Parents of Anatoly Moskvin believed he collected antique dolls, but they were actually young mummified girls

History was one of Anatoly Moskvin's passions. He was a journalist in Nizhny Novgorod, the fifth-largest city in Russia, spoke thirteen languages and traveled a lot. Moskvin also referred to himself as a "necropolyst" and claimed to be an expert on cemeteries.

Too unfortunate Moskvin pushed his knowledge to dangerous new heights. The corpses of 29 girls, aged three to 25, were discovered mummified in the historian's apartment in 2011, leading to his imprisonment.

A Strange Ritual

In his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Anatoly Moskvin was regarded as the world's foremost expert on cemeteries. He claims that an occurrence when the historian was 13 is what triggered his preoccupation with the macabre. This tale was published by Moskvin in Necrologies, a weekly journal devoted to graves and obituaries, to which he was a frequent writer.

Moskvin described how he was stopped by a group of guys in black suits on the way home from school. They pulled Anatoly along to the burial of 11-year-old Natasha Petrova and forced him to kiss the girl's body while they were there.

"I kissed her once, then twice, then three times", Moskvin wrote. The distraught mother of the girl then placed a wedding band on Anatoly's finger and another on her daughter.

In the piece, Moskvin said that his odd marriage to Natasha Petrova had been beneficial. Strange, for sure. He claimed that it finally resulted in a fascination with the dead and a belief in magic. It doesn't really matter if the narrative is genuine or not at this point because his troubling ideas would continue untreated for more than 30 years.

A Morbid Obsession Grows

The corpse-kissing occurrence remained a source of intense curiosity for Anatoly Moskvin. He started exploring graves as a young student.

His fascination with the macabre even influenced his academic pursuits, and Moskvin eventually received an advanced degree in Celtic studies, a group whose mythology frequently conflates the afterlife with the living. The historian was a multi-published academic who was fluent in about 13 different languages.

Moskvin was moving between cemeteries at the same time. Moskvin said to have visited 752 graves in Nizhny Novgorod between 2005 and 2007.

He studied the biographies of people interred there and wrote thorough notes on each one. The practical historian said that he often slept on hay bales and drank rainwater from puddles while walking up to 20 kilometers every day.

The "Great Walks Around Cemeteries" and "What the Dead Said" documentary series by Moskvin are still appearing in a weekly publication.

In fact,he said that one night before a funeral, he slept inside a coffin.

Graves being desecrated

Locals started finding graves that belonged to their loved ones desecrated, sometimes fully dug up, in 2009.

In the beginning, "Our main belief was that it was done by certain extremist organizations," Russian Interior Ministry spokesperson Gen. "We made the decision to expand our police forces and form teams made up of our most seasoned investigators who focus on crimes committed by extremists".

But the Interior Ministry's leads fizzled out after almost two years. No one could figure out why graves kept getting vandalized.

After a terrorist assault in 2011 at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, the inquiry took a rest. Soon after, Nizhny Novgorod police received complaints of Muslim graves being vandalized. Investigators were directed to a cemetery where someone had painted over the images of Muslim deceased people while causing no other damage.

Moskvin was ultimately apprehended here. After catching him at the Muslim cemetery, eight police officers proceeded to his flat to collect evidence.

The globe was shaken by what they discovered there, which startled them all.

Anatoly Moskvin's Creepy Dolls

The 45-year-old man resided in a little apartment with his parents. He was said to be a bit lonely. Authorities discovered life-size doll-like figurines all throughout the flat when they went inside.

The figurines have a vintage doll appearance. They dressed beautifully and variedly. Some had makeup applied over their faces that Moskvin had covered with cloth, while others wore knee-high boots. Additionally, he had cloth-wrapped their hands. However, they were actual real girls who had been mummified, not toys.

One of the bodies began to play music as soon as cops moved it. Many of the dolls' trunks featured music boxes that Moskvin had inserted.

Maps of nearby cemeteries, doll-making instructions, and photos and plaques that had been removed from gravestones were found scattered about the flat. Police even found that the clothing used to bury the mummified bodies was the same clothing that was worn by the dead.

He said he excavated girl's tombs because of loneliness. His greatest goal, he claimed, was to have children even though he was unmarried. Moskvin's inability to make a sufficient living prevented adoption by Russian agencies. According to the state of his pack-rat abode and his crazy preoccupation with the dead, it could have been best.

The parents of Moskvin said that they were unaware of the real story behind their son's "dolls."

The professor's mother Elvira, who was 76 at the time, recalled, "We saw these dolls but we did not realize there were dead people inside. We saw nothing improper with his making such large dolls since we felt it was his passion.

The police knew for sure that they had their grave robber when the shoes in Moskvin's flat matched footprints discovered close to desecrated graves.

Verdict and Sentence

In total, 29 life-size dolls were found in Moskvin's residence by the authorities. They were three to 25 years old. He kept one corpse for over nine years.

Moskvin admitted to 44 charges of mistreating graves and corpses in court. "You abandoned your girls, I brought them home and warmed them up," he told the parents of the victims.

After being found guilty, Moskvin was given a schizophrenia diagnosis and given a mental facility term. However, as of September 2018, he had the choice to keep receiving psychiatric care at home.

The relatives of the victims disagree. The mother of Moskvin's first victim, Natalia Chardymova, feels that Moskvin ought to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Chardymova added, "he was living with my mummified daughter in his bedroom for nine years, I had her for ten years...I still find it difficult to comprehend the scope of his disgusting 'job'."