Eye of the Red Tsar (36 page)

The woman moves to New York, where she resides temporarily with Annie Jennings, a wealthy Manhattan socialite. Shortly afterwards, following several episodes of hysteria, she is once again committed to an asylum, this time the Four Winds Sanatorium.

The woman, now known as Anna Anderson, returns to Germany.

Yurovsky gives a detailed account of the executions and the events leading up to them at a Communist Party conference in Ekaterinburg.

Release of the film
Anastasia
, starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner.

At the age of seventy, Anna Anderson moves back to the United States and marries John Manahan, who believes her to be the Princess Anastasia. The couple live in Virginia.

The remains of the Romanovs are located exactly where Yurovsky had said they would be, but the information is kept secret and the bodies are not exhumed.

Future Russian president Boris Yeltsin, then Communist Party chief in Sverdlovsk (formerly known as Ekaterinburg), orders the Ipatiev house to be destroyed, noting that it has become a pilgrimage site.

Anna Anderson is once again institutionalized. Within hours of her entering the psychiatric facility, Manahan kidnaps her and the two escape through rural Virginia.

Anna Anderson dies of pneumonia.

The skeletons of the Romanovs are exhumed. Through DNA acquired from, among others, the Duke of Edinburgh (whose grandmother was the sister of Tsarina Alexandra), the remains are positively identified as those of Nicholas II, Alexandra, their daughters Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia, as well as the three household servants and Dr. Botkin. Two bodies, those of Maria and Alexei, are missing.

DNA testing of a tissue sample from Anna Anderson confirms that she is not the Princess Anastasia. The DNA sample is found to match that of Karl Maucher, great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska.

Remains believed to be those of Maria and Alexei are located in shallow graves not far from the other burial site.

The Russian government announces that DNA testing has confirmed the identities of Alexei and Maria. On the same day, to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the executions, more than 30,000 Russians visit the mine where the Romanovs were buried.

Bulygin, Paul.
The Murder of the Romanovs
. London: Hutchinson, 1966.

Crawford, Rosemary and Donald.
Michael and Natasha
. New York: Scribner, 1997.

Erickson, Carolly.
Alexandra: The Last Tsarina
. New York: St. Martin’s, 2001.

Iroshnikov, Mikhail.
The Sunset of the Romanov Dynasty
. Moscow: Terra, 1992.

Mossolov, Alexander.
At the Court of the Last Tsar
. London: Methuen, 1935.

Steinberg, Mark, and Vladimir Khrustalëv.
The Fall of the Romanovs
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.

SAM EASTLAND
lives in the United States and Great Britain. He is at work on the second Pekkala novel, which Bantam will publish in 2011.

www.inspectorpekkala.com