Let us return to the original question and examine from a somewhat different point of view. I do apologize in advance for the graphic nature of the content; if it makes you uneasy, please don't read further. However the topic is of interest to some, and I think - in the right context - worthy of discussion.
To determine some semblance of truth (the precise nature of which can never be known) we must examine both the original source material and the motivations of the various characters providing testimony. We must also examine the irrefutable facts, few that there are, and determine if we can glean anything meaningful from them.
Let's start with the irrefutable facts.
One thing we know for certain is that virtually any Bolshevik soldier in Russia, at that time, would have eagerly accepted the task of killing the Tsar.
Even the most ardent Bolshevik, however, would have been unwilling to shoot innocent women and children.
We therefore can establish premeditation in the intent to murder the entire family from the moment the 10 "Letts" entered the house. Why? Because the arrival of the "Letts" signified a job had to be done for which no Russian - Bolshevik or otherwise - was willing. Remove the intent to murder the entire family, including women and children, and logically you must remove the "Letts" as well. (This is one of the reasons I find the "Ekaterinburg Soviet acted alone" theory to be rubbish: premeditation of several weeks infers communication with Moscow).
The botched "execution" (i.e.; murder) is much better understood in this context. For the Letts, even under orders, were also not inclined to shoot women and children. When the moment arrived, they all fired at the Emperor. Following this logic their secondary targets (regardless of what they had been instructed) were the remaining men: Botkin, the cook Khartinov, Trupp. After that they probably shot indiscriminately.
This is precisely how Yurovsky recounts the execution in his various testimony.
Within seconds of these initial volleys, we know that due to the nature of the confined space (~20 souls crammed into a small room, firing pistols) the murder scene became smoke-filled, chaotic, and mortally dangerous to the executioners themselves due to ricochet. It seems logical then that they quickly ceased fire.
At this point, in his memoirs, note, etc., Yurovsky implicates one man: Ermakov. It is Ermakov who reenters with a bayonet and savagely finishes off the injured. Not coincidentally, when we learn later about the burial, the lorry, it is the same Ermakov that has screwed it all up. And of course, when we read about Ermakov we discover he a hideous alcoholic with a history of violence, a common criminal, etc. In short, a very unlikeable fellow. A beast.
The problem with this is that by creating a demonic caricature of Ermakov - by turning him into an animal and sending him in alone to do the dirty work, so to speak - Yurovsky and the remaining executioners are thereby exonerated from the most unsavory, immoral and inhumane elements of the crime. We, as readers, are in a sense exonerated ourselves, for only a hideous creature could do such a thing, not a person.
If you have read the recreation of the murder in FOTR, this "Id=Ermakov" phenomenon is something Mr. King exploits to the hilt (irresponsibly, in my opinion).
In fact, by implicating Ermakov, Yurovsky himself conveniently emerges a far less guilty man. Motive! We therefore must be suspicious of his testimony, and any testimony in which the subject has murdered the Tsar firsthand, while his nefarious accomplices are responsible for the remaining innocents. I'm afraid that covers virtually every shooter's testimony. Ermakov himself "proudly handed over his Mauser revolver, no. 16174, to the Museum of the Revolution in Sverdlovsk, along with a short note claiming that with it he had personally killed Nicholas II." (FOTR p.512).
I suspect that Yurovsky, Ermakov, and very likely several other of those ultimately responsible for the "successful" outcome of the operation, returned to the room and finished off the remaining survivors. It surely had to have been a terrible, gruesome scene. Ermakov certainly doesn't distinguish himself, but neither does anyone else.
Given all this - the nature of the wounds, the protection of the corsets, the reluctance to shoot women in particular - it seems plausible that while still dying some of the victims moaned or moved while being transported out to the lorry. It seems implausible they could have lived beyond that.
I bring this up because Mr. King seems rather fond of Yurovsky, when it was Yurovsky who planned the execution in such a way that - even given the horrible injustice of the act itself - was absolutely inhumane in every sense of the word.
Perhaps most sad of is that all of the actors in this tragedy were human beings. I am reminded of this quote:
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties, but through every human heart." - A. Solzhenitsyn
