Police Stumble Upon UNTHINKABLE Horror Scene

Yellow crime scene tape with police lights in background.

A Russian historian turned 29 exhumed children’s bodies into homemade dolls in a case that exposes the horrifying consequences of unchecked mental illness and lax oversight that allowed a decade-long desecration of innocent victims.

Story Snapshot

Anatoly Moskvin exhumed 29 bodies of young girls from cemeteries and mummified them inside dolls in his apartment
The respected historian believed he could revive the dead through folk rituals and doll-making over a decade-long crime spree
Police discovered the remains in 2011 during an unrelated terrorism investigation at his shared family home
Moskvin was declared mentally unfit for trial and confined to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely
The case exposed failures in cemetery security and psychiatric system accountability in post-Soviet Russia

Decade of Desecration Uncovered in 2011

Anatoly Moskvin, a respected historian and linguist in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, operated undetected for over a decade as he systematically exhumed bodies from local cemeteries. In August 2011, anti-terror police searching his apartment for unrelated extremism suspicions stumbled upon 29 life-sized dolls dressed in women’s clothing, adorned with button eyes and makeup. Each doll contained the mummified remains of young girls aged three to twenty-nine, primarily children. Moskvin had applied folk preservation techniques learned through his academic research on ancient mummification methods.

Academic Expertise Twisted Into Grotesque Obsession

Born in 1966, Moskvin specialized in cemetery folklore and Slavic burial rituals, including the practice of “sleeping on graves.” His childhood trauma—being forced to kiss a deceased girl at a funeral—combined with his scholarly interests to create a dangerous fixation. During research trips to graveyards across Nizhny Novgorod, he began sleeping on graves of young girls before escalating to exhumation in the early 2000s. He shared his apartment with elderly parents who remained completely unaware of the twenty-nine corpses housed as dolls throughout their home.

Delusion of Revival Through Doll-Making

Moskvin claimed his actions stemmed from benevolent intentions rather than sexual motives, believing he could resurrect the deceased girls through his elaborate doll creations. He constructed each doll using paper mache, meticulously dressed them, and installed music boxes inside some to create an illusion of life. Police reports documented that he even conducted a mock wedding ceremony with the mummified remains of an eleven-year-old girl. Moskvin justified his grave robberies as a “greater good,” arguing he spared families additional trauma, though he later apologized to his parents following his arrest and confession.

System Failures Enabled Years of Crime

Post-Soviet Russia’s lax cemetery security allowed Moskvin to disturb graves repeatedly despite police noting increased reports of desecrations around 2009. The Nizhny Novgorod community’s vast, poorly monitored graveyards provided ideal conditions for his crimes to continue undetected. Following the 2011 discovery, authorities diagnosed Moskvin with paranoid schizophrenia and declared him mentally unfit for prison. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely, avoiding criminal trial entirely. This outcome highlighted significant flaws in Russia’s psychiatric system regarding accountability for non-violent but grotesquely harmful offenders who exploit legal loopholes through mental illness diagnoses.

The twenty-nine families affected faced the horrifying process of identifying and reinterring their loved ones’ remains. The case prompted cemetery management reforms and heightened security protocols, though the damage to community trust proved irreparable. Moskvin’s academic credentials and “normal” outward appearance had shielded him from suspicion, demonstrating how respected social standing can mask deeply disturbed behavior. Reports through 2022 indicate he remains institutionalized, with petitions for release claiming recovery consistently denied, though no recent updates confirm his current status as of 2026.