Alexander Spesivtsev

Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev (, born 1 March 1970) is a Russian serial killer, also known as the Novokuznetsk Monster and the Siberian Ripper, convicted for the killing of four people in Novokuznetsk in 1991 and 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. He confessed at some point to nineteen murders, but later retracted his confession and was convicted for only four. Based on found evidence he is suspected of having committed over 80 murders starting from as early as 1991.

Early life

Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev was born on 1 March 1970 and raised in an apartment on Pionerskiy Prospekt in central Novokuznetsk, the largest city in Kemerovo Oblast, RSFSR, Soviet Union. He was underweight at birth but survived, although he was frequently ill afterwards. During childhood, Spesivtsev was considered unsocial, did not have friends, and was bullied while at school. His mother Lyudmila Spesivtseva worked at a nearby school and the prosecutor's office and was very affectionate towards her son. His father was an abusive alcoholic who abandoned the family. 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 Alexander was 12.

Growing up, Spesivtsev showed increasing sadistic tendencies, and in 1988, met his first girlfriend. 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, at the time, still listed as undergoing treatment, in 1991, he was discharged. Once out, he began associating with transients and beggars and developed 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 and 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.

Olga G. died soon after of her knife wounds, but before her death she told the investigators that Spesivtsev had killed two of her friends, forcing her to dismember the corpses. She also said that Lyudmila had cooked the victim's flesh for consumption by herself and her son; they had also fed some to their dog and forced the captive girls to eat it.

In June 1996, the police had already found the buried bones of children, identified as belonging to at least 15 victims aged from three to fourteen. After his arrest, these were identified as possible victims of Spesivtsev, who indeed initially confessed to having murdered them, but later retracted his confession. In 1997, he was convicted for the murders of Olga G. and her two friends, but not for any other cases due to insufficient evidence. His mother was sentenced to 13 years in prison for having assisted him.

Spesivtsev is permanently confined to the Kamyshin Regional Hospital.