The Collector

The world is full of strange people. People who appear to be normal, and then suddenly something appears to affect them in some profound way, changing their personalities, altering their perceptions, motivating them in ways little understood, to involve themselves in strange behaviour.

A Russian historian, with a doctorate in Celtic studies who specialized in necropolises would present, in any event, as an unusual personality with peculiar interests. Bizarre perhaps, but not unheard of. People are entitled to their little eccentricities, after all.

Eccentric behaviour, in a sense, is endearing. It can be. If it does not transcend the boundaries of the social convention. If it just piques one's interest. If it results in odd little characteristics that sets people apart from the ordinary stream of human interests.

Anatoly Moskvin, however, was, it turns out, more than a little eccentric, on the face of things. He appeared to have been drawn completely and irresistibly to the presence of the dead. Dead women. Dead young women. Whose bodies he excavated from their graves and conveyed to his home.

A bachelor at age 45, it behooved him, likely through his parents' encouragement, to install a woman in his life. And he went that wish one better. He brought no fewer than 29 women into his two-bedroom apartment. Some might consider it to be desecration of a corpse.

He staged the skeletons of these women - aged between 15 and 25 at the time of their deaths - whom he abducted from their graves, around his apartment, dressing them in very nice garments, using makeup on their 'faces'. This appeared to please Mr. Moskvin.

Until his parents, with whom he shared the apartment, returned home from a prolonged vacation. They were, understandably, confused and alarmed at what they discovered.