EP46: Dollhouse of Death
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All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia Podcast. I am your co-host, Hank Sinatra, here with my pro host. Investigators later. And my lips are 99% healed. Yay! I actually am so excited to tell you this because I think it's the funniest thing I think I've ever thought of. Okay. So we have a lot of female listeners. Yes. Right? Shout out to the women in the world. Okay? You know why? Obvious reasons. I mean, I could give you many reasons why, but...

Obvious reasons, but also one specific reason. Women have answers. Yes. If you have a problem, women know what to do. Yeah. Start listening, fellas. I know. So when I announced that I was suffering from this

Malady. Yes. Chapped lips, which I don't think were chapped lips. I'm going to say publicly, by the way, I'm a little embarrassed, but we got an email from somebody who was like, Hey, I was using these cheap vape things and I had a reaction. I think that's what it was. I think that's what it was too. A hundred percent agree. Three months ago, I started hitting the stupid vape thing. And when I hit it, I liked it because it hurt.

I told you to calm down with it. It was getting out of control. I know. I know. That's how I do things, though. I know it is. So we got that email. I literally threw the one I had in the sink to ruin it, took the other two out of the package, flooded them, threw them away. It's been like five days. Can you tell our listeners why you flooded them and didn't just chuck them in the trash and move on? I would dig them out of the trash. Like a...

Raccoon? No, you texted and said like a nicotine-fueled raccoon. Oh, nicotine-fueled raccoon. Yeah. That'll be a Patreon name, I hope. I was dying when you texted that. Yeah, if I throw away pizza, I don't throw it away in the box. I mash it into the garbage because I 100% will get it out of the garbage.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a human garbage disposal with my kids. Like I clean their plates. It's so bad. Yeah. They don't count though, those calories. No, that's what I always say. That's literally what I always say. I'll have like a salad, grilled chicken, whatever for dinner. And then I'll eat the rest of their mac and cheese, but it doesn't count. No, no. Especially since you ate salad first. Exactly.

Oh my God. What? We have a huge announcement. Huge. Biggest ever, probably. Oh my God. I get so nervous every time you do this. You already know about it, so it's not going to be a surprise to you. Okay. But I am framing it in a little bit of an annoying way. Yeah, just come out with it. We've signed with Odyssey. Oh, yes. Yeah. Woohoo. The big podcast platform that's going to allow us to reach infinitely more little psychos to entertain with our shenanigans over here.

And we're excited to partner with them. What it means for you is like not much, to be honest with you. You mean the listener? The

The listener, yeah. We're going to be having ads. We've obviously talked about this multiple times. Like, should we do it? Should we not do it? We kind of have to. Like, what are we doing? I have full confidence that very few listeners are going to care. As a matter of fact, I think most of them are going to be excited about that. Well, it's because of our listeners that we've reached this point in such a short amount of time that we're able to say we have, you know, advertising. People want to use our platform to get their word out.

And as you guys know, I've been trying to get Slater to quit her job since we started this thing. So like, you know, we kind of made it a little bit. Congratulations. Us. Exactly. She knows the story back and forth. So like we know that sometimes ads will fucking jump in at really weird places.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to address that for a second. Yeah. So pretty much we can determine where the ads are going to go in our episodes. And I promise you that I'm going to try to find parts of the case where like we're not just about ready to drop a bomb and then all of a sudden ad pops up. We're going to be very careful with placement and keep

in mind your experience as the listener and conscious of it not like 100% we're because we're in this with you we know what it's like to be interrupted we don't want it to be like oh my I'm a cooked her husband Bill's head for Thanksgiving dinner hold on here at hello fresh we uh send you guys ingredients with heads in it fucking we're not gonna do that obviously that's the worst part of advertising obviously it has its place but we are not gonna be doing that

Also, we're going to be trying to pick advertisers that we love. We have a lot of leeway with who we choose to advertise. So,

If we love it, we hope you guys will love it. And it'll be nothing but authentic, but it will be a little bit of an interruption, but we're also going to try and make them entertaining. Right. And we wanted to give you guys the courtesy of the heads up because it's really because of you that we've reached this point and we are so grateful and appreciative and we're going to keep you guys in mind when we're figuring out where to drop these bad boys in the episodes. And what to drop. And what to drop. What bad boys to drop. Exactly. Okay. That was just a big announcement.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget.

Get your quote today at progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. But anyway, so I announced I had these chapped lips and women came to the rescue. I mean, they had recommendations galore from Aquaphor, which I was past that point already. But then people were talking about Dan's Corda Bomb and Bag Bomb and fucking...

30 different recommendations. Finally, I read a message or a comment that said, lanolin nipple cream. Many comments. Many, many, many, many. But the one I read, I was like, all right, I'll try that. I ordered it. I got it. I put it on my lips. I almost cried. I was like, this fucking feels so good. They're 99% better. And then Jessica told me that lips are the same skin as nipples. Oh my God. Yeah.

There's some kind of lipstick trick with your nipple color or something. I don't know. Women know. I am an outsider. This woman doesn't know. You never heard that before? No, but I am going to whip them out at the Ulta counter. Oh, yeah? You're going to give Sephora? I'm going to try some samples on my chest. Ma'am, please. This is a professional establishment. So, yeah, it worked. It felt great.

I was around a bunch of guys over the weekend. Who had no answers. I go, yes, guys, my fucking lips. I know they're glowing and they're red. I know they're chapped. One of these guys, I swear to God, this was the extent of their recommendations. He goes, oh, bro, that sucks. Did you try chapstick? Perfect. And I was such an asshole about it. I was like, yeah, dude, I fucking tried chapstick like 30 tries ago.

I popped open vitamin E capsules and rubbed them on my lips. Yes, I've tried ChapStick. I'm currently using lanolin nipple cream. Okay? It comes from a sheep. Can you imagine how painful it is for...

Breastfeeding women? No, I mean, I've known that since Jessica. Like, I'd never thought about it. And then I was like, there's this little human being sucking your nipple off of your chest. Hours and hours and hours and hours a day. Every day. I couldn't. No, there's no way. Men could never. No, I'm so glad to hear you recognize that. I've known it for a long time. Just finally saying it publicly. Very publicly. We all thank you for that. Listen, we're going to get into the episode. But first, I have to tell you, if you love us,

but you're just like, you're not getting enough of what you need from us. We have so much more content now at this point over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash psychopedia pod. We do unhinged episodes. I'm in the driver's seat. Slater is dying. I'm thriving. She is not. And it is fun. We go back and revisit the case. Barely. All right. Without further chapped lips, I would like to hear what this week's case is about.

Dolls, those inanimate figures crafted to resemble human beings, hold a peculiar and enduring position in the realm of the uncanny, evoking an unsettling mixture of fascination and dread for many people, myself included. Creepy. Very creepy. Why is that? Why do these seemingly harmless playthings possess the power to thoroughly freak us out

Even landing lead roles in horror films like Chucky, Annabelle, and multiple episodes of my favorite show ever, The Twilight Zone, spanning seasons because the concept of creepy-ass dolls remains perpetually captivating. It does. Well, first of all, it's essential to acknowledge that the human psyche is wired to detect faces and human-like features in our surroundings and to impose a meaningful interpretation of an indistinct stimulus.

