Psychiatrists dramatically reversed their claim to have cured historian Anatoly Moskvin, 52, who stole and mummified corpses before turning them into “dolls”. After having recommended release from a secure psychiatric hospital with once-a-month outpatient treatment, they now want him to be held indefinitely.
Russian reports said, however, that no new court order has been granted and Moskovin is technically free to leave amid claims the grave robber has made plans to move from his home city Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow, some 260 miles away. A judge has demanded a new set of psychiatric tests, and these have shown he is not fit to be released.
Before his detention in 2011, the body snatcher dressed the dead girls in stockings, girls’ clothing and knee-length boots to make them look like dolls, even applying lipstick and makeup to their faces. He wedged music boxes inside their rib cages and marked the birthdays of each of his dead victims with “parties” in his bedroom. And he told bereaved parents, who had described him “evil”: You abandoned your girls in the cold – and I brought them home and warmed them up.”
Mum Natalia Chardymova, 46, strongly opposes Moskvin’s freedom. Her daughter Olga’s corpse was one of 29 he dug up and stole from local graveyards. Following her murder aged 10 near her block of flats in 2002, Moskvin kept her mummified body for nine years in his flat while her mum was unknowingly laying flowers at an empty grave.
Ms Chadymova said: “I still find it hard to grasp the scale of his sickening ‘work’ but for nine years he was living with my mummified daughter in his bedroom. “I had her for 10 years, he had her for nine.”Moskvin’s mum Elvira told officers after he was arrested: “We saw these dolls but we did not suspect there were dead bodies inside.
“We thought it his hobby to make such big dolls and did not see anything wrong with it.”