Elderly woman orders own murder

Она заказала свое убийство

On that sunny summer day, Valentina Tarasovna, a retiree, decided to hang herself. She cleaned up a bit, went to see her relatives and told them to come around in the evening. "Why?" they asked. "Come over and you'll find out for yourself!" she said.  

When Tarasovna got back from the bathhouse, she put on something nice and clean. But on her way home, a black cat crossed her path.

"That's a bad omen," she thought. Tarasovna felt worse, but decided against postponing the evening's event. She pulled out the white noose out from under her mattress and hung it from the ceiling.  

Tarasovna was known as a pleasant, talkative woman in her small village of Krasnoborsk in the Arkhangelsaya region. But at the age of 80 or so, she began to feel burdened by the discomforts of aging, and sadness came over her. Her husband had died shortly before. She also lived apart from her daughter and son-in-law.  

Tarasovna lived alone in a large, wooden home that had once been confiscated from a priest. There used to be many icons scattered about the home, some in gilded gold frames. But several years earlier, she had gathered them and tossed them into the Northern Dvina River.  

"That's a mortal sin," her relatives said when they learned what she had done.  

"But I want to die," she said explaining her actions. "What good is living when your health keeps going downhill. I don't want you to have to waste your time on me. When I get around to ending it all, the money is in my chest. Take it."  

Suicides occur often in Krasnoborsk. Statistics show the Arkhangelsk region is among Russia's leaders in terms of the crime. Hangings are the most common form of suicide.

Pavel's son-in-law at their favorite aunt's grave.

Tarasovna's relatives and neighbors told KP the following stories about recent local suicides.

Shortly before Tarasovna's death, another local retiree went missing. Her friends and family thought she had gone to the city. But soon after, a soldier found the old woman hanging from a branch in a thicket. One shoe had fallen off and a single black toe protruded from her torn stocking. At the same time, another old woman came home from the hospital after an orderly had told her she likely had cancer. She cried and wrote a note to her daughter: "Eat when you get home from work. There's soup waiting for you. Then go into the shed." Her daughter ate and then went into the shed to see her mother hanging there... Sadly, the autopsy showed the woman didn't even have cancer. And Krasnoborsk has lost count of how many men have hung themselves. One man was transporting apples in his car in the autumn when the vehicle flipped over. So the driver hung himself so he wouldn't have to pay for the damages.  

And so, on that sunny summer day, Tarasovna came back from the bathhouse, hung the noose, stood up on her chair, fixed her hair and started pulling the rope around her neck. But at that moment, her neighbor walked in...  

"Thanks to that black cat! Darn omens!" Tarasovna said. "I guess I'll just have to go and drown myself in the river like Nurka did not long ago."

But her relatives told her not to drown herself. They wouldn't find her body in the swamp and couldn't visit her in her grave.  

"But they found Nurka!" she retorted.  

For some time, Tarasovna's relatives didn't take their eyes off her. They gave her medication and she seemed to calm down.  

Former special operations officer Vasiliy Buldakov didn't want to kill his neighbor, but she asked him so...

Nikolay Varsegov

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Она заказала свое убийство