Russian police said Monday that a historian arrested last week for desecrating several Nizhny Novgorod cemeteries had kept 29 female mummies at home and dressed them up like dolls.
The 45-year-old local resident was detained last week and accused of digging up dead bodies at the local cemeteries over the past two years.
A search of his apartment came up with 29 self-made dolls made of mummified human remains and dressed up in clothes of the buried women. Police said that several plaques from gravestones, maps of local cemeteries and doll-making manuals had been retrieved during the search. Forensic experts matched the man’s fingerprints and footprints with the ones lifted from disturbed graves at the Nizhny Novgorod cemeteries.
Official releases would not identify the man but the Nizhny Novgorod media reported last week that the suspect is a well respected specialist in necropolises Anatoly Moskvin, a PhD in Celtic studies.
The suspect was charged with desecrating dead bodies and their burial sites, a crime punishable by up to three months of arrest or a year of correctional labor.