Russian ‘cannibal couple’ skinned victims alive, preserved body parts, ate them

The chilling crimes were discovered after a discarded phone with photos of a man with dismembered body parts in his mouth was found.

A discarded phone has led Russian investigators to a ‘cannibal couple’ who could possibly rank among the country’s worst serial killers.

A woman sports a zombie costume during a ‘zombie walk’ through downtown Frankfurt, and uses a fake severed hand as a prop. (Reuters File Photo/Representative image)

A road repairing crew found the phone which unravelled almost 30 years of alleged killing, for on it were pictures of “a man with different parts of a dismembered human body in his mouth”, the Russian ministry of internal affairs said in a statement.

Natalia and Dmitry Baksheev are believed to have skinned their victims alive after sedating them, eaten parts of the bodies and preserved the remaining parts in a saline solution, police said.

Police managed to trace the phone to Dmitry and arrested the couple. Dmitry later confessed that he and his wife had practised cannibalism in the past two decades.

The authorities think the couple could be responsible for deaths or disappearances of as many as 30 people in the area about five hours from Sochi, media reports said.

Media reports said police found a dismembered corpse of a 35-year-old woman, as well as a glass jar with a canned hand, fragments of the human body in saline solution and frozen meat parts of unknown origin.

The evidence has been sent for forensic medical examination.

The BBC, citing Russian media, said police had found photographs at the couple’s residence, including one that dated back to December 28, 1999, and appears to show a dismembered human head on a serving plate with fruit.