What is not generally known is that the Russian King at that time-Czar Nicholas II- along with his family was brutally murdered by the communists. According to tenets of democracy, even a tyrant King can not be killed without a fair trial. This caused discontentment among the Russian masses but they preferred to keep quiet because of the tyrannical communist rule. Recently, when the winds of change swept Russia, its people have begun to explore what really happened to their King in 1917. For this they have taken recourse to a new forensic technique- the DNA fingerprinting- and have roped in experts from Great Britain.

Czar Nicholas II of Russia belonged to the Romanov family. At the time of Russian Revolution, 11 people living in Czar's palace were removed and imprisoned in the gloomy town of Ekaterinburg (This town is now known as Sverdlovsk, named after Jacob Sverdlov, the chief architect of the Czar's assassination). These 11 people included the Czar himself, his wife, his young son Alexie (who was suffering from a dangerous disease hemophilia. In this disease, even a minor scratch can lead to sever bleeding. His four daughters, Tatiana, Olga, Marie and Anastasia, his family physician Dr. Eugene Botkin, the empress maid Demidova, the Czar's valet Tropp and the family cook Kharitonov. These 11 people were shot dead on the night of July 16, 1918. Their bodies were taken to a mine shaft, where 150 gallons of gasoline were poured upon them and then the bodies burnt. The remains were hacked and sawn to pieces, then shoved down the shaft, with clothes and jewellery, 400 pounds of sulfuric acid dumped over it, all to dissolve the evidence of assassination.

The world came to know of this horrible crime in 1919, when the White Army took over Ekaterinburg. Since then many theories have emerged that the grand duchess Anastasia survived the massacre. Some theories suggest that Anastasia and Alexie survived while some others suggest that the entire family somehow managed to escape the mass assassination. However, conclusive proof has never been forthcoming. Many imposters have tried to pass themselves as survivors of that massacre. The stakes were high- the Czar's family wealth in cash alone standing at a staggering 800 million. As early as February 17, 1920, a teenage girl was dragged semi-conscious from a canal in Berlin, who claimed to be Anastasia. She had a remarkable similarly to Anastasia and knew the minutest details of the royal family. Her claim was however rejected by a Hamburg Court in May 1968 and in February 1970, by the German Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, it was necessary to know whether the Czar's family was massacred or not in 1918 and if at all it was, how many people were actually killed. Recent overthrow of the Communism in Russia fuelled this desire. Coupled with this was the fact that in 1985 a remarkable new forensic technique was developed by a British Scientist Prof. Alec jeffreys.

This new technique is known as "DNA fingerprinting" or "Genetic fingerprinting". This was basically developed to find out whether a particular child belonged to a particular mother or not. The actual event which led to the development of this technique is very interesting. A Ghanaian woman and her child were living in Britain as British citizens. Once she and her child went to Ghana to meet their relatives. When they returned to Britain, the boy was stopped by the immigration authorities at the airport itself. They contended that the boy was an imposter and not the real son of that lady. In other words, they were asserting that the boy had been "switched" in Ghana. Blood tests of both the mother and alleged son were conducted, but they were not conclusive. Finally Prof Alec Jeffreys of Leicester University conclusively proved by his new technique that the child was indeed the son of that lady.

This technique has now been used in a variety of criminal cases too. For example, if a scientist is given a drop of blood or semen of a person, he can pick out the man from whom it came, from among thousands of men.

Every individual contains in his body cells, a unique chemical called DNA (Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid). This DNA differs in different individuals. The DNA of any particular individual will not match the DNA of any other individual in the world. this is the basis of DNA fingerprinting. This may appear to be a very astounding fact, but it isn't. We know that the face of an individual does not resemble the face of any other individual. We can recognize an individual among thousands by looking at his face. Prof Jeffreys developed a novel technique whereby the DNA of any individual could be seen as "bands" on a photographic place (Fig 1A) and matched with the DNA of any other individual.

