The Misery Machine - Anatoly Moskvin's "Children" Weren't Just Dolls... [True Crime]
Episode Date: March 1, 2021This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss black magic, cemeteries, and the chilling case of Anatoly Moskvin, a Russian scholar and linguist who rose to infamy due to a bizarre collection of life size dolls ...found within his home in 2011. What secrets do these dolls hold? A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Moskvin https://7news.com.au/news/world/russian-man-lived-with-girls-mummified-corpses-turned-them-into-dolls--c-1536329 https://www.the-sun.com/news/1728763/graverobber-stole-corpses-dressed-dolls-refuses-apologise-parents/ https://www.darkhistories.com/russian-dools-anatoly-moskvin/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-15653074 https://www.amazon.com/Dollmaker-Anatoly-Michael-Leo-Centi/dp/B08QF1YH52 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizhny_Novgorod https://thepostmortempost.wordpress.com/tag/olga-chardymova/
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Yes.
Hi, with the Misery Machine.
I'm Yergy.
And I'm Drewby.
And this week we're doing the Anatoly Moskvin case, which has been all over TikTok.
I think it's the only true crime case I'm seeing on TikTok recently.
That involves a very unique occurrence that I don't think I've heard in any case before.
That also happens to involve.
Cemetery, one of our favorite places.
Yes, exactly.
So thank you so much for all the YouTube comments suggesting the Joe Methany case.
I'm sorry we're not doing it this week.
It is coming.
coming. I've already started notes on it. We possibly might do it next week. I can't promise anything,
but... But it's coming very soon. And thank you very much for the suggestions. If you have a
suggestion for a case who want to do, please leave it in the comment section below. And if you're
listing on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We're almost at 4,000 subscribers. All the subscribes,
they go a long way to help us. Please get us to that 4,000 by next week. But without further ado,
Anatoly Moskvin.
Previously, we covered the case of Lisa Montgomery, a Midwestern woman who in
in 2004, killed 21-year-old expectant mother, Bobby Joe Stinnett, and cut her unborn child from
her womb. Lisa suffered from a number of mental health conditions and was ultimately sentenced to death,
which was carried out in January of 2021. The need for a child is so dire for some that they would
literally kill for one, or even make one by their own bizarre means. That's where today's story brings us.
Antolay Moskvin was born to parents Yuri Federovich and Elvira Alexandrovna.
I hope I said that correctly.
He was born in the Russian city of Nizny Novgorod, which is located along the Volga River.
Moskvin had a rough childhood, to say the least.
In third grade, he returned home one day covered in bruises after being sexually assaulted
by a much older male.
It is not currently known if the young Moskvin alerted his parents to the assault,
but there was no mention of it
and stands to reason
that the perpetrator
was never caught for this.
So it is never okay
to rape men.
I know we talk about this a lot
with women,
but it's not talked a lot about
in the male sense,
never okay.
And I know we're getting ahead
of ourselves for a little bit
because we haven't really established
what Moskfin has done yet,
but there are,
I've seen comments
stating that they don't believe
this ever happened
because of what Moskfan did
later in life.
And I just think that's just irresponsible.
Like, y'all need to do better.
I just don't see that why a male being assaulted in such a way,
if he goes on to do something heinous,
not discounting the heinous acts,
but therefore giving it a reason to substantiate that that assault never happened.
That's not you need to do better.
Agreed.
So moving along, his parents noted from an early age
that there was something not quite right about Anatoly,
despite being very intelligent.
He was one of the most intelligent children in his school,
and he excelled in his studies,
but he was socially awkward
and was often bullied and ostracized at school,
struggling to make friends.
Moskman spent every last cent he had on books
and became a recluse,
even teaching himself several different foreign languages.
I believe he knew 13 of them.
Yeah, to this day, I believe it's 13 different foreign languages.
And just kind of imagine that,
the level of dedication and intelligence of a person
and to learn that many foreign languages as a young child.
I'm not even that dedicated to my duolingo.
Here I am.
I don't even think I have 13 different foreign languages going on my duolingo.
I think I have like six.
Yeah, here I am feeling guilty about my duolingo progress and my...
Duo harassing me because I haven't done my French today.
Yeah, but here is...
And it's wholly here.
Like...
You know, in the 60s and 70s, you know, way before these resources were there
and he teaches himself, himself, these languages without speaking them.
to other people. That's impressive.
So in his free time, he also enjoyed visiting cemeteries.
His favorite being the Kressnaya Etna Cemetery, which is located in the Leninsky District of
Nizny Novgorod. So I did this as a child too. I still do this. I'm a taffophile.
Taffophile for those that don't know is a lover of graveyards, which I think has become a lot more
accepted nowadays. I mean, in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland.
and people go there just to run and walk around.
It's not seen as this weird thing that you're doing this among a ton of graves.
But with that said, this is not exactly what Moskfin ended up doing later in life.
So when Moskvind was 12 years old, he found himself in a very strange situation when he happened upon about two dozen adults in black robes,
burning candles over a coffin and singing in a language unbeknownst to his ears.
all whilst collecting waste paper for a school's recycling program.
Moskvin was caught observing the strange ceremony and was grabbed by one of the robe figures
who insisted that he kissed the face of a dead child who lay in the coffin.
The deceased was a young girl by the name of Natasha Petrova,
whom at age 11 was electrocuted by a loose cable as she stepped out of her bathtub to fetch a towel,
which unfortunately killed her instantly.
This day was her funeral, but to Moskfin, this bizarre spectacle was no ordinary ceremony.
Despite refusing to kiss the dead girl, her parents insisted.
He cried and pleaded not to have to kiss her, but after being overcome with hopelessness due to the entrapment he found himself upon,
he was forced to approach the coffin against his will.
Moskvin stated, a woman, apparently the mother of the deceased, gave me a large Hungarian apple and kissed my forehead.
She led me to the coffin and promised me a great deal of candy, oranges, and money.
She told me to kiss the deceased.
I burst into tears and begged her to let go, but the sectarians insisted.
Everyone again saying prayers in a language I did not understand.
And one of the adults drew my head onto the waxy forehead of the girl in a lace cap.
I had no choice but to kiss her where I was ordered.
In tears and repulsed, Moskvin kissed the dead girl three times upon her pallid forehead.
According to Moskvin, the child's mother produced two brass rings, and he was instructed to place one onto the finger of Natasha, and to place the other one onto his own.
For his troubles, young Anatoli was provided a fruit basket and some coins, and he was free to leave.
He was ordered not to tell a soul about what transpired for at least 40 days.
Upon his escape, Moskvin discarded the fruit basket into the snow and spent the coins on a book about animals.
Traumatized by all this, because this is a young boy.
he believed that he had been forcibly married through this ritual and now had a dead wife.
And this was hard to process.
And again, this is something that people deny the existence of.
They say that this didn't happen.
And this is quite ridiculous.
I mean, this person did exist.
There weren't any witnesses.
And yes, this is all from Mosk's own accounts.
But I'm not too quick to dismiss that something like this happened.
So Moskin began having nightmares where the dead girl would visit him on a nightly basis
and insisted that he returned to where he kissed her and learned black magic from her.
He refused her, but he said that her ghost only became more enraged by his refusal.
He went so far as to visit her grave, which made the dream stop temporarily, but eventually they came back.
Having now reached a point where he was too terrified to fall asleep, he told his parents about Natasha,
and they decided to seek psychiatric advice.
However, the doctor concluded that Moskvin was merely transitioning into puberty and prescribed a valerian root,
an herbal sedative more commonly taken to aid sleep and relaxation, often consumed in the form of a tea.
After being haunted by Natasha for a year, finally she suggested instead that Moskvin could pass the burden onto another person.
He was instructed to perform a ceremony that involved using a tooth he obtained from a classmate.
It wasn't ever specified from our research how he was.
obtain that tooth. With this, he was able to transfer Natasha into the dreams of the
classmate that the tooth belonged to. After this, Natasha never visited him again, though her presence
in his life would have a profound effect on him, and he quickly developed a deep interest in
death in the occult. He claimed to be attracted to cemeteries like a magnet.
Reaching adulthood, Moskman studied in the philogical faculty of Moscow State University.
From his independent studies alone, he now spoke a staggering 13 different
languages. So...
Yeah.
Very, very smart and hardworking person, I guess, when it comes to his studies.
So while at university, Moskman joined the theistic branch of Luciferianism that embraced many
concepts of the left-hand path.
Or as most would know it as black magic.
It sounds like a cult to me, but okay.
Sounds pretty cultish.
Sounds like something I might have been into.
Anyway, he found that people were eager to teach him after hearing about his marriage and
subsequent haunting from Natasha.
After passing a test to become skilled in the dark arts, he took part in performing rituals involving dead animals and took a vow of celibacy and abstinence from drinking and smoking.
He found that he regretted turning the ghost of Natasha away, feeling like he had lost a spiritual mentor.
Mosfin wrote his thesis for the Department of German and Celtic Philology, and upon graduation began teaching Celtic studies at the Nisney Novgorod University.
During this time, he published two Russian-to-English dictionaries, a dictionary of foreign words and a dictionary of school phraseology aimed at school-age children.
So you had a better idea of what phraseology is exactly.
So it's the study of words that when separate mean one thing, but when joined together means something totally different.
So an example of this might be a Chinese auction, which does not mean an auction in China, but rather a combination of a raffle in a silent auction.
There were many mixed opinions amongst his colleagues regarding Moskvin.
Some found him to be kind, punctual, and a genius.
Others found him somewhat eccentric, whilst others found him difficult to work with.
Due to trouble fitting at the university, he left this position and instead focused on writing and tutoring.
On top of this, he was doing freelance journalism work, the bulk of his writings being obituaries.
According to his mother, he enjoyed working with children, teaching predominantly foreign languages,
though he also tutored various other subjects from history to literature.
In 2003, Moskman met a young woman named Yulia Granova,
who was a very spiritual person with an interest in Indian religions.
The pair entered into a non-sexual relationship at Yulia's request.
The arrangement satisfied Moskvin's need for companionship,
whilst allowing him to maintain his vows of celibacy.
Yeah, if it wasn't mentioned before, he took an oath of celibacy when studying black magic,
Though in general he has said many times that sex and anything sexual repulsed him in general,
and that seemed to work out for this relationship with Yulia.
However, Yulia longed for a child, as had Moskvin for many years.
Given the non-sexual nature of their arrangement,
Moskvin attempted to adopt a young girl from an orphanage in 2003.
His application was rejected on the grounds that Moskvin didn't earn enough money,
as his income consisted mostly of freelance journalism.
Moskvin also lived at home with his parents who didn't have the same enthusiasm for his plans to adopt,
which led to tensions within the family, leading Moskman to threaten,
I told my mother that I would engage in black magic and get in touch with the spirits of the dead.
Eventually, his relationship with the Yulia ended, and the need for a child seems to fade with it.
Instead, Moskman turned his attention to a new adventure on the road.
On July 18, 2005, Moskvin hit the road across the region,
documenting cemeteries and unearthing local history along the way.
The adventure was backed by Oleg Ryabov, a famous Nisni Novgorod-based historian.
The two planned to publish a book entitled Nisney Novgorod Necropolis.
Moskvin traveled for three years.
