearty snack while driving. Soon after returning from the flight, Tamara Ivanyutina’s first husband died of a heart attack.”
Then Tamara married a second time - to Oleg Ivanyutin, several years younger than her. She had her eye on the house and land plot father-in-law and mother-in-law. Needless to say, they soon died within two days of each other!
And Tamara began to tease her second husband, lamenting to her acquaintances that he was suffering from a mysterious family illness, and he was apparently dead.
At the same time, Tamara was hustling like a speculator, for which she earned a criminal record. That didn’t stop her from getting a job as a dishwasher in the school catering department in September 1986, using a fake Trudovik. She relied on hauling away produce and food scraps to fatten her pigs, from which she hoped to make a fortune. The 45-year-old psychopath has entered a time of “creative maturity.”
Chronicle of the disaster
On March 17 and 18, 1987, several students and employees of Kyiv school No. 16 ended up in the hospital with severe food poisoning. Two children and two adults died almost immediately, the remaining nine teetered on the brink of life and death in intensive care. A council of doctors was working on a version of some new flu virus, but when people’s hair started to grow, it became clear that this was not the flu. But what?
The investigation team started working. After questioning the victims, investigators determined that they became very ill after lunch in the school cafeteria on March 16. They all ate buckwheat porridge with liver.
This is how Poddubny spoke about his conversation with the injured child:
“Sixth-grader Anton, small, frail and completely hairless, constantly cried during the conversation. And he apologized for crying. Like, I understand that I’m big and I can’t cry, but it just hurts a lot.
I asked if he had eaten buckwheat soup and liver in the school cafeteria the day before. The boy was surprised and even stopped crying:
- Yes... How do you know?
- It doesn't matter where. Tell me, how did you end up in the dining room after five o’clock in the evening?
- New chairs for the dining room were delivered, but the high school students had already left. So the caretaker asked us. And when we finished everything, aunty offered us something to eat.”
When the question arose whether anyone was monitoring the quality of food, it turned out that the nutritionist nurse... died two weeks ago!
“It seems like there’s something wrong with my heart,” recalled the school director. - Yes, exactly: from cardiovascular failure. This happened immediately after March 8th. At the party on the eve of the holiday, she was cheerful, she even danced with the military commander, and on the evening of the 9th she was picked up by an ambulance. Kukarenko stayed in the hospital for three or four days, and then they called us and said that she had died.”
Kukarenko’s body was exhumed and traces of thallium were found in the tissues of the corpse. But searches of employees related to the catering department yielded nothing.
“I concluded that they don’t like us at this school,” recalled chemist expert Valentina Kalachikova. - The dishwasher Ivanyutina followed me around like a warden. She probably decided that I would steal the pan from them or pour cereal into their pockets. It's a terrible feeling, honestly. The look is unkind, heavy... How was this vixen even allowed to work with children?!»
"Affectionate" daughter-in-law
When they came to search Ivanyutina, she was not at home. But investigators talked to her husband Oleg.
“It turned out that Tamara Ivanyutina’s husband was not entirely healthy. Now he is on sick leave, he has a headache, his feet are numb, and his legs from hips to knees are simply twisted. He complains that he is going bald.”
Oleg said that he recently moved his parents from Krasnodar region, and one day he and Tamara went to see how they had settled in their new place. The psychopath was immediately seduced by her in-laws' house and land. If only there was a place to raise pigs! And she took out the treasured bottle...
“Tamara and her mother-in-law prepared dinner,” writes Poddubny. “We sat at the table together, but only in the evening the old man began to feel ill.” The next morning, his mother called Oleg and said that something bad had happened to his father: his legs were losing weight, his feet were going numb... He said that he couldn’t put on socks himself... And when his grandmother began to help him, he roared in pain, as if he were being cut into pieces. Oleg advised calling an ambulance, but at the emergency hospital, doctors examined my grandfather and said that polyarthritis had worsened. They prescribed meds and sent me home.
Tamara became very concerned about her father’s health and insisted on going to her parents immediately. She applied a heating pad to his feet and spoon-fed him soup. In general, Oleg praised her as the most caring daughter-in-law in the world... I think that she just splashed this liquid into the soup. That same night, my grandfather died in the hospital.”
At her husband's funeral, the widow became ill with her heart. Oleg asked Tamara to bring medicine from home. She returned with a glass of Valocordin and a glass of water. As soon as she drank the medicine, the mother began to stagger. A white coating appeared on her lips, and she immediately vomited...
“Panic began among those present. The widow began to cry out that she had been given poison. Some woman swore that she saw with her own eyes how Tamara dripped some liquid from a bottle into the medicine, taking it out of her jacket pocket. The men began to demand the police, someone suggested taking the contents of the glass for examination. And then Tamara threw both the glass of medicine and the glass of water to the ground. Oleg Ivanyutin shielded his wife from the angry crowd and began to calm his mother down.”
Oleg’s mother began to have the same symptoms: her arms and legs hurt, her feet went numb. She could not move her tongue and almost did not speak. By evening an ambulance took her, and two days later she died...
Very heavy bubble
During a search in Ivanyutina’s house, the necessary thing was found literally at the last moment.
“When we had examined everything that was possible, Valentina Petrovna Kalachikova suddenly approached the bedside table, which stood by the window, and asked to open the door. Ivanyutina, who watched everything that happened with contempt, hesitantly stepped towards the bedside table: “This is a sewing machine, I got it from my mother-in-law. Will you inspect it?" “We’ll take a look,” Valentina Petrovna said calmly. “Open it or give me the key, I’ll open it myself.” Ivanyutina threw the keys on the floor and almost hissed: “Open it yourself, seamstress!”.
Kalachikova examined the contents of the boxes. Bobbins with threads, needles in boxes, a set of tools for embroidery, a bottle of machine oil for lubricating mechanisms... She picked up the bottle and suddenly realized that the utensils were too heavy for oil. And she put the bottle in her pocket.”
In fact, Tamara did not hide the poison at all! Assess the degree of complacency, contempt for people and complete confidence in impunity. And on the one hand, these ugly features of her personality helped to investigate this terrible case. After all, if Tamara had been less complacent, more cautious - such as, for example, the Marquise de Merteuil - she would have hidden the jar better, and most likely it would not have been found and they would not have been able to blame her.
And this, without a doubt, would lead to more deaths. Judging by the number of corpses over the past six months, the poisoner has acquired a taste...
But Ivanyutina was showing off in vain. Laboratory research showed that the jar contained Clerici liquid, a highly toxic thallium-based solution. The psychopath was arrested.
By the way, it’s a mystery to me: why, even after realizing that she was close to failure, Tamara didn’t give in? Didn't lie to the bottom somewhere? After all, she couldn’t help but understand that she was walking around under execution. But, Apparently, the conviction was so great that everyone around, including the investigators, were suckers.
However, I also have a second version: Tamara was not afraid of arrest. Because she was sure: she would pay off. The psychopath judged people by herself. Since she followed the corpses after the ghost of the black Volga, will the “stupid” investigators really refuse a bribe?! Apparently, this did not fit into her picture of the world...
Initially, Ivanyutina wrote a confession. The time has come for a psychopathic benefit performance. Being in a state of grandeur, she goes into detail - I think with great pleasure! - told about her crimes. It turned out that she treated two sixth-graders to poison only because they refused to arrange tables and chairs. “I decided to punish them,” Tamara said.
“Ivanyutina also said that she first tested the effect of the poison on the neighbor’s chickens and cats. She experimented with quantities - she knew what dose to give to make a person slightly ill, and what dose to make sure he died. At the same time, she did not care at all about the pain in which her victims died. “There should be no accidents in such a matter,” Ivanyutina explained smugly. - My friend almost got burned on an ordinary chicken egg. It’s good that the doctors turned out to be mugs...”
Black egg
However, Ivanyutina later stated that she confessed under pressure from the investigation and refused to give further testimony. Apparently, when the “suckers” didn’t buy her “lots of gold,” she for the first time soberly assessed reality and realized that she was really in trouble.
But the whole picture of the crime was already clear to the investigation. So, in the fall of 1986, Ivanyutin poisoned the school party organizer to death - the woman prevented the theft of food from the canteen. Then Tamara treated two students in the first and fifth grades with thallium, who dared to ask her for the leftover cutlets for their dog. Fortunately, the guys survived, but such poisoning does not leave its mark on the body.
After the death of nurse Kukarenko in March, the head of the canteen, whose last name was Noga, sensed something was wrong and began locking the back room at night so that Ivanyutina would not have access to food. The presumptuous psychopath openly declared that “The leg will follow Kukarenko.”
...Following Tamara, Maslenko’s mother and father were detained, as well as Tamara’s older sister, Nina Matsibora, who poisoned her husband with the same thallium in order to take possession of his Kyiv apartment. The Maslenko spouses themselves poisoned to death their communal neighbor and a relative, and countless other animals of their neighbors. By the time of their arrest, they had been “dabbing” with thallium for 11 years - that is, since 1976. The Clerici bought the liquid from a friend who worked at a geological institute - they said the rats had overcome it.
“In November 1980, Maria Feodorovna fell ill and went to the hospital. Her husband Anton Mitrofanovich was very worried about her health. At some point, the matchmaker decided to visit her. After the hospital, she went to Anton Mitrofanovich and expressed concerns about the matchmaker’s health. Like, she is the heaviest of the entire ward. I'm afraid it won't work. "That is?" - the matchmaker asked in bewilderment. “The truth is that there is little hope. We must prepare to have a human burial.”
Maslenko shuddered as if he had been electrocuted. And at that very moment he suggested to the matchmaker not to say nonsense, but rather to drink to the health of his sick wife. He rushed at a trot to the pantry, where he had hidden the treasured vial. While she was pouring moonshine and preparing food for the table, he seized the moment and poured poison into the glass. At night, the ambulance doctors, at a loss, gave her injections, either for the heart or to lower the blood pressure, but all in vain - by the morning the woman died.”
By the way, the patient told the doctors that she was poisoned by a boiled egg. Like, when they were having a snack, Maslenko began to peel the egg, and it turned black right in his hands. He declared that the egg was spoiled and threw it aside. But when he left, the matchmaker felt sorry to throw him away, and she finished the egg. Unfortunately, the doctors considered it a dying delirium...
During the searches, no poison was found on Maslenko. But the poisoners gave themselves away! When Tamara was already in the pre-trial detention center, Maria Maslenko baked pancakes and went to treat her neighbor. She had a large disability pension, which was the subject of Maslenko’s black envy. She longed to “restore justice.”
But the neighbor did not eat the pancakes, because she had heard that the old woman’s daughter was suspected of poisoning. She threw one pancake to the cat, and by evening the animal began to convulse, and died three hours later. A neighbor reported this to the police, and the Maslenko couple were arrested. Just like Tamara, they told in detail and with gusto who, when, how and why they were poisoned.
In total, 40 episodes of poisoning were proven committed by the “poisonous” family, of which 13 were with fatal. Largest number fatal poisonings(9) and attempted murders (20) were the work of Tamara.
When given the last word, she refused to admit guilt or ask for forgiveness from the relatives of her victims. “I didn’t have the right upbringing,” she said haughtily.
Ivanyutin was sentenced to death, Nina Matsibora - to 15 years, father and mother - to 13 and 10 years, respectively. Both of them died in custody. Nina's trail was lost...
PS. Also in the USSR, collaborator Antonina Makarova - Tonka the Machine Gunner (1979) and Berta Borodkina, who carried out major financial scams (1983), were shot. Ivanyutina became third.
In 1987, the entire USSR was shocked by the case of serial poisoner Tamara Ivanyutina, who poisoned 40 people with the most dangerous thallium. Among the dead were small children.
Tamara Antonovna Ivanyutina (maiden name Maslenko) (1941-1987)
The motives of the serial killer Tamara Ivanyutina were revenge and self-interest. She had grandiose fantasies about a thriving pigsty, “mountains of gold” and a black Volga. In addition, she “did not want to breed poverty” in the form of other people’s children. Very modern and well-known “trends” to us.
Psychiatrists declared Ivanyutina absolutely sane. At the same time, three main features of her personality were identified: extremely inflated self-esteem, over-touchiness and vindictiveness. All these traits are characteristic of sociopaths, paranoids and narcissists.
Tamara was born into the family of Anton Mitrofanovich and Maria Fedorovna Maslenko, and was the fourth child of six in this large family. The main deity, the supreme idol and the main measure of success in the family was wealth.
The father did not hesitate to pour poison into a person he didn’t like, and the mother professed the following life wisdom: “You shouldn’t write complaints, but be friends with everyone and treat them. But adding poison to food is especially harmful.”
Maslenko’s old men, without hesitation, poisoned to death their neighbor in a communal apartment, who turned on the TV too loudly and interfered with sleep. And even a relative who reprimanded them about the puddle in the toilet. This is their way of “revenge for insults.” They added rat poison to pilaf and pancakes prepared for the treat, and stuffed oranges and gingerbread with poison...
And at the same time they were very proud of their ingenuity.
How to "go to success"
Having matured, Tamara married a representative of one of the most successful professions of that time - a truck driver. People who lived in the USSR remember that “long-distance drivers,” along with sailors, were always extremely successful - no joke, they traveled around all the republics of the Union, traveled to the CMEA countries, and sometimes, lo and behold, even to capitalist countries! Live and be happy! But that wasn't Tom's girlfriend. Money and an apartment, that's what you need right now. And so she began to poison her husband. Little by little, but gradually increasing the dose.
His partner, during the investigation, described the last flight this way. Tamara's husband became ill during the flight. His legs hurt badly; he couldn’t feel the pedals. I asked to replace him for an hour or two, but the poor fellow’s health was getting worse. Neither two nor three hours later the driver was able to get behind the wheel. Driving past a village stream, I asked my partner: “Maybe I should take a swim to cheer myself up? I’ll quickly douse myself with some water, get back to normal, and move on. Tomka prepared a clean towel for me...”
When the driver was drying his head, his partner was horrified to see that the entire towel was covered in hair. He refused to help himself to the sandwiches that his wife provided him with: not because he suspected anything was wrong, but simply because he was afraid to doze off after a hearty snack while driving. Soon after returning from the flight, Tamara Ivanyutina’s first husband died of a heart attack.
A short time later, Tamara married Oleg Ivanyutin and took his last name. Having seen the house and plot of her parents, Ivanyutina immediately made a decision - use the old people, the plot for a small pig farm, pigs for meat and lard and get rich, get rich, get rich.
One terrible day for the elderly, Tamara and her mother-in-law prepared dinner. We sat at the table together, but only in the evening the old man began to feel ill. The next morning, his mother called Oleg and said that something bad had happened to his father: his legs were losing weight, his feet were going numb. He says he can’t put on socks himself. And when the grandmother began to help him, he roared in pain, as if he were being cut into pieces. Oleg advised calling an ambulance, but at the emergency hospital, doctors examined my grandfather and said that polyarthritis had worsened. They prescribed meds and sent me home.
Tamara became very concerned about her father’s health and insisted on going to her parents immediately. She applied a heating pad to his feet and spoon-fed him soup. In general, Oleg praised her as the most caring daughter-in-law in the world... Apparently, she just splashed this liquid into the soup. That same night, my grandfather died in the hospital.
