Russian Federation exhumes czar’s remains in new probe

But the remains of Grand Duchess Maria and Tsarevich Alexei were discovered at another place in 2007.

Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra were killed by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1918, alongside their daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia and their son, Alexei.

The remains that were excavated in the ’90s are said to have included the czar, his wife, three of their children and several servants.

Russian officials are keen to ascertain that another set of remains, thought to belong to Nicholas’ heir, Czarevich Alexei, and one of the czar and czarina’s four girls, Maria.

Russia first looked into the murder of the family after a mass grave was discovered in 1991 near Yekaterinburg in the Urals, where the royal couple and their five children were exiled and shot after the Russian Revolution.

The question of the authenticity of the remains has taken on fresh urgency ahead of the looming centenary of the murder, as Russian Federation wants to bury all seven family members together.

The bodies were later buried in St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998, exactly 80 years after their murders.

Investigators also took samples from a blood-soaked coat that Tsar Alexander II – Nicholas’ grandfather – was wearing when he was fatally injured by a terrorist’s bomb in 1881, Interfax reported.

US armed forces geneticist Michael Coble, who worked on identifying the 2007 remains, wrote a thorough and kind of annoyed-sounding chronicle of all the testing that’s been done so far, dismissing some other scientists’ “feeble attempts to discredit these studies with contaminated data” and concluding, “It is now time to put this controversy to rest”.

They are also seeking access to the remains of the empress’ sister, Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Russia, the Investigative Committee statement said, adding that her remains are in Israel and have never been examined by Russian investigators. They came to light in the past four years.

However, the Russian Orthodox Church – which has canonized the last Romanovs – said it remained unconvinced, and the remains were stored at the Russian state archives.