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Every other Friday, True Crime of the Historical Kind returns to the scene of the crime...
We uncover the deeper story. The world that shaped the violence, and the humans that played a hand in history's tragedies.
Because the past may be distant, but human nature rarely is.
When the Romanovs were sent into exile in 1917, they believed Tobolsk would be temporary, but the world outside was shifting faster than their hope could keep up with. This is true crime of the historical kind. You're listening to part two of the execution and murders of the Romanov family, blood soaked jewels. By 1917, the Romanovs were no longer safe in Petrograd. The city was simmering with unrest, and the Bolshevik influence was spreading fast.
Speaker 1:Not even their royal relatives were willing to help them. Britain had officially withdrew their lukewarm offer of asylum, so the provisional government was left with few options. In August 1917, they made a fateful decision. Exile the Romanovs to Tobolsk, a remote Siberian town over 1,500 miles to the east. It was a move designed to keep them out of sight and out of the political crosshairs.
Speaker 1:Tobolsk was cold, distant, and isolated. A place long used by the empire to bury political enemies. But for the Romanovs, it might offer relative safety. They were housed in the former governor's mansion, a plain, sturdy building surrounded by forest and snow. They brought a small circle of trusted retainers with them.
Speaker 1:Doctor Eugene Botkin, their longtime physician, maid Anna Demodova, ballet Alexei Truppe, and their cook Ivan Karchanov. Together, along with three of the family's dogs, they tried to maintain a kind of normal life. The children studied their lessons. The family continued to read aloud to one another and maintain their close knit dynamics. But it was cold, monotonous, and uncertain.
Speaker 1:Yet in this strange limbo, the Romanovs clung to hope or maybe it was just some form of out of touch delusion that the war would end and they would carry on with their lives. The reality was that in Petrograd, the simmering was now turning to a boil. The Bolsheviks weren't just organizing anymore. They were preparing to seize real power. While the Romanovs waited in exile, the ground shifted beneath them.
Speaker 1:The Reds stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, toppling the fragile provisional government. Lenin and his Bolshevik party promised a revolution for the people. This was a dawn of a new world, one built on Marquist ideas of class struggle and worker control. And in that world, the Romanovs were nothing but remnants of the past, the Bolsheviks meant to destroy. Outside of Petrograd, Russia was splintering.
Speaker 1:It was clear civil war was coming. The Reds loyal to the Bolsheviks would soon be fighting the Whites, a patchwork of monarchists, conservatives, nationalists, and foreign armies who all agreed on one thing, that Lenin and his ideas were dangerous. And if Lenin could be stopped, the Romanovs might be allowed a safe existence even if only as ornamental symbols of Russia. For the Bolsheviks, that possibility was unacceptable. If this revolution was going to survive, the last vestiges of the Romanov dynasty, even in exile, had to be dealt with permanently.
Speaker 1:By the 1918, Russia was not just in revolution. It was tearing itself apart in civil war. White forces were driving across Siberia, pressing toward key rail lines, towns, and Bolshevik strongholds. The Romanovs still under guard in Tobolsk were suddenly far too close to the danger. The provisional government lost control, and the custody of the family transferred into the hands of the Bolsheviks.
Speaker 1:The new power would not be taking any chances. So in April 1918, Bolshevik guards moved the Romanovs west. The family was sent to Ekaterinburg, an industrial city in the Ural Mountains, deep inside Bolshevik territory. If Dubolsk had been house arrest, Ekaterinburg was captivity. They were placed in the home of a merchant, Nikolay Ipatiev.
Speaker 1:The Romanovs didn't know it, but the Bolsheviks had a name for this house, the house of special purpose. The former tsar, the former Tsarina, and their family were prisoners in a squat house, finding themselves under a tighter watch than the provisional guards and closer to danger than ever before. Their captors quickly put a fence up around the house so no one could see the family walking about the yard and, of course, as a measure to prevent an escape. At first, the family was able to have some forms of normality, getting fresh air, doing small tasks, but their freedoms were continually cut down. The Red Guards or Bolsheviks were rough men in close quarters with the pinnacle of what they were fighting against, the imperial family.
Speaker 1:Most of them were soldiers that had been hardened by civil war, often drunk, some angry, and many already convinced that this family had no place in the future they were fighting for. These guards didn't just watch the family. They mocked them, leaving crude drawings and lewd graffiti for the family to see, like characters, obscene jokes, even sketches of the daughters scrawled in chalk and pencil. It was humiliating and degrading as intended, and the girls could no longer walk freely in the yard. There was no one to reach out to as their letters were censored if sent at all.
Speaker 1:Their daily life was grim. Meals were bland, routines dictated by the whims of the guards, and they still struggled to care for the sick Alexi, and answers were certainly not given. Then the guards put up newspaper over the windows and painted over it so you couldn't see in or out. The family couldn't even glimpse the sky. Their world had been reduced to the walls of the Ipatiev house and a future no one would explain.
Speaker 1:For all they knew, this was a difficult but temporary situation meant to endure, not escape. Not that there was anywhere to escape to. The Romanovs were not the only ones feeling the pressure of this remote location. Fear and isolation are always a dangerous combination. Paranoia began to override sense and soon basic human decency.
Speaker 1:In Moscow, Lenin and the Central Soviet leadership were growing cautious. They were unsure of what to do with the Romanovs. Well, more than likely, Lenin was sure, but they were not all of one mind. Some argued that Nicholas should face a public trial, a spectacle to expose the crimes of the autocracy. Others feared a trial would give the family a stage, a rallying point for their enemies.
Speaker 1:And with the civil war widening, hesitation was dangerous. Every delay felt like a risk. So by 1918, the Romanovs and appointed Bolsheviks seemed stranded on a cold Siberian island of sorts. The Russian civil war was escalating. White anti communist forces were pushing eastward and gaining ground by the day.
Speaker 1:And one of their rumored goals was to liberate the Romanovs. But could they reach them in time? The Ural regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg was fiercely radical, often pushing harder than Moscow itself. They believed the Romanovs were not just prisoners, but dangerous living symbols. To them, every day the family remained alive increased the chance of a white army rescue and victory.
Speaker 1:And so pressure mounted locally to act. The local Bolshevik leadership was nervous about growing unrest and rumors of rescue, so they replaced the current command overseeing the Romanovs. In stepped Yakov Urovsky. Yakov was a hardened Bolshevik and a loyal man of the Urals. He had spent years abroad in Berlin before returning home.
Speaker 1:Now he arrived with a reputation for discipline and an unwavering commitment to the cause. He was the kind of man that you call when you need something done. He was efficient, controlled, and deeply trusted by the Ural regional Soviet. From the moment he took command, the tone inside the house shifted. He tightened security.
Speaker 1:He replaced the original guards who were chaotic and undisciplined with a handpicked squad of men who answered directly to him. He brought order but no warmth. One of Yorovsky's lieutenants was Pyotr Ermakov. He was also a local Bolshevik from Urals. But where Yorovsky was severe and controlled, Ermakov was brash, often drunk, and proud of it.
Speaker 1:He had a reputation for cruelty. He had fought in the red ranks during the civil war and was a man that believed violence was not just necessary, but useful. Ermakov was a sort of liability, but he's also the kind of man that's willing to do the dirty work when orders came. Once Yakov Yorovsky took control, he made no secret of his intentions in the situation. He wrote clear detailed reports to his superiors.
Speaker 1:In them, he argued that the Romanovs were a political liability, a symbol too dangerous to keep alive. And while white armies were approaching, the revolution was under threat. And so in cold language, Yorefsky put it plainly, the problem had to be liquidated. He didn't believe that Nicholas should have a trial or that they all be sent into foreign exile. He believed they had to be eliminated, All of them.
Speaker 1:Assassinating a political figure in a coup is nothing new. But in a civil world, it would be expected that Nicholas should at least stand trial. So to murder the family, the children would be savage. Regardless, plans were being made. Yorefsky forced the family to provide any jewels or riches they may have had.
Speaker 1:He created an inventory and placed them in a box. He suspected they had more on them, but didn't press them yet, figuring he'd do that later on. The family, completely unaware of what was being plotted, continued their routine the best they could. Reading, praying, and caring for Alexei, whose hemophilia had left him feverish and weak. For all the political chaos swirling around them, the Romanovs were still just a family.
Speaker 1:They had been born into privilege, into palaces and ceremony, which is a blessing to some and a burden to others, but it was all they knew. To their captors though, they thought that royal blood was the problem. It marked them as active participants in a system that starved its own people for their gain. Sometime between July 12 and July 16, the Ural Regional Soviet made its final decision. The Romanovs were to be executed.
Speaker 1:With intelligence that the whites could be there in three days possibly, the killing would need to be immediate. Though the exact chain of command remains debated. There's no document bearing Lenin's signature that has ever been found. But intercepted telegrams, memoirs, later testimony make it almost certain that Moscow knew and Lenin knew. Whether they gave direct orders or merely allowed others to act, the outcome was the same.
Speaker 1:Nicholas the second's final diary entry is simple and haunting. He wrote, Alexei took his first bath since Dubolsk. His knee is healed, but he can still not straighten it. The weather was warm and pleasant. We have no news from the outside whatsoever.
Speaker 1:As the Romanovs went about their evening as usual, Yorovsky was preparing the assassination squad. Around midnight, the Romanovs were awoken suddenly. The guards claimed that unrest had broken out nearby and that they were being moved for their safety. The family was confused but had no choice but to be compliant, so they dressed and gathered their belongings. They hid what remaining treasures of their dynasty they had in their underclothes.
Speaker 1:Around 01:30AM on July 17, the group was led to a small basement room, which is roughly 13 by 17 feet. The former Tsar Nicholas, Tsarina Alexandra, Olga, who was 22, Tatiana, 21, Maria, 19, Anastasia, 17, and Alexei, 13, along with four servants, doctor Botkin, Alexei Troop, Ivan Karchanov, Anna Demodova, all filed into the basement. Nicholas carried the ill Alexei in his arms. Yorovsky told them to wait for a truck to transport them to safety, but it didn't make sense. Nicholas asked for chairs for Alexandra and Alexei, and they were provided.
Speaker 1:The rest stood in an uneasy line along the wall. Not much later, the execution squad led by Yorovsky and Yermakov entered the room. Many of them were drunk, perhaps to cover their nerves, but clearly, something was terribly wrong. Yorovsky read a brief statement. The president of the Yarovsk region of Soviet has sentenced you to be shot.
Speaker 1:Nicholas was stunned, saying, what? What? And began to walk towards Yorovsky. Yorovsky pointed his gun and shot Nicholas point blank in the chest. Then the squad opened fire.
Speaker 1:The room quickly descended into smoke and chaos as bullets were ricocheting off the walls. Alexandra died moments later. The Romanov siblings and servants had thrown themselves to the ground. They were attempting to evade the bullets and crawl to safety. The scrambling and confusion in the smoke filled room made the killings more difficult than planned.
Speaker 1:Panicked, they realized how dangerous the ricocheting was, and they paused. As the firing ceased, they could hear whimpers and cries. They realized some, if not all, of the siblings were still alive. The men were ordered to use their bayonets, butt edges of the guns, and additional execution style shots to ensure that they were all dead and to kill the family dogs. Demodova, the maid, was the last to die, stabbed repeatedly as she screamed.
Speaker 1:According to later recounts of the event, the killing took about twenty minutes, a very long time if you think about the sheer terror and panic they must have felt. Eventually, 11 bodies laid in contorted angles, quiet and still. Blood was sprayed all over the room. It was a horrific scene. Urovsky made the order that the bodies were to be stripped of valuables.
Speaker 1:Though, he had to fight off the men as they attempted to assault the bodies and perhaps pocket the loo. They did in fact find the hidden jewels sewn into the hems of their clothes, leading them to believe that the jewels may have inadvertently acted as bulletproof vests and prolonged the agonizing deaths of the imperial family. Disturbingly, there had indeed been a truck waiting for him, but it was their lifeless bodies that were hastily loaded on as the corpses were driven away from the house of special purpose. As the trucks headed towards the Koptaiaki Forest, the men were panicked. What they had just done was irreversible, and if they were caught, they would have to face the global scorn and perhaps even ruin the very initiative they were fighting for.
Speaker 1:They knew the whites were only days or maybe even hours away. Yarovsky, in his haste, had planned how to destroy the evidence, but like many who find themselves in the morbid realities of disposing of bodies, he found it was more difficult than he anticipated. The bodies were dumped in a mineshaft called Ganinayama. There, they tossed the bodies in and doused them with benzene and sulfuric acid to disguise the identities if they were to be discovered. But things did not go as planned.
Speaker 1:The mine shaft wasn't deep enough, and the bodies didn't sink. Then they attempted to collapse the mine by throwing in grenades. When that didn't work, Yorovsky ordered the bodies to be retrieved. One by one, they used ropes to haul out the mutilated bodies, trying to find another solution. Yorovsky then sought to have the bodies burned and buried, but the bodies didn't burn as much as he thought they would and was enraged to find out that there was only one shovel.
Speaker 1:In addition, the ground near the mine was too hard to dig in. So they then took the bodies off a nearby road and began to dig there, all the while feeling like they could be discovered at any moment. The men decided that it was too risky to leave the 11 bodies together. So to throw off the scent, so to speak, they dug a second grave where they buried two of the dead to confuse potential searchers. And with that, the murders were over.
Speaker 1:The bodies were disposed of, hidden, at least for now. Yet the Bolsheviks knew that they were not in the clear. The killing itself was only half of the problem. The other half of the story, if the truth spread unchecked, that women, children, and loyal servants had been slaughtered in a basement, could undo them. So they did what regimes often do.
Speaker 1:They controlled the narrative. On July 19, the Bolsheviks made an announcement that Nicholas and Nicholas alone had been executed for crimes against the people. As for the former Tsarina, Alexandra, and the children, they were said to be safe. Though that did little to suppress the world's suspicions. Word of the entire Romanov family disappearance was already spreading.
Speaker 1:The regime's goal was simple, delay recognition, obscure the truth, and buy time for the Bolsheviks. As expected, the white forces captured Ekaterinburg. They arrived just a week or so too late to save the Romanovs. The only life they found was the family's dog, Joy, who somehow survived the massacre. He was wandering the property, no doubt searching for his family.
Speaker 1:The room still stink of gunpowder. Bullet holes marked the walls, and there were dark stains across the floor. The Romanov's family personal belongings were scattered. Whatever had happened here, it hadn't been relocation. The white new investigator was Nikolay Sokolov, a monarchist lawyer with a quiet manner and an unwavering sense of duty.
Speaker 1:When he inspected the house of special purpose, what he found was chilling. Sokolov began piecing together what the Bolsheviks had tried to erase. He interviewed guards and townspeople. He followed the trail the truck had left behind into the forest outside of the city. He found the mine shafts at Ganinayama where the trucks had gone.
Speaker 1:But the attempted graves themselves were empty. The Bolsheviks had clearly moved or destroyed what had once been inside. There, Sokolov's team combed through the ashes and charred soil. It was grim, painstaking work, digging with shovels, then hands, sifting through clumps of earth still black with soot. And there, amid the mud and burned fabric, they began to find things that should not have been left behind.
Speaker 1:Things like buttons, bits of lace, bone shards, and glittering among them fragments of jewels. Diamonds and pearls shaken loose from the clothing of the grand duchesses. He took pictures and documented his findings. It was proof that the Romanovs had been brought here, at least at one point. Even without bodies, these were clear signs of murder that the killers had tried to burn, to dissolve, to erase, but had not quite succeeded, even in ruin their traces endured.
Speaker 1:Knowing that the Bolsheviks didn't have much time, they knew the bodies couldn't have been far. They were just beyond their reach. Despite his best efforts, Sokolov never found the bodies. But his report was crucial in convincing most observers that the Romanovs were dead and that their end had been brutal. All they knew was that the Romanovs were gone, but the war was far from over.
Speaker 1:Among the whites, the murders became proof of Bolshevik barbarianism, a rallying cry to fight harder. Among the Reds, the message was different, that no vestige of monarchy, no symbol of the old order would be allowed to remain. From 1918 to 1922, Russia tore itself apart in a brutal civil war. By the time the war ended with a Bolshevik victory and the formal creation of the Soviet Union, the truth about the Romanovs had faded into myth. The family vanished from the official narrative.
Speaker 1:With the bodies missing and the victory in the hands of their killers, the facts were muddied. King George the fifth, the look alike cousin of Nicholas the second, sat in silence. England said nothing publicly about the execution that they could have potentially prevented had they acted and taken the family into exile a year earlier. Across the rest of Europe, whispers were growing louder that maybe, just maybe, one or more of the Romanov children had survived. Soon, impostors began to surface.
Speaker 1:Dozens claimed to be one of the five children. But the most famous by far was a woman who went by Anna Anderson. She appeared in Berlin in 1920, fragile, suicidal, and mysterious. Doctors and sympathizers claimed that she bore a striking resemblance to Anastasia. Anderson told a story of miraculous escape.
Speaker 1:Even some former Romanov associates believed her. Others scoffed. But the world was captivated. For decades, Anderson fought in court to be recognized as Grand Duchess Anastasia. She never won, but when she died in 1984, the mystery still lingered.
Speaker 1:It wasn't until the nineteen nineties with the advent of DNA testing that her claim was definitively disproven. She was not Anastasia Romanov. She was likely a Polish factory worker named Franziska. In the meantime, the Soviets continued to suppress the details of the murders, fearing they tarnished the current regime's image. Official records were sealed, and the Romanov's fate remained a taboo topic.