At her husband's funeral, the widow became ill with her heart. Oleg asked Tamara to bring medicine from home. She returned with a glass of Valocordin and a glass of water. As soon as she drank the medicine, the mother began to stagger. A white coating formed on her lips and she immediately vomited. Panic began among those present. The widow began to cry out that she had been given poison. Some woman swore that she saw with her own eyes how Tamara dripped some liquid from a bottle into the medicine, taking it out of her jacket pocket. The men began to demand the police, someone suggested taking the contents of the glass for examination. And then Tamara threw both the glass of medicine and the glass of water to the ground. Oleg Ivanyutin shielded his wife from the angry crowd and began to calm his mother. Oleg’s mother began to have the same symptoms: her arms and legs hurt, her feet went numb. She could not move her tongue and almost did not speak. By evening an ambulance took her, and two days later she died.
The road to the personal pig farm was open. But where to get food? There is only one answer - at school!
School No. 16 of the Minsk district of Kyiv.
In March 1987, three sixth-graders and 11 employees were brought to the hospital by ambulance from a Kyiv school with a diagnosis of influenza. Everyone had the same symptoms: weakness, nausea, leg pain, baldness. Despite intensive treatment, two children - Sergey Panibrat and Andrey Kuzmenko and two adults died almost immediately, the remaining 9 people were in intensive care. For that time, four deaths in a row was a real emergency. The prosecutor's office took over the case. Hospital doctors, summoned to an emergency meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, suggested that the cause of death was an unknown form of influenza, so standard treatment was ineffective. The following opinion was also voiced: people were poisoned with strong toxic substances through food or water. At first, this version was not even considered, but after the investigative authorities interviewed the victims, it turned out that they all ate what was left from lunch in the school cafeteria: chicken soup and chicken liver. Moreover, those who had lunch on time were not harmed.
Dietician Natalya Kukharenko
The first to fall at her hands was nurse Kukharenko, who had the imprudence to make comments to Ivanyutina, including for non-compliance with hygiene rules, rudeness and rudeness. Tamara did not skimp on comments to children and even teachers; she constantly hovered around the stove and looked into the pots. But it was difficult to find another dishwasher with a meager salary, so Ivanyutin was kept at work.
When Kukharenko was hospitalized, the patient complained of numbness and coldness in her legs, and doctors diagnosed her with heart failure. But just the day before the woman looked healthy, active and cheerful. Six months earlier, two schoolchildren and two teachers were hospitalized with the same symptoms. One of them told investigators that he had strangely gone bald, but the reason could not be determined.
All these facts showed that the “diseases” were not an accident. A decision was made to exhume Kukharenko’s remains. It was then that the presence of thallium in the tissues was discovered. But no one even thought about the deliberate use of this heavy metal for poisoning purposes. A request to the sanitary and epidemiological station to carry out measures to exterminate insects and rodents in the catering unit received a negative response. Experts checked all school premises, food, pots, containers for cereals and the buckwheat itself remaining in them. To no avail. But the investigators drew attention to the strange behavior of the dishwasher Ivanyutina. She obstructed the inspection in every possible way and was rude.
“I concluded that they don’t like us at this school,” recalled chemist expert Valentina Kalachikova. - The dishwasher Ivanyutina followed me on my heels like a warden. She probably decided that I would steal the pan from them or pour cereal into their pockets. It's a terrible feeling, honestly. The look is unkind, heavy... How was this vixen even allowed to work with children?!”
The next step was to check all the personal files of the canteen workers. And then it turned out that Ivanyutina’s work book was false, since she had a criminal record for profiteering, which means she did not have the right to work in children’s institutions. This was the reason to study the life of a dishwasher in more detail. This is where the deaths of the first husband and the parents of the second came to light. They all complained of nausea and numbness in their limbs. Oleg himself had been ill for a long time (general weakness, joint pain, baldness), but doctors could not establish a diagnosis. Thus, Ivanyutina became suspect number one.
Consequence
During a search in Ivanyutina’s house, the necessary thing was found literally at the last moment.
When they had examined everything that was possible, Valentina Petrovna Kalachikova suddenly approached the bedside table, which stood by the window, and asked to open the door. Ivanyutina, who watched everything that happened with contempt, took an uncertain step towards the bedside table:
- This is a sewing machine I got from my mother-in-law. Will you take a look?
- We'll take a look, open it, or give me the key, I'll open it myself.
Ivanyutina threw the keys on the floor and almost hissed: “Open it yourself, seamstress!”
Kalachikova examined the contents of the boxes. Bobbins with threads, needles in boxes, a set of tools for embroidery, a bottle of machine oil for lubricating mechanisms... She picked up the bottle and suddenly realized that the utensils were too heavy for oil. And she put the bottle in her pocket. Analysis in the laboratory showed that the container contained Clerici liquid - the so-called aqueous solution of thallium. It is used in geology to separate minerals by density. Therefore, first of all, all organizations of the Ministry of Geology of Ukraine were subjected to inspection. And almost immediately they found a supplier. One of the laboratory assistants of the geological exploration expedition regularly supplied the Maslenko family with thallium, allegedly for baiting rats. During the entire time they received about 500 mg of poison.
Her sister Nina Matsibora, who sent her legal husband to the next world, did not lag behind Tamara. Nina married a man much older than her. Having registered his young wife in his apartment, the elderly husband signed his own death sentence. A week after the wedding, he was admitted to the hospital complaining of weakness and pain in his legs. His death was attributed to age.
In November 1980, mother Maria Fedorovna fell ill and went to the hospital. Her husband Anton Mitrofanovich was very worried about her health. At some point, the matchmaker decided to visit her. After the hospital, she went to Anton Mitrofanovich and expressed concerns about the matchmaker’s health. Like, she is the heaviest of the entire ward. I'm afraid it won't work. "That is?" - the matchmaker asked in bewilderment. “The truth is that there is little hope. We must prepare to have a human burial.” This phrase became a death sentence for her. Maslenko suggested that the matchmaker should not say nonsense, but rather drink to the health of his sick wife. While a relative was pouring moonshine and preparing food for the table, he seized the moment and poured poison into a glass. At night, the ambulance doctors, at a loss, gave her injections, either for the heart or to lower the blood pressure, but all in vain - by the morning the woman died.” By the way, the patient told the doctors that she was poisoned by a boiled egg. Like, when they were having a snack, Maslenko began to peel the egg, and it turned black right in his hands. He declared that the egg was spoiled and threw it aside. But when he left, the matchmaker felt sorry to throw him away, and she finished the egg. Unfortunately, the doctors considered it a dying delirium.
During the searches, no poison was found on Maslenko. But the poisoners gave themselves away! When Tamara was already in the pre-trial detention center, Maria Maslenko baked pancakes and went to treat her neighbor. She had a large disability pension, which was the subject of Maslenko’s black envy. But the neighbor did not eat the pancakes, because she had heard that the old woman’s daughter was suspected of poisoning. She threw one pancake to the cat, and by evening the animal began to convulse, and died three hours later. A neighbor reported this to the police, and the Maslenko couple were arrested. Just like Tamara, they told in detail and with gusto who, when, how and why they were poisoned.
Initially, Ivanyutina wrote a confession. The time has come for a psychopathic benefit performance. Being in grandiosity, she goes into detail - I think with great pleasure! - told about her crimes. It turned out that she treated two sixth-graders to poison only because they refused to arrange tables and chairs. “I decided to punish them,” Tamara said.
“Ivanyutina also said that she first tested the effect of the poison on the neighbor’s chickens and cats. She experimented with quantities - she knew what dose to give to make a person slightly ill, and what dose to make sure he died. At the same time, she did not care at all about the pain in which her victims died. “There should be no accidents in such a matter,” Ivanyutina explained smugly. - My friend almost got burned on an ordinary chicken egg. It’s good that the doctors turned out to be mugs...”
However, Ivanyutina later stated that she confessed under pressure from the investigation and refused to give further testimony. Apparently, when the “suckers” didn’t buy her “lots of gold,” she for the first time soberly assessed reality and realized that she was really in trouble.
But the whole picture of the crime was already clear to the investigation. So, in the fall of 1986, Ivanyutin poisoned the school party organizer to death - the woman prevented the theft of food from the canteen. Then Tamara treated two students in the first and fifth grades with thallium, who dared to ask her for the leftover cutlets for their dog. Fortunately, the guys survived, but such poisoning does not leave its mark on the body.
After the March death of dietitian Kukharenko, the head of the canteen, whose last name was Noga, sensed something was wrong and began locking the back room at night so that Ivanyutina would not have access to food. The presumptuous psychopath openly declared that “The Leg will follow Kukharenko.” Then the poisoner, using a syringe, filled the orange with a solution of thallium and treated the “enemy”, but he, fortunately, did not accept the offering. On that ill-fated March day when the children were poisoned, the liver with thallium was also intended for the manager. It was just by chance that because of a meeting of the trade union committee, some school workers were late for lunch. As witnesses later said, Ivanyutina watched with a satisfied smile as innocent people consumed poisoned dishes.
The end of the Kyiv Borgia family
In total, the family has 40 proven poisonings, 13 with fatal outcomes. Surprisingly, the entire family was found sane by the results of a forensic psychiatric examination. Tamara Ivanyutina succeeded the most in terms of poisoning - 20 poisonings, 9 of which were fatal.
The trial of serial killers lasted several months. Husband Oleg reported in his testimony that every time Tamara brought more and more waste from school, while rejoicing that the children did not eat well. And the teachers got it precisely because they forced the children to finish their portions. This was not at all in the interests of the criminal, so she decided to poison especially persistent teachers. In addition, poisoning in the school cafeteria, in her opinion, should have caused distrust in school food and thereby increased the amount of waste for her pets.
Tamara Ivanyutina was sentenced to capital punishment and confiscation of property. Her father, mother and sister respectively received 13, 10 and 15 years in prison and an obligation to reimburse all victims for treatment costs.
When given the last word, she refused to admit guilt or ask for forgiveness from the relatives of her victims. “I didn’t have the right upbringing,” she said haughtily.
Tamara Ivanyutina was shot at the end of 1987 in the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center in Kyiv, she became the third and last female criminal officially sentenced to death in the USSR. The old killers died in custody, sister Nina, having served part of her sentence, was released in Independent Ukraine. Then her traces are lost.
In fact, this woman's name was Antonina Makarovna Parfenova. She was born in 1921 in the village of Malaya Volkovka near Smolensk, and went to school there. The teacher incorrectly wrote down the last name of the girl in the journal, who was embarrassed to say her name, and her classmates shouted: “Yes, she’s Makarova,” meaning that Antonina is Makar’s daughter. This is how Tonya Parfenova became Makarova. She graduated from school and went to Moscow to go to college. But the war began. Tonya Makarova volunteered for the front.
But nineteen-year-old nurse Makarova practically did not have time to serve her homeland: she ended up in the notorious Vyazma operation - the battle near Moscow, in which Soviet army suffered a crushing defeat. Of the entire unit, only Tonya and a soldier named Nikolai Fedchuk managed to survive and escape from captivity. For several months they wandered through the forests, trying to get to Fedchuk’s home village. Tonya had to become a soldier’s “travelling wife,” otherwise she would not have survived. However, as soon as Fedchuk got to the house, it turned out that he had a legal wife and lived here. Tonya went further alone and came to the village of Lokot, occupied by the German invaders. She decided to stay with the occupiers: maybe she had no other choice, or maybe she was so tired of wandering through the forests that the opportunity to eat and sleep normally under a roof became the decisive argument.
Now Tonya had to be a “camp wife” for many different men. In essence, Tonya was simply constantly raped, in return providing her with food and a roof over her head. But this did not last long. One day, the soldiers gave the girl a drink, and then, drunk, they put her in front of a Maxim machine gun and ordered her to shoot at the prisoners. Tonya, who before the front managed to take not only nursing courses, but also machine gunners, began shooting. In front of her stood not only men, but also women, old people, children, and drunken Tonya did not miss. From that day on, she became the Thin Machine Gunner, an executioner with an official salary of 30 marks.
Popular
Historians claim that Tonya’s childhood idol was Anka the machine gunner, and Makarova, having become an executioner, fulfilled her childhood dream: it didn’t matter that Anka shot enemies, and Tonya shot partisans, and at the same time women, children and the elderly. But it is quite possible that Makarova, who received an official position, salary and her own bed, simply ceased to be the object of sexual violence. In any case, she did not refuse the new “job”.
According to official data, Tonka the Machine Gunner shot more than 1,500 people, but only 168 names were restored. As an incentive, Makarova was allowed to take the belongings of the dead, which, however, had to be washed off from the blood and bullet holes sewn up on them. Antonina shot the condemned with a machine gun, and then had to finish off the survivors with pistol shots. However, several children managed to survive: they were too short, and machine-gun bullets passed over their heads, and for some reason Makarova did not fire control shots. The surviving children were taken out of the village along with the corpses, and partisans rescued them at the burial sites. So rumors about Tonka the Machine Gunner as a cruel and bloodthirsty killer and traitor spread throughout the area. The partisans put a bounty on her head, but they were unable to get to Makarova. Until 1943, Antonina continued to shoot people.
And then Makarova was lucky: the Soviet army reached the Bryansk region, and Antonina would undoubtedly have died if she had not contracted syphilis from one of her lovers. The Germans sent her to the rear, where she ended up in a hospital under the guise of a Soviet nurse. Somehow, Antonina managed to obtain fake documents, and, having recovered, she got a job at the hospital as a nurse. There, in 1945, a wounded soldier, Viktor Ginzburg, fell in love with her. The young people got married, and Tonka the Machine Gunner disappeared forever. Instead, military nurse Antonina Ginzburg appeared.
After the end of the war, Antonina and Victor became exemplary Soviet family: We moved to Belarus, to the city of Lepel, worked at a garment factory, raised two daughters, and even came to schools as honored front-line soldiers to tell children about the war.
Meanwhile, the KGB continued to search for Tonka the Machine Gunner: the search continued for three decades, but the trace of the executioner’s woman was lost. Until one of Antonina’s relatives applied for permission to travel abroad. For some reason, Antonina Makarova (Ginsburg) was listed as citizen Parfenov’s sister in the list of relatives. Investigators began collecting evidence and got on the trail of Tonka the Machine Gunner. Several surviving witnesses identified her, and Antonina was arrested on her way home from work.
They say that during the trial Makarova remained calm: she believed that due to the passage of time, she would not be given a very harsh sentence. Meanwhile, her husband and daughters tried to achieve her release: the authorities did not say why exactly Makarova was arrested. As soon as the family learned what exactly their wife and mother would be tried for, they stopped trying to appeal the arrest and left Lepel.
Antonin Makarov was sentenced to death on November 20, 1978. She immediately submitted several petitions for clemency, but they were all rejected. On August 11, 1979, Tonka the Machine Gunner was shot.
Berta Borodkina
Berta Naumovna Borodkina, aka Iron Bella, was neither a ruthless killer nor an executioner. She was sentenced to capital punishment for systematic theft of socialist property on an especially large scale.
