The school poisoning that exposed the case
In March 1987, pupils and adults connected to School No. 16 in Kyiv's Podil district became acutely ill after eating in the school canteen. A modern toxicology review from Ukraine's L. I. Medved Research Center describes 13 diners becoming ill after food had been contaminated with Clerici solution, a highly toxic thallium compound. Four of the school-incident victims died.
The unusual clinical pattern, including later hair loss among survivors, shifted attention away from ordinary food poisoning. Investigators also revisited earlier unexplained illness and death connected to the school. The dietitian, who had died shortly before the March outbreak, was exhumed; thallium was detected.
The search and the thallium source
Tamara Ivanyutina worked as a dishwasher at the school. A search of her home produced a container holding Clerici solution. Reporting and toxicology literature agree on the central finding: the substance used in the poisoning was a thallium-based liquid ordinarily associated with geological work rather than food preparation.
The inquiry then expanded well beyond the school. Investigators concluded that poisoning had been used repeatedly over years by members of Ivanyutina's family. A later toxicology review summarizes the investigation as establishing 40 poisonings, 13 of them fatal, across the wider family case. That total is not presented as 40 separate criminal cases on Crime by Region.
What was attributed to Ivanyutina
Retrospective reporting based on the case record attributes nine murders and 20 attempted poisonings specifically to Ivanyutina, while other deaths and attempts were linked to relatives. Because the case involved several defendants and a long period, this page distinguishes the wider family total from the conduct attributed to her personally.
Motives reported in the historical record vary by victim, including personal hostility and financial benefit. Those reported motives are not collapsed into a single psychological explanation. The legally important fact is that Ivanyutina was found criminally responsible and received the harshest sentence available under Soviet law.
Sentence and execution date
The Kyiv City Court sentenced Ivanyutina to death. Older retellings often incorrectly placed her execution in 1987, the year of the school poisoning. In 2022, WAS Media published an archival correction based on a document from Ukraine's Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government: Ivanyutina was executed on December 6, 1990 in Kyiv.
That archival correction matters because it separates the date of the crime, the later trial and appeal process, and the actual carrying out of the sentence. This dossier uses the documented 1990 date rather than repeating the earlier chronology error.
March 1987: 13 diners at Kyiv School No. 16 become seriously ill after a thallium-contaminated meal; four die.
1987: the investigation expands to earlier poisonings and to members of Ivanyutina's family.
Trial: Ivanyutina is sentenced to death; relatives receive prison terms.
December 6, 1990: archival documentation records that the death sentence was carried out in Kyiv.
Current status
The case is classified Solved / Adjudicated. Ivanyutina was convicted and sentenced to death. The archive keeps the four deaths in the 1987 school episode distinct from the 13 fatal poisonings attributed to the wider family investigation, and it does not fragment the poisoning series into artificial victim-by-victim pages.