This evolutionary adaptation, which is known as pareidolia, which, you know, I always love a name. Is that a para? It's not a paraphilia. Oh, pareidolia. Yeah. Oh, wow. It allows us to recognize and interact with fellow humans effectively. However, when a doll with its artificial eyes,

lifeless expressions, and unmoving limbs approximates a human being but falls short of the genuine article, it disturbs the delicate balance of our perception. Oh, it's called Uncanny Valley. Oh, no, I know. We've talked about Uncanny Valley before. I don't know if it was on a regular episode or Patreon. Yeah, it's like a thing. Yeah. Especially with this AI coming out where they're trying to make these things look real and they're thinking and talking and their mouths are moving just weird enough to be like,

What is that? And it makes you feel things. Oh, yeah. It makes you feel very uncomfortable. Very, very off kilter. Too close, but far enough. Right. Moreover, dolls seem to occupy a space of in-between, existing in a sort of twilight zone between life and death.

Their lifelike appearance can give them an uncanny semblance of sentience, leading us to wonder whether they might spring to life when we're not looking. This blurring of the line between the animate and inanimate challenges our understanding of reality and leaves us vulnerable to feelings of unease. But as an adult, your intellect can triumph and you can look at a doll without worrying about it being anything other than plastic or porcelain or whatever synthetic material was used in its crafting. Unless...

Oh, no, no, no. Yes. Don't even bother saying it. I will die. Unless the doll is not made of synthetic material. No, we can't do this case. Do you need to leave? I don't know if I can handle this. This is really making me uncomfortable. This episode, this is my type of an episode. Okay. It's got elements of spooky, creepy, obviously crime, different types of

driving forces behind the crime, behind the perpetrator's decisions. It's a wild, wild case. Okay, I bet it is. So while the doll's exterior in this case may give the impression of a typical plaything with its meticulously painted features, delicate hair, and complete little outfit, it harbors a horrifying truth, which is that in reality, the doll is in fact human.

This horrifying case delves into the nightmarish world of a 55-year-old Russian man who, despite his background as a military intelligence translator, journalist, and college professor, harbored an outlandishly disturbing penchant for digging up and quote-unquote immortalizing dead children.

Today, we are talking about Anatoly Moskvin, aka the Dollmaker. You ready?

No. Let's get into it regardless. Okay. Anatoly Yurovich Moskvin was born on September 1st, 1966 in the city of Gorky in Soviet Russia, which is now known as Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fifth largest city. Gorky Park. That was the name of a very famous song by, I think, Scorpion. Really? Beautiful song. You would know that. Yeah. Yeah.

His parents, Yuri Fedorovich and Elvira Alexander-Nova, provided Anatoly with a stable and ordinary childhood filled with love and support. He possessed exceptional intelligence, though his time in school was marked by social challenges leading to difficulties in forging friendships and making him a target for bullying and social exclusion.

As his intellect took center stage, Anatoly continuously found comfort in the companionship of books, nurturing his unending thirst for knowledge. Does this remind you of anyone? Me? Oh, I really hope not. No, Issei Sagawa. Oh, I just, okay. The Kobe Cannibal was the name of our episode, I believe. Yeah, yeah. One of our first.

but also he was socially ostracized as a child, very intelligent, and really just took comfort in reading. Me? I was like, you're going to want to take that out. I apologize to you and our listeners. I was looking something up, and the name of the song was Wind of Change. In the wind of change. That one? Da-da-da-da.

I don't recognize that. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park. Shit. We got to dig into that later. We sure will. Yeah. As a child, Anatoly self-taught himself multiple languages. Self-taught himself? Yeah. Wow. What?

What? You didn't edit that for redundancies? God damn it. Reading's hard. Reading out loud is hard and you read a lot of fucking words. So you have big passes with me, but I will never not laugh at something. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough.

So he taught himself multiple languages while his peers just squandered their time socializing and forming relationships. Sounds like me too. I use Duolingo a lot. Okay, freak. Oh, fuck. Told you I didn't want to do this case.

Man, we're off to a rough start. We are. Anatoly truly, truly did not care about being the sole character in the story of his life. He wanted for nothing and was entirely content in his own solitary skin. But then an extremely traumatic, horrific event occurred when Anatoly was in third grade, an event that is thought to have proliferated

profoundly affected the trajectory of his life. Because at just eight years old, Anatoly was violently raped by a much older man while coming home from school. Fucking horrible. His body bore the scars of this devastating assault marked by bruises, scratches, and cuts. Yet, despite enduring an overwhelming amount of psychological, emotional, and physical pain, Anatoly kept this incident private from his parents and from others. He internalized everything

every ounce of suffering, pain, confusion, shame, anger, and embarrassment, lacking both the vocabulary and the courage at such a young age to convey what had transpired. Yeah, of course. And as we've emphasized many times before on this podcast, the aftermath of trauma can be a gradual and complex process, one that can dramatically reshape the behavior and demeanor of a survivor.

Understandably, Anatoly's behavior as a young boy underwent a profound transformation following this assault and cast a long shadow over the rest of his life. It's amazing how any of us make it, really.

Every person has the worst thing that's ever happened in their life, which is for some unfathomable. And for others, others might think, oh, that's not really a big deal. But in that person's life, that's the worst thing that ever happened. Right. So like everyone has that one worst thing or those that multiple worst things that happened over and over and over again. So I just I've learned not to count people's trauma for them or their experiences for them. I don't know how they've been affected by it. I know what I've been through and how it affected me.

but I try to turn it into something positive. Right. But this is why, not to sound cheesy, honestly, but I believe in this fully. This is why compassion is so important. Oh, yeah.

So when Anatoly's parents attempted to inquire as to why he was suddenly behaving so differently and had become so irritable, Anatoly responded with aggression and a resolute avoidance of further discussion. And unfortunately, rather than delving deeper into the matter or seeking professional guidance, his parents ultimately decided to just let him be.

Tragically, this sexual assault marked the initial traumatic event in Anatoly's life and seemed to have set a grim precedent of psychologically distressing events. And the next event occurred on March 4th, 1979, when Anatoly was just 12 years old and on a school field trip to the local village. During the trip,

During this time in Soviet Russia, the government initiated a cleanup campaign aimed at tidying up the streets, and a competition was held among the local schools to see which one could collect and recycle the most amount of garbage, likely with the incentive of some kind of prize or maybe like additional funding for the school that won. And while wandering the streets during this field trip, Anatoly became separated from his school group and found himself in

inexplicably mingling with a peculiar group of men. What transpired next, Anatoly has since described as a turning point in his life. Those are his words, turning point. Dividing his existence into life before this incident and life after. Pop quiz. What happened? A. This group of men, all donning black suits, forced him to kiss a corpse inside a coffin they were escorting.

B, this group of men forced him to join an organization for young people spreading communist teaching. C, this group of men abducted and tortured him for two days to send a message. Forced him to kiss a corpse? Yeah. Well. Well. That's an event that would demarcate before and after for sure. Any of them would, but that's like. I like demarcate. Or bifurcate.

