Spesivtsev, with the assistance of his mother Lyudmila, would torture and kill children in their apartment, and sometimes cannibalize them. Despite only being convicted of 4 murders, Spesivtsev confessed to 19 murders he was accused of by police and, based on evidence, is believed to have committed over 80 killings beginning as early as 1991.
Alexander Nikolayevich Spesivtsev was born March 1, 1970, and raised in an apartment on Pionerskiy Prospekt in central Novokuznetsk, the largest city in Kemerovo Oblast, RSFSR, Soviet Union. He was underweight at birth but survived, although he was frequently ill afterwards. During childhood, Spesivtsev was considered unsocial, did not have friends, and was bullied while at school. His mother, Lyudmila Spesivtsev, worked at a nearby school and was very affectionate towards her son. Spesivtsev and his mother held a strong but unusual relationship, as Lyudmila would regularly show her son photographs of corpses from books about criminal cases at a very young age, and the two shared a bed until Spesivtsev was 12. Growing up, Spesivtsev showed increasing sadistic tendencies, and in 1988 at the age of 18 he was assigned to a mental hospital in Novokuznetsk for treatment.
In 1991, Alexander and Lyudmila began to lure victims chosen at random into their apartment where Alexander would torture and eventually kill them. Spesivtsev had developed an intense hatred for street children, which had become commonplace in the impoverished city of Novokuznetsk since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they became his main target. The bodies of victims would sometimes be cannibalized and Lyudmila would dispose of unwanted remains by throwing them into the Aba River, late at night.<2>
CITED REFERENCES
2. Wikipedia contributors, “Alexander Spesivtsev,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Spesivtsev (accessed April 4, 2019).