This technique is used in crime detection as follows. Suppose a raped and murdered woman is found. The scientist takes out the semen from the woman's genitals and prepares a DNA fingerprint from there (see fig 1B). This is the column A. Now suppose there are 3 suspects X₁, X₂ and X₃. Blood is taken from all the three suspects and DNA fingerprints prepared again. It is seen that DNA fingerprint of X₂ matches exactly with that prepared from the semen (A). Thus X₂ is proved to be the criminal.

In July 1991, the KGB exhumed nine skeletons from the Czar's presumed graves in Ekaterinburg. So one thing was certain. 11 people were not killed. Two people in fact escaped somehow. A joint Russian-British project was set up to apply the newly developed technique of DNA fingerprinting. The scientists involved were Dr. Pavel, 37, head of the forensic laboratory for gene fingerprinting (another name for DNA fingerprinting), in the Russian Bureau of Chief Medical Legal Examiner, Dr. Peter Gill, pioneer of forensic gene technology at the Molecular Genetic Laboratory, Aldermaston, Britain and Evin Sullivan, head of the British Forensic Science. First of all they established the sex of the individual skeletons. It was found that there were five female and four male skeletons. Then they tried to find the family group within these nine skeletons, because obviously all were not of Czar's family. They found five skeletons in family relationship and it was established that they were Czar, his wife (Czarina) and their three daughters. So obviously one son and one daughter (presumably Alexie and Anastasia) were missing, which confirmed several rumours that they had escaped.

How could the doctors establish that the skeletons belonged to the Czar's family? By a very complicated procedure they first extracted DNA from all skeletons and prepared DNA fingerprints from them. Now if they had the real "known" blood of Czar and his family with them, the scientists could ahve prepared DNA fingerprints from that "known" blood and compared it with the fingerprints prepared from the boxes. If the fingerprints had matched, they could have positively said that the bones belonged to Czar's family. But this blood was not available. So scientists resorted to a different method which we can exlain as below.

Look at figure (2). It shows 3 DNA fingerprints. The one on the extreme left is all red. They are the "bands" in the DNA fingerprint of a mother. The one on the extreme right contains all the white bands. They are the bands of father. Actually the bands do not have any color. They just look black. But here they are shown in different colors merely for understanding. Now the important fact to understand is that the son inherits half of his bands from his mother and hald of the bands from his father. Which bands will be trasferred from the mother and which ones from the father to the son is entirely a matter of chance, but one thing is certain- he will inherit just half of the bands from each parent. This is exactly what is seen in the middle of fig (2).

There are many living Romanovs now and some of their bands must match with that of Czar and Czarina. British Royal Family is related to Romanov's family. Queen Victoria was the maternal grand mother of Russian Czarina (Alexandra Fedorovna) and Prince Philip of Edinburgh who is alive, is related to Queen Victoria. A mathematical calculation tells scientists just how many bands of Prince Philip must match the bands of Czarina and his daughters. Prince Philip was approached and he generously agreed to give his blood samples. From his blood, his DNA fingerprints were prepared. Simultaneously DNA fingerprints of Czarina and her daughters were prepared from the suspected skeletons. If those suspected skeletons really belonged to Czarina and her daughters, then a certain fixed number of bands prepared by mathematical biologists must match. To their surprise, the scientists found that the bands matched perfectly. This proved once and for all, that the suspected skeletons belonged to Czarina and her daughters Tatiana, Olga, and Marie.

Now the problem was to find whether the suspected skeleton of Czar belonged to him or not. Since the identity of Tatiana, Olga and Marie was proved, it meant that half of their bands must have come from the Czar. When the matching was done between the DNA fingerprints of these three girls and the suspected Czar, the required number of bands matched again. This proved the identity of the Czar too.

The problem now is to prove the identity of four other skeletons. Their relatives are being traced and once they are traced, the identity of these skeletons will also be proved beyond doubt.

The problem remains: where are the skeletons of Alexie and Anastasia? Perhaps they really escaped as many rumours tell us. But where they are, nobody knows.

  

E-mail Me