You're just getting fancy now. Yeah, very smart. Wearing black suits, these men were part of a nearby funeral procession for an 11-year-old girl who passed away. Why the fuck would they do that? Named Natasha Petrova. Tragically, Natasha met her untimely demise while stepping out of the bathtub and reaching for a towel...

unintentionally coming into contact with a loose electrical cable that resulted in a fatal electrocution. Oh my God. According to Anatoly, a group of men who were part of Natasha's funeral procession that day approached him and insisted that he kiss the deceased girl's face while they prayed in an unfamiliar language. Anatoly terrified

terrified, initially resisted, but indicated that these men proceeded to forcefully press his face into the decedent's waxy forehead, which was adorned with an embroidered cap, leaving him with no other option than to comply and kiss her as directed. In fact, he was forced to kiss the corpse a total of three separate times.

Then Natasha, who's the deceased girl, her grieving mother removed two brass rings from her pocket and gave one to Anatoly while placing the other one on her dead daughter's finger.

She then looked at Anatoly and declared that he and Natasha were now married. What the fuck? And as a reward or a gift for the bizarre nuptials between her deceased daughter and newly minted son-in-law, the mother gave Anatoly a large red Hungarian apple, candied oranges, and some money.

She also instructed Anatoly to keep the ceremony private for at least 40 days, hinting perhaps that the union was part of some ritual or larger belief system that had rules. Obviously, it had to have been, yeah. But in Anatoly's young 12-year-old mind, he now genuinely had a dead wife.

I mean, I absolutely 100% can imagine thinking the same thing. Totally. Yeah. My life is over. Fuck. And he was rewarded handsomely for the privilege of marrying this dead girl. With an apple? And money and candy. How much money? This is Soviet Russia in 1979. Yeah. So...

That very night, so the night that he married Natasha, Anatoly had the first of many vivid dreams featuring Natasha. In these dreams, her ghost would communicate with Anatoly, urging him to revisit the precise location where they had exchanged vows while instructing, more like demanding, him to explore the realm of black magic. She even pledged to serve as his guide in this mystical pursuit. Wow.

Wow, what a girl. I mean, you know, you do things for your husband. Yeah. The ghostly presence of the girl persistently tormented Anatoly until he eventually, after several sleepless nights, yielded to her summons and revisited the village where their supposed union had transpired.

This bought him a few nights of restful sleep, as Natasha's spirit no longer haunted him after his visit to the village. But this peace of mind only lasted a short while, because Natasha's presence soon returned, tenaciously demanding that Anatoly learn black magic and perform rituals in the land of the living on her behalf.

desperate, overwhelmed, and exhausted once again because now he's not sleeping again because Natasha's back. Yeah, poor kid. Anatoly attempted to turn... I'm forgetting what he's going to do. Like, I don't want to get too hung up. Well, no, but I like that you did that. Listen, they're never forgiven and they're never given a pass, perpetrators who go on to do what Anatoly did. But when they are children and they are victims of anything, assault, abuse, definitely some sort of obviously mental health condition brewing here. We have...

We empathize. We empathize with an innocent child who at this stage in the case is that. Yeah. An innocent child. True. So he went to his parents for guidance as to what to do given the circumstances because he's not sleeping. Oh, he told them what happened? Yes. Oh, good. And Yuri and Elvira, his parents, responded by promptly arranging an appointment with a psychologist who, as treatment, just prescribed sleeping medication to the 12-year-old delusional boy and sent him on his way.

The psychologist reassured Anatoly's parents that these distressing dreams were likely a temporary phase that would naturally diminish as he matured. Did he tell them about kissing the corpse? No, he just told them about his dreams. Oh, man, that's a pretty big piece to leave out. Yeah, well, because remember, Natasha's mother made him promise that he wouldn't tell anyone for 40 days. That's right. So consequently, Anatoly did not undergo any psychological counseling or treatment,

Laying the very, very dark and unstable groundwork for three decades of unacknowledged and untreated disturbing thoughts, visions, and deteriorating mental health. Yeah, living hell. Yes. Predictably, visions of Natasha continued to haunt Anatoly, and her demeanor seemed to grow increasingly agitated.

She was aware of Anatoly's attempts to thwart her presence in her dreams. And so she used this as leverage by proposing that she would stop haunting him if, and only if, he performed a very specific black magic ritual. Hop quiz. Hop quiz. What specifically did Natasha instruct Anatoly to do?

A. Anatoly was to find another dead girl to marry in her place. B. Anatoly was to sacrifice a warm-blooded animal at midnight. C. Anatoly was to obtain the tooth of a living young boy. Oh, my God. These are all bad. Yeah. Um...

Find another young girl to marry? No. Get a tooth from a young boy? Yes. That's terrible. Did he find a kid with at least a wiggly tooth? Well, he was indeed able to find and obtain the tooth of a living boy. I could not find one single source to say how he did this. To your point, maybe he had somebody at school, lost a tooth, maybe he knocked one out.

I don't know. But in doing this, Natasha agreed to pass the burden of her haunts along to that child in place of Anatoly. And Anatoly was fine with this because he was determined to eradicate Natasha's haunts. So that night he placed the tooth of this other boy beneath his pillow and lo and behold, the nightmares stopped and Natasha was gone. Wow. But at 12, 13 years old,

You're willing to do whatever you got to do. Like, you're not thinking about other people. If you really think that there is a ghost haunting you, the only way to eradicate that haunting ghost is to do whatever. You're doing it. Anybody else? My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. So while Natasha was gone, she still managed to leave an indelible mark upon Anatoly.

Because while Natasha may have left his dreams and in turn exited from his life entirely, what continued to remain for the rest of time for Anatoly was a deeply ingrained fascination with the dead, an irresistible magnetism to the mysteries of the afterlife, and an obsessive allure towards cemeteries. As a child, he started taking solitary walks at night in graveyards, often finding himself drawn to the very ghost he banished from his visions, Natasha. Her

grave? Yes. Oh, man. By his teenage years, Anatoly began visiting cemeteries on a daily basis, finding comfort and solace among the lifeless occupants. Anatoly still managing to somehow excel in life in spite of all the time he spent devoted to the morbid. He enrolled at Moscow State University where he studied philology, which is a discipline focused on the historical study of language. Because remember how I mentioned he self-taught

multiple languages. I like graveyards too. I love graveyards, Tank. Love. Well, I didn't say I love. Oh, you didn't, did you? Just kidding. But I, when I go visit my friend Mike who passed away. Yeah. I just, I don't know. There is some kind of peace there. Everyone's story's over. It's been told. Yeah, you're right. I don't know if that's

where I generate my peace. For me, it's not a peace, although it is peaceful, I will say. I'm more fascinated to try to like figure out based on headstones and years, date of birth, date of death. If there's any type of like statement written on the tombstone, like what happened? Who was this person? And you love tombstone pizza too. I definitely have eaten one or two in my day, for sure. It might have something to do with it. There's a headstone where my grandparents are buried and the woman's name was

Was Rose Rose? Wow. Like she married somebody with the last name Rose? I don't know. I just, these things fascinate me. I met a couple at the gym the other day. It was Dino and Dina. That's pretty cute. I was like, that's weird as fuck. It's all right. But I remember their names. I never remember anybody's name. Yeah, I remember everybody's name. It's a weird, like heightened thing I have. I wish. I can see it.

