Russian Federation Reopens Romanovs Case

Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsarina Alexandra, their four daughters – grand duchesses Olga, Maria, Anastasia and Tatiana – the Tsarevich Alexei, their son and four royal staff members were killed in 1918 in a distant house in Yekaterinburg.

Russia’s Investigative Committee says the remains of Czar Nicholas II and his wife are to be exhumed to determine whether body parts unearthed eight years ago are those of two of their children.

The powerful Investigative Committee confirmed some of the family’s remains were being re-examined, with spokesman Vladimir Markin saying the probe would look into “the circumstances of the death and burial of the imperial family”.

They will also compare the remains to those of their aunt, Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Fyodorovna, and study newly discovered materials from a 1918-1924 investigation into the murder by the White Guards who fought the Bolsheviks.

A previous investigation concluded that the remains were indeed those of Maria and Alexei, but a working group set up at the instigation of the Russian Orthodox Church insisted that further tests be carried out, the statement said.

The Romanovs exiled in 1917 and were ousted, soon prior to the communist Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government.

In 2007 the remains of Alexei and Maria were discovered close to the first burial spot. DNA tests identified them as the murdered royals.

But the Russian Orthodox church never recognised the remains as those of the royal family, and when they were buried in St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998 at a ceremony attended by the then president, Boris Yeltsin, the priest avoided speaking their names as he read the funeral rites.

The Russian Orthodox Church in 2000 canonised them.

The new investigation is focusing on the remains of four Romanovs.

Only now can investigators get access to Elizabeth’s remains, which are in Jerusalem. He was killed by a bomb thrown by a “People’s Will” revolutionary, and buried in his military uniform in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. They came to light in the past four years.