Researcher Says Skeletons Are of Czar, Czarina

Scientists have determined that two skeletons unearthed in a Siberian city are those of murdered Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, solving a 74-year-old mystery, a researcher said Monday.

The remains of the czar and czarina were among nine skeletons dug up last summer from a pit in Yekaterinburg, said researcher Alexander Blokhin. A third skeleton was identified as that of the Romanov family doctor, Sergei Botkin, he said.

If one of the remaining bodies is firmly identified as that of the czar’s daughter Anastasia, it may finally put to rest a persistent legend that she somehow escaped the rest of the family’s fate.

The location of the remains of Nicholas and Alexandra and the circumstances of their execution at the hands of Bolsheviks were once taboo subjects in the Soviet Union.

Scientists using a computer matched the skulls found last summer with old photographs of the royal couple, said Blokhin, a Yekaterinburg regional official who is leading the investigation.

“Computer modeling, comparing ancient photos of the czar and czarina, have definitely proved that the remains found were their remains,” Blokhin said in a telephone interview from the city known in the Soviet era as Sverdlovsk.

Nicholas abdicated the throne in March, 1917, after a constitutional republic was established in Russia, ending the 304-year reign of the Romanovs. The imperial family was banished three months later to Siberia, where they lived their last year.

On July 17, 1918, the czar and his family were executed by firing squad in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg on the orders of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin.