The doll maker

In November 2011, Russian police arrested Anatoly Moskvin on charges of desecrating graves. At the time, they had no reason to suspect anything sinister about his unusual collection of dolls. The police had initially believed that Moskvin, a strange man with strange habits, was simply a collector of curiosities. However, they soon discovered that his "dolls" were far more disturbing than anyone could have imagined.

When the police searched his home, they uncovered the horrifying truth: wrapped inside the dolls were the bodies of recently deceased children—26 in total. The bodies were preserved using mummification techniques, and the dolls were placed around his apartment in various positions. The investigation also revealed chilling evidence: nameplates removed from the children's graves, instructions for making the dolls, maps marking cemeteries in the region, and a disturbing collection of photos and videos showing open graves and disinterred bodies.

But why did Moskvin do such a thing?

Anatoly Moskvin was born and raised in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, the country's fifth-largest city, located about 422 kilometers east of Moscow. His strange fascination with death and the dead began in childhood. He admitted that as a boy, he often wandered through cemeteries with his friends, which is where his unusual interest in dead bodies likely started. According to Moskvin, one of the defining moments came when he witnessed the funeral of a young girl. He claimed that the mourners forced him to kiss the girl's dead body. He later described the experience in detail, recalling how an adult pushed his face to the girl's "waxy forehead," and he was helpless but to obey.

Despite this unsettling event, Moskvin grew into a respected academic and lecturer, specializing in Celtic history and linguistics. Fluent in 13 languages, he wrote several books and academic papers. Colleagues described him as a genius, albeit eccentric. He never married and lived with his parents until his arrest. Moskvin considered himself a "necropolis expert," a self-proclaimed specialist in local cemeteries and the dead. He even went so far as to sleep in cemeteries, spending one night in an open coffin that was being prepared for a funeral.

In the early 2000s, the police began questioning Moskvin in connection with suspected acts of vandalism and theft. However, they found no solid evidence against him, and his reputation as a respected academic shielded him from more serious scrutiny. As time passed, Moskvin's obsession with the dead deepened.

Moskvin's fascination with Celtic folklore led him to develop a ritual of sleeping on the graves of deceased children, hoping to communicate with their spirits. He claimed that during these vigils, the children spoke to him, expressing a desire to return to life. This belief prompted him to begin exhuming recently buried children from local cemeteries. Using mummification techniques, Moskvin would preserve the bodies, drying them with salt and baking soda before hiding them near the graves he had stolen them from.

Once the bodies were preserved, Moskvin would take them home, where he dressed them in clothes, painted wax masks, and styled them with wigs. He claimed that his goal was to give the children "functional bodies" and slow the process of decomposition, believing that one day he might discover a way to bring them back to life. He insisted that he never took a body without the permission of the child’s spirit.

However, as time passed, the mummified bodies began to shrink, and Moskvin started wrapping them in cloth to restore their shape. This, in turn, gave the children a doll-like appearance, which helped conceal the macabre nature of the bodies