Russian cannibal couple held for killing and eating at least 30 victims

A Russian couple has been arrested after investigations revealed that they would knock their victims out with sedatives and subsequently skin them alive.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the couple ate parts of their victims, froze their remains or packed them in jars filled with saline solution.

The report adds that the couple may have gone scot-free if not for a broken mobile phone that was found on a city street in the Russian town of Krasnodar.

According to a report in the Moscow Times where this story was first published, a road repair crew found the phone. It was still working so the swiped through the images only to be horribly shocked.

The phone had ‘photos of a man with different parts of a dismembered human body in his mouth,’ the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement. The then traced the number to the couple.

City police have arrested the couple - Natalia Baksheeva and her husband, 35-year-old Dmitry Baksheev - who authorities say may be responsible for the death or disappearance of as many as 30 people in the city of 750,000 in the southwestern tip of Russia, about five hours from Sochi. So far, Baksheev has been charged with one count of murder, and the investigation is ongoing.

If all the killings are confirmed, the Russian couple would rank among the country's worst serial killers.

In police custody, Baksheeva told authorities that he and his wife had practiced cannibalism at least 30 times in the past two decades, according to the BBC.

For years, the couple had been living at what the BBC called a "hostel accommodation" at the site of a military base in the city. One or both had at one point worked on the base, in the kitchen.

"In the place of residence of the suspects, the investigators discovered fragments of the human body in saline solution in the dormitory . . . Frozen meat parts of unknown origin were seized in the kitchen," investigators said, according to CBS News.

According to CNN, one police source said, "at the moment, law enforcement had discovered a glass jar with a canned hand."

Earlier this year, former Siberian policeman Mikhail Popkov - nicknamed "the werewolf of Siberia" for his brutal killings - confessed to killing 81 people.