On July 17 1918, Nicholas, his wife, Alexandra, their children, doctor and three servants were woken and killed. [90][94], The noise of the guns had been heard by households all around, awakening many people. Only around 20% of Back in Victorian Britain, there was a job title called pure finder. Yurovsky instructed his men to "shoot straight at the heart to avoid an excessive quantity of blood and get it over quickly. Romanov remains identified using DNA British forensic scientists announce that they have positively identified the remains of Russia's last czar, Nicholas II; his wife, Czarina Alexandra; and. To confirm that the bodies belonged to the Royal Romanov family, DNA from the living members of the lineage were used to cross-verify the claims. The lifeless bodies of Russia's last monarch, his wife Alexandra, and their five children, Alexei, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, were about to go on a journey that would stretch over years,. [12] Various Romanov impostors claimed to be members of the Romanov family, which drew media attention away from activities of Soviet Russia. [97] Alexei received two bullets to the head, right behind the ear. "They had to stop. The leader of the new guards was Adolf Lepa, a Lithuanian. The Romanovs were kept in strict isolation at the Ipatiev House. "This is a big thing," he said. When they stopped, the doors were then opened to scatter the smoke. Assassinations: Romanov Family: see Assassinations & Russia & Romanov Dynasty & Assassinations: Rasputin etc & Monarchy & Revolution. [42] The guards were ordered to increase their surveillance accordingly, and the prisoners were warned not to look out of the window or attempt to signal to anyone outside, on pain of being shot. Now they knew for certain all the Romanovs died during the shocking execution. [104], The White Army investigator Nikolai Sokolov erroneously claimed that the executions of the Imperial Family was carried out by a group of "Latvians led by a Jew". More than 60 years earlier, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne while under pressure from the Red Army, an army created in the wake of theBolshevikRevolution of 1917. In the deserts of Jordan, a city lies hidden for centuries in a valley of rose-red stone. [131] Sokolov accumulated eight volumes of photographic and eyewitness accounts. What happened to the missing bodies of the Romanov family? Czar Nicholas II was the last Romanov. Investigators tested the bones mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is found outside the nucleus and acts as a power station for the cell. The guards would play the piano, while singing Russian revolutionary songs and drinking and smoking. [134], His preliminary report was published in a book that same year in French and then Russian. [24] A 2011 investigation concluded that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, no written document has been found which proves Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions;[25] however, they endorsed the murders after they occurred. [166] Unlike the imperial family, the bodies at Alapayevsk and Perm were recovered by the White Army in October 1918 and May 1919 respectively. Railroad ties were placed over the grave to disguise it, with the Fiat truck being driven back and forth over the ties to press them into the earth. The Tsarevich was the first of the children to be executed. Their ten servants were dismissed, and they had to give up butter and coffee.[30]. [124], Yurovsky separated the Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters to be buried about 15 metres (50ft) away, in an attempt to confuse anyone who might discover the mass grave with only nine bodies. This enabled them to identify that nine people were buried in the grave. [#1] The DNA tests revealed that skeletons four and seven were the parents of skeletons three, five and six. . [78] There is no documentary record of an answer from Moscow, although Yurovsky insisted that an order from the CEC to go ahead had been passed on to him by Goloshchyokin at around 7 pm. [139], Local amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin and filmmaker Geli Ryabov[ru] located the shallow grave on 3031 May 1979 after years of covert investigation and a study of the primary evidence. The Tsar, Tsarina, three of their daughters, and four attendants are identified. [112] Yurovsky maintained control of the situation with great difficulty, eventually getting Ermakov's men to shift some of the bodies from the truck onto the carts. We found several bone fragments. "All of them," replied Yakov Sverdlov. "It's all over," he answered. [113], The truck was bogged down in an area of marshy ground near the Gorno-Uralsk railway line, during which all the bodies were unloaded onto carts and taken to the disposal site. It had clearly come from a child. The two missing children had been buried about 70 meters from the mass grave. In this documentary, we look at one of the most peculiar stories of civilizational surviva We're committed to providing the best documentaries from around the World. National Geographic Presents: Mystery of the Romanovs: Directed by Dan Krauss, Pam Rorke Levy. Get unlimited access for as low as $1.99/month, This story is the first in a two-part series about the Romanovs. It was a mystery that baffled historians for decades: what really became of the missing members of the Romanov royal family, long thought to have been murdered during the Russian revolution? But two of the Romanovs were never found. [122] The impending return of Bolshevik forces in July 1919 forced him to evacuate, and he brought the box containing the relics he recovered. Scientists began by testing the short tandem repeat (STR) markers