Law enforcement do not often look to older women when they are seeking out suspects. For two decades, this fact kept Tamara Samsonova off the radar of police investigators.

In photographs, she's a thin, frail woman with a mess of blond-brown hair and watery brown eyes. The wrinkles on her face and hands and reminiscent of any innocent old woman off the street. Tamara Samsonova looks as benign as the old woman next door who used to let you play in her yard when you were a child. The shocking reality of Tamara Samsonova, however, is much darker and more twisted than investigators and the general public could possibly imagine. The media took to calling her "The Granny Ripper", and the nickname is not unwarranted.