My Father the Czar
Copyright 1998
Library of Congress number: 98-96138
by AUTHOR22@aol.com
All rights reserved
Chapter Twenty
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Vancouver Canada
June 26, 1977
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A small announcement appeared in the obituary column of the Sunday
edition of a Vancouver newspaper which read simply: "Died. Alexei
Heino Tammet-Romanov. Succumbed to Leukemia at the age of 73. Survived
by his wife and two sons.
A note in the tickler file of the city's newspaper was removed, and a
clipping of the obit was mailed to an obscure reporter in Idaho.
Before closing the file, the part time secretary, part time reporter
dugout the backup document and passed it on to her city editor.
The single sheet told little to anyone unfamiliar with the deceased:
1904: Alexi N. Romanov born in Russia.
1905: Ernst Benckendorf born in Russia. Died of typhoid about 1916.
1912: Spala A.N.R. bout with hemophilia.
1913: Imperial Black Eagle medal seen worn by Czar at royal wedding.
1917 March: Czar abdicates.
1918 July: Assassination at Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg.
1918 December: Benckendorf family records show Ernst Benkendorf.
1920: Alexi's foster family migrates to Estonia.
1921 January: Paul Benckendorff dies in Estonian border town.
1934: Official account of Alexi being executed.
1935: Imperial Court disagrees with hemophilia diagnosis.
1935: Journalist interviewed executioner.
1937: Alexi acquires publishing house in Estonia.
1939: Alexi made funeral arrangements for foster mother.
1939 September: Estonia under Soviet Control.
1943: Alexi marriage of convenience and migrates to Finland.
1945: Marriage ended in Sweden. Remarried. Had two sons.
1952: Migrated to Canada.
1954: Alexi opens a dance studio in White Rock.
1956: Alexi meets girl who will become his third wife.
1960: Alexi Marries for third time.
1967: Alexi seen wearing the Imperial Black Eagle medal.
1971: Alexi begins using name of Romanov.
1972: Alexi reveals his identity to his sons.
The city editor glanced quickly at the sheet, and wondered why there
had been a tickler made for it. It was late afternoon, and the man
wanted to go home so he tossed the paper into his waste paper basket.
The envelope, containing the obit arrived in Pocatelo, Idaho on
Friday, July first, and was delivered to a rural mail box on Saturday.
A tall elderly man, thin to the point of being gaunt, made his way
through the hot afternoon sun and retrieved an arm full of mail. Under
his breath he cursed the American way of doing business which filled
his box with unwanted advertising.
After leafing through a half dozen smaller envelopes, and filing them
between his fingers in order of importance, he came across the one
from Canada.
By the time he had reached his house his fingers were shaking in
anticipation. Nevertheless, he filed the junk mail in the trash barrel
and placed all but the Canadian letter on his desk.
He sat down in his upholstered rocker, fumbled with the envelope, and
finally opened it. It's content was the obituary clipping.
Sean wept as he read of Alexi's passing. It was not unexpected. He had
known since 1971 of the existence of a man calling himself Alexi
Romanov. Even before that he had heard rumors that the Tsarevich was
alive, and living in Toronto. He couldn't remember exactly when he had
first heard. Despite the passing years he had never been convinced
that the heir to the Russian dynasty was dead, so those hopes had
continually promoted his wishful thinking.
He had made his first trip to Toronto in the fall of 1971 after a
letter written to the Canadian Prime Minister had been published. A
man, reporting to be Alexei Romanov, had complained that a Polish
impostor named Michael Goleniewski was claiming to be the Russian heir
and England was on the verge of offering him official recognition.
As a reporter Sean was able to gain the co-operation of both the
newspaper and the Canadian government. He had written a letter
requesting an appointment with the Canadian Alexei Romanov, but the
letter had not produced the anticipated invitation.
Sean repeated the request, but at the end of the note he asked the
question: "Did you complete your Gdov movie."
A telephone call to Sean's farm asked him to meet at the Romanov home.
The caller was female, and identified herself as Alexei's wife.
A flurry of activity preceded the trip north. The farmer had become a
recluse, so little packing was required and he carried his single
suitcase on board the aircraft.
The man that Sean visited, was bed ridden and emaciated. They spoke
for several hours. It seemed odd to them both, that Alex-T had married
three times, produced two sons, and a number of grand children while
Alex-P had never married.