I can smell everything and I remember everybody's name. Every time we go to my wife's cousin's house the week before Christmas, I'm on Facebook like flashcarding trying to figure out who's who and what's, you know. Didn't you say once you wish there was a Shazam but for names? Of course. But this is like my wife's family. I've known them for like 12 years. Yeah, not great, buddy. But then they got husbands and then they had kids and dogs. Like I can't be expected to remember all these things. All you need to say is it's so great to see you again. Yeah. That's it. That's what I do. Yeah.

I panic.

So during Anatoly's academic journey, he delved into Celtic history, folklore, and various aspects of languages and linguistics. As a result, he achieved fluency in 13 different languages and earned... Fluency? Yes! Oh my God. Very, very smart. If nothing else, Anatoly Moskvin is very bright. And he earned recognition in scholarly circles while establishing himself as a highly regarded and multi-published academic scholar.

Fellow academics described Anatoly as both a genius and an eccentric. He was different from his peers, to be sure. Anatoly abstained from drinking, smoking, and having sex, and opted instead to focus all of his attention on black magic, the very thing that Natasha had steered him towards years earlier. In a dream. In a dream. Yeah. In dreams that he worked relentlessly to eradicate. But like I said, she planted the seed.

I mean, it really wasn't her, obviously. It was also, I mean, him kissing a 12, how old was she, 11, you said? Yes. A 11-year-old girl who was not alive. There's this thing called repetition compulsion that Carl Jung, who's a psychologist, talks about where like people just have this desire to recreate something

from their life, most of the time it's bad because it's like it registers so deeply in your brain and your soul that like you can't even get rid of this memory if you tried. Is that why history tends to repeat itself? I have a really interesting thought on that. I'd like to hear it. According to me, it might be like seventh grade shit. That's okay. But they say that, you know, you have to teach people history so they don't repeat it.

But teaching people history doesn't do anything. You have to teach people how to live in the present moment and deal with adversity, and then history will stop repeating itself. Until that point, humans are going to be humans and we're going to be fighting over the same shit decade in, century in, century out. There's no changes. There's no changes in human nature. So are you saying that by studying history, we're reinforcing what happened? We're not giving the message that it should be handled differently? We are missing the point of...

education. Meaning like, yes, it's good to, I guess, know what happened so it doesn't repeat itself, but it does anyway because humans are humans. So if you teach people how to live in the present moment with what they have and stop trying to get everything from everybody all over the world for fear of never having enough, then maybe the wars will stop and the occupations will stop and the killing will stop. Listen, I've said it once, I'll say it again. Tank for president. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And I'll be your veep. Come on.

So at this point, as I said, he's starting to focus all of his attention on black magic. Anatoly even joined a Luciferian group, which is actually not the same thing as a Satan-worshipping group, which I find very interesting. Really? Though associated with Satanism, they are two distinct belief systems or philosophies often associated with different ideologies and perspectives. So give me a second to tell you about it because I find it fascinating and maybe you will too.

Okay, first of all, Satan and Lucifer are often used interchangeably amongst us lay folk, but they actually have distinct origins and connotations in various religious and mythological traditions. Satan, particularly in Christianity, is commonly associated with the devil or the adversary of God. He or it is often depicted as a malevolent and fallen angel who rebelled against God and led a host of demons.

Satan is typically seen as a symbol of evil, temptation, and wrongdoing in Christian theology.

Lucifer, which comes from a Latin word meaning light bringer or morning star, is a metaphorical figure rather than a literal deity or supernatural being or evil entity. Lucifer is a symbolic figure representing the quest for illumination, wisdom, knowledge, and spiritual growth and rejects oppressive forces, including dogmatic religious beliefs. So for Luciferians, Luciferianism

Enlightenment is the ultimate goal. Have you ever seen the show Lucifer? I watched like the first two episodes and found it ridiculous. It's very bad. Yeah. So I didn't see it. But he did say something in that that I thought was interesting. He said, because he's like a reluctant fucking overseer of hell. Hmm. He doesn't want to be there. So he said. Would he inherit the position? Well, he was banished there. You know what I mean? He was like sent there. Yeah. Okay. So he goes, I'm not evil. I punish evil. And I was like, oh. Oh, shit.

Oh, shit. That's interesting. Oh, my God. So I think I like the idea of Lucifer better than Satan because Satan is evil. Right. You know what I mean? Lucifer is like, I think they call him Morningstar on the show multiple times. Is that right? Yeah, something like that. Wow. So the group that Anatoly was a part of conducted rituals and animal sacrifices all in the name of Luciferianism. Looking back at his 12-year-old self, Anatoly was now angry that he pushed Natasha away when she'd visit him in his dreams because...

Because he now realized that she could have been an extremely valuable teacher to him, and he was nothing if not a glutton for knowledge.

After graduating from Moscow State University, Anatoly continued to maintain a deep interest in cemetery hopping, burial rituals, death, and the occult, and kept a personal library of over 60,000 books and documents. I feel a pop quiz coming. As well as a large doll collection, which we will be diving into in extensive, horrific detail momentarily. Mm-hmm.

As a self-proclaimed expert on local cemeteries in Nishni, Novogrode, Anatoly Dub... Excellent. Thank you. Fucking hold on a second.

That was really good. That felt really good. Mishni Novogrod. Yes. He dubbed himself a necropolis, which is not a real term, which I find amusing insofar as him being an actual linguist, like he couldn't find an actual word. Anyway, be that as it may, he really was a wealth of knowledge with respect to cemeteries, given how many hours and days and years he'd spent chilling amongst the dead. Anatoly also traveled extensively and began to teach at the college level while participating

pursuing side hustles in journalism, specifically contributing his writing skills to local newspapers and publications.

Pop quiz. Oh, I knew it. I was, I could feel it. It was like a light at the end of the tunnel. It's pretty cool. I knew it wasn't coming up right then, but I could feel it. I sensed it. I knew you knew it wasn't coming up immediately because you kind of had you like you were looking down like you weren't totally dialed into me. Yeah. But you said I sense a pop quiz. It's crazy. And we should like never play poker together. Oh, I would. I feel like you would read me in a second. A hundred percent. But I hate poker. I don't know how to play it. So we're good.

Pop quiz. In what specific capacity did Anatoly work with local newspapers? A, provided the history of local cemeteries and helped to arrange funerals. B, wrote obituaries. C, offered spiritual guidance in the form of an advice column to those afflicted by hauntings. Wow. So wrote obituaries, advice column. What was the first one? Provided the history of local cemeteries and helped to arrange funerals. C.

Uh, no. Advice column. No, I just thought that would have been so cool if that existed. Yeah. Doesn't exist. I made it up. Wrote obituaries? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely on brand. Oh, for sure. So he wrote obituaries, which provided him with firsthand knowledge of the deaths within his community, including details about who had passed away, when they passed away, the circumstances of their deaths, and crucially, the location of their burials.

Life at this point, though, was pretty good for Anatoly. In 2003, at just 37 years old, he even entered his first romantic relationship with a woman named Yulia Granova.

Although they held differing spiritual beliefs, Yulia was still a spiritual person with high intelligence, and they both were content to maintain a non-sexual relationship, further contributing to their overall compatibility. Except there was indeed one minor challenge with their decision to abstain from sexual relations. And that challenge arose when Yulia expressed a strong desire to have a child.