He averaged over 18 miles per day, most of it on foot, due to the rural nature of many of the areas he visited.
Usually he would get to these cemeteries by evening and would spend what daylight he had left,
remaining to scrape the moss from old headstones with a chisel. He would then write the owner's
names, dates of life and death, and any other relevant information in a notebook. Oftentimes,
he had to sleep in the graveyard itself each night. Once while working in a Muslim cemetery,
he chose to sleep in a coffin that had been kept in preparation for a future burial. He was awoken the
next morning by two grave diggers who fortunately were already drunk and Moskvin was able to smooth the
situation over without any further trouble.
It wasn't always like this, though.
There were plenty of nice people he met that offered him lodgings and offered him, like,
food and water and things like that.
Sometimes he would sleep in a nearby haystack, but many, many times he would have to
sleep in the graveyard himself.
Due to the fact that police rarely patrolled the cemeteries, Moskman generally never encountered
any issues.
On the rare occasions that he was stopped and searched, he produced his academic research
materials in a passport and was allowed to continue on his way. However, this wasn't always the
case with the locals. In 2006, whilst documenting a cemetery in Bertolinsky, he was approached by a group of
a dozen or more inebriated men who were out celebrating a wedding, who in their drunken stupor accused him
of robbery. He pleaded with the men to be taken to the police rather than face their wrath, and after
bringing him to the station, the police drove him to the edge of town, warning him to never return.
On another occasion in September of the same year, he was visiting a
cemetery in Pavlovo when he was mistaken for a priest by two drunken men and a drunken woman who were
mourning by the grave of their recently deceased daughter.
Everyone's liking getting drunk in the cemetery, it seems.
So one of my old drummers, I believe first generation, Russian, American, maybe second
generation, but he'd go back to Russia.
And apparently one thing that he learned there, that is a tradition they do there, at least
his family did, I guess.
This is my first time hearing it.
They would go to the graveyards and you would go to each of your family's headstones and you would take a shot.
I mean, I'm not hating on this. It's just interesting.
Just from what it seems to me is that, you know, maybe not the case with Mosk-Find,
but it seems like people attend graveyards in those areas more than maybe people do here for mourning purposes.
And you're not allowed to drink in the graveyard here, although I've done it before.
Not in a malicious way.
I went and visited one of my friends who had passed away and had a beer with him.
And then poured one out for him.
I didn't know that was illegal here.
Yeah, you can't just be drinking and doing stuff like that in the cemetery.
Well, I know you can't like openly drink most places, but I didn't know there was anything specific for cemeteries.
I don't know if it's specific.
I mean, if it's specific, I'm sure there's signage for it.
Like the one kind of near the apartment where it has all these stupid rules.
Yeah.
Okay.
So when these drunk people wrongly assumed that Moskven was a priest, they asked him to sing with them.
And he declined, explained he was not a priest in turn to leave.
So instead, they beat him and robbed him.
However, the next day he revisited the grave site, noted the name on the headstone, and reported the affair of the police, who, you know, did their job, followed up on the lead and arrested the men.
Clever boy.
Aside from his scrapes with drunken locals, Moskman became fatigued from his travel.
I would too, on foot, my goodness. In 2006, he noted that the weather was unusually rainy throughout the summer,
and in 2007 it was unusually hot, leading him to drink from puddles.
It wasn't all for not, though, so Mosfin noted that many locals, as Drewby has said, were exceedingly generous,
and often brought him food, drove him between different rural villages free of charge, offered lodgings,
were just generally great, generous people.
And this guy was very dedicated to go from graveyard to graveyard.
I mean, that's pretty cool.
And I'm surprised he traveled on foot, I guess, at that time, traveling by car or anything else then.
So the reason he did that is a lot of the roads were total garbage.
Okay.
So that was why he had to do it a lot on foot.
Sort of like in some of those YouTube videos we're watching on, like, Eastern Europe and Georgia,
well, at least I'm watching it.
I think the country of Georgia is so cool and I want to go there.
However, it seems like the roads there, in some cases, aren't the best.
From what I understand, people will just pick you up hitchhiking for first.
That's pretty cool.
Have a culture of hitchhiking.
I mean, it's totally cool.
Everyone's really welcoming.
So it seems like it's the same kind of situation that Moskvin is experiencing.
That makes sense.
So, you know, it wasn't always easy for Moskvin and he doubted himself, but he often had to remind himself of the cause he was working for and how important that was to him.
Many records had been lost during the Soviet era.
And Moskvin didn't trust newspapers and the handwriting and the handwriting and the,
a generally poor condition of old documents
made the information difficult to extract,
which is why he insisted to go out himself
onto the roads and obtain the information for himself.
Between 2005 and 2007,
Moskman visited 752 cemeteries in 35 districts.
So I think 365 days in a year, two years,
that's a lot of days spent visiting a cemetery.
Some of them three a day.
Yeah, that's...
It's at least two a day.
That's some hard work.
And I don't know about you, like, going to cemetery sometimes when it's hot out and the sun's out.
Like, it's not...
There's only one that I like to do that at.
And that is evergreen down in Portland because there's enough shade in the older district of the cemetery, I guess you can call it.
It kind of creates a natural canopy.
It has a natural canopy.
And it's just there's a better breeze there.
But I wouldn't generally be going too many cemeteries when it's hot out because the ones that don't have that.
It's brutal.
However, that one that we found in four.
Farmington where I found that little area I called my little druid glade.
Yeah, that had its own canopy.
The first time I went there, because it's where a lot of my ancestors were buried, I was
going to move to the West Coast and I hadn't seen my great grandmother's grave.
And I wanted to go do that before leaving.
Trying to find her grave in there when the sun was out, yeah, it's pretty brutal.
