A court in the Urals sentenced a mother of two to 20 years in jail on Monday for murdering 17 elderly women over an eight-year period from 2003 in order to rob them.
Irina Gaidamachuk, 40, also known as "Raskolnikov in a skirt" (after a character in Dostoyevsky’s book Crime and Punishment), confessed to fraudulently entering the homes of her victims, aged between 61 and 89, and killing them with a hammer before robbing their flats. She was found sane by psychiatric experts.
According to investigators, she became acquainted with the pensioners, won their trust and offered to help them around the house. Once inside, she killed them and stole their money.
Gaidamachuk was finally arrested in the town of Krasnoufimsk on June 7, 2010.
She will also have to pay 30,000 rubles ($870) legal expenses.