But the fact that they couldn't or wouldn't make a child together was not going to stand in their way of becoming parents. So they decided to take steps to pursue adoption. Wait, they wouldn't have sex? Like they refused? They're abstinent. They have agreed upon having a non-sexual relationship. Neither one of them wants to have sex. Okay. But they want a kid. I mean, yeah, sure. I mean... Pursue adoption. That's where they're going with this.

Side note, I can't believe we're in 2003. I know. I was picturing like... 1800? Yeah, black trench coats, hats. Yo, we already graduated high school. Clouds, just like bread, like eating bread as your main sustenance. I know. This is 2003, baby. You're right. It's crazy. Contemporary.

Oh, okay. Okay.

Furthermore, Anatoly's employment status at this particular juncture was also a concern. Is that why they didn't want to have sex or they both were like asexual? For sure, Anatoly is asexual. He abstained from drinking, smoking, having sex. That was part of who he was from day one. There was never a stage when he did any of those things. Yulia, I know that with respect to her relationship with Anatoly, she agreed to be non-sexual. I'm not sure if that's her position in life. She had her ho-fays. Yeah.

I mean, who doesn't, right? I mean, I get such a kick out of women just coming out and being like, yeah, I had a ho face. It's like a badge of honor. I know, it's so funny to me. Good for you, Yulia.

So I mentioned, obviously, they're getting pushback from the adoption agency. They're not married. And Anatoly's employment status is a little bit of a concern because he'd resigned from his role as a university lecturer due to conflicts with colleagues and was mainly relying on the royalties generated by his published books, as well as a modest income from writing obituaries. So for these reasons...

They did not, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, knowing what he winds up doing, Yulia and Anatoly did not wind up adopting. Also, I'm going to add to the fact that Anatoly did not have a place of his own at this point. He was still living with his parents, Yuri and Elvira. At 37? At 37. So Yulia and Anatoly at this point actually broke up and his plans for adoption obviously were completely thwarted.

So he found himself at a crossroads, ready to embark on his next venture. He soon received a unique job opportunity that involved extensive travel across Russia by foot as he was tasked with analyzing and researching approximately 800 cemeteries on foot.

Why on foot? You know, I don't actually know why on foot. The only thing I could think about was that the person paying him to like who commissioned him to do this assignment was like, I'm not paying for your transportation. And he's quirky and eccentric. And I don't think he likely had a car. And he's like, I'm just fucking walking. Uber wasn't around yet. Yeah. Honestly, I think it may have been a choice. That's wild. This dream job, which he truly considered to be a dream job, was

was commissioned by an author who was writing a book about cemeteries and required Anatoly's expertise and passion to gather essential information for the publication. He was the perfect guy for the job. What were the specific tasks Anatoly was assigned to perform at these various cemeteries? His job involved meticulously recording the names, birthdates, death dates, and any additional information inscribed on the headstones of the cemetery's residents.

Anatoly covered nearly 20 miles each day to complete his assignment and would often drink water from puddles on the ground since he'd be so far away from any type of establishment that could provide food or water. He probably got fucking ripped. Yeah, probably. I knew you were going to go there. I swear to God.

My first thought, he was probably shredded. Additionally, he started to spend his nights sleeping within the various cemeteries as well. On one occasion, he even discovered an empty coffin that was intended for use the following day and chose to sleep inside of it for the night. No thanks. Nope. And this is coming from your dark queen. The darkest queen of all. And I ain't going no coffin. No.

Anatoly maintained this nomadic lifestyle for over a year, spanning between 2005-2007, during which he made his way to a total of 752 cemeteries. In reality, if he was driving, it could have taken two months. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just more efficient. Guy's quirky, okay. His responsibilities extended beyond merely recording data from headstones. As a historian by profession, he also delved into the individual histories of the deceased. Oh, wow. Which, you know, I vibe with. Yeah. Although the fruits of his labor remained unpublished, they were regarded as unique and priceless by Alexei Yezin, the editor of the weekly paper Necrologies to which Anatoly contributed.

Wait, the name of the paper was Necrologies? Yes. He even produced a documentary-style series titled Great Walks Around Cemeteries, offering valuable insights into the stories of the deceased. Once he completed this assignment, Anatoly returned back to his parents' house and essentially became a recluse. He barely left the home and spent his days mostly sleeping and reading. However...

Contrary to appearances, Anatoly Moskvin was far more involved in disturbing activities than met the eye. Because in 2009, a troubling pattern emerged as locals began to discover the graves of their loved ones desecrated. Some even completely dug up.

Russian Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin revealed that initial suspicions pointed towards extremist organizations. So the authorities responded by bolstering their police presence and forming specialized investigative units focused on extremist crimes. I'm going to give you a little context, all right? Okay. Since anti-Muslim sentiments in Russia during this era was rampant,

In 2007? Yeah. Yeah. The prevailing theory at the time centered on a potential connection between these grave desecrations and Muslim extremist organizations. The

The idea was that these attackers might have been targeting cemeteries due to their cultural, religious, and emotional significance to the communities in which they were held. Desecrating these sacred places could serve as a symbolic act meant to incite fear, outrage, psychological distress, and division among those who held them dear.

But leads into extremist organizations yielded no significant breakthroughs, and the grave desecrations continued for nearly two more years. It was just some fucking one weird guy. A lone wolf. Yeah. But then a turning point came in the investigation following a devastating terrorist attack on January 24th, 2011 at Moscow's Dmodedevo airport. Dmodedevo. Listen, listeners,

We're both stumped. We just listened to pronunciations on YouTube. That's as close as we're getting. We're trying. Yeah. It's an airport. So there was a...

a terrible terrorist attack on January 24th, 2011 at that airport. Inside the airport, right? Yes. Like a suicide bombing, unfortunately. I remember that. You do? Yeah. So it took place in the airport's arrivals hall and it resulted in a tragic loss of lives. I think there's video of that. Numerous injuries, I believe so, yes. Yeah. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by an Islamist militant group.

Suddenly now, Muslim graves in Nizhny Novgorod had become targets for desecration. So it went from being non-Muslim people to now almost exclusively Muslim people. Tombstones and memorials were overturned and images of deceased Muslim people were defaced.

This prompted authorities to switch gears and launch an investigation into groups and individuals now promoting anti-Muslim sentiments. So they completely reversed the investigation. Like, they flipped it on its head. They must have been so confused. Oh, yeah. And...

And it was during this phase that Anatoly came under police scrutiny because Anatoly had gained notoriety for his vocal and vehemently anti-Muslim stance expressed through numerous articles and publications that he'd written. Oh, okay. So I guess we're going to find out, but it wasn't people desecrating Muslim graves. You will find out. Okay. Moreover, the desecrated Muslim graves were predominantly local to Anatoly's residence. Wow.

Lots of red flags. That's fishy. With this compelling lead, law enforcement deemed it necessary to bring in 55-year-old Anatoly Moskvin for questioning. And sure enough, when they located him, he was found near a Muslim gravesite, further raising suspicions surrounding his involvement in these unsettling events. He was covered in dirt, out of breath, sweaty. So he brought his ass in, screaming something about hating Muslims. It seemed like he was our guy. We had a hunch.

While law enforcement were apprehending Anatoly, eight investigators made their way into his apartment, located within a nondescript five-story building along Lennon Prospect. Investigators were armed with a video camera and recorded the entire search from the moment they opened his door to the moment they made their terrifying discoveries. First, upon entering the apartment, the video footage unveiled a scene of utter terror.

