INVESTIGATION OF THE ROMANOV REMAINS HAS BEEN REOPENED

[Kalafrana]

I agree with Helen. The entire family is accounted for, including all four girls. Though it would be nice to know definitively which of the two youngest girls is which, it is not essential.

I wonder whether part of the reason for the exhumation is the advance in DNA techniques since the original testing was done. However, the original testing did establish that these really were the remains of the Imperial Family, so further testing is not essential. The remains of Alexei and the 'missing girl' were only tested recently, so that point doesn't apply to them.

Ann

[Maria Sisi]

I just hope they get the correct remains of GD Ella this time, and also that Alexander II's blood sample is not contaminated after all these years, otherwise we will see a lot more of the same nonsense...  This has gone on way too long and they need to get it all resolved ASAP...  

Sorry for being clueless but can you elaborate on this? What happened to Ella's remains? I thought the victims of Alapayevsk were recovered soon after the whites took the town and identified? What happened between then, the journey to the far east, China and Jerusalem or after?

Also what blood sample of Alexander II are you talking about? Are you talking about the bloody tunic from his assassination? Because if you are then I understand. Otherwise is there another sample stored somewhere?

[Romanov_Fan19]

How long will it all take  sheesh      seems they aren't gonna make the 18th deadline

[holynewmartyr]

Remains of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna may be included in royal family inquiry - Russian Investigative Committee

Moscow, September 28, Interfax - The Russian Investigative Committee does not rule out that samples of the remains of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna may be delivered from Israel to Moscow for a new examination within the royal family inquiry but a final decision has yet to be made.

"We are holding negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church. This is a very complicated matter: international relations and the delivery from a foreign country. A final decision has yet to be made," senior investigator of the Russian Investigative Committee main criminal investigation department Vladimir Solovyov told Interfax.

Future Great Duchess Elizabeth, the one of British Queen Victoria's favorite granddaughters, was born in Germany and spent her early years in England. She was a sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and a daughter of Grand Duke of Giessen Darmstadt. She was brought up in Christian spirit and compassion.

She was a Protestant, but during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land she adopted Orthodoxy and after her husband Moscow general-governor Sergey Alexandrovich Romanov had been killed by the terrorist, she founded famous Sts Martha and Mary Convent in 1909 where nuns combined prayer with active social ministry, helping the sick and wounded, especially during World War I. People called Grand Duchess Elizabeth the White Angel of Russia.

She refused to leave Russia during revolutionary days and was arrested in spring of 1918 and martyred in a duffer Novay Selimskaya not far from Alapayevsk, the Yekaterinburg Region. Elizaveta Feodorovna was canonized as saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Source: http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=12361

I do hope that samples are obtained. This would resolve the confusion caused by the Stanford testing in 2004 of a finger allegedly belonging to Ella that didn't match the DNA of Alexandra.

[helenazar]

... I just hope they get the correct remains of GD Ella...  

Which begs the questions: Is this really Ella's body?



There was the controversial testing done at Stanford University in 2004 with an alleged finger of Ella that was obtained by Bishop Anthony Grabbe during the opening of her coffin in Jerusalem in 1982. The DNA did not match. The Stanford team concluded the remains of the Imperial Family were not authentic. The counter-argument is that the finger isn't really from Ella. 

Yes, that finger was definitely NOT Ella's.  Margarita Nelipa and I wrote an article about that study back in 2005, and we talk about the finger extensively.   It was a completely incompetent work. https://www.academia.edu/7316582/_Claims_That_the_Remains_of_the_Russian_Imperial_Family_Are_Still_Missing_Or_Are_They_Sorting_Out_the_Facts_from_the_Fiction._Helen_Azar_and_Margarita_Nelipa

[LisaDavidson]

Helen and Margarita are/were correct. The mtDNA of Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Empress Alexandra would be identical to that of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. No matter how much digging up or new testing that is done, this will not change.

[Inok Nikolai]

... I just hope they get the correct remains of GD Ella...  

Which begs the questions: Is this really Ella's body?



There was the controversial testing done at Stanford University in 2004 with an alleged finger of Ella that was obtained by Bishop Anthony Grabbe during the opening of her coffin in Jerusalem in 1982. The DNA did not match. The Stanford team concluded the remains of the Imperial Family were not authentic. The counter-argument is that the finger isn't really from Ella.  

Yes, that finger was definitely NOT Ella's.  Margarita Nelipa and I wrote an article about that study back in 2005, and we talk about the finger extensively.   It was a completely incompetent work. https://www.academia.edu/7316582/_Claims_That_the_Remains_of_the_Russian_Imperial_Family_Are_Still_Missing_Or_Are_They_Sorting_Out_the_Facts_from_the_Fiction._Helen_Azar_and_Margarita_Nelipa

Yes, that article by the two of you was a solid refutation of the shoddy "science" of the Stanford team.

And yes, the finger is compromised as a source of uncontaminated DNA for such studies.

However, not everyone would go so far as to declare that it is not Grand Duchess Elizabeth's.

