Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova is one of the most ruthless serial killers in Russian history. Given the scale of the deed, even the life imprisonment to which the criminal was sentenced seems too lenient punishment.
Bloody landowner
Most of the atrocities Saltychikha committed on her estate near Moscow near the village of Troitskoye. Today, the Trinity Forest Park, located in the village of Mosrentgen, a few hundred meters from the Moscow Ring Road, is laid out at this place. It is noteworthy that in the 1930s, the former estate of Saltykova housed the administration of the NKVD of the USSR, and in the place of the town house of the lady, located at the intersection of Kuznetsky Most and Bolshaya Lubyanka Streets, the building of the KGB of the USSR was later built.
The peasants bypassed the Saltykova estate, considering this place cursed. The reason for this was the massive pestilence among the serfs, caused not by epidemics, but by the atrocities perpetrated by the young widow Daria Saltykova. For six years (from 1756 to 1762) the murderer sent to the next world at least 138 of her serfs, most of whom were young girls.
Any trifle could become the reason for the fury of the landowner - more often poor cleaning or poor-quality washing. As usual, she punished herself: she tore her hair, beat with a rolling pin, grabbed the victim with hot tongs. The grooms and hayduks continued the execution, who often beat the "guilty" with batogs or whips to death. However, many peasants perished at the hands of Saltychikha herself.
Complaints about the tormentor were constantly going on. But for a long time, thanks to influential patrons and bribery, Saltykova managed to prevent the initiation of a criminal case against her. Only in the summer of 1762, when the serfs Savely Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin, who had escaped from Saltychikha, reached St. Petersburg, did the situation get off the ground.
The newly-made Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna took the landowner's business seriously, entrusting the investigation to Stepan Volkov, a rootless official of the Justice College. No matter how many obstacles Saltykova did, using all her connections, she could no longer stop the spinning wheel of justice. The only thing she succeeded in was to protect herself from the torture used in the inquiry. Influential patrons did help.
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The investigation of Daria Saltykova's crimes lasted six years. 38 deaths were fully proven, in which the bloody landowner was directly involved, including double murders when a pregnant woman and her unborn child became victims of atrocity. Obviously, dozens of serfs who disappeared without a trace also became victims of the bullying of Saltychikha and her servants, however, the confirmed murders were more than enough to assign the most severe punishment to the murderer.
The senators did not pass judgment, leaving the last word to the empress. It is known that Catherine rewrote the verdict several times - four sketches made by the tsarina's hand have been preserved in the archives. On October 2, 1768, the final version was finally sent to the Senate, which contained both a description of the punishment itself and the procedure for its execution.
Sharpen forever
The final verdict of the acting monarch was as follows: Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova to be deprived of her title of nobility; impose a lifelong ban on naming the family of a father or husband; prohibit indicating their noble origin and family ties with other noble names; sentenced to life imprisonment in an underground prison without light and human communication (light was allowed only during meals, and communication was exclusively with the chief of the guard and a woman nun).
But before the convict had to experience a "revolting spectacle" on the frontal spot of Red Square, during which she stood chained to a pillar with the inscription "tormentor and murderer" attached above her head. After an hour of standing to the sounds of continuous abuse of Muscovites passing by, Saltykova was imprisoned in the underground prison of the John the Baptist Convent, which still stands on the Ivanovskaya Hill in the Kitai-Gorod area.
The first eleven years of Saltychikha's imprisonment turned out to be the most terrible. She was essentially buried alive in a "penitential pit" dug under the Cathedral Church, a little more than two meters deep and closed on top by a grate. Ironically, this church was built in honor of Ivan the Terrible, who also received the sad fame of the murderer among the people. Only twice a day Saltykova could see the light - when the nun brought her a candle stub, which illuminated the meager food unusual for the landowner.
The prisoner was forbidden to walk, she was not allowed to receive or send correspondence. Only during the main church holidays was Saltykov taken out of the dungeon, being allowed, leaning against a small window in the wall of the church, to listen to the liturgy.
In 1779, the super-harsh regime of detention of Daria Saltykova was relaxed. The prisoner was transferred to a stone annex to the temple, which had a small barred window. Visitors to the temple could not only look through this window, but also talk with the prisoner, another thing is that Saltychikha was not very talkative. As the historian P. Kicheev wrote in the magazine "Russian Archive", when the curious gathered at Saltykova's torture chamber, the prisoner "cursed, spat and thrust a stick through the window that was open in the summertime."
According to the testimony of State Councilor Pyotr Mikhailovich Rudin, who was in the Ivanovo monastery during his childhood, the aforementioned window was closed with a yellow curtain, and anyone who wanted to look at the prisoner could pull it up on his own. Rudin, who saw Saltykova with his own eyes, noted that "she was in her old years and full, and according to her behavior it seemed that she was devoid of reason."
Another interesting detail of Saltychikha's conclusion to the author of the magazine "Russian Archive" Kicheev was told by a contemporary of the murderer, a connoisseur of antiquity, Pavel Fedorovich Korobanov. According to him, a guard soldier brought food to Saltykova, first he served it through the window, then began to enter the door. And then one day the lady was born, and it happened in the fiftieth year of her life. Of course, the guard was accused of the deed: the involuntary lover, according to rumors, was publicly flogged and sent to a penal company. Nobody knows whether it really was or not, in any case there is no other confirmation of this story.
Daria Saltykova died on November 27, 1801, having spent a total of 33 years in prison. At the time of her death she was 71. Saltychikha was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, where all her relatives were buried. The gravestone of the odious landowner with a fairly worn inscription can be seen today.
Saltykova, until the end of her days, did not show the slightest remorse for what she had done. Modern criminologists are sure that the manic obsessed criminal suffered from mental disorders. Her diagnosis is often referred to as "epileptoid psychopathy", some suggest that she was also "latent homosexual." One way or another, Saltykova took the secret of her personality with her to the grave.
Taras Repin