Russian police have discovered 29 mummies at the home of a well-known local historian who dug the bodies up from cemeteries and dressed them in clothes scavenged from graves.
A police video of the man's apartment in the city of Volga River in Nizhny Novgorod shows a gruesome tableau of what looks like dolls - dressed in bright dresses and headscarves, some with their hands and faces appearing to be wrapped in cloth.
Arrested ... Anatoly Moskvin.Credit: AP
Police said they were mummified remains.
They have refused to name the suspect arrested last week but released photographs of him on Monday, giving his age as 45 and describing him as a well-known specialist in the history of the city.
Russian media reports identified the man as Anatoly Moskvin, a 45-year-old historian who was considered the ultimate expert on cemeteries in Nizhny Novgorod, and who had spoken openly about rummaging through cemeteries and studying grave stones to uncover the life stories behind them.
Russian newspaper reports quoted police as saying the man had only selected the remains of young women for his grisly collection.
The arrest followed a long-running investigation into the desecration of graves at several cemeteries in Nizhny Novgorod, police spokeswoman Svetlana Kovylina said. She did not explain how they tracked him down.
The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said Moskvin was detained at a cemetery while carrying a bag of bones.
But Kriminalnaya Khronika, an online publication specialising in crime news from the Nizhny Novgorod region, said police investigators discovered the bodies when they visited Moskvin to consult with him about the desecration.
Moskvin, who had long been known in the region for his interest in the dead, wrote several articles about cemeteries in the region.
A linguistic expert by training, he specialised in Celtic culture and studied 13 languages.
In a 2007 interview with the Nizhegorodsky Rabochy newspaper, Moskvin said he had inspected 752 cemeteries, often travelling about 30 kilometres a day by foot.
He said he drank from puddles, spent nights in haystacks or at abandoned farms and once even slept in a coffin readied for a funeral
He said he drank from puddles, spent nights in haystacks or at abandoned farms and once even slept in a coffin readied for a funeral. He said he was repeatedly questioned by police, who then always let him go.
Just last month, he wrote a piece for a publication on necrology to explain his interest in the dead. He said that when he was 12, he came across a funeral procession whose participants forced him to kiss the face of a dead 11-year-old girl. He said he later grew interested in the occult.
AP