They took turns telling the other about their lives since they had
last seen one another in 1917. The Tsarevich had been subjected to a
mock execution and spirited away to be raised as the son of a
Ekaterinburg farmer. Later they migrated to Estonia, then to Finland,
Sweden, and finally to Canada.
Sean told of his escape through Finland, Sweden, and France. His voice
changed to a throaty emotion as he told of his love affair with
Charles, then his escape to America. In 1945 he learned that Charles
McGee had been killed in France while a member of the underground.
From then on his life had been concerned only with his survival.
The July afternoon was hot and dry yet Sean felt a nostalgic comfort
settle over him. It was as though an adventure had come to an end.
He reached for a thick loose leaf notebook, flipped it open and began
to re-read the notes he had accumulated during the past six years.
A historian had been quoted in an article in Life Magazine: "Without
doubt it remains the single most dramatic event in Russia's history, a
brief moment during the eighteenth year of our twentieth century that
is frozen in the worlds memory for all time. While we strain to deal
with its brutality, not one of us knows the exact truth of what
happened. Stories told by those who did the deed are full of
contradictions and the perpetrators have all since met that inevitable
fate which none of us can escape. Thus, the world is left with only
scattered pieces of evidence, some as yet undiscovered, which we must
analyze under the cold lens of logic.
"During the earliest hours of a Siberian summer morning, twelve armed
men entered the cellar room of Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg where
they faced six women, four men and a boy. Some speculate that the
family group, with their retainers, had been told that they were being
photographed as proof of their well being. What followed a brief
statement, delivered by the leader of the twelve, can only be
described as bloody carnage."
Sean leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes, yet the tears
continued to flow as he thought back over the years since he had been
chosen by Gregori Rasputin and taken to live with the Imperial family.
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Las Vegas Nevada
1998
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The writing of "My Father the Czar" has been a unique experience for
the author.
The original concept was to capture the experience of a young royal,
brought into focus by the death of Princes Diana. And what better
world stage to set it on then that of the Romanov dynasty of 1914
Russia?
The naivete of the author precluded any prediction of the dramatic
events of past history, nor the radical, almost fictional, aspects of
real life.
What began as pure fiction, soon became dramatizations of historical
fact.
It has always been assumed that the murder of Nicholas II and his
family was the final act in the drama of the Russian monarchy... but
one must ask: "Is that accurate?"
DNA identification of remains unearthed at the end of the Cold War
proved once and for all that Nicholas, the Czarina, and three of his
four daughters were murdered in 1918 as had been reported. However, it
also revealed something else which has fueled the long-standing rumors
of survivors: the bodies of one of the daughters and the Czar's only
son and heir are still missing!
So what happened to the Crown Prince who may have been the legal Czar
at the time of the murders in 1918?
The answers to that question are as radical, and unbelievable as was
the beginning of the Great War, the influence of Gregori Rasputin, or
the murder of the Imperial family.
While the story appears to have drawn to a conclusion in Canada, the
trail begans in Siberia.
A clue to the answer may be found when Boris Yeltsin, in 1977, carried
out the orders of Leonid Brezhnev and KGB boss Yuri Andropov to tear
down the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg; the site where the Bolshevik
murders took place.
Why was there a sudden need to eliminate the last known physical
evidence of the murders when its existence had been first glorified
and then ignored during the previous fifty-nine years? After all, it
had been the KGB who had called for the demolition and it had been the
KGB's Cheka predecessors who had committed the murders. So again one
must ask: Why did the destruction of the last remaining evidence
coincide with the death of a survivor known only to the KGB?
Moscow insiders were fully aware that the man who died in a Vancouver
area hospital on the 26th of June 1977 was believed by Vancouverites
of Russian and Estonian descent to be the Crown Prince Alexei. The
man's death certificate gives his name as Alexei Heino Tammet-Romanov.
The historic building where Russia's Imperial murders took place was
razed to the ground on 27th of July 1977, exactly one month... thirty-
one days after his death!
In April of 1992 the man's widow sent two of Alexei's teeth to
England's Home Office forensic scientists in Aldermaston, and is
presumed to still be there.
On the tenth day of May 1993 Russian researcher Dr. Ivanov sent a memo
to Molecular Research Centre director Dr. Peter Gill stating that he
considered an analysis of those teeth to be worthwhile.
