The truth of the bones

Lost trail of two Russian royals may end at UMass Medical lab

The work of a University of Massachusetts Medical School researcher may have put to rest one of the enduring mysteries of modern Russian history.

For nearly nine decades, no one could locate the bodies of Crown Prince Alexei, the final heir to the Russian throne, and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria. Bolshevik executioners had gunned down the pair, along with their father, Czar Nicholas II; their mother, Alexandra; and their three sisters in 1918 as the country descended into civil war. The remains of the Romanov czar, his wife, and three of the girls were exhumed in 1991, but not those of Alexei and Maria. Some believed the pair had survived the bloodshed, fueling wild tales of escape.

Now, a preliminary DNA analysis by a professor, Evgeny Rogaev, indicates that bone fragments discovered last year in the Ural Mountains probably belonged to two children of the last czar of Russia.

"This was a horrible crime, and I feel I have to help somehow to place these bodies in the appropriate place with the appropriate ceremony and funeral," Rogaev said.

Rogaev said that he would not discuss details of his conclusions, and he cautioned that testing remains to be done. In testing to date, Rogaev compared the DNA of the remains found last summer with the reported DNA of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II and a distant relative of Empress Alexandra, the children's mother. He hopes to compare DNA inherited through the paternal line within the month, testing that he said could offer conclusive results.

Yesterday, a regional governor in Russia, Eduard Rossel, announced the DNA findings.

"The main genetic laboratory in the United States has concluded its work with a full confirmation of our own laboratories' work," Rossel told reporters, according to the Associated Press. "This has confirmed that it is indeed the children."

Rossel did not identify the American laboratory. Rogaev confirmed that he had been commissioned to work on the remains and that he had relayed his preliminary findings to local Russian investigators.

Gregory Freeze, a professor of Russian history at Brandeis University, said that the findings would probably lay to rest any rumors of a Romanov survival.

"DNA testing is pretty incontrovertible. I should think this will settle it," he said.

Freeze said interest in Nicholas and his family has surged in post-Soviet times. He said that although Nicholas had been a repressive czar who executed thousands of his enemies, he is increasingly viewed as noble for opposing the Bolshevik regime. He was a pious man, too, a quality that some have come to laud in recent years as the Russian Orthodox Church has returned to prominence.

The Romanovs met a bloody death. Nicholas had abdicated in 1917 as the Bolsheviks swept across Russia. He and his family were shot by a firing squad on July 17, 1918, in the basement of a home in Yekaterinburg where they were being held.

All did not go as planned. Bullets ricocheted off the family jewels that the women had hidden in their corsets, nearly hitting the killers, Freeze said. The killers also struggled with how to dispose of the remains, which they feared could become symbols to rally anti-Bolshevik forces, he said.

Rogaev, a 47-year-old professor of psychiatry at Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute at UMass Medical School and a professor of genetics at Moscow State University, has a lengthy association with the mystery of the Romanov remains. He helped to identify the first set of remains that had been uncovered in 1991, which were later interred in a St. Petersburg cathedral that holds the crypts of other Russian royalty.

He said he had been asked by investigators in Russia to examine the second set of remains, discovered last year by anthropologists. Testing of the remains is proving more difficult than the first set, because the bone fragments were shattered and burned, he said.

Of his findings, he said: "I don't have a reaction. I am like a machine. Experts should work as a machine. You have to follow just the facts."

He won't discuss the Russian revolution's effect on his family. "Too personal," he said. And he has forbidden media from photographing the bone fragments.

"It's my ethical feeling," he said. "I feel I cannot make a show of the bones of murdered people, particularly kids. I don't like it."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.