DNA buries Romanov myth: Anastasia and brother died with family

2 children, long thought to have escaped, were slain along with kin in 1918, researchers say

March 11, 2009|By Thomas H. Maugh II, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS: Los Angeles Times

The most enduring and romantic legend of the Russian Revolution -- that two children of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, survived the slaughter that killed the rest of their family -- may finally be put to rest with the positive identification of bone fragments from a lonely Russian grave.

The czar and his family were gunned down and stabbed by members of the Red Guard early on the morning of July 17, 1918, but persistent rumors have maintained that two of the children, the Grand Duchess Anastasia and her brother Alexei, survived, perhaps because the diamonds sewn into their clothes blocked attempts to kill them.

Those hopes were bolstered with the 1991 disclosure that nine bodies of Romanov family members and servants had been found in a Yekaterinburg grave but that a son and daughter still were missing.

Now, newly analyzed DNA evidence from a second, nearby grave discovered in 2007 proves that the bones are from the final two children. A report on the analysis was published online Tuesday in the journal PLoS One.

"I think it is very compelling evidence that this family has been reunited finally," said geneticist Terry Melton of Mitotyping Technologies in State College, Pa., an expert in forensic DNA.

Melton, who was not involved in the new research, played a major role in disproving the claims of the late Anna Anderson that she was Anastasia, a claim that received a great deal of attention. Melton says she still receives several calls each year from people claiming to be direct descendants of the Romanovs.

"There is absolutely no doubt that these are the remains of the Romanov family," said Peter Sarandinaki, founder of the Scientific Expedition to Account for the Romanov Children Foundation, which has been seeking the remains of the family.

"The scientific results are, without a doubt, conclusive," said Sarandinaki, the great-grandson of the White Army general who tried to rescue the Romanovs before their deaths.

Nicholas abdicated the throne in March 1917, ending the 304-year Romanov rule, and the family was banished to Siberia.

The following year, the family, their doctor and three servants were executed by the Ural Red Guard on the orders of Vladimir Lenin and their bodies disposed of.

Russian film director Gely Ryabov, an amateur archeologist, found the remains of nine bodies in an unmarked grave near Yekterinburg in the early 1970s but kept the discovery secret until 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Says geneticist Anthony Falsetti of the University of Florida: "There are still people who are going to want to believe that there were survivors, and God bless them, but I am confident that the royal family has been found, they have been identified and there was no escape, no princess."