A twisted historian unearthed around 150 burial sites to dress the remains of young girls for birthday celebrations and narrate fairytales to them.
Anatoly Moskvin, a seemingly exemplary academic proficient in 13 languages and a well-traveled college lecturer and local historian in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, had a dark secret. Despite portraying himself as a “necropolist” with vast knowledge of cemeteries, he shocked the nation in 2011 when the police found 29 mummified bodies of girls and young women in his apartment.
These bodies, stolen from local graves, were preserved using a homemade chemical solution and meticulously clothed and arranged to mimic life-size dolls. Moskvin targeted girls aged three to 12 to fulfill his disturbing fantasies.
He brought the bodies to his residence and turned them into a macabre mummy collection, dressing the bodies and skeletons in various garments, including tights and dresses, and even sculpting one to resemble a teddy bear.
A video discovered by detectives at Moskvin’s home showcased a hallway filled with bridal gowns and colorful attire. In one scene, the camera focused on the girls’ faces covered with beige material.
Moskvin’s eerie voice on the video stated, “These dolls are made of mummified human remains.”
Authorities revealed that Moskvin meticulously gathered information about each exhumed girl’s life and created computer printouts detailing how to craft dolls from human remains.
Born in 1966, Moskvin spent years engrossed in death rituals, attributing his fixation to a traumatic childhood experience. He recounted an incident from 1979 involving a group of men compelling him to kiss a deceased girl at a funeral, an event that haunted him.
Following his arrest, Moskvin was declared mentally unfit for trial due to paranoid schizophrenia and was confined to a psychiatric facility, where he remains unapologetic to the families of his victims.
Despite doctors recommending his potential return home, pending court approval to place him under relatives’ care as incapacitated, the haunting legacy of Anatoly Moskvin continues to shock and disturb many.