So these things that he did, yeah, obviously he has an obsession with the occult, with death,
with the graveyards.
but there was a silver lining here, a good piece of what he was doing.
He was able to uncover the past of over 1,000 people that had thought to be lost to time.
That's a big deal.
That is huge.
Think about it.
So some of the older cemeteries, like, I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but this is important stuff.
Aside from the better maintained either Catholic cemeteries or the ones that are bigger like Evergreen or down in Providence, Swan Point.
How many of these older cemeteries have we gone to where the graves have just been eaten back up by the earth?
Yeah, or you just see the gravestones basically shattered, falling apart.
You can't even read them anymore.
I remember I looked at the grave of this one person, and I can't remember what it was specifically that made me think this.
I'm like, there is nobody alive right now that remembers this person or even knows this person's name, probably.
Right.
I was able to know this person's name by looking at their gravestone, but how many people don't have a gravestone, how many people's deaths weren't recorded?
This type of record keeping, I mean, maybe you don't think it's important.
I think there's people with more nihilistic views might think that this doesn't really matter, but it can matter, especially if you feel strongly about this, being able to take people lost to time and actually able to put them on record.
I think that's, that's noble work.
So aside from the valuable research, this journey produced, it also aided Moskvin and some of his more sinister exploits, which we will touch on soon.
So yes, we've said a couple forgiving things, some positive things about Moskman.
This is mostly where they end.
So over the course of the next four years, after his research into local cemeteries,
Moskman wrote for various papers and newspapers and published books covering several different controversial topics.
He was accused of being a fascist and drew criticisms from both the general public,
as well as the Russian Department of Internal Affairs Anti-Terror Unit.
After the Domo de Dovo International Airport Terror bombings that took place in 2011,
Moskvin visited a Muslim cemetery and vandalized graves by painting them
and affixing newspaper articles to them to the gravestones containing names of the deceased.
This followed a flurry of anti-Muslim activity in the area and the desecration of Muslim graves around the region and prompted authorities
who had been following him for some time now to take action.
So on November 2nd, 2011, they raided Moskvin's apartment, they being the police.
Rather than extremist materials, however, they found something far more disturbing.
I should say that according to Moskvin, they didn't actually raid his apartment, that he agreed to let them in.
It's debated.
But either way, they gained access to his department.
It's like you didn't break up with me. I broke up with you.
Yeah, exactly, right.
So inside of Moskman's apartment, which she had shared with,
his two elderly parents, which was also pretty hoarded.
Yeah.
Police found 29 human-sized dolls.
Dressed in girls' clothing, their faces painted haphazardly with makeup and or nail polish.
Some of them had music boxes embedded into their chests, allowing them to speak when touched.
Yeah.
So what had happened is that a officer bumped into one of these and heard music come out.
And he's like, what is he hiding in these thinking it's going to be dressed?
rugs or something incriminating.
No, no.
Well, maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Definitely incriminating.
Because if this wasn't strange enough that he had those in there.
I shouldn't be laughing.
This is naughty, but go on.
If this wasn't strange enough, these dolls held a more sinister secret.
So when they noticed something was off about these dolls, one of them opened one of the dolls up.
And they found that squirreled away inside of each one,
were the mummified remains of a human body.
All of these human bodies were usually young girls,
and that explained what Moskvin was doing at the cemetery on his off time.
So as the police searched the apartment through and through,
they found a total of 29 dolls.
They carried each one of them out of the house
to be placed in the back of a truck in front of a gathering crowd
that just kept getting larger and larger,
consisting mostly of journalists, locals who all watch and disbelief.
And you could imagine the rumor real started going crazy out there.
I mean, a story was too salacious for the papers to resist.
So by the next day, the story was viral.
And there was headlines dubbing him the puppeteer or the doll maker.
So following his arrest, both of his parents were hospitalized.
I believe his father had a heart attack.
His mom just had shock.
Yeah, she had a mental breakdown.
Father was reported to have a heart attack.
Yeah.
Despite living with the dolls for so long,
they insisted they had no idea what was inside.
In the past, Mosven had an interest in Russian dolls.
So as parents just assumed it was an extension of that interest,
they stated they just looked like large paper mache dolls.
Yeah, a lot of people speculate,
well, how did the parents not know?
They must have been covering for him.
And while that is possible,
I'm not sure how many parents would have covered that up for that long.
And other people talk about how it smells bad in there.
Well, there's another factor that I read,
and I only saw this from one, maybe two,
sources, but that the parents didn't live there full time. Apparently from April to October,
they were like snowbirds. They went somewhere else. They went somewhere else. So that is quite a bit of
time. If they're only there during the winter, but something that gives credence to the fact that
his parents must have known something was up is that he put one of those life-sized dolls in his
parents' bedroom and had it facing his parents' bed. So it's kind of crazy to think that they didn't
suspect something, but these are two elderly parents. I just, I don't know. I hesitate to throw a lot of
blame on them, but I do recognize that it's possible that they were covering for him. And as far as the
smell goes, people said there was a lot of like nasty smelling pipes in a lot of the basements in some of
the older buildings around town anyway. Plus, if you have a house that was hoarded up as bad as this one
was, it's going to smell too. Yeah. And do we know the extent of mummification that was done? I mean,
maybe that reduced the smell somewhat to not smell like rot of the grave.
We talk about it a little bit later about what he was doing.
It definitely wasn't full-on mummification.
And a lot of these corpses that he was taking from the ground were already pretty decomposed.
Yeah.
And we'll have some pictures as well for a YouTube to see.
They're not that graphic.
But it would be enough where possibly the dolls might have smelled.
But I don't know that it would have really permeated all over the apartment.
Right.
Because some of them had been long dead.
