A disturbed bodysnatcher who disguised the mummified remains of 29 girls as dolls will continue to be confined in a psychiatric hospital, a Russian court has decided.

Anatoly Moskvin, 55, turned the dead children into “dolls”, dressing them in stockings, clothes and knee-length boots.

He was first arrested in 2011 when a series of desecrated graves of girls aged three to 11 led to a months-long manhunt across Novgorod, Russia.

When cops searched the flat Moskvin shared with his parents, they discovered the bodies of 29 girls.

Each had been mummified, dressed in children’s clothes, and arranged like dolls in his home.

The former academic claimed that he practised black magic and believed he could one day revive the children using science.

Moskvin, now 58, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was ruled unfit to stand trial in 2012.

He has been held in a secure Russian psychiatric unit ever since.

Despite several pleas made by Moskvin’s lawyers, a Russian court has now confirmed that the sick man would remain under forced detention.

His term was extended after the chief physician of the psychiatric hospital filed a petition against his release – possibly due to his behaviour.

Moskvin confessed to 44 counts of abusing the graves of girls aged three to 12.

In Soviet times, he worked as a translator for military intelligence in the Red Army, and later wrote several history books. 

The historian, described in court as a genius and the author of scientific papers, gave various explanations for his deeply disturbing behaviour.

Moskvin informed his interrogators that he was hoping for scientific advancements that could bring these girls back to life, alongside his desire to become skilled in mummy creation.

He chillingly said to the family members of the dead children: “You abandoned your girls in the cold, and I brought them home and warmed them up.”

Moskvin added that he had needed biological material for cloning and insisted his actions were not for any sexual motive.

He told investigators: “I felt sorry for the dead children, who could still live on.

“So I kept them until the time when science would have advanced, and revived them.”

His mother, Elvira, testified in court: “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.”

Parents of the dead children have pleaded he remain locked up for life, fearing he’ll return to his sinister old habit, which saw him living with some children’s remains for up to ten years. 

In the early years after his arrest, he frequently gave interviews and made bizarre confessions, including that he had slept in Muslim graveyards and visited more than 750 cemeteries.

He claimed: “I lay down in one coffin, and slid another one on top. And I got a good night’s sleep. And no one noticed.”

In 2021, his lawyers tried to argue that he should be transferred to outpatient care and had plans to write a book and work as a language teacher in Moscow.

But the court rejected the plea, as it did again last week.

The court sided with the hospital that he remain under psychiatric supervision in detention until November.