The interior was a disastrous shitstorm of paper, clothing, books, stacked floor to ceiling, and assorted odds and ends. 60,000 books this guy had. Yeah. Literally from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, it was as if reality collided with the darkest recesses of a hoarder's mind. Yeah. As the investigators navigated this overcrowded landscape, their quest for answers only led to the need to ask more questions.

Because certain oddities were discovered that just seemed so out of place, even in a space where nothing seemed to have a place at all. And these oddities, standing out amongst the chaos, came in the form of dolls.

just tons and tons of dolls appearing in a variety of different ways. Some were almost life-sized while others were much smaller. Some were staged to recline on the couch while others were perched upon a file cabinet or windowsill. Each doll was dressed in colorful attire and had on bright red lipstick along with painted eye makeup. One doll half sitting, half lying on a couch wore a knitted hat, a lilac sweater, white tights and white shoes.

Nearby, another doll with flowing blonde curly hair donned a silk wedding dress with a cascading veil. As the camera delved deeper into this peculiar collection of bizarre-looking dolls, investigators could not help but think, despite their adult understanding that there was no real reason to be afraid of dolls, that they all possessed a sense of otherness.

Then the voice behind the camera uttered the following words with absolute horror. I might start crying. These dolls are made of mummified human remains. Oh, okay. Not that it's better, but I forgot that he dug them up. I mean, I understand. It's better in a sense that people were not...

tortured and like that he didn't kill right he's to satisfy his urge to have dolls in his house right still horrific that he dug them up we take whatever small mercies we can get around here oh my god this revelation felt like a nightmare come to life sending a profound shock through the officers conducting the search rattling the local community and sending shock waves around the globe

It was revealed that the dolls, despite their varying sizes, positions, and clothing, shared a horrifying commonality. They were all once living human girls whose bodies had been exhumed, mummified, clothed, and arranged throughout Anatoly's house and garage. Some of these dolls had music boxes hidden within their chest cavities, accounting for the mysterious rattling noise noted by one of the investigating officers.

Other dolls were found with pieces of clothing or personal belongings stuffed inside their decomposed remains. For instance, one mummy contained a fragment of her own gravestone with her name inscribed on it. Another held a hospital tag revealing the cause and date of her death. Shockingly, a third doll concealed a dried-up human heart, presumably her own. And here was Anatoly's despicable process.

To begin his search for bodies to exhume, Anatoly would start by pursuing the obituaries that he had written for recently departed children. When he found one that spoke to him, so to speak, he would then sleep on the child's grave in order to determine if the spirit wished to be brought back to life. He claimed that he had slept on top of graves for 20 years before digging up an actual body.

Oh my God.

Oh my God. This guy actually did that. Actually did this. Following the extraction, Anatoly would then sleep beside the corpse in the graveyard before beginning the mummification process. And here was the process for that. He would begin to preserve the corpse by coating it with a mixture of salt and baking soda, a preservation process that took about two weeks to complete. And this is all done in the actual graveyard. Oh, really? Yep.

After the corpse was thoroughly dried, he would then wrap the body in bandages and carefully fill the shriveled-up, decomposed skeletal remains with rags and fabric, seemingly for the purpose of lending them a more lifelike appearance by enhancing their shape. Then he'd find clothing in nearby dumpsters to dress them in, often opting to encase the legs in tights for additional structural integrity.

He'd also, as I mentioned, insert music boxes into the chest cavities so that when he touched or hugged the quote-unquote dolls, they would in essence offer a response.

The final step of this macabre, nightmarish process involved transforming the mummified faces into doll-like features. This was achieved either by removing the face from a toy doll and affixing it to the deceased girl's face or by crafting his own wax faces, which he would then melt and shape before applying makeup to it and attaching it to the body. Oh, my God. And all of these kids...

Must have been pretty recently deceased. Not necessarily at all. Oh, my God. Can you fucking imagine...

Being in that apartment and that energy shifted. Well, you can see the body cam footage, so you can actually be in the room. No, no, no. Zero desire to do that. I'm just a little too good right now for some reason at imagining that moment where they realized, thank God they said it in Russian because that's throwing me off a little bit. I can't. I actually almost translated that into Russian so it could be like completely accurate in the words that you hear uttered behind the camera. Yeah.

but I chose not to. Oh, neat. And lastly, to complete their eerie gaze, Anatoly would often affix circular items such as buttons to serve as eyes so that he and the dolls could watch cartoons together. This guy's fucked. And all of this, from the salt and baking soda chemical process to the dressing up, the entire process unfolded within the confines of the actual graveyard.

Investigators from the Center for Combating Extremism discovered that there were 26 bodies discovered in his apartment. That's a year.

Let's see, you have 26 times two weeks. That's like a full year of this guy doing that. And he was on the road for how long? Was he on the road for two, three years? Between 2005 and 2007. This fucking guy was just digging bodies up. Most of the girls Anatoly callously exhumed were taken out of cemeteries local to his home, while others came all the way from Moscow, which was about 265 miles away. This is...

mind-boggling. Yeah, it really is. It really is because...

It happened. Like, I know we say this, I feel like, often enough that it's a repeated theme. But, like, take a minute to really think. You don't have to, Tank, because you're definitely doing this already. I'm too in already. This actually happened. Like, I'm not telling you a ghost story around a campfire. It's so easy to think because you're hearing a story laid out so eloquently and brilliantly by Investigator Slater that it's like...

Just a story. Not real. But it's real. That's why I got hung up on the person with the camera saying, oh my God. Yeah. These are actual human dead babies. Children, but yes.

The sizes of the dolls found in his home varied, ranging from very small to about four feet in height. Oh, my God, dude. And the ages of the children represented in these dolls spanned from three to 12 years old. Ugh.

These poor, poor babies were forcibly removed from their final resting places, transformed into perverse playthings for this profoundly disturbed man. And their parents were completely unaware that their daughters had been posthumously abducted. Yeah. Posthumously, but sure. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. You're just loving it, aren't you? Whatever. I'm trying to like lighten the mood a little bit because I'm about to lose my mind.

So these parents would visit the graves to pay their respects and connect with their children only to later realize that they had essentially lost their children a second time. Yeah. And if there's one thing that I know about parents who lose children, they're at that grave a lot. The interviews that I read from some of the parents indicate exactly that. It's

heartbreaking and the way that they take care of the graves and the way that they keep them clean and polished and festive around the holidays and they'll leave gifts around the child's birthday. It's too much. It's too much to even think about.

As investigators meticulously combed through Anatoly's home, they made significant findings. Matching boots were uncovered consistent with footprints found near other desecrated children's graves. Among the discoveries were photographs and plaques taken from tombstones, local cemetery maps, and a quote-unquote doll-making manual.

Moreover, police stumbled upon a collection of photographs and video footage showcasing open graves and exhumed bodies. It also became apparent that some of the outfits adorning these dolls were in fact the very garments in which they had been buried in. So sometimes he would find clothing in local dumpsters and other times he would keep the child in the clothing her parents chose for her to be buried in.