Per a friend of the Moswin family, quote,
the dolls didn't turn up suddenly.
he had built up the collection over 10 years.
All of them were kept in his room.
There was only one in the parents' room which he named Masha.
His parents had no idea.
When friends visited, they often remarked on them as works of art, calling them puppets.
They just never thought they might contain mummified humans.
The only concern his mother had was that at times he would talk to them.
She would say, are you a child?
Why do you play with them?
End quote.
On one New Year's Eve, Moskman introduced Masha to his aunt.
after sitting her at the family table.
This is Masha, he said.
Do not be afraid of her.
All of the dolls were found to contain the mummified remains of young girls
who had suffered tragic and often violent deaths,
several whose names and details were never released.
The reported ages of the deceased ranged from three and 25 years old.
Moskman stuffed their mummified remains with cloths and rags,
dressed them up in clothes he found in the garbage,
and made their faces up with makeup and nail polish.
He knew all of their names, their history,
and their circumstances of all their deaths.
He dug up the first body on May 9, 2003,
following the disagreement with his parents over adoption,
instead deciding on resurrecting the deceased
by means of his alleged black magic.
So one thing I forgot to mention,
the first time he threatened his mother with a black magic
when she says, you can't have an adoption,
she just had been fed up with him in his crazy behavior
and basically said, do what you want.
Yeah.
Like, blew him off completely.
And I think he said, I will.
Like, I'll get one of.
my own or something like that.
Something like that.
According to Moskven, the quote,
the coffin was covered with crimson synthetic
matter. With a chisel, I hollowed
out a hole in the lid of the coffin at
the head of the bed and through
it. I pulled out what was left of the
body. It was in very poor
condition. The girl was dressed in a
white blouse, black skirt, old tights
and shoes. The child had long hair.
Now I decided for the first time to try
to mummify it. I moved the body to
a remote corner of the cemetery and
buried it in the abandoned grave of some
grandmother. To properly mummify the body, you need soda and salt in various proportions. I bought
these substances in the store. I found old stockings in the garbage dump and made bags for them.
Pouring soda and salt into them and tied them into the remains. I changed these bags once a week.
If people paid attention to me, I said I was there to feed the birds. So this is definitely not
how you mummify a body. So basically he was just making these sachets of salts in baking soda and
putting them around the body, hoping, I guess, to desiccate it? I guess.
That's not how you do it.
I continue, quote, on July 25, 2003, I wrapped the body in different clothes and carried it back to my home in my backpack.
Within two days, I restored the body.
I stuffed the body with threads and made a wax mask on her face.
And then covered it with nail polish, which I found in the trash.
After that, I put on her clothes, which I also found in the trash, end quote.
Good job on being really DIY and resourceful.
So some of the dolls had buttons for eyes.
had masks made from soft toys.
There were even some that appeared
to have Halloween masks affixed to their faces.
Now, while awaiting trial,
Moskman cooperated with the police investigation,
detailing the various cemeteries
that the bodies had been removed from,
as well as supplying the names of the girls he had exhumed.
On May the 12th, he gave an interview
to Russian journalists.
Quote, the thing is, I'm practicing black magic.
I wanted to revive them.
I felt sorry for these children
who could still live and live.
I kept them so that when science learns to fight cancer, it can later revitalize them.
Genetics are developing now very rapidly.
I felt sorry for all these children.
I am an expert in Celtic studies in studying Celtic culture.
I noticed that the druids had a tradition of communicating with the spirits of the deceased by sleeping on graves.
When I studied the culture of the peoples of Siberia, specifically the culture of the ancient Yakuts,
there too I found a similar practice.
I also began to sleep on the graves of children who liked me.
The spirits of the deceased children came to me.
Accordingly, I checked whether it was demons that came or whether it was spirits.
I collected all the information I could.
Then, if possible, I checked this information.
I was convinced that the spirits of the dead children really came to me.
At first I slept on the graves, then I adjusted because it was not convenient to sleep there.
Instead, I carried the bodies to where it would be convenient for me to sleep on them.
I began to dry them and I brought them home.
This was done very cleverly and slowly one at a time so nobody knew about it.
I studied the theory, the technology of modification from all available books.
I studied the ancient Egyptian scripts.
I went to Moscow especially to study the whole thing.
So a lot of this sounds pretty delusional.
Yeah.
So when prompted as to what he did with the bodies in his home,
Mossfin explains.
I talked with them.
We had a hierarchy, our own language.
We had respectively our songs.
We had our own holidays.
We had our own inner peace.
My parents saw almost nothing of this,
and I did not let anyone else into this world.
As a rule, my parents left the house for summer,
leaving in April and returning in October.
At this time, we were engaged in this world.
I guess I really explored all that I could in this area of black magic.
To be honest, I had my favorite children.
I planned to keep my beloved children home,
in any case. Those that I liked less, I planned to take them to the garage and they live there in the
garage. I did not disfigure them, did not dismember them. I applied all my work gently, affectionately,
and politely. I even tried not to swear in front of these children. The fact is that I suffered
very much from loneliness, especially during the summer period when my parents were not there and when they
took the cat. I sat them down. They had holes drilled under their eyes. I assume that he did that
himself. I showed cartoons to them. I played children's songs. I myself sang songs to them. Ordinary
children's songs I would sing when I have a live daughter. After that, we ate together or rather,
I ate. I just offered them food as it is in the Celtic and Yakut tradition. I have been
studying child psychology for about 10 years, preparing for the upbringing of a child. I have experience
of communicating with living children from my tutoring. What I would do with living children, I would do with
these. I treated them as if they were alive. They were just temporarily dead, end quote.
