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A mother has spoken of her double-grief at the brutal murder of her daughter whose remains were then dug up from her grave and mummified by a "genius" Russian historian.

Anatoly Moskvin, 47, ransacked graveyards and kept dozens of corpses of young girls in his bedroom in the flat where he lived with his mother and father.

He dressed the dead children in stockings, girls' clothing and knee length boots to make them look like dolls, even applying lipstick and make-up to their faces, and putting music boxes inside their rib cages.

The highly educated bodysnatcher marked the birthday of each of his dead victims in his in bedroom in Nizhny Novgorod.

A judge has decreed that schizophrenic Moskvin - too ill to face trial for his crimes - should remain in a secure psychiatric hospital for the foreseeable future.

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Following his arrest, the grave-robber told the parents of his victim accusingly: "You abandoned your girls in the cold - and I brought them home and warmed them up."

For Natalia Chardymova, 42, each new macabre report about Moskvin - arrested in 2011 - is like a hammer blow because her own daughter Olga was among 29 he secretly dug up, and dressed as a doll, and kept at home.

Olga had been horrifically murdered, aged ten, the first time she was allowed to walk alone from the family flat to her granny's apartment in the next block after her parents went to work.

"I'm ten already. I can go myself," she pleaded.

Her mother relented and she went out with her favourite green bag and blue umbrella, never to be seen alive again.

(Image: East2West)

Unseen, a drug addict waiting in the lobby of her block had forced her back up to the top floor, and robbed her of her earrings, and because she tried to escape, cracked her over the head with a metal bar.

Despite searches for her body, Olga's remains with the umbrella and bag were not found for five months wedged behind pipes in the block's attic.

"We buried her on 2 October 2002.

"I could never imagine that almost exactly ten years later, on the 5 October 2012 I would open her grave with the police, and find her remains had vanished.

Her coffin was empty, with a hole at the top from which he had pulled the remains.

(Image: East2West)

"You can't begin to imagine it, 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."

In 7 May 2003, Natalia and husband Igor, 44, started painting a small metal fence they had erected around the grave.

The next day, they came back to finish, and felt someone had been there.

A wreath had been moved and a torment began, lasting nine years.

The same month they found a note signed with two letters - D.A. - standing for Dobry Angel or Kind Angel, how Moskwin thought of himself.

"We shivered with fear each time we went to the grave, not knowing what to expect," she said.

"These sick anonymous notes were addressed to my daughter, calling her 'Little Lady'.

(Image: East2West)

"He congratulated her on all the public holidays.

"He remembered about 1 September each year (the first day of the school year in Russia) and the last school bell in May.

"He counted carefully which school grade she was about the enter, as if she was still alive.

"For example "happy last month of your 6th year at school".

"Imagine what it was like for us, her grieving parents, reading these notes about our murdered daughter.

"It was not at all like some sick joke but a spear through our hearts."

Sometimes, the desperate parents arrived at the grave to find soft toys - stolen from other plots, and on January 1 he always put New Year decorations on the grave.

In one note, he threatened the parents: "If you don't erect a great monument which she deserves, we will dig her body out."

The couple erected a headstone in June 2003, and he penned messages on it before taking an axe to it.

Natalia reported it to the police, who were appalled but said there was little they could do.

(Image: Police)

"They told us, if you find him, do what you want to this barbarian, we won't object.

"At this point we knew nothing about Moskvin, or that by now he had already removed her, but if I'd met him at Olga's grave, I'd have killed him with my own hands."

The strain drove them apart, and they separated. Natalia wanted to move to a new flat and try and rebuild her life.

But Igor refused to leave their flat where he sat for hours on end in Olga's room.

"I just could not live in the block where my daughter was murdered.

"And Igor did not want to sell the flat, he would go into Olga's room and stare at her things. Finally, I left and went to live with my mother."

Fourteen months later then got back together, and in now have another child together, a son Alexei, who "has restored my faith in life".

Through all this time, the unknown visitor kept coming to the grave, leaving notes, or bending the metal holy cross.

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In 2011, police arrested Moskvin after going to question him about other similar reports of graves being disturbed.

Later the police told Natalia they needed to open her daughter's coffin because 29 mummified corpses of girls from different graveyards had been found at the flat he shared with his parents Elvira and Yury.

