Russian ‘cannibal couple’ may have killed 30
Photograph of human head on a platter with oranges and body parts among gruesome finds
A RUSSIAN couple are suspected of dozens of cases of cannibalism after they were found with pictures of human body parts, including a cooked head on a platter of oranges.
Dmitry Baksheyev, 35, and his wife Natalya, are suspected of killing as many as 30 people over the past two decades while living at a military academy in south-west Russia.
Detectives were tipped off after road workers found a phone belonging to Mr Baksheyev which included “selfie” photographs of him with a woman’s severed hand and other body parts.
Mr Baksheyev is believed to have killed the woman and cut her up after the couple quarrelled with her during a drinking session three days earlier, according to investigators who have opened a formal murder inquiry regarding the dead woman. However phones belonging to other alleged victims were also found, as well as recipes and video lessons for cooking human meat, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
Local media also published a photograph of what appeared to be the man with a human hand in his mouth.
Investigators later discovered fragments of a human body in a salt solution and frozen meat of an unknown origin in the couple’s room in a dormitory at the Krasnodar military aviation academy, where Mrs Baksheyev had reportedly been employed.
Among the finds was a jar with the preserved hand that the husband had taken a photograph with, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
A search also uncovered remains of the dead woman in a nearby basement. The head had been kept in a bucket of cold water to preserve it, according to Komsomolskaya Pravda. The man claimed he found the body parts and photographed himself with them, investigators said.
RIA Novosti later quoted a source saying he had admitted to killing the woman and a previous victim in 2012, and reports said that the pair had been connected to at least seven killings.
Komsomolskaya Pravda published a blurred-out photograph, showing the cooked head on a platter with mandarins, which it said was taken in 1999 and was found in the Baksheyev home.
Meanwhile, entrepreneur Vitaly Yakubenko told local media outlets that Natalya had been interviewed for a vacant chef’s job at his restaurant in 2010. “She kept asking everything about meat, whether I wanted to buy it cheaper,” Yakubenko told Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“Apparently she wanted to sell human meat in my bistro.”