Move over Dahmer, Russia's got it's own sociopaths

Obviously this topic is a little more macabre than the usual ones, but I just had to know - Does Russia have it's own dirty history of serial killers, or does America have that market monopolized. Turns out, they do. My search led me to four names: Sasha Spesivtsev, Andrei Chikatilo, Alexander Pitchushkin, and Darya Saltykova. I won't go into details (you can find those out yourself) but I just thought it'd be interesting to see how Russia's sickos compare to ours. Let's just say they hold their own.

Sasha Spesivtsev was raised in an abusive home where his father tortured the entire family. Sasha was institutionalized after he murdered his girlfriend. Later, he shared an apartment with his mother. One day a plumber, responding to a neighbors call, forced his way into Sasha's home after a pipe breakage and found the apartment covered in blood and with, lets say, surprises throughout. Authorities found Sasha's diary detailing the killing of 19 girls, for which he was sentenced to death.

Andrei Chikatilo, known as the Red Ripper, also lived in a traumatic household. He would often wet the bed, for which his mother would beat and humiliate him. He would approach runaways and vagrants and bring them into the forest, where he would commit his crimes. He was arrested at a train station, but released when he produced a false negative from blood tests. He would go on to kill a total of 52 women and children before being arrested and confessing. He too, was executed.

Alexander Pichushkin, known as the Chessboard Killer, was thought to be in competition with Andrei, which some speculate was the motivation for his actions. He said that he wanted to kill 64 people, equal to the number of squares on a chessboard. When captured though, he claimed that he wouldn't have stopped at 64, he would have continued killing until he was stopped. He was arrested in 2006 and charged with 48 counts of murder, but he told a Russian court to add another 11 counts to that. It took the judge an entire hour to read his sentence, life in prison with the first 15 years to be spent in solitary confinement.

Finally, there's the one female in the group, though she is no less sick than the rest. Darya's crimes occurred long before the others, in the 1700s. Darya inherited her late husband's estate at age 26, which allowed her to do as she pleased to the serfs working there. Darya was well connected in the royal court, so any complaints of the deaths and torture of serfs taking place at her estate were often ignored or even punished. Eventually, relatives fo those killed started a petition and the empress arrested Darya. Darya was held for 6 years while an investigation took place, after which she was found guilty of having tortured and killed 138 female serfs. The death penalty was outlawed at that time, so she had to settle for life locked in the basement of a convent.