More from this creator
Other episodes by Kitty Cat.
More like this
If you liked this, try these.
Transcript
The full episode, in writing.
A woman lay face down in the snow beside a Moscow canal, her hands bound behind her back with strips torn from her own shawl. A deep gash ran from her left ear to the corner of her mouth, and her eyes were fixed open, staring at the gray morning sky. The police officer who found her in the winter of 1872 had seen murder before, but nothing this cold or deliberate. In the coming weeks, as more bodies emerged from rivers and alleyways, all with the same macabre signature, the city would realize it was facing a string of killings unlike anything in living memory.
In the heart of 19th-century Moscow, the city was swelling with new arrivals. Factories ringed the city, drawing peasants with promises of work. The streets bustled with carriages, vendors, and a growing population of the desperately poor. Many families lived in cramped wooden barracks, entire households crammed into a single damp room. By the 1870s, Moscow’s population had reached nearly 600,000, making it one of Europe’s largest cities. The gap between rich and poor was stark. On one side, gilded theaters and ornate churches; on the other, labyrinths of alleys where the city’s poorest residents struggled to survive.
One of those new arrivals was Andrei Chikatilo, a man who would later come to be known as the “Butcher of Rostov.” But decades before his crimes, Moscow faced another predator. This man’s true name would be lost to history, but his deeds, and the panic they caused across the city, would echo for generations. Police records from the period refer to him only as “the Skoptsy Ripper,” a reference to the particularly brutal wounds inflicted on his victims and the infamous Russian religious sect known for self-mutilation. But no connection to that group was ever proven.
Most of the women targeted were young, aged between 16 and 25. Many were recent arrivals to the city, looking for work as maids or seamstresses. Some had left their villages with only a few rubles and a change of clothes. They lived in cheap boarding houses or worked menial jobs in the homes of the wealthy. At the time, Moscow’s police force was small and stretched thin. There were only a few hundred officers to patrol the entire city, and most were poorly paid and ill-trained. Crime rates were rising, and murders often went unsolved.
The first known victim was Yevdokiya Ivanova, a 19-year-old laundress. She was last seen leaving her employer’s house on a snowy December evening in 1871. Her body was discovered two days later in a narrow lane near the Sukharev Tower, her throat cut and her hands bound. Over the next two months, four more women were found dead in similar circumstances. Each had been killed with a single deep cut to the throat, and all had their hands tied behind their backs. News of the killings spread quickly, fanned by the city’s thriving rumor mills. Pamphlets and broadsheets warned women to stay off the streets after dark.
The city’s chief of police at the time, Yakov Sazonov, ordered his men to increase night patrols and questioned known criminals and vagrants. But the killings continued. The press dubbed the killer “the Moscow Ripper,” and speculation about his identity ran wild. Some claimed he was a lunatic escaped from an asylum. Others insisted he was a member of the city’s secret police, taking revenge on women he deemed immoral. By March of 1872, nine women had been killed, all mutilated in the same way.
The killer’s method was chillingly consistent. Each attack took place in a different part of the city, but always late at night and always targeting women walking alone. Witnesses occasionally reported seeing a tall man in a dark overcoat following the victims in the hours before they disappeared. In the case of Maria Lebedeva, whose body was found near the Yauza River, a neighbor recalled hearing a brief scream, followed by silence. When Lebedeva’s body was examined, investigators found a scrap of coarse wool stuck to the bindings on her wrists, possibly from her attacker’s clothing.
As panic spread, many women refused to leave their homes after sunset. Some employers gave their maids curfews or insisted on sending them home in pairs. The city authorities offered a reward of 100 rubles for information leading to the capture of the killer, a sum equivalent to more than a year’s wages for a servant. But leads were scarce. The killer left no personal belongings at the scenes—no footprints, no weapon, no clear motive. The only evidence was the pattern of the killings themselves.
On March 18, 1872, the killer struck again. This time, his victim was found alive. Anna Morozova, a 23-year-old dressmaker, was attacked while returning home from a late shift. She fought back, clawing at her attacker’s face and biting his hand. He slashed at her with a knife, cutting her cheek, but fled when she began to scream. Morozova was rushed to a local hospital, where she described her assailant to the police as “tall, with a long black beard and a heavy coat that smelled of tobacco.” She remembered his voice—calm, almost gentle, as he tried to reassure her before the attack.
This was the first time Moscow’s police had a living witness. Under Sazonov’s orders, the police canvassed local taverns and boarding houses, looking for men with fresh scratches or bite marks. They questioned dozens of suspects, but none matched Morozova’s description exactly. Rumors flew that the killer had left the city or committed suicide. But the murders resumed in April, with two more women found dead in alleys less than a mile apart.
Among the belongings recovered from one victim, Vera Sokolova, was a crumpled theater ticket stub. Investigators traced the ticket to a performance at the Maly Theatre three nights earlier. Witnesses there recalled seeing Sokolova in the company of a man matching Morozova’s description—a tall, bearded man in a heavy coat, who escorted her out during the second act. Police staked out the theater on subsequent nights, but the suspect did not return.
The investigation revealed that all of the victims had recently attended public events—markets, church services, or the theater—suggesting that the killer was stalking his targets in crowded places before attacking them in isolated locations. Detectives speculated that he might be a coachman or laborer, someone familiar with the city’s streets and able to move unnoticed at night. Despite Sazonov’s efforts, the case stalled. By May of 1872, the city’s newspapers were openly criticizing the police, accusing them of incompetence and corruption.
A breakthrough came in June, when a pawnshop owner reported a man trying to sell a bloodstained shawl. The owner, suspicious of the stains and the man’s nervous demeanor, contacted the police. The seller was arrested and identified as Ivan Karpov, a 34-year-old former soldier recently discharged from the Imperial Army. Karpov bore fresh scars on his face and hands, consistent with wounds described by Anna Morozova. Under questioning, he claimed to have found the shawl in a ditch. Police searched his lodgings and discovered several items belonging to the victims, including jewelry and a pair of gloves marked with the initials “V.S.”
Faced with mounting evidence, Karpov confessed to the murders of three women, but denied responsibility for the others. He described his method in chilling detail: following his victims from crowded places, waiting until they were alone, then attacking swiftly and binding their hands to prevent resistance. He claimed he was driven by “voices” and an overwhelming urge to kill. However, details in his confession did not match all of the crime scenes. Investigators believed Karpov may have been responsible for some, but not all, of the murders.
Public reaction to Karpov’s arrest was swift. Crowds gathered outside the police station demanding justice. Some newspapers hailed Sazonov as a hero, while others remained skeptical. At his trial, Karpov appeared calm and detached, answering questions in a monotone. He was convicted of three murders and sentenced to death by hanging. The execution took place in August of 1872, witnessed by a crowd of hundreds. But after his death, the murders continued for several more months, though at a slower pace.
This raised the possibility that Karpov was either not the only killer, or perhaps only a copycat inspired by the earlier murders. Police continued to investigate, but no further arrests were made. The killings eventually ceased in the winter of 1873, as abruptly as they had begun. The crimes faded from the headlines, but the fear they inspired lingered for years.
The official record of the case remains incomplete. Some historians question whether the Moscow Ripper was a single individual or several killers operating independently. The lack of forensic science at the time made it impossible to conclusively link all of the murders. A few contemporary police reports mention the possibility of an accomplice, based on witness sightings of two men in the vicinity of one of the attacks, but no evidence ever surfaced to support this theory.
The Moscow Ripper case highlighted the limitations of 19th-century Russian policing. The city’s growing population, combined with inadequate resources and a lack of investigative training, made it difficult to solve complex crimes. The case also exposed the vulnerability of young, working-class women in a rapidly changing urban environment. Many of the victims left rural villages for the promise of work in Moscow, only to find themselves isolated and unprotected.
At the time, sensational crimes were widely reported in the city’s newspapers, fueling public anxiety and prompting demands for police reform. Stories of the Moscow Ripper were retold in pamphlets, sensationalist novels, and even stage plays for decades after the murders ceased. The case contributed to the push for improvements in policing, including the eventual creation of a more professional detective branch in Moscow in the late 19th century.
The details of the Ripper’s attacks—his methodical stalking, the ritualistic binding, and the mutilation of his victims—entered Russian folklore and were later cited in police training manuals as examples of serial murder. Despite the passage of time, the identity of the true Moscow Ripper remains unknown. The legacy of fear he left behind, and the questions his crimes raise about the darker corners of urban life, continue to haunt the history of Russia’s capital.
A report filed by Yakov Sazonov in December 1872 lists a total of 14 victims attributed to the Moscow Ripper, though unofficial accounts put the number as high as 21. The same report notes that of the confirmed victims, three survived their attacks and gave statements to the police. The wounds inflicted on the survivors were studied by one of Moscow’s leading physicians, Dr. Fyodor Krestovsky, who concluded in a public letter that the killer was left-handed, based on the angle and depth of the cuts.
In one contemporary account, a police constable named Pyotr Chernov described walking his beat along the Yauza Canal and hearing the plash of something heavy thrown into the water on a foggy October night. Two days later, the body of Elizaveta Zaitseva was pulled from the canal, her wrists bound and a stone tied to her ankles. Chernov’s testimony formed a key part of the investigation, though no suspect was ever apprehended for that particular murder.
The Moscow Ripper killings coincided with a period of great social change in Russia. The Emancipation Reform of 1861, which freed the serfs, resulted in a massive migration of rural peasants to the city in search of work. This influx strained Moscow’s infrastructure and contributed to rising crime rates, as thousands struggled to adapt to urban life.
The city’s newspapers kept the case in the public eye with lurid headlines and sketches of imagined suspects. One popular broadside depicted the killer as a demonic figure with a top hat, stalking the snowy streets with a bloodied knife. This image became so deeply embedded in the public imagination that parents used it to frighten unruly children for years afterward.
The Moscow Ripper case remains one of the most troubling and mysterious chapters in the city’s criminal history. The police files, incomplete and scattered by later wars and revolutions, offer only glimpses of what really happened during those cold winters. But the facts that survive—the number of victims, the consistent pattern of the killings, the public fear, and the inadequacy of the police response—reveal a society grappling with the consequences of rapid change and the dangers that lurk in its shadows.
In the winter of 1872, the Moscow police received a letter signed only with the Cyrillic letter “Р,” taunting them for their failure to catch the killer. The envelope contained a scrap of cloth from a victim’s dress and a crude map of the city’s riverbanks, marked with X’s. The letter ended with the words: “The river is my only witness.” This cryptic taunt, never solved, was filed away and forgotten for years.