"When we opened the grave with policemen in October 2012, we found a coffin there which looked amazingly well preserved after ten years - but it had a hole at the top.

"Moskvin had dug down, cut the hole, and pulled Olga's body out. I almost collapsed. I felt sick.

"My girl had been murdered, if anyone deserved to rest in peace, she did, but instead her grave had been robbed."

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The police said Moskvin's copious notes showed the grave had been disturbed on May 2003, the first time Natalia sensed it had been disturbed.

"They told me to see her: the sight was too grotesque, they said. But I have seen the pictures of some of the other girls.

"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 ten years, he had her for nine."

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He mother Elvira, 76, told police: "We saw these dolls but we did not suspect there were dead bodies inside.

"We thought it was his hobby to make such big dolls and did not see anything wrong with it."

She and his father Yury, 77, went to their country house each summer, leaving him alone in the flat, which is when Moskvin prowled graveyards stealing new corpses and dressing them up.

In interviews with police and in court, historian Moskvin, described as a "genius" and an authority on Russian cemeteries - gave various explanations of his actions.

"I was waiting for science to find ways for these girls to live again," he told them.

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"I wanted to be an expert in making mummies" - this was another excuse.

"I wanted to communicate with these girls" - and it seems he was trying to talk to them.

"He told how he carefully selected which girl to take.

"I lay on the grave and tried to get in touch with her.

"I listened to what she said.

"Often they asked me to take them out for a walk."

Police say he wasn't motivated by any twisted sexual desires with these children.

"He loathed sex and thought it was disgusting," said one officer.

He admitted the crime of digging up the graves, but the court found he was mentally ill.

While he's lucid most of the time, when talking about "his girls" he becomes obsessed, said the psychiatrists.

(Image: Police)

Reports claimed Moskvin had been raped as a child.

He also told how he was forced as a boy to kiss the face of a dead 11 year old girl at her funeral.

It was claimed that he wanted to adopt a girl and was refused because he was unmarried.

His behaviour was blamed on his parents taking him for walks in graveyards as a child.

For Natalia, there is one more reminder of the man who has caused her such grief.

From her kitchen window, she can see the yellow coloured psychiatric hospital where Moskvin is incarcerated.

"I worry that one day he will convince them he's sane, and he'll come out and start his morbid activities again," she said. To me, he got off lightly.

"Like other parents tormented by him, we reckon he knew what he was doing. I wanted to see him go to jail and face hardened criminals in the same cell.

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"He should know real pain, not be pampered by doctors who see him as a fascinating psychiatric case."

"In the court building in February 2013, I was standing there when suddenly two policemen escorted him in.

"He walked right towards me. I lost my breath. I just stood there, mouth open like a fish. I looked at his whimpering, trembling mother.

"Yes, I feel some sympathy, she is a mum after all, but deep in my heart I can't believe she and his dad Yury knew nothing.

"Just look at the police pictures of their home, like a burrow, in such a mess.

"I can't believe there was no smell, or nothing suspicious to her about all these 'dolls'.

"Yet she turned a blind eye to her son's weird hobby."

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Natalia keeps a picture of her daughter in the kitchen, and talks to her when she cooks. She would now be 22.

"She should be living her life to the full now, if not for the evil she faced. But to me she will always be a child."

Her husband, Igor, said: "I hate our soft laws. "The punishment must be somehow in balance with what the person has done.

"And this man will rest in his clinic and we fear they will say he is cured and let him out to go back to his graveyards.

"I wish I had met him ten years ago by Olga's grave. But if I'd done what needed to be done to him, I'd be in jail myself."

The couple have now reburied Olga in an unmarked grave where, finally, they hope she can rest in peace.

Prosecutor Konstantin Zhilyakov said: "All of us involved in this criminal case agreed that it is one of the most shocking we ever came across.

"You could never imagine such an investigation but it was deeply emotional at the same time.

"We had to deal with the relatives of the 29 children who lost their beloved children and had to bury them again."

"The verdict was to send Moskvin to a psychiatric clinic for treatment.

"There is no term, in other words he is not sent there for the certain number of years. He will stay there until he is cured - or forever.

"The only way for him to get out of this clinic is through another court action, where prosecutors and lawyers will take part."

He is now subject to annual checks but he said: "There is a very little chance that he even leaves this clinic."

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