Needless to say, Anatoly Moskvin was arrested on November 2nd, 2011, and surprisingly, he remained entirely cooperative with law enforcement. In his mind, he believed that he committed no wrongdoing, even though he was intellectually aware that he was breaking the law. Well, this is also one of those things that it's like, everyone knows it's illegal to kill someone. Everyone knows it's illegal to rob a bank. He went outside of the realm of...

of legal, I mean, precedent by saying, you know what, I'm just going to do something that doesn't even exist. Pretty much. And maybe they won't be able to put me in jail for it. Pretty much. For Anatoly, saving people took precedence over adhering to legal norms. Saving. Mm-hmm. Because in his mind, he was immortalizing these children. Yeah.

His mind is a dangerous place. It is. It's crucial to note for what it's worth that Anatoly did not harbor any sexual attraction or desires towards the bodies. This was not a case of necrophilia. Rather, he regarded them as the children he never had. He would have birthday parties for them on their actual birthdays and celebrate holidays with them all for their benefit. How long did he have them in his house? Almost a decade, some of them. What the fuck? Yep.

Are you serious? I am. Anatoly played children's music for his deceased prisoners, offered them food, as was tradition in the Celtic culture, and generally treated them as if they were living, breathing, willing beings who were just, and I quote, temporarily dead.

Anatoly was later quoted as saying that he was careful, affectionate, gentle, and polite with his process of extracting and preserving the corpses and that he never did anything to damage, disfigure, or dismember them. Yeah. As he cut a hole in the fucking, in the coffin and then ripped them out by their hair. Right. He felt that this is something he should be praised for. He even commended himself for not swearing in front of the girls. Right.

Anatoly also indicated that his intention had been to hold on to their remains so that when the technology became available, he could clone them. This man needs to be mummified himself. I mean, who wants him forever? You know? I mean, I very rarely do I think that somebody is beyond...

rehabilitation. And then I think like, well, he didn't do, he didn't cause his own, but maybe, I don't know, dude, you fucking. It's okay to be in your headspace. It is. You have to see where I live in terms of my headspace when I'm researching. Yeah. It's a lot.

Anatoly's elderly parents, both of whom were 78 years old by this point, claimed to have had no idea that any of this was going on. Who could possibly know? They spent a significant portion of each year away from the house, typically from April through October. Wait, he was living at that house still? Yeah. He was still living with his parents. He never not lived with them. Oh my God.

God. Additionally, his parents genuinely believed that the dolls were nothing more than regular dolls or puppets as they called them, unaware that their own son was involved in the ghastly act of body snatching, all within the confines of their own home.

Denial is so amazing. It is, but I also kind of believe them. No, no, I'm saying I believe them too. They couldn't process the fact that these were exhumed children. Oh, yeah. Astonishingly, one of the dolls, Masha, had been kept in the parents' bedroom.

Unfortunately, following Anatoly's arrest, his father, Yuri, suffered a heart attack, though survived, thankfully, and his mother was hospitalized due to poor health that she attributed to the shock of her son's abhorrent behavior. Elvira even contemplated taking her own life in the wake of this sickening revelation. I can't even imagine. It was her husband who convinced her not to.

Pathologists identified as many of the bodies as they could, and Anatoly also provided names for his victims as well as where they had originally been buried. He revealed that he had been collecting bodies and crafting dolls for a span of 10 years. His grim journey began when he first exhumed the remains of a 10-year-old little girl named Olga Chardimova.

To access the body, he used a chisel to create an opening atop the coffin near the child's head through which he pulled out the remnants of her corpse. Anatoly recalled that the young girl had been dressed in a white blouse, black skirt, worn tights, and stylish shoes. He then relocated the body to an isolated area within the cemetery where he proceeded with the subsequent stages of his mummification process.

By July 25th, the body, now clothed differently and adorned with tights, different tights, left the cemetery grounds concealed within Anatoly's backpack, destined for his residence and eternal unrest until she was rescued. When asked why, why did he do what he did? What was his motivation? Anatoly explained that he experienced profound loneliness in life and

particularly during the months when his parents were absent and took the cat with them.

Anatoly was charged under Article 244 of the Criminal Code for the Desecration of Graves and Dead Bodies, a charge which carried up to five years in prison. In court, he confessed to 44 counts of abusing graves and dead bodies. During the trial, outraged and grieving families of the girls shouted out for the judge to lock him up for life and to even consider issuing a death sentence. I can imagine they would want that.

In response, Anatoly made a statement to the parents of the dead girls whose bodies he so terribly destroyed and made into his own toys. He said, and I quote, you abandoned your girls. I brought them home and warmed them up. Get fucked. Seriously. After a psychiatric evaluation was conducted on the defendant, it was determined that he had a form of paranoid schizophrenia rendering him psychologically impaired.

On May 25th, 2012, which feels like fucking yesterday. It was. A district court declared him mentally unfit to stand trial, resulting in his sentencing to coercive medical measures without any chance for appeal.

He remains under psychiatric care with periodic assessments of his condition. In fact, in 2019, the institution overseeing his care actually requested his release. Absolutely not. Believing he could be safely cared for at home. No. Yeah, well, assessments conducted by court-appointed officials yielded contrary results...

leading to the rejection of his release request. Thank you. While Anatoly appears lucid most of the time, he becomes obsessive when talking about his girls. So the institution abandoned their efforts to secure his release. Okay, good. I mean, fucking get your act together, institution. And it's unlikely that he's going to get his personal act together because he's incapable of doing that. It's unfortunate, right?

for sure, but that man cannot be in the general public. He can't. He's too unwell. Yeah. He's also considered a very rare type of predator because his predatory actions were driven by an unusual and extreme combination of factors.

First of all, his motivation was not rooted in sexual gratification or sadistic pleasure, which are typical motivations for many predators. Instead, Anatoly's actions were primarily driven by his mental illness, specifically paranoid schizophrenia, which caused him to harbor delusional beliefs and engage in behaviors that were deeply disturbing and disconnected from reality entirely. Okay.

And his paranoid schizophrenia compounded by his loneliness, which I actually, so when you said he felt lonely, I went, hmm. And not because I'm like, yeah, fuck. Right. You're not giving him a pass. I would do that. I don't know if, if I'm the only one, I know I'm not the only one. Cause I talk to people about this all the time, but like when I have to go away and I'm over in California, I had to go to Miami last year for like three days, those nights, I

are not great. I know. They're not my favorite nights. I know. I can't really understand that, but I'm shaking my head and I'm understanding because I see it when I FaceTime with Dave when he travels for work. Oh, it sucks. He is in such a dark place. I'm looking at it like, fuck you, man. You get three days in Miami. I'm here with like the kids by myself, the dog, I'm working, I'm, you know, whatever. Yeah.

but he's constantly telling me how fucking lonely he is. My friend Vinny did a documentary on this guy. I forget. He was like a big trainer. I think, I think he like trained Kim Kardashian and fucking some other Hollywood people. Personal trainer. You mean personal trainer? Yeah. And he did this thing where he went to a cabin every weekend and he felt like he was out there losing his mind every time the sun went down. So he went out there and documented it. This guy was legitimately having like, uh,

I don't even know what kind of experience to say it was. It was just hard to watch. Like this guy was like throwing up, crying. Oh my gosh. Screaming. He may have also had some things.