As a result of the progress being made in recognizing the Canadian
Romanov family, one of the children moved to Russia in 1991 to aide
the Russian government in its quest for the truth.
Much of the evidence supporting the story of Alexei Tammet-Romanov was
received in Moscow by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in
October of 1995. A few weeks later Boris Yeltsin, the Patriarch Alexei
II, and St. Petersburg's former mayor Anatoly Sobchak canceled plans
for the formal burial of the remains of Czar Nicholas II for the
fourth time.
In the preface of his book "The Romanov Conspiracies", Dr. Michael
Occleshaw stated that before Dr. Ivanov had left England he had
complained about political interference.
A research paper on the mitochondrial DNA work was sent by Dr. Gill to
the scientific journal "Nature Genetics" in August of 1993 (published
in the February 1994 edition). That paper has since been offered as
the standard against which any DNA comparisons of those who claim to
be survivors of the Romanov murders should be made.
Despite the positive activity, the political atmosphere in Moscow
created such a fear of danger that N. Romanov brought his family back
to Canada, vowing never to again set foot on Russian soil.
The only way that scientists and the politicians behind them could
maintain jurisdiction over this explosive situation was to exert
control over what was published in scientific journals. One might
speculate that if a match was already known then it would have been a
simple matter to take measures to block a third party attempt to
produce a DNA match and its resultant valid claim to Russia's dormant
throne.
Just how did the world's most famous hemophiliac survive a hail of
assassins' bullets in the early morning hours of July 17, 1918? The
two-part answer to that question is amazingly simple.
First, the execution squad commander aimed his revolver at the right
ear of the Tsarevich and squeezed the trigger twice... but he was
NEVER shot! The impression that he had been killed was purposely
created as part of Lenin's revolutionary campaign of disinformation.
Even Alexei never understood how and why it happened. He was only
weeks short of his fourteenth birthday at the time of the execution
and there was no need for the perpetrators to tell him their purpose.
As teenage heir to Russia's throne, Alexei was a useful pawn to keep
hidden away just in case he was needed before the final outcome of the
Revolution was secured two years later. The Russians have always been
good at the game of chess and they know only too well that a pawn on
the seventh rank is only a pawn... but as soon as it reaches the
eighth rank it can be elevated to become the most dangerous piece on
the board.
The second answer to the question of Alexei's survival is the one that
will be dealt with first. It has escaped the experts for more than
three-quarters of a century because, until now, there was no need to
question or explain it. Historians have always assumed that the son of
Czar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra was a hemophiliac. However, no
absolute proof of that diagnosis exists and the medical records of the
Tsarevich Alexei have yet to be found. The only formal statement ever
to come from the palace was issued by the physicians of the Imperial
court on the 21st of October 1912 in which the doctors described the
boy's symptoms as a "significant anemia".
Alexei's blood disorder has always been given as the reason for the
Czarina's dependence on Rasputin's healing abilities.
However if Alexi was not a hemophiliac and the Russian doctors at the
turn of the century were wrong in their diagnosis then the next 15
years must be looked at in a different light. The official cause of
the Prince's illness, in 1912, was never publicly explained by
Russia's Imperial court. In fact, it was a state secret. In 1913 there
was a speculative piece in the newspapers and the story was expanded
from there, but it was never actually confirmed.
Today we know more about the science of hematology than we did in
1912. There is no doubt that the boy was suffering from a potentially
deadly blood disorder, but it was not hemophilia. The curse that hung
over the head of the young Tsarevich was even more terrible than that.
Reviewing all of the available material in the story of the Russian
Royals reveals two problems with that original diagnosis. Alexei would
often go for months at a time without any problems and then be struck
down without warning by a new attack.
This should have been one of the first alarm bells to ring with
medical professionals telling them there is something wrong with the
historic record. The boy's symptoms were episodic but hemophilia is
not; it is always there.
The second alarm bell sounds even louder than the first. The worst
episode Alexei experienced was at the Czar's hunting lodge in Spala,
Poland during October of 1912. The boy screamed in agony, doubled up
from the pain of internal hemorrhaging with his face exhibiting a
sickly colorless pallor marked with black circles under his eyes. The
key to the true nature of Alexei's disease can be found in a letter
that Czar Nicholas wrote to his mother. In it he said, "The days from
the 6th to the 10th were the worst... His high temperature made him
delirious night and day".
