Anatoly Moskvin was a respected historian (Image: CEN)
A disturbed historian desecrated as many as 150 burial sites to dress the remains of young girls for birthday parties and read them bedtime stories.
On the surface, Anatoly Moskvin appeared an exemplary scholar – proficient in 13 languages, extensively travelled, a university lecturer and a well-regarded local historian in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia‘s fifth-largest metropolis.
He was also considered an unusual yet harmless authority on graveyards, dubbing himself a “necropolist”, possessing comprehensive knowledge of the deceased.
Yet beneath this academic veneer lay a chilling nightmare. In 2011, authorities uncovered something so profoundly disturbing it sent shockwaves throughout the country – the mummified corpses of 29 girls and young women within Moskvin’s flat.
The bodies had been taken from nearby cemeteries, preserved through a makeshift chemical process, and meticulously clothed and arranged to resemble life-sized dolls.
Anatoly Moskvin had a horrifying explanation for his behaviour (Image: EuroPics[CEN])
Moskvin had dug up the corpses of girls ranging from three to 12 to fulfil his twisted compulsions.
He then took them to home and turned them into a macabre mummy collection, dressing the bodies and skeletons in stockings and dresses, even crafting one to look like a teddy bear, reports the Mirror.
Footage recorded by Moskvin and uncovered at his property by investigators showed a corridor packed with wedding dresses and bright, colourful garments. In one room, the camera lingered on the girls’ faces, covered in pale beige fabric.
His unsettling voice on the recording said: “These dolls are made of mummified human remains.”
One of the mummified body’s found in Moskvin’s home (Image: Police)
Police revealed Moskvin had collected up-to-date information about each girl he had exhumed, and had created computer printouts with instructions for making dolls from human remains.
Born in 1966, Moskvin had spent a significant portion of his life engrossed in death rituals. He later attributed this obsession to a distressing event from his childhood.
As a regular writer for ‘Necrologies’, a specialised Russian weekly focusing on cemeteries and obituaries, Moskvin recounted an incident from 1979 when he was just 13.
He claimed that he was intercepted by a group of men dressed in black suits while returning home from school. They were en route to the funeral of an 11-year-old girl named Natasha Petrova.
Moskvin alleged that these men forcibly took him to the coffin and made him kiss the dead girl, an experience he said haunted him for the rest of his life.
In his account, he wrote: “I kissed her once, then again, then again.”
According to Moskvin, the bereaved mother of the dead girl then put a wedding ring on his finger and another on her daughter’s lifeless hand. “My strange marriage with Natasha Petrova was useful,” he stated.
After his arrest, Moskvin was found unfit to stand trial due to his mental condition and was committed to a psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
One of the mummified body’s found in Moskvin’s home (Image: Police)
He has remained there ever since, refusing to offer any apologies to the families of those he exhumed.
A spokesperson for the prosecution previously stated: “After three years of monitoring him in a psychiatric clinic it is absolutely clear that Moskvin is not mentally fit for trial. He will therefore be kept for psychiatric treatment at the clinic.”
Last October, reports emerged that doctors are now suggesting he can return home.
Medical professionals are “submitting documents to the court to discharge the patient and place him under the care of relatives” under the category of “incapacitated”, as per Russian news source Shot.
