“
In March 2010, authorities discovered a 13-year-old boy, Zhenia Barsukov, who could not speak human language, ate oranges without peeling them, and walked around his apartment naked. Last March, Viacheslav Kazistov, from the building next to Popova’s, heard somebody screaming: “Save me! Save me!” in the apartment next door. When police arrived and they broke down the door, Kazistov said, they discovered “a paralyzed skeleton” on the floor. All the man had in the room to eat was half a loaf of dry bread and two bottles of water. Yuri Baushev’s own brother kept him locked inside the apartment for almost a year, in hopes of becoming the apartment’s only owner, if his brother starved.
