Silent Witnesses (32 page)

A geologist named Alexander Avdonin was particularly committed to the search. He lived in Yekaterinburg and was a keen amateur archaeologist with an interest in local history. The murder of the Romanov family was a story that particularly fascinated him. Avdonin researched the incident for years, slowly collecting evidence on what might have happened to the bodies of the royal family after they had been shot. In 1976, as a result of his sustained interest, he met writer and filmmaker Geli Ryabov, who had been given some information by the son of one of the men involved in the shooting and was certain that he knew where the tsar and his family were located. According to Ryabov's source, nine of the eleven bodies were buried near grade crossing 184 on Koptyaki Road. Supposedly, after the bodies had been dumped into the grave, acid had been poured over them to help destroy them. After that, railway sleepers were placed over the hole before earth was thrown on top.

Armed with these clues, Avdonin and Ryabov began to search for the spot in the spring of 1979. Luck was on their side, and it was not long before they struck the rotted wood of the sleepers. Shortly afterward they discovered broken fragments of what they took to be the jars that had contained the acid. Spurred on
by this, they kept digging and finally unearthed several skulls. They were now all but certain that they had found the long-lost royal family of Russia. Suddenly the enormity of this discovery dawned on them, and they began to think about the potential repercussions. Worried about what might happen, they reburied the remains along with a number of icons. They kept their secret for the next ten years. Then, in 1989, Ryabov released the story to the media.

Eventually the bodies were exhumed again, this time officially. Given the location in which they were discovered, the fact that one of the skulls had golden bridgework (which Nicholas Romanov was known to have had) and the fact that when that same skull was superimposed against a photo of Nicholas it matched perfectly, it seemed highly probable that these truly were the bodies of the Romanovs. However, as compelling as the circumstances might be, there was still no absolute proof, and so doubts lingered.

It is at this point that my involvement in the story begins. I came across the story of the remains while I was working on the BBC show
Tomorrow's World
in 1992. Fascinated, I contacted the Russian Forensic Science Service in Moscow to find out more and was put through to one of their leading DNA specialists, Dr. Pavel Ivanov. He outlined what they had done so far, but he explained that they had insufficient funds to bring the remains to England for DNA analysis. I offered to pay, which delighted him. The next step was to contact the then Home Secretary (and fortunately my own constituency MP), Ken Clarke, who authorized the DNA work to be carried out at Aldermaston, the UK Home Office's forensic science service. It was to be done by a British scientist, Dr. Peter Gill, who was extremely excited at the prospect. Pavel Ivanov then flew into the United Kingdom carrying nine right arms in an old British Airways bag. The bag promptly went into the back of my Volvo, and we drove to Peter Gill's house. I couldn't help but wonder how the police might react if they stopped me and found that I had nine skeletal arms stashed away. Still, there can't be many people who've had an entire royal family in the trunk of their car.

The cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg, where the remains of the Romanov family were finally laid to rest.

The genetic analysis of the bones was carried out over a number of weeks, testing against samples of relations to the Romanovs, such as the Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine was the sister of Tsarina Alexandra. At the end of this period, Peter Gill had established that the remains were indeed those of the family. It was momentous news and obviously received a great deal of media attention. Given that there was no longer any doubt about who they were, the remains of the Romanov family were also finally able to be given a proper burial. They were interred in the vaults of the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998. There they now lie, along with so many great tsars of Russia. I subsequently received a letter from the Russian Forensic Science Service thanking me for my help in the project, and I also received the thanks of the surviving members of the Romanov family—I am very proud of both.

DNA fingerprinting also ended the question of Anna Anderson's controversial claims to have been the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Even as early as 1927, a private investigation funded by Tsarina Alexandra's brother Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, had identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a
Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. But without stronger evidence there was no way to definitively debunk her claims. In fact, it would not be until after her death in 1984 that the question could finally be settled. It turned out that part of Anderson's intestine, which had been removed during an operation in 1979, had been stored at a hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she had lived out her final years. Analysis of the DNA from this not only proved that this woman was not related to the Romanovs, but was also able to match her with a sample given by Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. It seemed that the original investigation had been right all along. There might be a certain romance to the notion that Anastasia had survived all those years that made some people willing to believe it, but in the end DNA analysis revealed the truth.

But if it seems shocking that science can reach so far back into the past, perhaps the most astounding piece of recent DNA analysis reaches back even further—hundreds of years, in fact. King Richard III of England was born on October 2, 1452. He reigned as king for two years, from 1483 until his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. He has the distinction of being the last king of the House of York, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His reign is now somewhat infamous, and he is often vilified, as in Shakespeare's
Richard III.

When Richard's brother Edward IV died in 1483, Richard became Lord Protector on behalf of Edward's son, the twelve-year-old King Edward V, along with the boy's brother. Richard had the two boys housed and locked away in the Tower of London for, Richard claimed, their own protection. Edward's coronation date was set for June 22, 1483. However, before the young king could be crowned, his father's marriage was declared invalid because of a prior union, thus making the children illegitimate and ineligible for the throne. This was extremely convenient for Richard, who was therefore able to ascend to the throne himself.

A portrait of Richard III by an unknown artist, thought to have been painted before 1626. He is suspected to have suffered from scoliosis, which would have made one shoulder appear higher than the other, as does indeed seem to be the case in this painting.

During his reign, Richard had to confront two major rebellions. The first, in October 1483, was led by the Duke of Buckingham and supporters of Edward IV, who believed Edward's sons were the true heirs to the throne. Richard crushed the revolt and Buckingham was executed. Then, in August 1485, Henry Tudor and his uncle Jasper Tudor moved against Richard. The two armies finally met at Bosworth Field. At first it seemed that Richard would defeat Henry, since his army was considerably larger. However, Richard was killed while leading a cavalry charge towards Henry in an attempt to cut him down and finish the battle. He was the last King of England to be killed in battle.

It is recorded that Richard III's remains were buried by friars in a nearby church. However, for many years a legend persisted that, not long after his death, his body was taken from its grave in Greyfriars cemetery and thrown into a river by an angry crowd and was therefore lost for ever. No evidence of this has ever been found.

The search for the site of Greyfriars church got under way largely due to a member of the Richard III Society, Philippa Langley, with Dr. John Ashdown-Hill and Annette Carson, both of whom had written books about Richard. Their first task was to try to raise the money they needed in order to begin any serious exploration. With the help of the members of the Richard III Society, they not only reached but considerably exceeded their goal of £10,000. Then Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist at the University of Leicester—it is really rather surprising how important the University of Leicester
has been to the history of forensic science—became involved in the project. Although he considered that the chances of actually finding the body of the king were slim to none, he was willing to have a try; after all, they might find something else of interest on the site, even if they could not locate the royal remains.

An eighteenth-century map of Leicester showed that the site of Greyfriars church was now under the office of Leicestershire Social Services. On August 25, 2012, the team began to excavate the building's parking lot. By September 12 that year they were able to make an extremely exciting discovery public: they had discovered the skeleton of an adult male. Although it was of course too soon to make a real identification, there were things that made the team dare to hope that they had found the lost body of the king.

For example, when the team used a CT scan on the remains to produce a 3D record of every bone in the body, they established that the skeleton showed signs of scoliosis—a slight curvature of the spine. While this would not have made the man a hunchback of the sort Richard is sometimes represented to have been, it would likely have made one shoulder visibly higher than the other and might be the kind of feature that detractors would have picked up on and exaggerated for their own propaganda.

The skeleton also exhibited various war wounds—no fewer than ten, in fact. It seemed that this man had lost his helmet at some point in battle, since most of these were to the skull. There was a stab wound, almost certainly made by a rondel dagger, which was a popular weapon at the time; there was a slicing injury that must have been caused by a flat-bladed
weapon; and finally there was a massive cleave to the back of the skull that would almost certainly have exposed the brain. It was this last injury that must have been the fatal one. At any rate, it was clear that this man had died in battle.

As much as everyone wanted to believe that the skeleton might truly be Richard III, all this was only compelling circumstantial evidence. But DNA analysis might be able to provide more definite proof. And Dr. John Ashdown-Hill had managed to do something really quite extraordinary that would assist in this effort. Through in-depth genealogical research, he had succeeded in tracing a distant descendant of Anne of York, Richard III's older sister: a British woman named Joy Ibsen who had emigrated to Canada shortly after the Second World War. She was a sixteenth-generation great-niece of Richard, along a direct maternal line. This last point was significant because it allowed her to be used for the purposes of mitochondrial DNA analysis. Mitochondrial DNA represents a tiny amount of the total genetic material that any one of us carries, and it is distinct from that carried in the main chromosomes. Every person inherits their mitochondrial DNA from their mother, without the usual recombination of genes from mother and father, meaning that along a direct maternal line, every person will have the same mitochondrial DNA.

Sadly Joy died in 2008, so it was her son Michael Ibsen who gave a mouth-swab in 2012 for the purposes of comparison. His mitochondrial DNA was found to belong to DNA haplogroup J; if the remains were those of Richard III, their mitochondrial DNA would be from this haplogroup as well.
The work on the remains was carried out by geneticist Dr. Turi King, who was able to confirm that this was indeed the case. Of course this wasn't an absolute identification, as a large number of other people might belong to haplogroup J, but given the location of the remains, their age, their physical appearance, and the injuries to them, this extra piece of evidence seemed to confirm beyond reasonable doubt that the body was that of King Richard III, and on February 4, 2013, the University of Leicester announced this to the world. In an ending comparable to that of the discovery of the Romanov family, it has since been announced that Richard will be properly interred in 2014.