The Collector

Anatoly Yurevych Moskvin born 1 September 1966 is a Russian academic and linguist from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, who was arrested in 2011 after the mummified bodies of twenty-six girls between the ages of three and fifteen were discovered in his apartment. After exhuming the bodies from local graveyards, Moskvin mummified the bodies himself before dressing and posing them around his home. Moskvin’s parents, who shared the apartment with him, had seen the mummies but had mistaken them for large dolls.

After a psychiatric evaluation, it was determined that Moskvin suffered from a form of paranoid schizophrenia. In May 2012, Moskvin was sentenced to court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and has since been held in a psychiatric hospital.

Moskvin lived in Nizhny Novgorod, the fifth largest city in Russia. Moskvin said he began wandering through cemeteries with friends when still a schoolboy. In particular, they visited the Krasnaya Etna Cemetery located in the Leninsky district of Nizhny Novgorod. In an article written shortly before his arrest, Moskvin explained his interest in the dead, attributing it to a childhood incident during 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 also had a deep interest in cemeteries, burial rituals, death, and the occult.He also kept a personal library of over 60,000 books and documents, as well as a large collection of dolls. Fellow academics described him as both a genius and an eccentric.

As an adult, Moskvin led a secluded life. He never married or dated, instead preferring to live with his parents including his father, Yuri F. Moskvin. He abstained from drinking alcohol and smoking and is purportedly a virgin.

In 2016, it was reported that Moskvin was going to marry a 25 year old native of his hometown that attended his trial. Yeah he’s a nut case, keep that one locked up! Next Ed Gein over hear.

What are your thoughts?