The Romanovs - were the remaining two bodies ever found?

Factual Questions
1

I was doing some reading on Princess Anastasia and Anna Anderson tonight, and every article I’ve read say that only nine bodies were ever found, and that two are still missing.

I could SWEAR that I remember, maybe about five years ago, that they’d found the remaining two bodies of Alexei and Anastasia, away from the location of the other bodies, but in some sort of wooded area buried under a path. I can’t find anything to support this, though, although ElzaHub says he remembers something in the news about it as well.

Anyone know whether or not they really did find the last two bodies?

E.

2

Supposedly, back in the 20s, someone found evidence of two bodies burned-bone fragments, some congealed fat, in that area, and the remains found there were supposedly taken to Serbia, I believe. I’ll have to dig out one of my books and look it up.

Other than that, the place where supposedly the remains of Alexei and one of his sisters (either Anastasia or Maria, it’s never been conclusively proven otherwise, and it could even have been Tatiana), was plowed extensively sometime in the 1980s I believe, to look for the bodies, and I believe experts say that if that happened, the remains have probably been destroyed completely.

Interestingly enough, they’ve also never located the remains of Nicholas II’s brother, Mikhail II, who was Tsar for a day after his brother’s abdication. Mikhail was killed along with his secretary in Perm, and no one has ever looked for the remains, from what I understand.

3

After doing a TON of reading last night, I did find one instance where someone else remembered two bodies being found around 1999 or around that point. Still, nothing was ever conclusive.

It’s funny how things will change your mind - I always thought Anna Anderson was NOT a Romanov - now I’m not so sure anymore. There’s too much odd data out there to be conclusive either way.

This was an odd, odd piece of history. So many things just don’t add up.

E.

4

PBS did a documentary on this a couple years back. I, too, thought that they had accounted for all the children. You might try searching their web site. You can usually buy the videos.

5

DNA tests proved conclusively she was not, any evidence to the contrary was always circumstantial at best, hearsay and pure conjecture at worst.

6

Anderson was an interesting case-she wasn’t the Grand Duchess, but I think that she herself BELIEVED she was. I think she was mentally disturbed and used by a lot of people for their own agendas. Poor woman.

7

From what I’ve read, the DNA testing itself is questioned (for one, the Grand Duchess Elisabeth’s DNA didn’t match that of Alexandra’s - her own sister), which is why I’ve been questioning it after reading.

Common sense says she was not one of the Romanovs, but the DNA testing itself has been called into question by many people.

E.

8

I’ve always liked the idea that one of the Romanov girls survived.

Alas, I never could buy into Anna Anderson’s claims.

AIUI, the problem with DNA evidence for this sort of thing is that it assumes that official pedigrees match with reality. Which isn’t going to be a bad supposition for any one child/parent pair - but when one starts dealing with several such pairs, it becomes more iffy. And that’s ignoring the real (highly unlikely) possibility of a chimera being involved at some point in the lineage.

9

According to The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie, DNA testing not only proved that Anna Anderson was NOT Anastasia, but gave fairly conclusive proof as to who she was.

It’s been too long since I read the book to give an authoritative summary, but the story goes something like this.

Shortly after Anna “Unknown” was pulled from a canal (where she had allegedly attempted suicide), she was placed in a hospital in order to recover her lost memory. Soon afterward (I don’t remember whether this was before or after she claimed to be the missing Romanov), she was visited by a pair of Polish siblings who claimed she was their sister. After talking with her behind closed doors for some time, the two departed, stating that they must have been mistaken.

After the results of Anna Anderson’s DNA testing indicated that she was not of the Romanov line, someone tracked down the descendents of the Polish family that had tried to claim her. The mitachondrial DNA results were a spot-on match.

10

I saw that PBS show, too. Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, was related to the Romanovs (on his mother’s side, IIRC), and was the guy who supplied the DNA sample which was cross-checked.

11

Elizabeth would be related, too, by Queen Victoria would she not?

12

The late anna anderson was a pretty weird woamn. her last days were spent in a run-down house with lots of cats. One other thing to contribute; there was a russian guy in St. Petersburg, who claimed to be the grandson of alexei. he looked like a Romanoff, but i never heard how his DNA test came out.

13

Yep, and that’s the story that’s pretty much gone around - when I get home tonight, I’ll have to post the few links I found when I was searching around last night that cast some aspersions on the validity. They aren’t saying that she WAS a Romanov - just that there are questions about the DNA evidence itself.

It’s an interesting story either way - there are quite a few theories out there thaat I’d never seen.

E.

14

on the british royalty front… philip is from a maternal connection to the romanovs, elizabeth from paternal. when doing the dna testing for the romanovs they were looking for a maternal connection.

15

Anna Anderson was cremated after she died. The DNA tests were conducted on tissue sample left over from surgery she had. Doubts have been raised over whether the tissue actually came from her.

16

It was still a match for the non-royals tested.

17

Yes, but she was related through the male line, rather than female. Okay, quick biology and genetics lesson:

Mitochondrial DNA passes through the mother-therefore, you inherit your mito DNA (let’s call it that) from dear ol’ Mom. Prince Phillip’s maternal grandmother and the Tsaritsa were sisters, their mother was Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse-Dharmstadt. Now, Victoria would have passed her mito DNA to Alice, and then Alice to HER daughters, Princess Victoria of Battenberg and Tsaritsa Alexandra. Victoria then passed the mito DNA to her daughter, Princess Alice of Greece, who passed it to Phillip. Okay?

Alexandra passed it to her four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and her son, Alexei. So they all share the same mito DNA sequence, stemming back to Victoria.

Now, Elizabeth is also a descendent of Queen Victoria. BUT…she descends from Queen Victoria’s SON, King Edward VII. And then from his SON, King George V, and George V’s son, George VI. So HER mito DNA is not Queen Victoria’s, it comes from HER mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who is no relation to Princess Alice’s line, therefore, it would be completely different.

alphaboi867, Massie pretty much discredited those who claimed that the tissue samples from Anderson were switched. They also found hairs containing DNA in one of her old hair brushes kept by her husband.

re. Claimants-in my view, no one survived that night to escape. There may have been one or two still alive when they left the basement, but just barely. Basing it on bodies missing isn’t a good theory, because Alexei’s body is one of those missing. Alexei was a hemophiliac, and was shot point blank in the head. I cannot bring myself to believe he could have survived that without any medical treatment whatsoever. Considering that in the past he almost died on two occassions-one from a nosebleed, the other from a bruise in the groin.

Now, I will say, the most credible claimant was one Alexei Tamment from Canada, if only because he looked like a dead ringer for the Tsarevich. But I don’t believe it was him.