Moskman spoke happily to the journalist about how he held birthday parties for the children and celebrated
holidays with them. When asked if he knew what he had done was illegal, Moskvin stated, yes, I realized
that it was illegal. But at the time when the heroes of our science, Dubinin, Czech Veracoff,
when they were experimenting with fruit flies somewhere in their closet, they also knew that it was
illegal under the laws of Stalin's time. It was just then that genetics was banned. Now cloning is
prohibited. From the very beginning, I knew that I was committing a crime, but I was so sorry for the
children that, unfortunately, cloning is prohibited in our country. It will be allowed sooner or later.
I just wanted some material for future cloning, so that these children could live for a second time.
I was very sorry for these children. Naturally, every time I dug a grave, I leveled it so that
nothing could be seen so as not to disturb those who are relatives. The fact is that for 10 years
this was kept secret. So I knew that none of the relatives of the deceased would ever know about this.
I did everything neatly. I was not arrested in a cemetery. The MVD, which is the Russian anti-terrorist
unit that arrested him, came to me on quite another matter and accidentally found the dolls.
Nobody knew what I made these dolls from. Even my parents didn't know.
Sadly, when asked why he did it, he replied that he wanted a daughter of his own that he could share all of his knowledge with.
The children that I liked, I dried, resurrected, and brought home.
Anatoly Moskvin's trial began in May of 2012.
During the trial, families of the girls he had mummified demanded life imprisonment.
Some even demanded the death penalty.
Though he faced five years in prison, he was deemed mentally incompetent and exempt from any criminal liability.
He was officially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and on September 27, 2013, he was remanded to a psychiatric hospital where his case would be reviewed every six months with no specified end date.
Neither prosecution nor defense appealed this decision.
He is still there to this day.
He was also ordered to pay compensation of what would equate to $75,000 U.S. for damages to the families of each child.
the one of the father's declined payment.
He was quoted as saying,
I would not take anything from Moskvin.
After all, he treated my daughter better than I had during her life.
He dressed her, put her to bed,
read her fairy tales, and showed her cartoons, end quote.
So one of the girls whose body became one of Moskvin's dolls
was 10-year-old murder victim, Olga Chardomova.
She is probably one of the more famous dolls.
He kind of paintered her up to have kind of a clown mouth.
You see her a lot in a lot of the pictures when they showed the dolls.
So she was killed the first time her parents allowed her to go for a walk by herself to her grandmother's house after protesting.
I'm 10 already. I can go myself. I remember doing this same thing when I was 10.
This is what's about to happen is a parent's worst nightmare that finally lets their child go off on their own.
So Olga took her favorite green bag and her blue umbrella and set off for her grandmother's house, which was one block away from her own after her parents had left for work.
Olga never made it out of her building.
A drug attic waiting in the lobby
forced Olga back to the top floor
where he robbed her of her earrings.
Then the 10-year-old was hit in the head
with a metal bar and killed for trying to escape
the thief. Her remains went
undiscovered for five months.
Olga's body was eventually found
wedged behind pipes in the attic
of the building. Her parents had
no idea. No idea. Here they
are. They were searching for her for a very long
time. She was considered... In their own home.
Yeah, and she was considered a missing person.
and then all this time she was up there.
And I believe she was discovered by a maintenance man.
It's very sad.
Olga Chardemova was buried in a cemetery in Nisney Novgorod in October 2, 2002.
Her parents, Natalia and Igor had built a metal fence around their daughter's grave
and began painting it on May 7, 2003.
The following day when they returned to complete their painting,
they noticed a wreath on Olga's grave had been moved and since someone had been there.
Shortly afterwards, they began finding notes on their daughter's grave,
addressing her as little lady,
congratulating her on special offense as though she were alive.
According to Olga's parents,
the anonymous person left notes on every holiday,
including the first day of school in September
and the last day of school in May,
which would read similar to,
happy last month of your six year at school.
Each disturbing letter was signed DA,
meaning Dorby Angel or Kind Angel.
Each was hand delivered by Anatoly Moskven,
who would regularly visit
the graves of the girls whose remains sat in his bedroom.
Each year, Olga's parents would find their daughter's grave had been decorated
and would often discover stuffed animals or other soft toys on Olga's grave
that had been stolen from other graves in that cemetery.
Natalia Chardimova, Olga's mother told reporters,
We shiver in fear each time we went to the grave not knowing what to expect.
Imagine what it's like for us, her grieving parents,
reading these notes about our murdered daughter.
It was not like some sort of sick joke but spears through our heart.
hearts. In June of 2003, Natalia and Igor were able to purchase a proper headstone for their daughter's
grave site. Antoly Moskvin penn threatening messages on it, including, quote, if you don't erect a great
monument, which she deserves, we will dig her body out, end quote. Moskvin later destroyed the
headstone with an axe. These are things like when you read about Moskvin, you don't know that he did this.
This was like really spiteful and cruel. The Nisni Novgorab police were appalled, and when in
formed by the grieving parents of what they had been subjected to by the anonymous psychopath.
Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do at the time to track down the person but told them,
if you find him, do what you want to this barbarian, and we will not object.
Natalia later stated, if I'd met him at Olga's grave, I'd have killed him with my own hands.
So notes and toys continued to be left on Olga's grave, and often a metal cross on the site was found bent.
After complaints of similar occurrences at the graves from many other young girls in Nisny Novgorod,
the police decided to open Olga's grave on October 5, 2012, nearly 10 years to the day that she had been buried.
Olga's parents and the police found a hole in her coffin through which Olga's remains had been removed.
Investigators later discovered through Anatoly's notes that Olga Charterimov's body had been in fact removed in May of 2003
when her parents originally suspected an unwanted visitor had been to their child's grave site.
You can't imagine it, Natalia explained, that somebody would touch the grave of your child,
the most holy place in this world for you.
