Questions About Testimonies of Yurovsky, Others

[AGRBear]

As far as we know,  Yurovsky talks about Ermakov being drunk,  and an uknown "guest"  in Radzinsky's book, and,  _____ .  Hmmmmm.   King and Wilson must have found more than just one person saying this about Ermakov..... because they are the ones who go into more detail about Ermakov.

From what you tell us, Maples was more interested in the bones and forensic stuff.....  

Penny?

Greg?

AGRBear

[Finelly]

It would not be far-fetched to posit that in order to shoot an entire family, gather up the bodies, clean up, dismember bodies, transport the bodies, throw them in a big whole, pull them out, set them on fire, and bury them (not necessarily in that order) one would need alcohol.

It's pretty gruesome work.  Whether they were drunk when they did the shooting, or got drunk afterwards, I would imagine that their recollections would be distorted long afterwards.

[hikaru]

The real name of Yurovsky was Yankely Haimovich Yurovsky He dead at the Kremlin Hospital at 1938 being
interrogated ( which saved him from from the Stalin 's repressions).

[hikaru]

Maybe somewhere there is a file of his last interrogation.
(I took this data from  a book of academician Mr. Plotnikov " The truth of History . The destruction of the Imperial Romanov Family"

[lexi4]

Does anyone knoe if Veniamin Alekseyev's book is available anywhere and if it has been translated to English? I have searched everywhere and cannot find it.

[lexi4]

Questions about the Yurovsky testimony.

In 1934 he said: "Although I warned them through Botkin that they didn't need to bring anything with them, they nevertheless gatherd up various little things - pillows, littel bag and so forth - an I believe, a little dog."
*taken from "The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar" page 194

There is no mention of a dog in his 1920 report.

In The File on the Tsar, Summer and Mangold (p. 161) say that during the Sokolov investigation the body of Tatiana's dog Jemmy was found in the bottom of the mine. They also say that Sokolov pulished a photo showing the dog. They also say that none of the guards tesimonty (including Yurovsky's) include a reference to a dog in the murder room.

I have no idea what this means, if anything. But the topic is questions about the testimonies. So why is there no mention of a dog until after Sokolov's report is published that they dog was found?

I am not asking for opinions and speculation, rather documentation/information about this detail?

(good thing I have the cricket bat, Extonexile)

[Finelly]

BTW, there were two dogs.  One was Jemmy, the one found in the mine shaft.  The other stayed at the house and was adopted by a diplomat and taken to England.....

[lexi4]

That is correct. I forget to mention the second dog

[AGRBear]

Here is some testimony Phil is presenting to us on another thread:

Digging around some old files I've come across a British Military Intelligence report from c1920 which includes a Report to the Minister of Justice by the Procureur of the High Court of Kazan (M Mireluboff) dated 12th December 1918 which includes details of the preliminary inquiry into the murder of the late Emperor and his family.  This includes an declaration by one  Theodore Nikiforov Kutuzoff dated July 17th 1918 gathered by Assistant Procurator Kutuzoff regarding the murder of the family, information about the burials provided by peasants at Koptyakov, descriptions of the room in Ipatiev Dom, including room size and numbers of cavities in the wall,  statements by Gilliard & Tchemaduroff, details of the seizure of various articles belonging to the family from a forner soldier named Ketemitin, and a statment from one Kutenkoff about overhearing members of the burial party say "at first they were buried at two spots outside Ekaterinberg but afterwards carried away and buried at different spots".

Is this report common knowledge?  If so I'll forget it, otherwise I'll take the time to transcribe it in sections for the site.  This may take some time as it runs to 8 pages of typescript.

Phil Tomaselli  

Yes it is curious that it should go missing, though files do get mislaid at Kew occasionally.  I've had a couple disappear over the last few years, though thankfully I can prove that someone else has had this file out since I last did so.  Usually, I suspect, one file gets accidentally placed inside another and, eventually, it'll turn up when the other file is next looked at.

Anyway, here is section 2 of the report (my artificial division) dealing with initial enquiries at the mineshaft.  It follows on immediately from first extract:

On July 16th or 18th the peasants of the village of Koptyakov, in the Upper Tssetskaya Canton, within 18 versts from Ekaterinburg, noticed some movements of detachments of Red Army soldiers in the forest siuated near the village, while nobody was allowed to approach that locality.  Being however inquisitive to know what the soldiers of the Red Army had been doing there, Andrew Scheremetevsky, Michael Aleroff, and other peasants of the said village went there after the soldiers had left the forest and followed the way trodden by the Red soldiers, which brought them to the waste shafts.

There, within a few steps from one of the shafts, they met an improvised hillock on which were found the remnants of a pile.  On digging it up the said peasants found a cross with green stones in it; four busks of corsets, buckles of braces, buttons, knobs, and four beads.  When one of the peasants let himself down on a rope into the shaft, he noticed that on the watery surface there were floating about  a stick, bark, boards, fresh acerose leaves and an iron shovel.