Berta Borodkina was born in 1927. The girl didn't like her own name and preferred to call herself Bella. She began her future dizzying career for a woman in the USSR as a barmaid and waitress in a Gelendzhik canteen. Soon the girl with a tough character was transferred to the position of canteen director. Borodkina coped with her duties so well that she became an Honored Worker of Trade and Catering of the RSFSR, and also headed a trust of restaurants and canteens in Gelendzhik.
In fact, this meant that in Iron Bella's restaurants party and government officials received ideal service - not at their own expense, but at the expense of visitors to inexpensive cafes and canteens: underfilling, underweight, the use of written-off products and banal calculation allowed Bella to release dizzying sums. She spent them on bribes and servicing officials at the highest level.
The scale of these acts allows us to call the Gelendzhik restaurant trust a real mafia: every bartender, waiter and director of a cafe or canteen had to give Borodkina a certain amount every month, otherwise the employees were simply fired. At the same time, connections with officials for a long time allowed Berta Borodkina to feel completely unpunished - no sudden checks and audits, no attempts to catch the head of the restaurant trust for theft. At this moment, Borodkina began to be called Iron Bella.
But in 1982, Bertha Borodkina was arrested on the basis of an anonymous statement from a certain citizen, who reported that in one of Borodkina’s restaurants, pornographic films were shown to selected visitors. This information, apparently, was not confirmed, but the investigation found that during the years of leading the trust, Borodkina stole more than a million rubles from the state - a completely incomprehensible amount at that time. During a search of Borodkina's house, they found furs, jewelry and huge sums of money hidden in the most unexpected places: in heating radiators, in rolled up cans and even in a pile of bricks near the house.
Borodkina was sentenced to death in the same 1982. Bertha’s sister said that in prison the defendant was tortured using psychotropic drugs. So Iron Bella broke down and began to confess. In August 1983, Berta Borodkina was shot.
Tamara Ivanyutina
Tamara Ivanyutina, nee Maslenko, was born in 1941 in Kyiv, into a large family. WITH early childhood her parents instilled in Tamara and her five brothers and sisters that the most important thing in life was material security. IN Soviet years The most profitable places were considered to be trade and catering, and at first Tamara chose trade for herself. But she fell for speculation and received a criminal record. It was almost impossible for a woman with a criminal record to get a job, so Ivanyutina got herself a fake work book and in 1986 she got a job as a dishwasher at school number 16 in the Minsk district of Kyiv. She later told investigators that she needed this work to provide livestock (chickens and pigs) with free food waste. But it turned out that Ivanyutina did not come to school for this at all.
On March 17 and 18, 1987, several students and school staff were hospitalized with signs of serious food poisoning. In the next few hours, two children and two adults died, another 9 people were in intensive care in serious condition. The version of an intestinal infection, which doctors suspected, was ruled out: the victims’ hair began to fall out. A criminal case was opened.
The investigation interviewed the surviving victims, and it turned out that they had all had lunch the day before in the school cafeteria and ate buckwheat porridge with liver. A few hours later, everyone felt a rapidly developing malaise. An inspection was carried out at the school, it turned out that the nurse who was responsible for the quality of food in the canteen died 2 weeks ago, according to the official conclusion - from cardiovascular disease. The circumstances of this death aroused suspicion among the investigators, and it was decided to exhume the body. The examination found that the nurse died from thallium poisoning. It is a highly toxic heavy metal, poisoning with which causes damage nervous system and internal organs, as well as total alopecia (complete hair loss). The investigation immediately organized a search of all employees of the school canteen and found “a small but very heavy jar” in Tamara Ivanyutina’s house. In the laboratory it turned out that the jar contained “Clerici liquid” - a highly toxic thallium-based solution. This solution is used in some branches of geology, and there was no way a school dishwasher would need it.
Ivanyutin was arrested, and she wrote a confession: according to her, she wanted to “punish” the sixth-graders who allegedly refused to place tables and chairs in the dining room. But Ivanyutina later stated that she confessed to the murders under pressure from the investigation and refused to give further testimony.
Meanwhile, investigators found out that the poisoning of children and school staff was not the first murder on Tamara Ivanyutina’s account. Moreover, it turned out that Tamara Ivanyutina herself and her family members (sister and parents) had been using thallium to commit poisoning for 11 years - since 1976. Moreover, both for selfish purposes, and in relation to people who, for some reason, family members simply did not like. They purchased the highly toxic Clerici liquid from a friend: the woman worked at a geological institute and was sure that she was selling thallium to her friends for baiting rats. Over all these years, she transferred the poisonous substance to the Maslenko family at least 9 times. And they used it every time.
First, Tamara Ivanyutina poisoned her first husband in order to inherit the apartment. Afterwards she remarried, but the relationship with her father-in-law and mother-in-law did not work out, and in the end they died within 2 days of each other. Ivanyutin also poisoned her husband herself, but with small portions of poison: the man began to get sick, and the killer hoped to soon become a widow and inherit a house and land. In addition, the episode of poisoning at school, it turns out, was not the first: earlier Ivanyutina poisoned school party organizer Ekaterina Shcherban (the woman died), a chemistry teacher (survived) and two children - first and fifth grade students. The children annoyed Ivanyutina by asking her for leftover cutlets for their pets.
