Anatoly Moskvin: The Lord of the Mummies

Anatoly Moskvin will not be listed under the same category as “serial killers” because he actually never murdered anyone. He never physically took the life of any living person. What he did, however, shocked authorities and those who knew him to the core. He became infamous in Russia for his “hobby.”

Anatoly Moskvin was a Russian linguist, philologist, and historian and lived in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s fifth-largest city. Moskvin became captivated by the dead at an early age and walked through local cemeteries often as a boy. He came to be known as the “cemetery expert” of Nizhny Novgorod.

Before his arrest, he wrote an article referencing an incident that contributed to his fixation. He stated that while on the way home from school one day, a group of men in black suits dragged him to the funeral for an 11-year-old girl.

One man pushed Moskvin’s face down to the girl’s face and ordered him to kiss her, which he did. The mother of the deceased girl placed a ring on his finger and then a ring on the finger of her daughter. Moskin believes that this “marriage” led him to his fascination with the dead.

Moskvin graduated from Moscow State University and developed his academic interests in Celtic history and folklore, as well as languages (of which he spoke 13) and linguistics. He continued his obsession with deaths, burials, cemeteries, and the occult.

While Moskvin never married, nor even dated, he did compile a personal library of over 60,000 books and documents, as well as a large doll collection. He lived with his parents, did not smoke nor drink, and was reported to be a virgin at the time of his arrest.

Moskvin claims to have visited 752 cemeteries in Nizhny Novgorod and taken detailed notes on each one. He created documentaries of his walks, some of which took him 20 miles per day, entitled “Great Walks Around Cemeteries” and “What the Dead Said.” He insists that he even slept on top of a coffin one night, just before the funeral of the deceased.

The Collector

In 2009, family members of deceased persons in the area began noticing the desecration of graves. In 2011, after a terrorist attack occurred at the Domodedovo airport in Moscow, investigators were led to a cemetery that they believed had ties to the attack. It was here that they caught Moskvin digging up graves. After his arrest, investigators went to his apartment. No one was prepared for what they would find there.

Inside Moskvin’s small apartment that he shared with his parents, investigators found life-sized dolls throughout. They appeared to be antique, dressed in fine clothing, some with boots, some wearing makeup. Imagine the investigators’ shock when they realized that the “dolls” were actually the mummified bodies of deceased human girls.

There was a total of 29 corpses inside his apartment.

When one of the investigators moved one of the “dolls” it began playing music. It was discovered that Moskvin had embedded music boxes inside the chest of several of the corpses. Some of the girls also had some of their personal belongings “stored” inside them, such as pieces of their tombstones or a hospital tag with the girl’s date and cause of death written on it.

Also discovered inside the apartment were photographs of the tombstones, plaques from their graves, doll-making manuals, and maps of local cemeteries. Investigators also realized that the clothes that each girl was wearing was the clothing that they had been buried in.

Moskvin informed investigators that he would stuff the bodies with rags and wrap nylon tights over their faces. He would attach buttons or toy eyes onto the girls so that they could “watch cartoons” with him.

But WHY??

Moskvin explained that he dug up the girls’ bodies simply because he was lonely. He had always dreamed of having children, but considering that he was single and Russian adoption agencies wouldn’t allow him to adopt because of his financial status, it seemed as though it would never happen.

He also mentioned that he was waiting for science to progress enough to be able to bring the dead back to life. He took note of each girl’s birthday that was displayed on their headstone and celebrated each and every one as if they were his children.

Moskvin’s parents claimed to know nothing about the dolls being real human bodies. They were not charged with any wrongdoing.

His mother, Elvira said,

“We saw these dolls, but we did not suspect there were dead bodies inside. We thought it was his hobby to make such big dolls and did not see anything wrong with it.”

The 29 dolls in Moskin’s apartments ranged in age from three to 25, one of which he had kept for almost nine years. He was charged with 44 counts of abusing graves and corpses.

When asked if he would like to apologize to the families of the girls, he replied,

“You abandoned your girls; I brought them home and warmed them up. So no, I would not apologize.”

Moskin was sentenced to serve his time in a psychiatric ward and diagnosed with schizophrenia. It was said that he could be released in 2018 to continue his psychiatric treatment in his home, but as of November 2020, a judge renewed his psychiatric detention for at least another six months.

The movie detailing the macabre grave robber, “Dollmaker: The Anatoly Moskvin Story” was released in January 2021.

***Story published previously on Medium.com by the author***