DNA testing ends mystery surrounding Czar Nicholas II children

With bone fragment analysis, scientists put to rest the rumors that two children might have escaped the royal family's slaying during the Russian Revolution.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
LA Times
March 11, 2009

The most enduring and romantic legend of the Russian Revolution -- that two children of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, survived the slaughter that killed the rest of their family -- may finally be put to rest with the positive identification of bone fragments from a lonely Russian grave.

The czar and his family were gunned down and stabbed by members of the Red Guard early on the morning of July 17, 1918, but rumors have persisted that two of the children, the Grand Duchess Anastasia and her brother Alexei, survived, perhaps because the diamonds sewn into their clothes blocked attempts to kill them.

Those hopes were bolstered with the 1991 revelation that nine bodies of Romanov family members and servants had been found in a Yekaterinberg grave, but that a son and daughter were still missing.

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