We had been visiting the grave of our child for nine years and we had no idea it was empty.
Instead, she was in this beast's apartment.
During his hearing, Moskvin accusingly told the parents of the young girls he had mummified and kept in his apartment,
quote, you abandoned your girls in the cold and I brought them home and warmed them up, end quote.
In June of 2015, a hearing was held to accept.
extend Moskvin's stay in the psychiatric hospital for a further six months. However, at this time,
Moskman was being represented by Violetta Volkova, the same human rights lawyer who shot to international
fame when she defended the feminist punk band Pussy Riot. It had been reported that
Moskvin had been assaulted on a regular basis by both guards and other patients, so he was placed in
isolation, making it possible for his family to visit. Moskvin's mother alleged that he was fed a cocktail of up to 15
medications daily, including many sedatives, leaving him unable to write and in a semi-comatose state.
While COVID insisted that he be transferred to a clinic in Moscow for re-examination, citing distrust
for the psychiatric doctors in Moskman's current institution. Moskman had spent the last two years
suppressing for release and to continue his treatment at home as an outpatient. However, a spokesman
stated after three years of monitoring him in a psychiatric clinic, he is absolutely clear that
Moskvin is not mentally fit for trial. He will therefore be kept for psychiatric treatment at the clinic.
In September of 2018, Moskman's doctors stated that he was no longer dangerous in petition for the Leninsky District Court of Nizny Novgorod to release him for outpatient care from home. However, in February of 2019, a subsequent psychiatric evaluation found that it was too early to release Moskvin and the hospital withdrew their petition. Apparently they found that he had not changed from day one.
Yeah, he was completely unrepentant. So my understanding from all of this is that he knew everything that he was doing was illegal, but he felt that it was for the greater good.
He also felt from what I understand, I heard from a couple different sources that when you bury someone in the grounds, that's when the parents' rights go away. It's now like up for grabs the body.
That was his belief. That's not an actual law. No, no, no, no, no. That's his belief for sure.
Okay, okay, yeah. He cited some experimental.
research case that furthered the medical community saying that once he contributed to the
advancements of cloning and resurrecting the dead, that people will look at him and what he did
as noble and worthwhile. So, I mean, I don't think he's ever going to be released. He hasn't ever
tried to play ball and act like he's reformed. He still is just as adamant about what
he did. I think I read somewhere that he even said that, you know, he may continue doing this
once he gets out of the hospital. And a lot of people believe that he very well may reoffend.
I believe he said during his court trial to some of the parents, or I believe, I heard it in
some research that I did that not to bother bearing them too deep because he's just going to dig them
all back up. Yeah. It's just some people. It's sad. It's sad for so many different reasons.
It is. One, we have like a really sad mental health situation. I'm
definitely not laughing or shaming or anything. It is very sad. It is.
That this is even happening to want a child that bad. It's terrible. It is terrible. It is just a very sad thing.
Yeah. And, you know, a lot of this is a product of the cycle of abuse. So unless you're one of these people that just want to be like he, he was always paranoid schizophrenic and he hallucinated the funeral. He elucinated the sexual assault he endured. I mean, I'd reason to believe that his mental health issues probably.
stemmed from these abuses when he was younger. Now, could he be predisposed? Yeah, sure, he absolutely
could. I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, and we don't have access to what his mental
health was like before he experienced these abuses, and his parents aren't exactly the best
historians on Moskven. But I mean, they're much older now, too. I think it stands to reason that
this is, unfortunately, somebody who faced severe trauma and what.
whatever issues they had got a lot worse. Now that's not to forgive what he did. It's acknowledging
that he had bad things happened to him. And then in turn, Winton did also quite horrific things.
Nobody's arguing that at all. Some people argue that they think that if he got out, he would
become a murderer eventually. I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true either. I think he was
truly satisfied in what he was doing. I don't think he feels the need to, you know, go create his
own, I think he's actually trying to give the deceased new life, not make somebody deceased.
So even despite the knowledge of his poor treatment, his parents don't want him out.
They fear that he would repeat his crimes.
You know, it's reported that if he should be released, he planned to marry a 25-year-old native of his hometown who attended his trial and allegedly graduated from his alma mater.
Yes.
Yeah, he has a girlfriend.
He's been trying to petition to go live with her.
Not sure how that happened.
How old is Mosk Finn?
He's in his 50s.
He's in his 50s.
Yeah, I know he's an older man.
He looks definitely quite weathered.
I think the trial in the subsequent abuses he's facing within the institution has done that.
He looks like a very old man now.
Yeah.
And I know people don't like me saying this, but, you know, when he was arrested, he wasn't a bad-looking gentleman.
He really wasn't.
This has aged him severely.
Yeah, prison ages you in general.
Prison completely ages you, so that totally makes sense.
And also, like, just because you say somebody, like, we have people say, oh, you can't say a perpetrator is good looking.
We're not doing it to, like, glorify them.
You're not being like, ooh, so sexy.
I'm just stating how badly prison or institutions can age a person in a matter of 15, 20 years.
Yeah, absolutely.
My goodness.
I mean, so.
In this case, it's more like 10 years.
I think a lot of people agree that, obviously, this is somebody who's done horrible things.
I think the consensus is that he should probably stay in a institution for the rest of his life.
Now, it's strange.
It's strange because had he not done anything to implicate himself as insane, he'd be out by now.
He'd be out in five years and would be able to reoffend.
That's the interesting part.
If he did not act insane and still was unrepentance, like, I don't care.
glad I did what I did. He would get five years and be out. So there's something that's unfair there,
whether you think that he should be locked up or not, just know that if he did not go the insanity
plea, he would be a free man today. I really think that he shouldn't be in an institution anymore.
This is my own personal belief, but I think he should be in something that's more like halfway
where he can contribute to society. This is a brilliant person still. He did horrible things. He did
horrible things, but he didn't kill anybody. It's true. That is true.
He did not kill anybody.
He did some, he did some serious harassing.
He tormented and harassed parents.
He defaced graves.
He desecrated bodies.
Desecrated bodies.
When it comes down to it, he's really done his time at this point.
So why not have him in some sort of like halfway house or transitional living type situation where he's able to write?
Have his medications actually monitored so there are like livable doses of things where he can be a productive member and, you know, go on to still
maybe teach people. Yeah, I mean, he could, even if he's never allowed to work with people again,
he still has proven that he has things to contribute to society from a scholarly perspective.
People who commit other crimes, as long as they're not deemed insane, which is hard to be
deemed insane in this country. But let's talk about Vince Lee in Canada. He's out already.
Yeah, he is. But I mean, a lot of people think that that was very, very lighthanded. And in America,
obviously, that would never happen to Vince Lee. I mean, it didn't happen to,
Lisa Montgomery either. They put her to sleep. Right. This is a case-by-case basis where we can go into the
merits of letting someone out early, not letting someone out early. Just think that if this was somebody else,
like, let's look at this strictly from a law perspective. If you did a crime that would land you
five years in jail and you were deemed sound of mind, would there ever be this consideration to
keep you in longer because you might go out and do that same thing that lands you five years in
prison. I'm not saying this in the defense of Moskven because I understand this is a very
different kind of case because this isn't just smashing some headstones. This is
digging up bodies and defacing people's children. Like taking them into your house and making
them your own. There's something just so vile about that and I feel for these families, absolutely. Would he
have gotten more than five years if they were able to adjust the law? I mean, I'm sure they would have,
but I think given what he did, they realize they don't have any laws that kind of cater to the types
of crimes he committed and therefore he just gets desecration of a corpse. And when most people think
desecration of a corpse, they aren't thinking this.
It's usually some like teenagers stealing a skull out of a mausoleum or something.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I don't think they were prepared to ever run into somebody like this.
So, yeah.
Yeah, that's all I've got.
Yeah, it's all I felt to do.
I feel really sad for him. I really do.
I do.
Yeah, he did horrible things to the parents.
But I do.
There's a part of me that just feels for him.
I feel as if if he had killed somebody, I'd feel a lot differently here.
I still think.
It's unforgivable what he did to these children, their families.
I cannot even think to imagine.
Like, one can kind of imagine what it's like to have a loved one die.
I think it's really hard to imagine what it's like to have your dead loved ones, graved, defaced, have their body pulled out and have them turned into a play thing for somebody.
Agreed.
So I try not to look at this too lightly, but I do feel bad for him given, you know, what's having.
you know, what's happened to him in life
and had some of these things
not had happened to him, you know,
maybe we wouldn't even be talking about him right now.
He'd continue his scholarly work,
clearly as genius level IQ, I'd imagine,
based on what he's done.
And that would be that.
He would have ended his life as a scholar.
Instead, now this is where he is.
And it's unfortunate.
It's sad for the families,
and it's sad all around.
It really is.
I don't want to go too much more into it.
because like I don't want to feel like I'm like really, really sympathizing and not having empathy for the families.
But like I have my own personal reasons why I feel for this guy.
No, I know what it's like to like want a child and not be able to have one.
Yeah, that is true.
He really did want a child.
For those who don't know, like that's something I has struggled with in my adult life.
I don't know if I can now.
I don't even know if I want to now if that's like something that's even part of my lifestyle anymore.
But medically I wasn't able to for most of my adult life.
And I feel for that.
I really, really feel for that.
So I feel for him in that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And here's somebody who probably could have fathered his own child, but he was so repulsed
by anything sexual that he just wasn't going to do it.
And I don't think he should have just not even the money portion of that.
I think the money thing was the least of the concerns.
There's a lot of poor people all over the world that would be really great parents.
Yeah.
You don't need a lot to raise a child well with love, as long as their needs
are provided for. It's much better than being in some of the orphanages. It's true.
It really seriously is. And the fact that they just turn these children out at 18. Yeah, turn them out with very little life skills. So you ended with a lot of trafficking, especially if they're girls. Yeah. Or a lot of just, you know, criminals because what are they going to do? Even here in America, which people consider to be more sophisticated in the adoption system compared to other places in the world. I don't think so. I still think it's very archaic.
It's awful here, too. But it's basically, you know.
human trafficking. But it took to my point, if you are not adopted and you, you exit the foster care
system, there is a, and I don't have the, the data on me. It's been a while since I looked at this,
but there is a high percentage that you end up entering the criminal justice system. And, you know,
there's numerous reasons for this, not having a support system, lack of identity, you know,
being bounced around and now, you know, here you are on your own. Some people adapt to the
very well and that's not to excuse, you know, certain crimes people commit, but I'm just saying
these things shouldn't have to happen. While, yes, some people adopt children and do heinous
things to them, most often the orphanage is a terrible place all around. That's just me. I think
without going into the tangent, what they should have looked at more was his mental state and the
fact that he was basically living in a hoard. There should have been some sort of like, you know,
wellness check there before just denying based on income. Is that all you got? That's all you got.
all I've got. Okay. So yeah, that was one of our more longer episodes. We haven't done one of those in a while. I'm fine with it. Yeah, do you, do you appreciate that? It's a lot more editing for me on the back end, but we get to spend more time with you. So I hope that was cool. If you appreciated this and you're listening on YouTube, if you hit like and subscribe, it'll help us continue to keep doing these types of episodes for you, which we love doing. And it'll ensure that you won't ever miss one. And if you're listening on another platform, if you could subscribe, if there's a review system that allows you to,
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