RUSSIA: Forensic experts hope to determine whether remains found earlier this year belong to Russia's royal family

Almost 90 years after Tsar Nicholas II and his family had been murdered by the Bolshevik revolutionaries, a team of international forensic experts is trying to determine whether remains found earlier this year belong to Russia's royal family. On July 17, 1918 Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra, their five children, their doctor and three attendants were herded into a dismal cellar in a home in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg and brutally murdered. The Bolshevik revolutionaries, who ordered the massacre, tried to destroy the bodies and hid the remains in a pit in the forest, producing an enduring mystery. Now a team of international forensic experts is working in Ekaterinburg to determine whether remains found in August this year are the remains of Prince Alexei Nikolayevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, two of the five children of Russia's last Tsar. While the remains of the Tsar, his wife and three of their children were found and exhumed in 1991, the bodies of these two children have been missing. The bones were discovered in a forest near the site where the remains of rest of the Romanov family were found and first examinations suggests they belong to Tsar Nicholas II's 13-year-old heir, Prince Alexei, and his daughter Maria. But only DNA tests can confirm the initial findings. Vladimir Gromov, deputy head of Ekaterinburg's Sverdlov Forensic Institute carrying out the investigation said the bones are severely destroyed and the institute needed to ask the help form foreign experts to extract DNA. "It will be very difficult to extract the DNA from the bones and we would need to apply special methods and research technology. This is why we have invited foreign specialists from various countries. They bring their expertise and it will make the research results more objective," said Gromov. One of the foreign experts helping in this case is American Anthony Falsetti. Falsetti is a professor of anthropology and director of the University of Florida's C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. Falsetti and his lab are well-known for their forensic work and also helped identifying the remains of the other members of the royal family "I am familiar and I was here in 1999 and have worked on this case on and off. So, yes, I am very familiar with the family and the importance of what we are doing here," Falsetti said. Falsetti is woking alongside a team of Russian forensic experts and criminologists, and his results will be compared with earlier findings. "We are not trying to influence the experts, they are working independently. And we will compare all the results with each other," said Vladimir Solovyov, a chief investigator. First results have shown the remains belong to two young people aged about 14 and 20. A total of 44 bone fragments were discovered, with bullets found close enough nearby to indicate to forensic experts that they had been inside the victims' bodies before they decomposed. Many people believe the two missing children escaped the 1918 massacre, but scientists soon hope to solve the enduring mystery and close the last chapter of Russia's last ruling royal family.

ITN Source | November 14, 2007

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