Chekhov: Sakhalin

 However, one grey-haired old man, sixty to sixty-five years old, Terekhov by name, who was being kept in the dark punishment cell, produced on me the impression of a real villain. The day before my arrival, he had been punished with the lash, and when our conversation turned to this he showed me his buttocks, which were dark-blue-crimson from bruises. According to the prisoners’ stories, this old man had murdered sixty people in his time; he was alleged to have carried on in the following fashion: he would spy out which of the newly arrived prisoners were a bit better off, and entice them into escaping with him; then, in the taiga, he would kill them and rob them, and in order to hide the traces of the crime, he would cut the corpses into pieces and throw them in the river. The last time they had tried to capture him, he had defended himself against the overseers by brandishing a large oak cudgel. Looking at his dull, tinny eyes, and his large, half-shaven skull, angular as a cobblestone, I was prepared to believe all these stories.