autopsy romanov family

[100] Ermakov grabbed Alexander Strekotin's rifle and bayoneted her in the chest,[100] but when it failed to penetrate he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head. [5], Yurovsky and five other men laid out the bodies on the grass and undressed them, the clothes piled up and burned while Yurovsky took inventory of their jewellery. Behind, from left to right, are their daughters Maria, Olga, and Tatiana.. Alexandra did not trust Yurovsky, writing in her final diary entry just hours before her death, "whether it's true & we shall see the boy back again!". [79] This claim was consistent with that of a former Kremlin guard, Aleksey Akimov, who in the late 1960s stated that Sverdlov instructed him to send a telegram confirming the CEC's approval of the 'trial' (code for execution) but required that both the written form and ticker tape be returned to him immediately after the message was sent. [83] Neither Yurovsky nor any of the killers went into the logistics of how to efficiently destroy eleven bodies. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images, https://www.history.com/news/romanov-family-bodies-discovery-coverup, Why the Romanov Familys Fate Was a Secret Until the Fall of the Soviet Union. [16] Boris Yeltsin and his wife attended the funeral along with Romanov relations, including Prince Michael of Kent. . The wall had been torn apart in search of bullets and other evidence by investigators in 1919. Yurovsky sent them to the Popov House for failing "at that important moment in their revolutionary duty". Dmitry Shlapentokh. He ordered additional trucks to be sent out to Koptyaki whilst assigning Pyotr Voykov to obtain barrels of petrol, kerosene and sulphuric acid, and plenty of dry firewood. Their four daughters were named Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and their son was named Alexei. [124] 44 partial bone fragments from both corpses were found in August 2007. [103] Future investigations calculated that a possible 70 bullets were fired, roughly seven bullets per shooter, of which 57 were found in the basement and at all three subsequent gravesites. By this time, however, the coded telegram ordering the execution of Nicholas, his family and retinue had already been sent to Yekaterinburg. [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. [32] They were forbidden to speak any language other than Russian[33] and were not permitted access to their luggage, which was stored in a warehouse in the interior courtyard. of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world at the city's Church on the Blood marks the 100th anniversary of the murder of Russia's last . Since the female body was badly disfigured, Yurovsky mistook her for Anna Demidova; in his report he wrote that he had actually wanted to destroy Alexandra's corpse. [104] Alexandre Beloborodov and his deputy, Boris Didkovsky, were both killed in 1938 during the Great Purge. [87] Yurovsky's assistant Grigory Nikulin remarked to him that the "heir wanted to die in a chair. Nicholas noted in his diary on 8 July that "new Latvians are standing guard", describing them as Letts a term commonly used in Russia to classify someone as of European, non-Russian origin. [104] Stepan Vaganov, Ermakov's close associate,[151] was attacked and killed by peasants in late 1918 for his participation in local acts of brutal repression by the Cheka. 29, 2023 at 7:53 AM PDT. [14], On 29 July 2007, another amateur group of local enthusiasts found the small pit containing the remains of Alexei and his sister, located in two small bonfire sites not far from the main grave on the Koptyaki Road. Sulphuric acid was again used to dissolve the bodies, their faces smashed with rifle butts and covered with quicklime. In 1979, a geologist in Russia approached a grassy area near the Koptyaki forest. The family of Tyre Nichols has filed a lawsuit against the city of Memphis, its police department, and several officers involved in the death of the 29-year-old black motorist. [117], The reason for the lack of jewels in Maria's underwear was, according to Gillard and other witnesses, "not only the daughters who wore bras with jewels sewn into them, but these bras were on those daughters." He unsuccessfully tried to collapse the mine with hand grenades, after which his men covered it with loose earth and branches. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Everything was packed into the Romanovs' own trunks for dispatch to Moscow under escort by commissars. p. 220. One was the Tsars great niece, and the second was a Duke in Scotland. [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. Mr Nichols died . [58], The sixteen men of the internal guard slept in the basement, hallway, and commandant's office during shifts. And perhaps even more pressingly, could scientists be sure the grave truly belonged to the Romanovs and not some other unfortunate family? [14][142] Although criminal investigators and geneticists identified them as Alexei and one of his sisters, either Maria or Anastasia,[143] they remain stored in the state archives pending a decision from the church,[144] which demanded a more "thorough and detailed" examination. Erin Blakemore is a journalist from Boulder, Colorado. [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. [181], In late 2015, at the insistence by the Russian Orthodox Church,[182] Russian investigators exhumed the bodies of Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, for additional DNA testing,[183] which confirmed that the bones were of the couple. All those under arrest will be held as hostages, and the slightest attempt at counter-revolutionary action in the town will result in the summary execution of the hostages. [125] Alexei and his sister were burned in a bonfire and their remaining charred bones were thoroughly smashed with spades and tossed into a smaller pit. . For starters, two of the Romanov children were missing. [44], The guard commandant and his senior aides had complete access at any time to all rooms occupied by the family. Yurovsky returned to the forest at 10 pm on 18 July. 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. Twenty-seven others were killed in the next 84 days. Romanov family shrouded in mystery Nicholas II, his German-born wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children, Anastasia, Maria, Tatiana, Olga and Alexei, were executed by the Bolsheviks. [100] Heavily laden, the vehicle struggled for 14 kilometres (9mi) on boggy road to reach the Koptyaki forest. The Russian Prosecutor General's main investigative unit said it had formally closed a criminal investigation into the killing of Nicholas because too much time had elapsed since the crime and because those responsible had died. [77] Shooting and stabbing them at night while they slept or killing them in the forest and then dumping them into the Iset pond with lumps of metal weighted to their bodies were ruled out. [72] Preston's requests to be granted access to the family were consistently rejected. [139][122] Three skulls were removed from the grave, but after failing to find any scientist and laboratory to help examine them, and worried about the consequences of finding the grave, Avdonin and Ryabov reburied them in the summer of 1980. Nicholas was forbidden to wear epaulettes, and the sentries scrawled lewd drawings on the fence to offend his daughters. And how could they further confirm the Tsars identity and convince skeptics? [38] The second palisade was constructed after it was learned that passersby could see Nicholas's legs when he used the double swing in the garden. I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. [126], Ivan Plotnikov, history professor at the Maksim Gorky Ural State University, has established that the executioners were Yakov Yurovsky, Grigory P. Nikulin, Mikhail A. Medvedev (Kuprin), Peter Ermakov, Stepan Vaganov, Alexey G. Kabanov (former soldier in the Tsar's Life Guards and Chekist assigned to the attic machine gun),[45] Pavel Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, and Y. M. Tselms. Seven bodies, including two that investigators believe belong to two missing teenage girls, were found Monday afternoon at an Oklahoma residence of a man who authorities were seeking in the teens . He had a permit to dig, and authorities assumed he was there for geological research. Born: June 18, 1901, in St. Petersburg, Russia Died: July 17, 1918, in Yekaterinburg, Russia [121], During transportation to the deeper copper mines on the early morning of 19 July, the Fiat truck carrying the bodies got stuck again in mud near Porosenkov Log ("Piglet's Ravine"). [59][168] However, only the final resting places of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and her faithful companion Sister Varvara Yakovleva are known today, buried alongside each other in the Church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem. But Alexei and Marias remains are still being held in a Russian state archivenot buried along with the rest of their family. 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. [148] Pyotr Voykov was given the specific task of arranging for the disposal of their remains, obtaining 570 litres (130impgal; 150USgal) of gasoline and 180 kilograms (400lb) of sulphuric acid, the latter from the Yekaterinburg pharmacy. Before the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, the Romanovs were Russia's last Royal Family. [20][21] Most historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the Imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War. [32] Their Brownie cameras and photographic equipment were confiscated. The family was imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in Yekaterinburg's Ipatiev House, which was designated The House of Special Purpose (Russian: ). [27], On 22 March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II, deposed as a monarch and addressed by the sentries as "Nicholas Romanov", was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. [28] Princess Helen of Serbia visited the house in June but was refused entry at gunpoint by the guards,[52] while Dr Vladimir Derevenko's regular visits to treat Alexei were curtailed when Yurovsky became commandant. The leader of the new guards was Adolf Lepa, a Lithuanian. [85] The family was very upset as Leonid was Alexei's only playmate and he was the fifth member of the imperial entourage to be taken from them, but they were assured by Yurovsky that he would be back soon. Four chemical bases adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine bond with hydrogen to make base pairings. The case, however, was still open. The two missing children had been buried about 70 meters from the mass grave. She has been a regular contributor to History.com since 2017. [176][162], The remaining two bodies of Alexei and one of his sisters, presumed to be Maria by Russian anthropologists and Anastasia by American ones, were discovered in 2007. [177] However, reflecting the intense debate preceding the issue, the bishops did not proclaim the Romanovs as martyrs, but passion bearers instead (see Romanov sainthood).[177]. Czar Nicholas and his family waited patiently in the basement.

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