on the nuclear DNA. The bodies of the parents and all five children were laid on the ground. According to historian David Bullock, the Bolsheviks, falsely believing that the Czechoslovaks were on a mission to rescue the family, panicked and executed their wards. They also recovered seven teeth, three bullets of various calibres, a tantalising fragment of a dress, and wire from a wooden box. One woman, who called herself Anna Anderson, surfaced in Berlin a few years after the execution and said she survived with the help of a kind Bolshevik soldier. Posted: 11/22/2019 11:25:45 PM EST. out of the jurisdiction of Yekaterinburg and Perm province). [100] Heavily laden, the vehicle struggled for 14 kilometres (9mi) on boggy road to reach the Koptyaki forest. It was a mystery that baffled historians for decades: what really became of the missing members of the royal Romanov family, long thought to have been murdered during the Russian revolution? Combined with additional DNA evidence from the 1991 grave document, we have virtually unquestionable evidence that the two persons recovered from the 2007 grave were the two missing children of the Romanov family: Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters. [79] At 8 pm, Yurovsky sent his chauffeur to acquire a truck for transporting the bodies, along with rolls of canvas to wrap them in. Romanovs: Missing Bodies Dr. Michael Coble is an associate professor and associate director of the Center for Human Recognition at the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center in Fort Worth, Texas. For starters, two of the Romanov children were missing. [67] Yurovsky later observed that, by responding to the faked letters, Nicholas "had fallen into a hasty plan by us to trap him". Given the mystery and debacle of the assassination of the Romanov family (and the missing bodies), people have held out hope for years that some of the children might have escaped. [126], After Yekaterinburg fell to the anti-communist White Army on 25 July, Admiral Alexander Kolchak established the Sokolov Commission to investigate the murders at the end of that month. 86 (Sverdlov) as well as the archives of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Executive Committee reveal that a host of party 'errand boys' were regularly designated to relay his instructions, either by confidential notes or anonymous directives made in the collective name of the Council of People's Commissars. "[118]Yurovsky knows nothing about the lack of jewelry in her underwear, so in his 1922 memoir, Here the special position Maria held in the family was confirmedshe is not similar to and [also] outwardly as the first two sisters: [she is] somewhat reticent and considered like a step-daughter in the family. is written on it. the two children missing from the mass grave - Alexei and one of his sisters - as evidence that the bodies found in the mass grave were not the Romanov family. Seven years later, five skeletons were found in a forest near Ekaterinburg, soon . [14] The identity of the remains was later confirmed by forensic and DNA analysis and investigation, with the assistance of British experts. The Romanovs were buried in two unmarked graves, one containing Nicholas, Alexandra, and three of their daughters and another containing Alexei and one of his sisters. Sokolov's report was banned. This raised the prospect of the Romanovs being rescued and on July 4th the guards were suddenly replaced by a squad of Cheka secret police under the command of a certain Yakov Yurovsky. [104] Alexandre Beloborodov and his deputy, Boris Didkovsky, were both killed in 1938 during the Great Purge. Lenin was, however, aware of Vasily Yakovlev's decision to take Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria further on to Omsk instead of Yekaterinburg in April 1918, having become worried about the extremely threatening behavior of the Ural Soviets in Tobolsk and along the Trans-Siberian Railway. [41] In early May, the guards moved the piano from the dining room, where the prisoners could play it, to the commandant's office next to the Romanovs' bedrooms. [43] An iron grille was installed on 11 July, after Alexandra had ignored repeated warnings from the commandant, Yakov Yurovsky, not to stand too close to the open window. To prevent a repetition of the fraternization that had occurred under Avdeev, Yurovsky chose mainly foreigners. And how could they further confirm the Tsars identity and convince skeptics? [91] The remaining executioners shot chaotically and over each other's shoulders until the room was so filled with smoke and dust that no one could see anything at all in the darkness nor hear any commands amid the noise. The Bolsheviks placed the family under house arrest, and then suddenly executed them in 1918 an event that toppled Russia's last imperial dynasty. In the first of the book's three parts, Massie relates the savage murders . Forensic DNA testing of the remains in the early 1990s was used to identify the family. Both agreed to provide DNA samples. Kudrin was also armed with a, 17/VII 1918 ( ), , . [156] Lenin operated with extreme caution, his favored method being to issue instructions in coded telegrams, insisting that the original and even the telegraph ribbon on which it was sent be destroyed. One of the missing bodies was Alexei and the other was one of the Czar's four daughters. This rebellion was violently suppressed by a detachment of Red Guards led by Peter Ermakov, which opened fire on the protesters, all within earshot of the tsar and tsarina's bedroom window. [69] Only seven of the 23 members of the Central Executive Committee were in attendance, three of whom were Lenin, Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky.