Romanovs: The Missing Bodies | National Geographic

to Anastasia [Music] an international team of forensic experts is flying in to the scene of a ninety-year-old crime in a far-flung Siberian forest including a leading forensic anthropologist and veteran of the 9/11 investigation Anthony false setting it's another case of huge significance especially for Russia the remains of long-lost members of its royal family may have been found at last but nobody knows for sure the truth of what happened to the romanovs has long been blurred by myth and legend did the royal line of russia end in a violent murder or did an heir to the throne escaped and survived the investigation team also includes dr. Michael Koval a leading forensic DNA expert who works for the Pentagon identifying the remains of American soldiers with the American military's laboratories at his full disposal he'll attempt to put names to these mystery bones the team is headed into a remote forest 20 kilometres outside the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg this far-flung industrial outpost is where the fate of Russia's royal family was written five children born into royalty the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana the flower of young womanhood Maria and Anastasia are beguiling teenagers thirteen year old Crown Prince Alexei is the boy born to be king millions of loyal Russians revere them even worship them a divine family set on earth to rule the nation but the Romanov line would end with them 1917 the Russian Revolution in its wake a civil war raged the Bolsheviks against the Tsarist loyalists the royal family was imprisoned exiled to Siberia under house arrest in Yekaterinburg but their popularity among the masses presented a problem for the fledgling Soviet administration the Bolshevik leadership planned a show trial and execution for the Tsar perhaps weary of a populist backlash some accounts say Lenin wanted the rest of the family kept alive as political pawns the royal family was dumped one and a half thousand kilometers away from Moscow on the unstable fringes of the new Soviet state much of the country was still divided in civil wars from here forensic anthropologist dr. Anthony faxed in 1991 local academics armed with shovels and vital information ventured into the cops yaki forest to dig although the Romanovs executioner's were long dead papers handed down by the commander yuck of Euro ski held clues as to where the bodies of the royal household might lie The Dig revealed a shallow grave skulls bones full skeletons but something was missing in 1991 nine sets of remains were found there were 11 people that were killed in Ekaterinburg that night two sets of remains were still missing the Czar and czarina three of their daughters and four attendants are identified but two of the youngest royal children aren't among the dead now little more than 60 meters from the first grave a second find is being investigated by leading American forensic experts locked away in the Yekaterinburg city morgue the newly uncovered bones will be subject to the most intensive 21st century forensic analysis did all of the Russian Royals come to a violent end at the hands of Bolshevik executioner's or could the legends be true did to of Tsar Nicholas children survive forensic anthropologist Anthony falsity and DNA expert Michael Koval are about to get their first look at the bones that may answer these intriguing questions once and for all and the lock and key in the Yekaterinburg morgue access to these potentially royal remains is tightly controlled in the year 2000 the Romanovs were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church if authenticated these bones could become holy relics Antony falsity is no stranger to these halls he was part of the original team assembled in the 1990s to investigate the first set of Romanov burns the investigation and its findings proved highly controversial sparking a very public Rauh Russian scientists used facial reconstruction techniques to claim that one of the bodies was that of Anastasia and others were unconvinced still more troubling was the body count discrepancy two bodies are still missing this time if two bodies were missing was the entire grave unrelated to the Romanovs there were accusations of political interference and rushed rash conclusions in the end the Russian Orthodox Church rejected the DNA evidence is tainted and refused to acknowledge that the remains were in fact the Romanovs but now this new find could change all that and this time the team wants to avoid the storm of publicity that engulfed investigations in 1991 but the Romanoff mystery is an enduring fascination we arrived into the lab and there's a massive number of cameras and people doing interviews while we're trying to look at the remains the start of the latest investigation makes the evening news ministry which is no Bushra government depend of castilla-la mancha but once the cameras are gone a critical story emerges once the cameras are gone we get down to work and what I discover is that these 44 fragments many were not going to be able to identify as being human perhaps they're not there's just not enough material here these shattered remains looked nothing like the nearly complete skeletons found in 1991 broken almost unrecognizable but careful inspection by expertise reveals the fragmentary remains are human but exactly who are they the remains of could these be the bones of Alexey Maria or Anastasia or do they belong to someone else entirely [Music] the mystery within the mystery is what happened to Anastasia did she escape or is she here right now I can't tell whether of two females or a male and a female or whether these fragments are part of the other bones that were already recovered handling and photographing what maybe the bones of saints is a delicate matter each fragment must be handled with the greatest respect and sensitivity then after intricate examination a breakthrough it doesn't look like much it is a portion of the pelvis it is our Oz [ __ ] and as it turns out it just from a female we can deduce that by the sciatic notch in males it would be more narrow in females it is quite wide that is critical we know we have two people now we know that one of them is female a male and a female body parts from two individuals but are they the missing Romanov children and any falsity and the forensic anthropologists will have to dig deeper for Mike Coble and the DNA team there's another problem these bones show evidence of burning looking at the remains I'm beginning to think this is gonna be a very difficult case when when the bone is burned there's a lot of heat generated which is not very good for DNA make our sample from down here two and a half three centimeter cut Michael kögel selects fragments most likely to yield readable DNA my new pieces will be cut off and sent to his lab in America and to other researchers around the world for independent analysis the fragments but teasing out the ninety-year-old genes that may lie dormant in the fragments will take weeks and the chances that the DNA has survived intact are slim for the forensic team a few pieces of badly damaged bone isn't much to go on [Music] but in the town where the Romanoff family met their end there are more leads to pursue local archaeologist Sergey Korolyov was one of the excavators who found the second lot of bones in 2007 he has kept and carefully stored evidence taken from the grave in the forest among the artifacts he's preserved are fragments of a wooden crate quantities of ash and some pieces of pottery each is a clue to what might have happened when the remains were buried the ash corroborates with burn marks found on the bones a grim picture is beginning to materialize what kind of container the pottery shards are perhaps the most compelling evidence they match similar fragments found in the nearby grave uncovered in 1991 other pieces of the puzzle will have to be found and put together correctly before a true picture can emerge of exactly what happened in the forest outside Yekaterinburg more than 90 years ago the most important pieces to that puzzle three bullets exhumed from the grave these projectiles may be the very bullets that killed the heir to the Romanov throne if they match the bullets found in the nearby grave in 1991 a conclusive forensic connection could be made between the two graves the bullets are taken for expert analysis when fired from a gun a bullet is scored with distinctive scratches as it travels through the barrel these so called ball markings are like fingerprints the first of the three bullets found in the 2007 grave excavation is too damaged for analysis but the other two have survived intact initial test shows the other two bullets have nearly identical bore marks implying that the same kind of gun was used what's the lowest we can determine that the bullets were shot from the same weapon a Browning pistol the type of weapon may have been identified but the results have exposed yet another twist in the tale these bullets are different in caliber than the ones found in 1991 the bullets don't match those found in the earlier grave meaning a different gun had to have been used to kill those buried in the other grave nearby we know that this gun is from the same time period but we don't have a direct tie to the ninety-one find no link a new and previously unknown weapon if there's no hard evidence linking the graves to the same crime and perhaps the remains in the latest grave belong to nameless victims and had nothing to do with the slaughter of the Romanov family [Music] so far forensic investigations hadn't been able to link the graves or the remains found inside them in Russia the forensic investigator Antony falsities trail is running cold but the answer to the lost bones identity and to what really happened to Anastasia and the rest of the Romanoff children maybe inside this box these are the samples DNA expert Michael Coble selected back at the Yekaterinburg Maugham they've made the journey halfway around the world for United States sealed in contamination proof containers other samples are on their way to Austria and other labs around the world the package is brought into a sterile room at each stage proper procedures are followed to make sure that the samples aren't damaged or contaminated the tiny samples inside wait just a few grams each are these the remains of Alec's a Maria or Anastasia Romanov to find out viable DNA will have to be extracted then traced back through the generations to genetic markers shared by a select group of people the intermarried households of European royalty the Romanov children like the British royal family were descended from Queen Victoria the DNA in this royal bloodline bears unique identifying genetic characteristics [Music] Michael Kobol and his team are more used to dealing with modern remains these bone fragments are nearly a century old and teasing viable DNA out of them won't be easy DNA is fragile and easily damaged by the ravages of time they've injured almost a century below ground in the climate of extremes well below freezing in winter and swelteringly hot in summer [Music] to extract and test the DNA most of the powdered sample will be used up if this first attempt fails there might not be enough material left over for a second definitive DNA analysis and the mystery of russia's royal grave may never be solved an international effort is underway to solve the 90 year old murder mystery of the Russian royal family American forensic anthropologist Anthony falsity has a lead that may help him piece together separate shreds of evidence recovered from the crime scene it's a testimony from a long-dead witness years ago it would have been unthinkable but now an American investigator has high-level access to Moscow State Archives here I am an American scientist two floors below ground a hundred years worth of communist secrets the keeper of those secrets is dr. Ludmilla likova giant glass doors designed to protect the Kremlin's most precious records from nuclear attack swing over we're down here it's 30 feet walls are two feet thick and this is Lennon's archive if Soviet archives hold the missing pieces to the Romanov puzzle this is where they'll be so these are Lennon's documents is originals he's how I didn't garganelli Engel this one's from Copenhagen correct yeah okay rumor here going that the Czar has been murdered kindly wire facts what's not yet this inquiry was one of many sent to Lenin in the weeks and days before the killing this was his reply rumor not true Azhar safe all rumors are only lie of capitalist press and it's signed Lenin when Lennon wrote this reply the royal family was alive asleep but they had only hours left to their by daybreak on the 17th of July the deed had been done but exactly what happened in the cellar is still open to question only the execution is new and their statements are on file in another basement the report filed by the head executioner commander Yakov Yourofsky is regarded as the most accurate account and makes chilling reading you Loski Jacque Fresco's and Yourofsky said this about the execution of the emperor's family they stood along the wall and here he said the following words to them the reign of the Romanovs has reached its end despite the fact that relatives both outside and inside the country are trying to liberate them the Ural Soviet of the workers deputies has decreed they must be shot when the executioners opened fire there were a number of problems amongst them they were in a basement room with stone walls which sent the bullet sort of ricocheting around the room yeah the firing Yourofsky says becomes ever so confused and when this confused fire ended the shooter saw the daughters were still alive they shot the girls but nothing happened they weren't able to kill them incredibly eyewitness accounts agreed that the Duchess's seemed to be protected by Joule filled corsets that acted like bulletproof vests statements by surviving firing squad members recorded in the 1960s confirmed this a botched execution anastasia may have survived the initial gunfire could she really have cheated death with a gem Laden corset and if that was true and what else might be possible all the accounts go on to say that everyone was finally killed with a gunshot wound to the head but what if that's alive what if there were co-conspirators co-conspirators that could have helped her escape it's another unsubstantiated story the forensic investigator decides to stage an experiment to put the first part of the story to the test could Jules stop a bullet diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring substance known to man but aren't practical all within the budget of this experiment scoring a respectable 8 out of 10 on the gem hardness scale zirconias are a more realistic alternative the replica course it is finished with rose quartz and carnelian bullets will smash into it at a thousand feet per second will they be deflected interior ministry colonel vladimir solovyov is the leader of the Romanov investigation he's got special permission to handle the actual guns fired by Europe's key and his execution squad tsar nicholas ii was killed with this pistol this second pistol was also in the basement of the in ponte of house and it may have been used to kill other members of the Czar's family this pistol was also used in all the events than the impact of house it's a grotesque feeling to be in the presence to hold the weapons to kill this family [Music] Torche the original guns can't be used in the experiment but the investigation is provided duplicates guns from the same era as with less iconic value the reconstructed dual corsets are placed on a mannequin for safety only the shooter is allowed in the room could a diamond corset have shielded Anastasia from a hail of bullets we have different powered weapons they were fired sequentially and what we have on the first two is clearly some fragmentation there were these projectiles did not pass through in these first two there's an impact site here from the second but none of these were what we would consider penetrating gunshot wounds this acts like a bulletproof vest maybe the legend is true [Music] perhaps the bones found in the forest aren't from people killed in the basement that night after all a gunshot aimed at the heart deflects by Julie's sown beneath the clothes the accounts that bullets ricocheted that Maria or Anastasia and Alexei perhaps survived the initial gunfire a becoming plausible for almost a century these accounts have been the basis for many spurious claims to the Russian throne Anna Anderson's claim was the most famous she went to her grave claiming to be the last grand duchess anastasia she convinced many people including the family of Peter Sarandon Aki whose ancestors were part of the Tsar's inner circle my mother-in-law to her dying days to her last day belief that Anna Anderson was Anastasia first and she had a triangular injury on her foot which was probably a bayonet stab she also had the same stubbed toe problem as Anastasia she had the same ear as Anastasia there were a lot of similarities between the two [Music] despite her persuasive story DNA testing after her death revealed her true identity she was not a royal but a former factory worker from Poland [Music] but determining whether the latest remains are those of the Romanov family or simply another case of mistaken identity will take time the DNA is so degraded that it must be copied or amplified to recover and identify any surviving fragments of genetic information that remain at his lab outside Washington DC DNA expert Michael Koval and his team are using a process called PCR or polymerase chain reaction by exposing the faint traces of DNA that remained to a bacterial enzyme a single piece of DNA can be multiplied generating millions of copies but even after amplification there are no guarantees that any readable DNA will emerge to make identification possible for now the identity of the two individuals in the grave remains a mystery while the search for viable DNA continues in America in Russia the search for clues has come to an end forensic expert Anthony falsity is going back with more questions than answers about the most recent grave in the 1991 excavation nearly intact full skeletons were found but in the grave uncovered in 2007 only fragments were unearthed why were there so few bones less than 10% of a full skeleton was found but even these scant remains can reveal more than DNA the degraded condition of the most recently discovered bones might actually be a clue in itself anthony falsity is about to take another look at the information he's collected at his laboratory at the University of Florida drawing on his long experience of bringing stories of the dead back to life he's looking for any patterns or links with other evidence [Music] he'll comb through the accounts of the executioner's and see if the history and bones tell a common story he already knows that this will be a harrowing tale the savagery did not end when the shooting stopped firing squad leader Yakov you're offski wrote that after the killing was done he feared that loyalist troops might catch them red-handed the plan was for a quick and clean disposal but as the bodies were being loaded into a truck the plan unraveled as they were lifting up one of the bodies she sat up and screamed it was either Maria Anastasia we know that two of the Grand Duchess has left that room alive her mock off grabbed a nearby rifle and ended up smashing them repeatedly in the face until they stopped screaming the bodies were then transported a dozen miles outside Yekaterinburg to the Copts iake forest to an area of abandoned mine works so here's what we know the bodies were taken into the forest they were thrown down a mineshaft grenades were thrown after him in an attempt to collapse the walls the bodies were only partially hidden as dawn approached Yurovsky returned to Yekaterinburg to report to his superiors misfortune struck again euro skis men got drunk and bragged to locals telling them how they killed the Royals and the location of the bodies their commander insisted on keeping the burial secret the corpses had to be moved the next day the bodies were retrieved and Yurovsky has his men looking for a new location but after the bodies were exhumed summer rain turned the ground to a gluey mud the truck got stuck the corpses had to be offloaded commander Yurovsky was exhausted and his men became mutinous he decided to try burning two of the bodies to make the process easier his men were ordered to dismember the corpses physical damage to fragment number one for seven supports the dismemberment story the royal remains were allegedly subject to another indignity but the evidence wouldn't be visible [Music] euro ski claimed that his men poured acid over the courses to disfigure them beyond recognition chemical composition tests on the bones conducted in Russia revealed faint traces of sulfuric acid according to Euro Ski it was then that his men burned what was left of the two bodies [Music] it's another element of the story that can be put to a forensic test as an alternative to human flesh pork is a good substitute the composition and structure of the meat is similar to its human equivalent and pigs are often used in forensic comparison we know that they had between an hour and a half in three hours to completely consume two human bodies three hours later the peak talk is his charred but still intact what we've demonstrated here is it's not possible to consume a body in a fire certainly not one for three hours relatively low temperatures Yurovsky 's plan to incinerate the corpses was more than a failure it was a fiasco dawn was breaking and there was still nine bodies in the truck a drastic change in tactics was in order he claimed his men dug a second pit further to the west that they threw the remaining nine bodies into the pit poured acid on them and then covered them with planks and soil what we know about history is being reflected by the evidence but circumstantial evidence will not be enough to put the legend of Anastasia's escape to rest to prove that the remains are not part of some elaborate hoax historical accounts must be corroborated by the irrefutable DNA do these new bodies belong to Russia's royal bloodline by most accounts tsar nicholas ii and his royal family were a close tight-knit group frequently seen together film here on a cruise when the children was still very young [Music] then playing tennis while on holiday a few years later and parading together in this 1913 celebration of 300 years of Romanov rule starring the nine year old Crown Prince Alexei and the four daughters about to bloom into womanhood but where the Romanovs is inseparable in death as they were in life DNA evidence gathered from the second and most recent grave attributed to them will tell the story five months after first selecting the bone samples for analysis DNA expert Mike Koval is now ready to share his findings let's see what you've got the first thing that we should look at is here this is the marker that determines sex and sample 146 there's an XY which means this is a male sample right and then 147 has one x peak and this is what we see with females so far the DNA only demonstrates that there were two bodies in the grave one male one female mic kobolds next step was to compare the male sample with DNA from Czar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra so what we have here on top this is a profile from the Tsar and in this on the bottom is a profile from the czarina and here is the male sample from the second grave we expect that this particular profile is going to be a combination of the Tsar and the czarina if this is truly Alexei this male got this 25 repeat peak from bizarre and this 23 peak was passed to him from the czarina and here is the male's that makes 17 out of 17 possible matches the evidence is overwhelming yeah absolutely that's their son and they had warrants on and that's Alexei exactly right finally there's compelling forensic evidence that 13 year-old Crown Prince Alexei was executed along with the rest of his family though not buried with them but what about the female found in the second grade Mike Coble compared Alexa's DNA with hers what's interesting though is that notice they both share 23 they both share this marker which is a 33 point to repeat once again one genetic marker after another is shown 17 repeats 23 repeats leading to another overwhelming statistical probability it's over a million times more likely that these remains are siblings than if they were completely unrelated okay very strong evidence here that we have a brother and a sister yeah [Music] that sister was either Maria or Anastasia but beyond that the DNA evidence has nothing else to suggest of course there is a limitation here the DNA can't tell us exactly which child is Anastasia which child is Maria the bottom line isn't really doesn't matter anymore because they're all present and accounted yet after almost an entire century the final chapter of the Romanov dynasty can be written at last Anastasia the youngest Romanov daughter did not escape the firing squad like her mother my father her baby brother and her three older sisters Anastasia was shot to death in July 1918 one month after her 17th birthday [Music] she was buried along with the others among the towering birch trees [Music] it was surely not the end any of them expected what is but the DNA evidence makes it clear that's what really happened on the night when Russia's longest-lived dynasty came to its abrupt and bloody end [Music]

Channel: The Romanov Royal Martyrs

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Keywords: romanovs, romanov, romanov royal martyrs, Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, Royal Family, Romanov execution, Romanov dynasty, Romanov trailer, Romanov family, Romanoffs, Helen Rappaport, Four sisters, Last Tsar, Ekaterinburg, Olga Shirnina, Anastasia Romanov, Alexandra Feodrovna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, Royalty, British Royalty, romanov family today, romanov family death, romanov coronation, romanov sisters, romanov jewels, romanov saints, romanov book, National Geographic

Id: wRWSIUQfahI

Length: 40min 35sec (2435 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019