'I had an unbelievable view': Female medical student murdered two elderly women so she could study death
By Will Stewart
Last updated at 9:25 AM on 23rd July 2009
A medical student murdered two elderly women so she could study the process of dying for her doctorate.The 24-year-old - named only as Tatyana - killed her victims with an axe before observing their last moments. Russian police say the woman confessed to the killings.
The first victim was her neighbour Olga Stepushenko, 85. 'I took the axe and hit her to the head several times,' said Tatyana.'When she fell down, I sat next to her and waited until she died. I had an unbelievable view.'Four days later she murdered Olga's neighbour, 87-year-old Zoya Karpova, who she struck eight times with the weapon.Tatyana returned to the flat over the next two weeks to study the rotting corpse, making notes about the decomposition of the body. 'I wanted to have more details of the death process to use it in my work,' she said. 'I aimed to see how the worms would decompose Zoya's body.'
She included the observations in her dissertation at a top medical institute.
The student, from Novosibirsk in Siberia, who was close to qualifying as a surgeon, was arrested before she could complete her analysis.
