Darya Saltykova

Written by Tatiana Klevantseva for RT

March 11, 1730 – November 27, 1801 (1800 according to some documents)

Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, commonly known as Saltichikha made her infamous mark with the atrocious killings of her serfs. She enjoyed torturing and mutilating her victims. Saltichikha was the epitome of boyar abuse of serfs in pre-reformation Russia. She pleaded guilty to the murder of at least 138 serfs at her estate, and the torture of many more. The name Saltychikha became a synonym for bestial treatment of the peasants.

Young widow

Darya Saltykova was a Russian Countess who over a period of years turned from a noblewoman into a vicious serial killer. Her maiden name was Ivanova. Her family members were relatively well-connected with Davidovs, Musin-Pushkins, and Tolstoy’s family. Saltykova married young to Gleb Saltykov and was widowed by the age of 26. She became the richest widow in Moscow. With her husband's death, she inherited the beautiful estate near Moscow called Troitskoe, where she lived with her two young sons and over 600 serfs. She also had good property in Moscow.

While she was married, no one had noticed anything special about her. She just seemed gloomy most of the time. Also she was a very pious woman, who donated a lot to churches and monasteries.

One day Saltykova met a young and very handsome Nikolay Tyutchev (the grandfather of well-known Russian poet, Fyodor Tyutchev. As she was getting older and was very lonely, the affair with him raised her spirits a little bit. She soon learned that Tyutchev had a love affair with a young girl and they were even secretly married in church. In blind fury, Saltykova nearly killed her unfaithful lover. Tyutchev and his wife escaped to his relatives’ estate in Moscow and soon fled from the region. Out of revenge Saltykova wanted to kill them, the opportunity was lost.

Soon she started wreaking her anger on her serfs, mostly women. She hated them all. The younger they were, the more she hated them. She treated them as her rivals, giving her enemies no quarter. She tortured children and pregnant women to death by beating them, breaking their bones, throwing them out of the house naked into the frost, pouring boiling water on their bodies and many other vicious and bloody tortures. She didn’t make a habit of killing men - only three accidentally - although she tortured them in a different way. She killed the ones they loved. One of her serfs lost, one by one, three of his wives.

The tortures and murders

Saltykova’s cruelty had no simple explanation, as she would become furious for no apparent reason. At the beginning she would throw logs at her serf girls, when she didn’t like the way they were cleaning the house for example. Then, transported with range, she would beat, whip and torture young girls and women to death. She was a sadist who enjoyed physically abusing her servants.

Many early complaints to authorities about the deaths at the Saltykova estate were either ignored or resulted in punishment of the complainants, because Saltykova was well-connected with powerful members of the royal court. Complaints about her possibly killing those who worked for her fell on deaf ears due to her standing in society. After an uproar from many of the victims grieving family members, Saltykova was finally tried and convicted for killing only 38 women – about 100 fewer than in reality.

Arrest

In the summer of 1762 peasant serfs Sakhvely Martynov and Ermolay Ilyin (the latter had lost three of his wives, beaten to death on orders of Saltychikha) fled from the estate to St. Petersburg, where they eventually brought a petition before Empress Catherine II. The empress ordered the College of Justice to begin an investigation regarding torture and murder. Catherine decided to try Saltykova publicly, in order to further the empress’s lawfulness initiative.

Saltychikha was arrested in 1762. She was held for six years while the authorities conducted an investigation. Most surviving victims and witnesses were afraid to give evidence. Stepan Volkov was the investigator who allowed an action to proceed. Saltychikha was not admitted mad or ill. She was unrepentant of her terrible deeds. Even the priest whose mission was to make her confess to her killings failed to make her talk. She was absolutely sure she would escape punishment.

According to forensic detectives, over the period of six to seven years Darya Saltykova murdered by various methods 139 people, mainly women (only three of her victims were men), including young girls of 10-12. Catherine's Collegium of Justice questioned many witnesses and examined the records of the Saltykova estate. The investigating official counted as many as 138 suspicious deaths, of which the vast majority was attributed to Saltykova. She was found guilty of having killed 38 female serfs by beating and torturing them to death. But the Empress was still unsure about how to punish her, as the death penalty had been abolished in Russia in 1754, and the new empress needed the support of the nobility.

Finally, on 2 October 1768, a sentence of life imprisonment in the Ivanovsky Cloister was handed down to Saltykova, preceded by a “civil execution” ceremony on Red Square in Moscow. At a public beating in Red Square, she was chained on a platform for an hour in front of the crowd, with a sign around her neck with the text: "This woman has tortured and murdered." She was then hauled off to live out her remaining years in the basement of a convent. 

Imprisonment

Saltykova was sentenced to life imprisonment in lieu of capital punishment. Her sentence required her to be incarcerated in a monastery dungeon in chains and in darkness. A windowless wooden room was built for her, so for a long time she lived in complete darkness. She was under 24-hour guard. A nun would bring food and a candle. After meals the candle would be taken away. In the Imperial verdict was also the prescription: “From this reclusion take her out in such a place during church services where she would be able to hear one, without entering the church proper.” In the penitentiary cell, fully dark, Saltykova turned her back on the world for 11 long years.

The Moscow cloister was notorious as a place where many women of aristocratic lineage were imprisoned against their will. Their families would typically make sumptuous offerings for the monastery towards the upkeep of their female relation. It is here, often under the guise of mental illness, that secret female prisoners of the Investigation Department and the Secret Investigations Bureau would be sent, typically involved in political and criminal cases. All of them were held in the stone sacks under supervision of the cloister sisters.

After 11 years, in 1779, Saltykova was transferred to one of the monastery buildings. This room contained a window with shutters. One of her contemporaries recorded her conduct here. Saltikova would spit at curious spectators, would revile them, and shove a stick at them through the window. Whether her mental illness was a result of her solitary confinement or was merely aggravated by it is unclear.

She died in her cell on November 27, 1801, at the age of 71 after 33 years of incarceration. Somw documents however provide 1800 as a year of her death.

Russiapedia.rt.com

(Automatic translation)

Darja Nikolajewna Saltykowa often with pointed name Saltytschicha mentioned (*1730, "1801 in Moscow), was a Russian noble one and property lady. History it entered as unparalleled and Sadistin, whose unbelievable brutality does not only look for a resembling in the Russian history their.

Background

Saltykowa (born Iwanowa) was third daughter of a wealthy Russian large basic owner. It was married and of it had gotten two sons first with the officer Gleb Saltykow. At the age of 26 years it verwitwete however and became exclusive owner over a house in Moscow as well as over far land surfaces and in the European part of Russia and concomitantly over thousands of body-own farmers.

Until today nobody knows so correctly, when exactly the crime series began and which the crucial trip for it was. It was delivered however that she could have to do with unfortunate love Saltykowas for engineer Nikolaj Tjuttschew (by the way grandfather of at that time famous poet Fjodor Tjuttschew), which left her allegedly because of a rothaarigen woman. If that actually like that it were it appears surprising few that Saltykowa had foreseen it with its Folterorgien excellently on young, blond women.

The crimes

Altogether 139 humans are to have come by Saltykowas crime to death, although you however "only" 38 victims could be proven. They were killed usually not directly, but died extremely painful at the consequences of tortures, which Saltykowa caused to them.

Up to two proven cases all victims were female, among them even gave it a few 11 - to girl. Saltykowa was supported with its crimes by several accomplices, who held the victims during the torture as well as the corpses disposed later.

Typically Saltykowa began to strike one it serving woman, while this deseamed the house, usually under the pretext of unsatisfactorily implemented work. It slammed shut first with a timber beam or a hot iron several times, and forced the woman afterwards to perform their work further. Since this was after the impacts naturally no longer for this able, she was afterwards lashed and continued to torment.

To the preferential torture methods Saltykowas belonged: Burn the hair, Verhungern or verdursten leave naked, a pouring over of the head or the face with cooking water, lashing in the free one at frost temperatures, pulling the ears out with glowing pliers, with high pregnant women Mrs. also continuous footsteps into the belly. Beyond that Saltykowa was suspected even cannibalism.

She committed most of its acts on its Landgut "Troizkoje" close of the city Podolsk south of Moscow. It should take several years, until the murder series became public and Saltykowa could be arrested. At first there were bad rumors in neighbouring villages over an terribly brutal property lady in the close environment.

One always sighted a little later Troizkoje coming Kutschen with suspect, provisional covered charge, which proved then also as corpses. First the drivers of these Kutschen tried to dissuade, it from act with this dead ones around farmers, who had died a natural or an accidental death. One noticed only later also that the corpses had cruelly mutilated. But that could not even stop the atrocities fast.