Whenever one of these episodes struck the doctors said they could not
explain the fevers that were a part of his symptoms. Today, physicians
know that the symptoms of fever and delirium are not consistent with a
diagnosis of hemophilia. People suffering from the disease do bruise
easily and bleed when they are cut, but they do not suffer fevers as a
result.
All of the historic accounts state that during his most serious
episode Alexei suffered from internal hemorrhaging, bleeding in the
joints, abdominal swelling, pallor with a fever as high as 105 degrees
Fahrenheit. The description in the Czar's letter of the boy's symptoms
of delirium suggests the involvement of the central nervous system.
The symptoms which the boy experienced during his worst episodes more
accurately portray what the medical profession now call
Thrombocytopenia.
Thrombocytopenia can either appear on its own or associated with
Aplastic Anemia or Leukemia. These two diseases are similar in
appearance and which one the patient has can only be determined by
performing a number of specific tests. Aplastic anemia can also cross
that fine line between the two and become Leukemia later in life.
Alexei's doctors surmised that his hemorrhaging caused a loss of blood
flow to the head, thereby producing his delirium and pale appearance.
This hypothesis may have been a little too simplistic. As well as
causing hemorrhaging, pallor, and fever, Leukemia produces delirium by
affecting the central nervous system. It was also assumed that a
swelling high in the abdomen was due to a hemorrhaging stomach. One of
the things that the boy did to relieve the pain was to elevate his
left leg. This suggests an enlarged spleen... one of the
characteristics of Thrombocytopenia.
In 1935 the head of the Imperial Court Secretariat, Alexander
Mossolov, wrote that court physician Serge Fedorov had disagreed with
his colleagues. Mossolov quoted Dr. Fedorov as having said, "It is
urgently necessary to apply far more drastic measures, even if they
pose a greater risk".
Sometime later the doctor threw up his hands in frustration and said,
"You can see what is going on here". Such a statement tends to suggest
that decisions were being made about the boy's health over which
Fedorov had no control.
No reliable methods of blood testing for such diseases existed in
1912. The medical community had discovered blood typing the year
before Alexei's birth in 1904. All that his doctors had as a basis for
their diagnosis were the stories about the Royal family's medical
history. There were few published case histories to aid them in their
understanding of the boy's symptoms.
The central argument in support of the hemophilia theory is the claim
that the daughters and granddaughters of Queen Victoria were carriers
of the disease and passed it on to their sons. But, once again there
is no solid medical proof. The bleeding disease is carried down the
maternal family line and passed on from mothers to their sons by a
faulty X-chromosome.
Hemophilia being in the Royal bloodline begins with the explanation
that Queen Victoria became a carrier through a spontaneous mutation
from her father. This presents the first of a number of problems which
suggest that the disease was carried in the family line.
The first Royal said to have died from the disease was Victoria's
grandson Frederick of Hesse... Alexei's uncle. Known to the family as
"Frittie", the boy was only three years old when he died in 1873.
Alexei's mother was less than a year old when her brother fell out of
the window of his mother's bedroom at the New Palace in Darmstadt. The
toddler fell twenty feet and landed head first on the paving stones in
the garden below.
Today X-rays and CT scans are taken for granted but the doctors of
1873 could only make a visual examination. They saw no signs of
external damage and mistakenly reported that the boy looked to be
without injury. When he died later that same evening his "bleeding on
the brain" was attributed to the recently discovered disease of
hemophilia.
In the 1990's we now know that anyone can die as the result of a
severe cerebral hemorrhage caused by a skull fracture... not just
hemophiliacs.
The second Royal on the list was Victoria's third son and Frittie's
uncle Leopold who died eleven years later in 1884. His health was
described as frail and once again the death was attributed to
hemophilia. The thirty-one year old Prince had died in his sleep and,
just like his nephew before him, the physicians said that "bleeding of
the brain" was the cause of his death.
Today this is called an aneurysm and we know that it is not exclusive
to hemophiliacs.
Third in the line of faulty case histories are the two Spanish princes
who both lost their lives in an automobile accident. You do not have
to have hemophilia to die from severe internal injuries suffered in a
car crash.
Hemophilia, to the people of the nineteenth century, was a bit like
AIDS is for todays world ... a newly discovered disease that frightens
everyone; one which few understand.
In the world of the early 1900's, if someone bruised or bled easily
then hemophilia was the popular diagnosis. Doctors knew very little
about what blood was made of and what caused the disease.
Returning to the matter of DNA: While the medical detectives did not
use chromosomal DNA to identify the remains unearthed in Koptyaki they
did use it to determine the gender of the bones. To do this the
scientists must see if the DNA contains two X-chromosomes indicating a
female or one X and one Y-chromosome indicating a male. One can assume
that since the gene that causes hemophilia is part of the X-chromosome
that was used to identify the gender of the remains the scientists
would be able to recognize it. If that is the case, one can also
assume that they already knew for certain if the Empress and her
daughters were carriers of the disease.
No evidence, which could prove the existence of hemophilia in the
Royal line, has ever been published. If the chromosomal DNA
examination did reveal such evidence then the scientists are
withholding that critical information. Logically one could conclude
that the test results failed to show that the hemophilia gene was
present in the remains of the Romanov women. In turn, that would mean
that the blood disease suffered by the Tsarevich was something other
than hemophilia. Considering todays political climate the only reason
to withhold such information would be if there was a concern regarding
an Alexei claimant who fit that description.
When the end appeared to be near at the lowest point of Alexei's 1912
Spala episode four doctors circled the boy's bed. A priest gave the
Tsarevich the Last Rites and death notices were prepared. It was at
this point that the most mysterious figure of the drama, Grigory
Rasputin, made his grandest entrance and he did so without actually
being present. He sent the Empress a telegram that counseled, "Do not
grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to
bother him too much". Within a day or two the boy began to show
miraculous signs of recovery.
Thrombocytopenia has the peculiar ability to fade away almost as
quickly as it appears. This trait of spontaneous remission suggests
that Rasputin was nothing more than a creature of good timing. Another
possibility may be that the holy man may have seen the same symptoms
before. Members of Rasputin's own family had suffered and died from
serious illness and he had learned a good deal about life while he
traveled about Russia and the Middle East on foot before finally
settling in St. Petersburg.
It has often been speculated that Rasputin may have used hypnosis to
cure the Russian heir's symptoms. While this seems very unlikely,
Alexei Tammet-Romanov insisted that he liked the man who was described
as a "starets" and said that his eyes did have a calming effect.
A patient might have many episodes of Thrombocytopenia over the years
but, then again, a patient might only have one.
The disease has another trait which figures into our hypothesis;
twenty to forty percent of adult patients experience long terms of
remission.
After the 1918 execution of the Imperial family Canadian Alexei
experienced two more episodes before the age of seventeen, which his
foster family attributed to typhoid fever. What ever the cause of
those episodes, the condition went into remission until the man's
physical condition began to decline after his seventieth birthday.
For two years before he died in 1977, Canadian Alexi exhibited exactly
the same episodes that he had as a youngster. As he lay dying in a
Vancouver hospital his doctors performed test after test finally
settling on a diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
Alexei asked them to try again because he was positive that they had
reached an erroneous conclusion. More tests were done while he
survived on transfusions of whole blood for the next six weeks. Again
his doctors conferred, but this time concluded that the disease was a
form of Leukemia.
Again returning to the scientists for a moment... Since Canadian
Alexei was being treated with transfusions up until his final passing
that means he had the DNA of other people flowing through his veins at
the time of his death. That fact could further complicate any testing
which might attempt to link his remains to those of the Czar's family.
Consider, now, evidence regarding the actual murder. Photographs, and
interviews show that as one faced the Ipatiev House from the street,
the room where the execution took place was halfway along the left
side of the building. The ground sloped gradually to a canopied and
arched side entrance and people entering the building through that
doorway would find themselves facing four more sets of doors at the
back of the bottom floor. The double doors, opening into the execution
room would have been to their right.
The accepted version of the story states that the commandant, Yakov
Yurovsky, entered the room with eleven revolutionary soldiers behind
him.
Probably the most well known piece of evidence is an old photograph
which shows the back of the room and the damage that is presumed to
have been done to it by the murderous assault of the Bolshevik guards.
Light shines in from the small window that is high and to the right of
the edge of the picture and causes the damage on the wall and rubble
on the floor to cast short shadows to the left. Given the room's
position in the building, this suggests that the building faces north
or north-east and the photo was taken in the morning. It also means
that the Imperial family had been lined up facing the rear of the
building with their backs to the street in front.
A double door takes up a little less than half of the width of the
wall between two pillars that jut out about eighteen inches into the
corners of the room and which support a heavy arched ceiling. A
similar set of pillars supported two arches on either side of the
photographer. The man holding the camera stood in the doorway through
which Yurovsky and his armed squad passed.
Plaster and decorative paper have been ripped away low and to the left
of the door, exposing the inner structure of the wall. The resulting
rubble lies in a heap on the floor along the baseboard. This damage is
situated precisely where the historic record suggests that the
lady-in-waiting, Anna Demidova, had struggled to avoid the thirty or
more bayonet thrusts that took her life.
After firing their revolvers until they were empty, the twelve men
picked up bayonets and proceeded to stab their victims.
With even the simplest knowledge of arithmetic and handguns one must
conclude that there is no way to account for a minimum of seventy-two
shots. In "Dead Men Do Tell Tales" the head of the American forensic
team investigating the case, Dr. William Maples, stated that only
fourteen bullets had been found in the grave. Even considering the
plaster damage evident in the photograph, it is not possible to
account for another fifty-eight bullets.
All existing evidence describes Yakov Yurovsky as having stepped
forward and then fired three shots at the right ear of the young Crown
Prince. Every reconstruction to date has placed Yurovsky in the middle
of the room, in front of his squad of armed men and facing the ex-
Czar.
What thinking man stands directly in front of eleven guns with his
back to them? In some accounts Yurovsky claimed to have shot the
young Alexei in the right ear as he lay on the floor, but in 1934 he
told a meeting of old Bolsheviks that he finished the boy off as he
sat in the chair. If the boy had been shot in the right ear either he
was lying on the floor on his left side or, if he was sitting in the
chair with Yurovsky in front of him, Yurovsky was left-handed.
A photo of Yurovsky published in John Klier's "The Quest of Anastasia,
Solving the Mystery of the Lost Romanovs" shows the commandant holding
what looks to be a cup of tea in his right hand and a saucer in his
left. Unless the picture has been printed backwards, Yurovsky is right
handed and we have to look for another explanation if the boy was
sitting in the chair.
Officially, Alexei's remains have not yet been found and only one man
who claimed to have been the missing Tsarevich gave any description of
having been in that room at the time. The Canadian Alexei said that
after he heard Yurovsky give the command to fire everything went
black.
Assuming that he was the boy in that room on the morning of the 17th
of July, 1918, his statement tells us two things: If, as he said,
everything went black right after the order to fire then he was the
first to be fired upon. His is also the only account that claims an
order was given to fire. That would suggest Yurovsky's group was an
organized firing squad and not the disorganized mob that history
describes. No executioner stands in front of his own firing squad to
give the order. He stands to one side.
Returning to the description of that half-cellar room, in "The
Romanovs: The Final Chapter" Robert Massie gave the dimensions as
eleven by thirteen feet. It must now be remembered that a supporting
pillar jutted about a foot and a half into each of the room's four
corners. Viewed from above, the room was shaped like a cross. This
might have allowed Yurovsky enough room to step out of the line of
fire between the pillars by the left wall and opposite the single
barred window on the right.
Existing evidence suggests that Yurovsky may have stepped to the left
to give the order to fire. Bullet paths in the discovered remains
shown in a diagram published in John Klier's 1995 book indicate that
two and possibly three of the victims may have been looking to that
side of the room when the bullets struck them in the head. The most
convincing point is that the right handed Yurovsky would have to be in
this position in order to fire at the right ear of the young Tsarevich
if the boy was still sitting in the chair and one of the first to be
shot.
There is no reason to question the story that Yurovsky fired a gun at
the right ear of the Tsarevich because that fits perfectly with the
tale of Canadian Alexei's survival. His Vancouver doctors confirm that
his inner ear on the right side had been completely destroyed by some
sort of concussion injury in his youth. They also confirm that he had
a number of scars on his right side that might have been caused by
boots or bayonets. However, while Alexei was completely deaf in his
right ear, those same doctors could see no sign of damage to his
skull.
Putting all those facts together brings us face to face with another
new and crucial question. What type of gun was Yurovsky using and how
was it loaded? The destroyed inner ear, with no evidence of bone
damage, suggests that the gun must have been loaded with blanks. The
Vancouver coroner, most familiar with this case, concurs with that
hypothesis.
The problem comes in trying to determine what type of gun was used. In
his book "The Last Czar" Edvard Radzinsky quoted Yurovsky as having
claimed that he had two guns: "Colt no. 71905 with a cartridge clip
and seven bullets, and Mauser no. 167177 with a wooden gunstock and a
clip with ten bullets". Both guns are clip-loaded pistols but only a
few sentences earlier on the same page Radzinsky quotes the Cheka
guard Andrei Strekotin as saying: "At his (Yurovsky's) last word he
instantly pulled a revolver out of his pocket and shot the Czar". So
exactly what kind of weapon did Yurovsky have in his hand? Was it a
clip-loaded pistol or a revolver? The answer to that question is
crucial to the question of Alexei's survival.
In 1935 journalist Richard Halliburton interviewed another of the
assassins, Peter Ermakov, who stated, "Yurovsky had a Nagant repeater.
Vaganov and I had Mausers". A Nagant is a Russian made revolver of
questionable reliability similar to the Smith and Wesson sidearm used
by British troops of the era but with two differences: The cylinder
springs forward to seal the chamber just before the bullet is fired
and it holds seven rounds instead of six.
The Colt that Yurovsky had described was a seven shot .45 caliber
semiautomatic pistol designed by John Browning and known as the 1911.
The serial number is from a group of weapons made in the United States
in 1914 and last reported to have been in the American state of
Kentucky in 1915. How could such a weapon find its way from the U.S.
into the hands of a Bolshevik assassin in the Russian Ural mountains
during the last half of the First World War.
There is another reason to rule out the Colt that Radzinsky refers to
in his book and that is provided by the lead American forensic
investigator in the recent discovery of the Czar's remains. In his
book "Dead Men Do Tell Tales" Dr. William Maples states that fourteen
bullets were recovered from the grave where five of the seven Romanovs
are said to have been found. He explains that all of the bullets are
7.62, 7.63, or 7.65 millimeter rounds or about the same size as a .32
caliber. The Colt is a .45 caliber weapon. Dr. Maples also points out
that the Russian investigators think nine of the bullets came from
Nagant revolvers, four from a Browning (according to Radzinsky, Pavel
Medvedev was armed with a ten shot Browning pistol), and one from a
Mauser. Not one came from a Colt.
The Colt is a big bore hand held cannon-like weapon with a big kick
but little accuracy over long distances. The Mauser was designed in
1895 and its holster can be clipped to the back of the handle to turn
it from a handgun into a small rifle. With a muzzle velocity of nearly
1500 feet per second, it is dangerous up to a thousand yards. Both
weapons need to be modified to fire blanks and even when firing blank
rounds they can be deadly within six feet.
There is another piece to this puzzle in the testimony from the son of
the Chekist Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin who had said that Yurovsky had
burned his finger.
As Colts and Mausers are both pistols with sealed chambers and loaded
with clips it is practically impossible to burn a finger firing one.
On the other hand, an old revolver with its spinning cylinder can
easily cause injury to its user if the cylinder is worn from heavy
use. The hot gases produced by the igniting gunpowder can escape
around the sides of the cylinder and burn the trigger finger. Such a
gun can also fire blank rounds without modification... which could
deafen ears at close range without doing major internal physical
damage to the victim.
It was, and still is traditional procedure for firing squads to be
supplied with guns loaded with both blanks and full rounds. The reason
being so that no one knows for certain who fired the fatal shot. All
of the accounts state that on the evening before the murders Yurovsky
called on the captain of the guard, Pavel Medvedev, collected all of
the revolvers which he then took to his office on the upper floor of
the Ipatiev House. If Yurovsky was alone in that room with the guns,
then he was the only one who knew how the guns were loaded.
If the intention was to eradicate the Imperial party as quickly as
possible, then why all of this trouble to organize a twelve man firing
squad? Chekist guard Andrei Strekotin was manning a machine gun in the
corridor, and with the double doors open, he could have sprayed the
entire party with a single sweep of his weapon.
Short of the invention of a time machine, the complete story of this
last chapter of Czarist Russia probably will never be known. And in
that regard the author wishes to stress the fact that "My Father the
Czar", is a work of pure fiction.
There should be no attempt on the part of any reader to correlate this
story with history. However, the author wishes to thank two Russian
newspaper men who live in Moscow, as well as members of the Canadian
Romanov family for their factual contributions which strengthened the
historical skeleton upon which this story was woven.
THE END
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