At the same time Native sister Tamara Nina Matsibora poisoned her husband in order to take over his apartment, and the women’s parents, Maslenko’s wife, poisoned a neighbor in a communal apartment and a relative who reprimanded them. Tamara and Nina’s father also poisoned his relative from Tula when he came to visit her. Family members also poisoned neighbors' pets.
Already under investigation, in the pre-trial detention center Tamara Ivanyutina explained her life principles to her fellow inmates this way: “To achieve what you want, you don’t need to write complaints, but be friends with everyone, give them food. But adding poison to food is especially harmful.”
The court proved 40 episodes of poisoning committed by members of this family, 13 of which were fatal. When the verdict was announced, Tamara Ivanyutina refused to admit guilt and apologize to the relatives of the victims. She was sentenced to death. Ivanyutina’s sister Nina was sentenced to 15 years in prison, her father and mother to 10 and 13 years, respectively. The Maslenko couple died in prison; Nina’s further fate is unknown.
Tamara Ivanyutina, who never admitted her guilt, tried to bribe the investigator by promising him “a lot of gold.” After the court verdict was announced, she was shot.
On March 17 and 18, 1987, several students and employees of school No. 16 in the Podolsk district of Kyiv were hospitalized in serious condition. Two children and two adults died almost immediately, the remaining 9 people were in intensive care. Because the symptoms were inconsistent, doctors initially suspected an intestinal infection or food poisoning, however, they were alarmed that some time later the victims’ hair began to fall out. Because this was not typical for such diseases.
A criminal case was opened on the facts of poisoning and death. The investigation, having interrogated the surviving victims, established that all the victims had visited the canteen the day before they became ill. When the question arose whether anyone was monitoring the quality of food in the school canteen, it turned out that the nutritionist nurse responsible for this, Natalya Kukharenko, died two weeks before the events described - from cardiovascular disease. Investigators did not believe in such coincidences and decided to exhume her body. As a result of relevant studies, traces of thallium were found in the tissues of Kukharenko’s corpse. After this, searches were carried out at all persons associated with the school catering unit, including in the house where Tamara Ivanyutina, who worked as a dishwasher in the school cafeteria, lived.
During a search of Ivanyutina, some kind of “small but very heavy jar” was found, which interested operatives and investigators, and therefore was seized and sent for examination. Laboratory testing showed that the jar contained “Clerici liquid,” a highly toxic thallium-based solution used in some branches of geology.
Ivanyutina was arrested and initially wrote a confession, admitting to committing poisoning in the school cafeteria, and the motive indicated hostility towards noisy schoolchildren and selected colleagues. Later she retracted her words.
Further investigation showed that the Ivanyutin family had been using thallium to commit poisoning for 11 years (that is, since 1976); Moreover, the poisonings were committed both for selfish purposes and against people whom they simply did not like for some reason. The poisoners purchased the Clerici liquid from a friend who worked at the geological institute, explaining to her that the poison was necessary to kill rats.
Tamara Ivanyutina was born into a large family (there were six children in the family), and from childhood, parents always instilled in their children that the most important thing in life was material security. And the most quick way to get rich is to marry a rich man and... become a widow. At the beginning of her criminal activities, Ivanyutina poisoned her first husband in order to get his apartment. After his death, Ivanyutina married a second time, but in her new marriage she poisoned her father-in-law and mother-in-law and poisoned her second husband with small portions of poison. The goal was to take possession of a house and land that belonged to the husband's parents.
In September 1986, Ivanyutina got a job as a dishwasher at a school. During her work, in addition to the victims mentioned above, Ivanyutina poisoned a school party organizer (died) and a chemistry teacher (survived), who prevented her from stealing food from the canteen, as well as two students in the first and fifth grades (survived) - they asked Ivanyutina for leftover cutlets for your pets.
The murderers and other members of her family did not lag behind. Elder sister Ivanyutina - Nina Matsibora, using the same Clerici liquid, poisoned her husband and took possession of his Kyiv apartment. Ivanyutina’s parents, Maslenko’s wife, also committed numerous poisonings: in particular, through poisoning they killed a neighbor in a communal apartment and a relative who made a remark to the spouses. Family members also poisoned neighbors' pets.
In total, 40 episodes of poisoning committed by this family were proven, 13 of them were fatal. At the same time, 9 lethal poisonings and 20 attempted murders were committed personally by Tamara Ivanyutina. Although the forensic psychiatric examination found Ivanyutina sane, it noted such features of her psyche as increased self-esteem, vindictiveness, touchiness. During trial the woman refused to admit her guilt and repent of what she had done, explaining at the trial that she “had the wrong upbringing.”
Ivanyutina was sentenced to death - execution. Her accomplices were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment: sister Nina - to 15 years, and father and mother - to 10 and 13 years, respectively.
The case is also unusual in that the main accused was one of three women sentenced to death in the USSR after the war. Prior to this, capital punishment was imposed only on the underground millionaire Bertha Borodkina and the fascist collaborator Antonina Makarova (Tonka the Machine Gunner).
Loading...
