Russian psychopath who dug up girls’ bodies and turned them into dolls could walk free
A deranged man, who dug up the bodies of 26 young girls and turned them into ‘human dolls,’ could walk free from a psychiatric unit despite the fury of his victims’ relatives and the concerns of doctors.
Anatoly Moskvin, a 52-year-old historian from the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, was arrested and sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment after two dozen mummified bodies were discovered at his apartment in 2011.
Last year, psychiatrists claimed that they had cured the man and recommended that he continue receiving treatment as an outpatient. However, they recently reversed their decision and demanded that his treatment be extended indefinitely.
However, the body-snatcher could now walk free on a technicality as the order keeping him in the secure hospital expired in December. With a court poised to rule on the issue, relatives of the deceased children whose bodies he took have expressed outrage at the prospect of his release.
“He is incurable,” one of the victims’ parents told the media. “He will just stop taking pills, and at some stage he will return to his terrible actions as he had promised he’d do.”
Moskvin, a historian and a well-known cemetery expert, developed a fascination with the dead in childhood, before starting to rob graves and steal the bodies of girls aged between three and 12.
After drying the bodies, he would wrap their limbs in strips of cloth or would stuff them with padding, sometimes adding wax masks decorated with nail polish over their faces. He would then dress them in brightly colored children’s clothes and wigs. Some also had music boxes inside their rib cages.
He hosted tea parties for the “dolls,” sang children’s songs, and turned on cartoons when he worked at a computer.
Neither colleagues nor his elderly parents, who lived in the same apartment, noticed anything unusual about his behavior. Moskvin’s mother told police after he was arrested: “We saw these dolls but we did not suspect there were dead bodies inside. We thought it was his hobby.”
During the trial, Moskvin gave detectives conflicting explanations for his actions. He initially said that he was lonely and wanted to communicate with the girls, but later claimed he had tried to find ways to resurrect them. He also said he wanted to become a mummification expert.
- Source : RT
