Anatoly Moskvin

Anatoly Yuryevich Moskvin (Анатолий Юрьевич Москвин; born 1 September 1966) is a Russian former linguist, philologist, and historian who was arrested in 2011 after the mummified bodies of twenty-six girls and women between the ages of 3 and 29 were discovered in his apartment in Nizhny Novgorod.

After exhuming the bodies from local cemeteries, Moskvin mummified the bodies himself before dressing and posing them around his home.

Moskvin's parents, who shared the apartment with him, knew of the mummies but mistook them for large dolls.

A psychiatric evaluation determined that Moskvin had a form of paranoid schizophrenia.

In 2005, Oleg Riabov, a fellow academic and publisher, commissioned Moskvin to summarize and list the dead in more than 700 cemeteries in forty regions of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

Moskvin claimed that over the next two years, he had gone on foot to inspect 752 cemeteries across the region, walking up to 30 km (18.6 miles) a day.

During these travels, he drank from puddles, spent nights in haystacks and at abandoned farms, or slept in the cemeteries themselves, even going so far as to spend a night in a coffin being prepared for a funeral.

On his extensive travels, Moskvin was sometimes questioned by police on the suspicion of vandalism and theft, but was never arrested or detained after stating his academic credentials and purpose.

The work itself remains unpublished but has been described as "unique" and "priceless" by Alexei Yesin, the editor of Necrologies, a weekly paper to which Moskvin was a regular contributor.

After his arrest, Yesin stated that he was confident there had been a mistake and Moskvin would be exonerated.

Later, Yesin told the Associated Press that Moskvin was a loner who had "certain quirks" but who gave no indication that he was up to anything unusual.

Between 2006 and 2010, Moskvin worked as a freelance correspondent for the newspaper Nizhny Novgorod Worker, publishing articles twice a month.

His father also sometimes wrote for the same paper.

During 2008, Moskvin wrote an extensive series of articles on the history of Nizhny Novgorod cemeteries that appeared in the paper.

Moskvin was arrested on November 2, 2011, by police investigating a spate of grave desecrations in cemeteries in and around Nizhny Novgorod.

Investigators from the Centre for Combating Extremism discovered the twenty-six bodies, initially reported as twenty-nine, in Moskvin's flat and garage.

Video released by police shows the bodies seated on shelves and sofas in small rooms full of books, papers and general clutter.

Although only twenty-six bodies were discovered in his home, Moskvin was suspected of desecrating as many as 150 graves after police found numerous grave accoutrements such as metal nameplates removed from headstones.

Police also discovered instructions for making the "dolls", maps of cemeteries in the region, and a collection of photographs and videos depicting open graves and disinterred bodies, though none of this evidence could be conclusively connected to any of the bodies found in the apartment.

According to the investigation, the bodies primarily came from cemeteries in the Nizhny Novgorod region, though some may have come from as far away as Moscow.

Moskvin actively cooperated with investigators and claimed he made the dolls over the course of ten years.

In May 2012, he was sentenced to court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and has since been held in a psychiatric hospital.

Vladimir Stravinskas, head of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Nizhny Novgorod region, called the case exceptional and unparalleled in modern forensics.

Anatoly Moskvin was born in the city of Gorky in Soviet Russia, which is now known as Nizhny Novgorod.

As a schoolboy, Moskvin began wandering through cemeteries with friends, particularly the Krasnaya Etna Cemetery in the city's Leninsky district.

In an article written shortly before his arrest, he attributed his interest in the dead to a childhood incident in which he witnessed a funeral procession for an eleven-year-old girl.

Moskvin alleged that the participants forced him to kiss the dead girl's face, writing that "an adult pushed my face down to the waxy forehead of the girl in an embroidered cap, and there was nothing I could do but kiss her as ordered."

After graduating from the philological faculty of Moscow State University, Moskvin became well known in academic circles.

His main areas of academic interests were Celtic history and folklore, as well as languages and linguistics.

Moskvin had a deep interest in cemeteries, burial rituals, death, and the occult.

He kept a personal library of over 60,000 books and documents, as well as a large doll collection.

Fellow academics described Moskvin as both a genius and an eccentric.

As an adult, Moskvin led a secluded life.

He never married or dated, preferring to live with his parents.

He abstained from drinking alcohol and smoking and is purportedly a virgin.

In 2016, it was reported that Moskvin planned to marry a 25-year-old native of his hometown who attended his trial.

A former lecturer in Celtic studies at Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University, Moskvin previously worked at the Institute of Foreign Languages.

A philologist, linguist and polyglot who speaks thirteen languages, he has written several books, papers and translations, all well known in academic circles.

Moskvin also occasionally worked as a journalist and regularly contributed to local newspapers and publications.

Describing himself as a "necropolist", Moskvin was considered an expert on local cemeteries in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.