Yeah, it sort of seems like it. I mean, that sounds extreme, that reaction, although I'm not a mental health professional, so I don't know. But if you're in 2023, right, and you are, I don't know why he did it. I don't know if he was doing it to try and exercise these fucking demons or whatever. Pun, because he's a personal trainer. Nice. It was unintentional. But he went out there, no phone, no internet, no TV, no nothing, just quiet, dark cabin shit. For how long? He'd do it for a weekend at a time. Why?

I don't know. Maybe he liked being in the cabin, but like nighttime came and he lost his mind. No, there's something else going on there. Yeah, for sure. But what I'm saying is when people have mental illness and they are alone and lonely at the same time, because they're two different things,

the results are usually not great. Not everyone winds up going and exhuming dead bodies. As a matter of fact, this is the only time I've ever heard of that. There's always a spectrum, a behavioral spectrum. This man is at the opposite end of the spectrum from somebody who's like, yes, a long time. And we'll talk about this literally in 30 seconds, but you know, he's got a lot of history going on and a lot of untreated behaviors.

mental health issues. So the fact that it culminated in the way that it did is shocking and unacceptable, but also not shocking. Yeah. That makes sense.

Regarding the innocent girls, who should always be the focus when talking about this case, all 26 of those precious children not only endured premature deaths in life, but were also denied the fundamental human right to eternal rest due to an exceedingly peculiar and in many respects undignified post-death situation. I tried to obtain the names and stories of all 26 children so that we could pay tribute to them all, but...

But unfortunately, I could not uncover a complete list. But let's at least acknowledge and honor them all in our own way and say the names of the children whose names I was able to uncover. Olga Chartimova, she was his first victim. Anya Gurakova, Nastya Petrova, Sveta Svetikova, Masha Kuprova, and Katya Vlasova.

I do know that Olga's parents have been very, very vocal, Natalia and Igor, about their hatred for their daughter's body snatcher and their strong belief that he should never, ever be released back into society. Especially since he has not once issued an apology or shown any remorse for what he did.

Natalia and Igor had been visiting their daughter Olga's grave for nine years without realizing that it had been empty every single time they went.

That's sad. Yeah. And regarding Olga, I just want to shine a light on her story because I do know it. It's just beyond tragic from start to finish. Olga was just 10 years old when she was killed. And it happened when her parents allowed her to walk by herself for the very first time to her grandmother's house after protesting, I'm 10 already. I can go myself. Yeah, that's like every parent's worst nightmare.

Really? Yeah.

But Olga never even made it out of her apartment building because she was grabbed by a drug addict in her building who forced her back to her apartment where he robbed her of her earrings before hitting her on the head with a metal bar and killing her. Oh my God, that's horrible. Olga's remains went undiscovered for five months as they were wedged behind pipes in the attic of the building. So her parents were just like, she's missing? Yeah, they didn't know that she was killed for five months.

Oh my God. Disturbingly, Anatoly would regularly visit Olga's grave after learning about her death in an obituary, and he'd leave her toys and notes signed with the letters D.A. standing for Dobry Angel or Kind Angel, which was the name that Anatoly used to refer to himself. Olga's parents and the police discovered her gravesite and coffin had been tampered with and that her body had been removed.

Once Anatoly became the subject of investigation for the desecration of Muslim graves, authorities swiftly connected him to this heinous crime, along with numerous other instances of child grave desecration. 26 to be exact. That's right. But to that end, Anatoly was suspected of desecrating as many as 150 graves. Wow. Natalia has indicated that what Anatoly did to Olga was like a spear through their hearts. She said, and I quote,

This creature brought fear, terror, and panic into my life. And then 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. Yeah, that's a lot to process.

In conclusion, Anatoly Moskvin's story is shrouded in the dark grip of mental illness where his mind became entangled in a complex web of delusions to the point where the distinction between reality and the haunting landscape of schizophrenia became indistinguishable. While Anatoly believed he was constructing a surrogate family of sorts,

The families whose children fell victim to desecration and disturbance are left with only anguish and heartache over what happened. What was intended to be a sacred place of eternal rest instead turned into a hunting ground for an exceedingly uncommon breed of predator.

My heart, I know your heart, goes out to the grieving families whose innocent children were subjected to twisted acts of horrors. And while their pain is immeasurable, I hope that they can now find solace in knowing that Anatoly Moskvin has been caught and justice, to the extent deemed appropriate by the powers that be, is being served. And as we reflect on this chilling tale, we can only hope that the innocent souls who were denied their rightful rest will now find eternal peace.

There's a documentary made about this movie, by the way. It's called Dollmaker, The Anatoly Moskvin Story. I think you can find it on YouTube. I'm good. Yep. Yep. But yeah, I just hope that their memories can be honored, the victims, and that their spirits can finally rest now. Two things. One,

You're very good at this. Thank you. That was really needed because I struggled. Well, hold up. Because when you said in conclusion, I almost shed a tear. No, I just thought this case was going to go on forever. And I made peace with that. I was like, this is where I live now. I'm just going to listen to this case. And then you take it. I should have taken it in first. Yeah, I need you need a T-shirt. We need merch that says give it and then take it. It's like a theme with you.

No, I really was like, okay, I mean, I'm in it for the long haul now. This is what I signed up for. This is what I do now. Maybe my kids will visit me up here. Jessica will bring food.

Oh my God, that one was a lot. Yeah, it's a... Very interesting. An interesting case. We definitely don't think we've ever covered any case of this kind on Psychopedia. Absolutely not. Right? So it's a cross between certainly true crime and real victims. I mean, I know that they obviously weren't alive anymore, but they were certainly victimized as were their families. But just the level of...

psychological complexity is endless here, it feels. Yeah. And to be him must be

absolute living hell. Yeah. I mean, he also truly does not see anything he did as wrong. And in fact, he thinks he did these girls a favor. It's just so tragic all around. So whether the logic works in his brain or not, the fact that he swore off of things that he had never tried before, alcohol, drugs, sex,

And then wound up with this kind of complex psychological issue manifested. Like, okay, okay, you have psychological issues? Okay. But like, a lot of times they don't make their way out of the person. They're just kind of like torture for the person that has them. Right. But this guy expressed them in a way that I don't, I've never heard of before. And to be in his brain, even if the logic and rationale works, I can only imagine that there must just be like this dark, dank,

wet, cold feel to his entire life. Man, I felt that. Yeah. That doesn't feel good. No. And fuck him, first of all. Right. Of course. To be clear. But also, I can't imagine living in that headspace. It's like separating what he did from the unwell individual that he is. And you know, you...

Again, he doesn't get a pass. But remember, he was violently sexually assaulted when he was a child. Yeah. He went through this really disturbing, bizarre situation with Natasha's funeral and kissing a corpse. But there was... I don't believe. I don't know. I can't... You know, I'm not an expert and I don't know the facts, but...

I have to believe that he was going to be sick to some extent anyway. And those two things just ignited it. Well, it's the nature and nurture combination. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for doing all that work. Truly always a pleasure. Thank you for writing so well. Thank you for appreciating it. I really do appreciate that. So if you made it this far, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Come on, they're on this ride with us. I know, I know. And we're going to, you know, we finish our breakfast every episode. We finish your breakfast? My homie's trick told me do finish your breakfast. Should have known. Got it. Yeah. And so do you, if you made it this far, Megs. Thanks for just riding it out with us. We're so glad to have you here. And we will see you guys at the next episode. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Bye.