Speaker 1:Publicly, Nicholas the second was dismissed as a tyrant. Privately, the full story of what had happened in the basement was sealed behind the state archives in silence. Though, as we know, people can't help but talk. Yermakov survived the civil war and lived into old age. Unlike Yorefsky who left behind careful reports, Yermakov boasted loudly about his role.
Speaker 1:He would retell the story of the executions as if it were a badge of honor, but Yermakov didn't follow the official script that Nicholas was the only executed. He told the ugly truth or at least more of the truth than was acceptable. He became bitter at Moscow for never acknowledging him as one of the great men of the revolution up until his death in 1952. The house of special purpose where the family had spent their final months and met their end had stood untouched for decades. It was like a grim monument known locally as the house with no windows.
Speaker 1:As interest grew in revisiting the death of the Romanovs, the house was demolished in 1977. They didn't want a shrine or a tangible place where people could point to as the family's death site. For over half a century, the truth about the Romanovs fate remained sealed under layers of propaganda, politics, and fear. But history, as it tends to do, has a way of resurfacing. By the late nineteen eighties, the cracks in the Soviet Union were showing.
Speaker 1:And with its collapse in 1999, old secrets began to stir. Russia was entering a period of reevaluation, and suddenly stories that had been long suppressed could now be pursued openly. Come to find out, the Romanov's grave had already been found. It had first been located back in 1979 by two amateur historians. They had used Rufsky's testimony and fading eyewitness accounts to trace the path of the trucks into the forest.
Speaker 1:But under the USSR, revealing it was too dangerous. They kept the secret, marking the site quietly, waiting for safer times. Those times came in 1991. That summer, as the Soviet Union unraveled, the site was finally exhumed. They uncovered a shallow pit containing nine skeletons.
Speaker 1:Forensic teams soon set to work using samples from living relatives, including Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who shared mitochondrial DNA with Empress Alexandra through their maternal line. And scientists confirmed the identities. It was Nicholas, Alexandra, three of their daughters, Olga, Tatiana, and one of the two youngest, either Maria or Anastasia. Them being the same gender and close in age made the distinction difficult. But there was also the four loyal retainers, Botkin, Demodova, Kartonov, and Troup.
Speaker 1:It was a landmark moment, the first real forensic confirmation of a crime that had haunted history for nearly a century. The Russian government formally acknowledged the discovery. The Russian Orthodox Church, however, hesitated. Long suspicious of Soviet era archives, they refused at first to accept the remains as genuine. But wait, even in this triumph, there was a new mystery.
Speaker 1:Two bodies were still missing, Alexei and one of his sisters, which would support the rumors of escape, Anastasia's. By now, there had been countless books, stories, and movies made about the legend of Anastasia. Most famously, the classic film Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman. Then, much later, the very successful animated film of the same name in 1997. The Romanovs mystery was not fully solved, but for the first time since that basement in Yekaterinburg, there were answers to their fate.
Speaker 1:On 07/17/1998, the eightieth anniversary of their deaths, the nine remains were reburied in Saint Peter And Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. This was the traditional resting place of the Romanovs for three centuries. The president at the time, Boris Yeltsin, called the murders one of the most shameful pages in Russian history. The ceremony was attended by Yutzen and state officials, along with members of the extended Romanov family who had lived most of their lives in exile. In the year 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the Romanovs as fashion bearers, recognizing them for their faith in the face of martyrdom.
Speaker 1:But people still wanted to pay their respect at the place that they were last alive. We know that the House Of Special Purpose had been demolished in the late seventies. But in its place now stands the Church On The Blood. It was consecrated in 2003 and now stands as a place of remembrance. Yet, what about the two missing bodies?
Speaker 1:The truth finally emerged in 2007 when archaeologists searching near the original grave uncovered a second, smaller burial pit. Inside were the charred and fragmented remains of two individuals. The bones bore the marks of acid and fire, which is a grim confirmation of what the Bolsheviks themselves had written in secret reports, that they had mutilated and burned the bodies in an attempt to obscure the scale of the crime. In 2008, DNA analysis provided the answer, confirming that it was Alexei and most likely Maria. And with that discovery, science could finally account for the whole family.
Speaker 1:Clearly, history rarely gives easy answers. But beneath the cold stone crypts of Saint Petersburg, the Romanovs finally can rest in peace. The execution and murders of the Romanovs belong to history now. But even as the world moves forward, new catastrophic events are happening for future generations to dissect just as we look back on 1918 today. This was true crime of the historical kind.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. Look out for new episodes every Friday. And if you'd like to support the podcast, following and sharing are always helpful. Until next time. Bye.