History Forum / General / British History / August 2007

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DSH
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Remains of Tsar's missing children found: experts

Reuters
25 August 2007

Russian forensic experts say they may have found the remains of two children
of the last Tsar whose bodies have been missing since a Bolshevik firing
squad executed Russia's royal family in 1918.

The scientists say examination of bones discovered near to the site where
the rest of the family were found suggests they belong to Tsar Nicholas II's
13-year-old heir, Prince Alexei, and his daughter Maria.

DNA testing still needs to be done to confirm the find.

"It is most likely that this second burial place is linked to the first one.
Everyone knows who they belong to," Sergei Pogorelov said, a historian with
the local administration in the Sverdlovsk region.

The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office says it is formally reopening its
investigation into the case.

Bolshevik revolutionaries shot the royal family in the basement of a
merchant's house in the city of Yekaterinburg, 1,450 kilometres east of
Moscow. Attempts were made to destroy the bodies, then they were dumped into
pits.

Following the collapse of Communist rule, remains believed to belong to the
Tsar, his wife and three daughters were exhumed and reburied in 1998 in the
imperial crypt of St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

But Prince Alexei Nikolayevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna were not
among those remains. Scientists, prosecutors and amateur historians have
mounted a huge operation to find them while some speculated they might have
survived.

"We need to be very careful about all these finds," Ivan Artsishevsky, part
of a group that says it represents surviving members of the Romanov family,
told Ekho Moskvy radio station.

But he added: "This is a very important event for the family and for the
whole history of Russia."

The scientists told a news conference in Yekaterinburg that the newly
unearthed bones belonged to two young people aged about 14 and 20, and had
been found close to the burial site of the other members of the royal
family.

Yes Alexei was 13 on 16 July 1918 and Maria was 19. -- DSH

A total of 44 bone fragments were discovered, with bullets found close
enough nearby to indicate to the forensic experts that they had been inside
the victims' bodies before they decomposed.

-Reuters

See Also:

<http://www.searchfoundationinc.org/>

<WJhonson@aol.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.1237.1187969369.7287.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com...

No...

Ekaterinberg was called Sverdlovsk -- between 1924 and 1991.

You've confused Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk) with Ekaterinberg.

Madame Blavatsky was born in Ekaterinoslav, now Dnipropetrovsk, in 1831.

DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas