The Assassins
The assassins first took the bodies to a mineshaft and tossed them in. Later they were recovered, some were burned and others covered with acid. Eventually they were buried in a forest, the location hidden by the Soviet government.
There were rumors that one of the Czar’s children survived. In fact, several women claiming to be Anastasia appeared over the years. Anna Anderson is the most famous. Eugenia Smith was another but the lion’s share of the attention went to Anderson.
When Anderson was pulled from the water in 1920, she had no identification and she refused to give her name. She was transferred to a mental hospital where someone supposedly recognized her as a Grand Duchess. Not Anastasia, but Tatiana, one of her older sisters. She didn’t deny it, but she never said it either. When given a list of the Czar’s daughters, she crossed out all the names except Anastasia.
Trying to prove her identity, officials arranged for one of her mother’s ladies-in-waiting to visit her. Anderson hid and the lady-in-waiting declared she was an imposter. Anastasia’s tutor, Pierre Gilliard said that he thought she might be Anastasia but later said she was not.
Nikolia’s cousin, Grand Duke Alexander, after spending time with Anastasia said, "I have seen Nicky’s daughter." And a cousin, Princess Xenia (do you really think I could have not mentioned a princess with that name) was a supporter of the claim.
Anderson filed suit in a German court in 1938, attempting to prove her identity. Anthropologist Otto Reche testified that Anastasia and Anna Anderson were one in the same, or that they had been identical twins. The suit was finally settled in 1970, with the court ruling, not that Anderson wasn’t Anastasia, but that she had failed to prove that she was.
Then, of course, came the collapse of the Soviet Union. Included in the state archives, now available to researchers from around the world, was information about the gravesite. Excavations found that all but two of the Romanovs had been buried together. Missing, based on the evidence, were Alexei who would have become Czar and Anastasia. At least that was the consensus. Those other two had been buried somewhere else.
The door that had remained slightly open was quickly closed. The "In Search Of…" program predated the discovery of DNA "fingerprinting" and DNA mapping. It predated the research that is so common now, that proves paternity in so many cases, and solves so many crimes to a high degree of certainty. It was used to confirm that the Czar, his wife and three of his daughters, along with four others, servants, maids, and a doctor were buried together.
Samples of Anna’s DNA (thought of as hair and blood samples so long ago) had been preserved. DNA of the Romanov family line existed in the members of that royal family. And with the majority of the bodies found, other DNA sampling was possible. The conclusion, based on the DNA evidence, was that Anna was an imposter. She was not the sole surviving member of the Czar’s family. The real Anastasia died with the rest of her family.
But as is so often the case, the believers simply would not let go. The hair sample, which came from a North Carolinian who had outbid others for some cartons of books owned by Jack Manahan, who had married Anna Anderson late in life was challenged. In the box, packed by Althea Hurt, one of Jack’s relatives, was a sample of hair. There is no positive way to link it to Anderson, other than the box came from Anna’s husband and it was deduced that it was Anna’s hair. The provenance of it is somewhat shaky.
The second sample is a section of intestine that had been kept at the Martha Jefferson Hospital. Here the provenance is much better. The sample was sent from Charlottesville to England where the testing was done by those who had originated the technique. Although mailed, it required special handling so that it could be tracked the entire way. The provenance, and a chain of custody because it had to clear customs, has been preserved.
Believers suggest that the Romanov family, which has much to gain if Anna was proved not to be Anastasia, might have intercepted this package along the route and switched it for another DNA sample. One that surely would not match.
But here we move into conspiracy a little too deeply. We have the definitive evidence in the form of DNA. We have the evidence from the Russian archives. We have the testimony of the men who carried out the assassination, in the form of careful reports made in 1918 and hidden by the Soviets. Reports that were detailed enough that the majority of the bodies were found. Clearly there is no longer a doubt that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia.
And as if that wasn’t enough, it seems that the DNA proved that Anna Anderson had been Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who disappeared the night that Anderson appeared. A factory worker, by coincidence who had been injured by a grenade that detonated in the factory where she worked and therefore having some scares that matched, generally, those of the real Anastasia. (And no, I’m not going to wonder how they managed to get a DNA sample of this woman for comparison. I’ll merely note that it seems a tad bit incredible.)
So, while the producers of "In Search Of…" in the 1970s believed that the question of Anastasia might not be resolved, it seems that it was. The documentation found in the Russian archives and the DNA evidence proves that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia.
In Search of… Anastasia Part 2
Back when I began this blog, I had in mind that I would explore those things that interested me, especially in the realm of the unusual and the paranormal. I have, in the past, talked about global warming on
Mars (and, apparently on Pluto), how many planets are in the Solar System (eight for those of you who haven’t been keeping track), and if Anna Anderson was really the Russian princess Anastasia (seen here in 1910). In that column, based on DNA, I thought the answer was no.
Some disagreed. Although the bodies of the Czar and most of his family had been found ending part of the mystery, two of the children were still missing. That could mean that they had survived and that Anderson could have been Anastasia. Anderson wasn’t the only woman who made this claim. She was merely the most famous. Certainly all of them couldn’t be telling the truth, and as so often happens, it was pretty clear that none of them were.
The story that had circulated for years was that Nicholas II, his wife, five children, a doctor and three servants were killed in the basement of a house where they had been imprisoned after the Russian Revolution. The records of those murders became available to the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union confirming the story that had been a fairly well known “secret”. In 1991, the remains of several bodies were found… with a couple of important exceptions.
And, to complicate the story even more, there seems to be some confusion about who was found in 1991. Aleksei, the 13-year-old son, and one of his sisters seemed to be missing from the mass grave. Many believed the missing girl was Anastasia, but others suggested it was her sister, the 19-year-old Maria.
And there the mystery remained until this year. Vitaly Shitov (and yes, that name bothers me too), who is reported to live in the Yekaterinburg (Russia) area where the bodies were found, said that he believed that the two missing children would be located in the same place, just not in the same, common grave. This year, he, and fellow amateur archaeologists discovered, on a raised area about 70 yards from the first grave, a second. It contained two bodies, (or rather bones of two bodies), believed to be those of Aleksei and one of his sisters.