In his own article refuting the Stanford study, Dr. Parson, in the second paragraph, declares that he does not doubt that it is hers, but that it had been handled too much.
He also notes that even in the Stanford tests some strings of the finger's DNA did match Prince Philip's.
http://www.searchfoundationinc.org/no-reason-to-doubt-the-romanov-dna-testing

For our part, we have known the Grabbes for decades. Fr. George Grabbe, subsequently Bishop Gregory, was the Chancellor / Secretary of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad for many, many years.
His son, Archimandrite Anthony, subsequently Bishop Anthony (the one in question here), was Head of the ROCA's Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem for many years and responsible for the convent where St. Elizabeth's remains were kept.
He personally opened the coffins of her and Sister Barbara at the time of their glorification, when their relics were transferred from the crypt to the main church. It was he who removed the finger, and other relics, and brought them to NYC.
So the "chain of custody" is pretty straightforward in this case. We ourselves saw her finger in his care in NY not long before he died.

It's also important to remember that long before DNA studies were even heard of, people had no idea that they were somehow 'contaminating' a specimen, or compromising it for a future, still uninvented scientific process.

That is one reason why the Otsu kerchief did not yield any useful results -- too much handling by too many people in the course of many years.

But who would've thought?!

[helenazar]

I don't have any proof, but my theory is that they mixed up the bodies of Ella and Varvara... They were the only two females in that mine, and they reportedly identified Ella's body by the icon around her neck, but it is very possible that Ella may have given that icon to Varvara... Usually one can tell the difference when the DNA result is from contamination vs someone else's, which why I don't think it was the contamination... it would be interesting to compare the DNA from the finger to someone in Varvara's family, but of course no one will ever do that...

[holynewmartyr]

For our part, we have known the Grabbes for decades. Fr. George Grabbe, subsequently Bishop Gregory, was the Chancellor / Secretary of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad for many, many years.
His son, Archimandrite Anthony, subsequently Bishop Anthony (the one in question here), was Head of the ROCA's Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem for many years and responsible for the convent where St. Elizabeth's remains were kept.
He personally opened the coffins of her and Sister Barbara at the time of their glorification, when their relics were transferred from the crypt to the main church. It was he who removed the finger, and other relics, and brought them to NYC.
So the "chain of custody" is pretty straightforward in this case. We ourselves saw her finger in his care in NY not long before he died.

It's also important to remember that long before DNA studies were even heard of, people had no idea that they were somehow 'contaminating' a specimen, or compromising it for a future, still uninvented scientific process.

That is one reason why the Otsu kerchief did not yield any useful results -- too much handling by too many people in the course of many years.

Thank you for your post. This clears up some uncertainties I had.

[holynewmartyr]

I don't have any proof, but my theory is that they mixed up the bodies of Ella and Varvara...

At first, I thought that may be a possibility, but then I consulted my copy of Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke, 6th Edition by Lubov Millar.

Victoria's letter of January 27, 1921 to her brother Ernie is published in the book and says the following:

1) "And our Ella's body was not decayed, only dried up".
2) Nun Varvara's coffin is the same as Ella's "...only smaller. For you remember she was a tiny person".

Considering that the coffins were of different sizes and Ella's body was to some degree incorrupt and therefore identifiable, I find it difficult to believe that the bodies were switched.

In light of Inok Nikolai's post, I'm now inclined to believe the finger is actually that of Ella's but experienced contamination.
 

[helenazar]

1) "And our Ella's body was not decayed, only dried up".
2) Nun Varvara's coffin is the same as Ella's "...only smaller. For you remember she was a tiny person".
 

I think her body was pretty corrupt if by all reports it had to be identified by the icon on her neck.. They did not say anything about the size or anything else for identification, they only mentioned that they identified her by that icon... Which leads me to believe it was pretty hard to tell which one was which. When contaminationhappens, the results are non-conclusive, and you can definitely tell that it's contamination, it just looks very odd, vs getting a specific DNA sequence. In this case they got a specific result - of someone else's DNA... I am like 99% sure that they had the bodies mixed up and the finger is actually Varvara's, but again, short of comparing the DNA from the finger to a known relative of Varvara, there is no way to prove that. I just hope they had the bodies sorted out in Jerusalem, so that we don't come upon the same issue again!

[helenazar]

Also, when DNA sample from a body part is obtained, scientists will usually collect it from an area where it would not be exposed to contamination, i.e. inner tissue or bone, etc, not from the surface... Which again leads me to believe that in case of the finger it was not contamination, just wrong sample. I would be more likely to believe that it was contamination if it was something like the Otsu sample, but not something like a finger. I know it's hard for the church to accept that they have been venerating the wrong relic all these years, but this is a very reasonable conclusion based on these results.

[lilianna]

The examination found the gene of hemophilia Anastasia Nikolaevna.
News today 10 October 2015.The examination found the gene of hemophilia Anastasia Nikolaevna. In the video, the investigator Solovyov in the archive. Expert Rogaev on expertise Alexei and Anastasia Nikolaevna.
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2673879

[Kalafrana]

Interesting, but not very surprising, as there is a 50% risk of a carrier mother passing on the gene to each of her children. Alexandra had five children, so statistically speaking, 2 or 3 could be expected to have the gene.

Ann

[lilianna]

News that only Anastasia has the hemophilia gene. He is not at Olga, Tatiana, Maria.