Some few farmers, who dared it to indicate Saltykowa at the authorities failed because of the corrupt police and the relations of the rich Satykowa with the power structures, which had been captivated by it. Pretty often it even occurred that instead of Saltykowa the plaintiffs were punished.

The process

The turning point in this history appeared only after the seizure of power by Katharina the large one, which already at that time the body characteristic of the farmers in Russia critically opposite. 1762 created it two farmers, whose wives Saltykowa fell to the victim to convey their complaint directly to the Zarin.

The thing came finally in motion, and in May 1764 against Saltykowa accusation was raised. The determinations lasted for many years, many details could be only gradually abandoned, since many potential witnesses from fear did not want to state around their life.

The fact that Saltykowa was to the act time psychologically ill and therefore addition unable can be assumed only, there it in the Russia 18. Century naturally still no psychiatric appraisals of series murderers gave.

The process could be locked only 1768. Were exposed here also many of the corrupt police officers, who suppressed the earlier complaints against Saltykowa. Their titles were denied to them, they were expropriated and sent in banishing. Saltykowas direct accomplices were condemned to the public Auspeitschung and to the labour camp detention.

Saltykowa was condemned first to death; since however Katharina wanted to probably create the large one no precedent for the other noble ones in Russia, in order not to draw the anger of this influential social class on itself, on which however a kind looking process other side wanted to make, the death sentence was waived and instead of its ordered to lock up Saltykowa lifelong into an underground hole in a Muscovite monastery. It was placed directly before on the Muscovite Red Square with the attached label "Peinigerin and for one hour publicly against a pillory.

The detention

In its following detention Saltykowa spent 33 years long up to their death. Their underground, stick-dark cell was lit up only if their eating and drinking were brought. From its attendant she got even times a child; whether it was actually a relationship or it was raped by it, is not well-known.

It confessed their acts neither nor ever repented - and that, although it is to have been time of her life an extremely person.

Saltykowas crime in the literature

In Boris Akunins book "cemetery stories" is a freely invented Gruselgeschichte, which turns around Saltykowas atrocities and also receives a multiplicity of authentic facts. Who did not know it before, it experiences there likewise that Saltykowas remained keep-drawn burial place until today on the old part of the Donskoje cemetery in Moscow.

Darya Saltykova, Russian Serial Killer Who Loved to Torture & Mutilate Women & Girls - 1762

Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova (Russian: Дарья Николаевна Салтыкова; née Ivanova, commonly known as Saltychikha) (1730 - 1801) was a Russian serial killer and noble. Saltykova was a Russian noble from Moscow who became notorious for torturing and killing and torturing 138 female serfs. She beat them with logs and rolling pins and reportedly mutilated their genitals. (Sebag Montefiore, Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin, Thomas Dunne Books, 2001, p. 22)

Daria Ivanova married young into the famous Saltykov family. She was widowed by the age of 26. With her husband’s death, she inherited a substantial estate, where she lived with her two young sons and a substantial number of serfs. Many early complaints to authorities about the deaths at the Saltykova estate were ignored, or resulted in punishment to the complainants, because Saltykova was well connected with holders of power at the royal court.

Eventually, however, relatives of the murdered women were able to bring a petition before Empress Catherine II. Catherine decided to try Saltykova publicly, in order to further her “lawfulness” initiative. Saltykova was arrested in 1762.

Saltykova was held for six years (until 1768), while the authorities conducted a painstaking investigation. Catherine’s Collegium of Justice questioned many witnesses and examined the records of the Saltykova estate. The investigating official counted as many as 138 suspicious deaths, of which the vast majority were attributed to Saltykova.

She was found guilty of having killed 38 female serfs by beating and torturing them to death, but the Empress was unsure about how to punish her; the death penalty had been abolished in Russia in 1754, and the new Empress needed the support of the nobility.

In 1768, Saltykova was chained on a platform in Moscow for one hour, with a sign around her neck with the text: “This woman has tortured and murdered.” Many people came to look at her during the hour she was displayed. Afterward, she was sent to imprisonment for life in the basement of Ivanovsky Convent in Moscow. She was buried next to her relatives in the Donskoy Monastery necropolis.

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