Near the pile they noticed a birch tree bearing on its bark the inscription: "T A Fessenko, Mining Technologist, July 11th 1918."  When the Examining Magistrate afterwards made a detailed inspection of the place, they found, near the same shaft, called "Tssetsky Mine", amidst burnt sticks and coal, a burnt lady’s bag, while with 64 feet from the shaft there were found burnt rags, lace, and some sparkling fragments.

Moreover, Captain Pometkovsky, who was presnt at the inspection, found a much soiled stone of a watery colour of considerable size with a flat centre in a white setting with very minute spangles, which on subsequent inspection by an expert jeweller turned out to be a diamond of very great value (worth at least 10,000).  Not far from the same place there were also found two small fragments of emerald and pearl, as well as a torn piece of stuff with a strong smell of paraffin.  Lastly, on the very edge of a wide shaft there was found in the clay a small fragment of a rifle barrelled hand-bomb, while descending into the shaft there were discovered traces of the explosion of a hand-bomb.

[AGRBear]

(coninued)

...[in part]......

Here is the next part of the report:

Later on, during the period from August 2nd to 8th the Examining Magistrate made an inspection of the house of Ipatieff at Ekaterinburg, where the Emperor Nicholas and his family had been placed under a strict watch.

Among other things this inspection showed that the entrance door to one of the rooms had been torn off from the hinges by some instrument.  The door itself, splintered by bayonets, was found at the entrance to the house.

In view of the special importance of the case, pursuant to note 2 of the Article on the Statute of Judicial Institutions and on the recommendation of the Acting Procurateur, the District Court ordered on August 7th to charge the with with case a judge of that Court, I A Sergeyeff, who accordingly carried out the subsequent inquiry proceedings.

During August 11th tu 14 th an inspection was made of the ground floor premises of Ipatieff's house, where only one room calls for special attention, namely the one in which the shooting took place.  The most careful inspection of the same did not enable one to ascertain who precisely had been shot in that room, though it is undoubtedly clear that several persons have been shot there.

The room is 7 arsheens and 8 vershops (about 17 ½ feet) long, and 6 arsheens and 4 vershops (14 ½ feet) wide.  On one of the walls, opposite the entrance, there are 16 cavities situate at various distances from the floor.  Similar cavities were found on the left side of a portion of the floor of that room, such cavities being situate precisely at the spot where clear traces of blood washed away and rubbed over with sand are noticeable on the floor.

By order of Judge Sergeyeff portions of the wood and floor where apertures had been found were cut out in the shape of squares, when the examination revealed that those apertures presented channels for revolver bullets.  Some of these channels were filled with curdled and congealed blood.  From the position of the revolver apertures in the wall of the room one may conclude that the persons shot were on their knees.

Next section, to follow tomorrow I hope, deals with Tchemaduroff's testimony.  Sorry to have to do it like this but I do have a normal life to lead as well......

Phil T


 

[RealAnastasia]

This is an interesting point: there were TWO dogs who died in the Ipatiev house: Jemmy and Ortino. We know this for the White investigators found Jemmy's corpse in the mine. He wasn't rotten. Ortino's corpse didn't appear, but some of the little bones found for the Whites must have been his. I read in FOTR that Ortino was "Impaled" by one of the Yurovsky's men. Goloshockin even said: "A dog's death for a dog"...

It's very strange that Penny and Greg doesn't mention Jemmy's death. In Robert K. Massie "Nicholas and Alexandra" and "Romanov; Last Chapter", this author wrote about Anastasia bringing Jemmy in her arms...

Other interesting point in the murderer witnesses, is the fact that the girls were shot in the head, one by one. They said that after the shots, all they head exploded in cerebral tissue and blood. But then, is not possible that two of them (some accounts said three) sat in their path to the truck, screaming...Not with such brain damage. Yurovsky claimed that Ermakov shot Maria in the head to "finish her off", but she was one of the girls who "waked up to scream" before being put in the truck. So...What happened? Someone is plainly lying here...

RealAnastasia.

[Elisabeth]

This is an interesting point: there were TWO dogs who died in the Ipatiev house: Jemmy and Ortino. We know this for the White investigators found Jemmy's corpse in the mine. He wasn't rotten. Ortino's corpse didn't appear, but some of the little bones found for the Whites must have been his. I read in FOTR that Ortino was "Impaled" by one of the Yurovsky's men. Goloshockin even said: "A dog's death for a dog"...

Actually we don't know for a fact that two dogs were killed by the Bolsheviks. Kudrin states in his memoir that only Ortino was killed. More significantly, not a single one of the killers says that there was a dog present in the murder room. As Summers and Mangold demonstrated in FOTT, it's very probable that the Whites themselves planted Jemmy's corpse at the Four Brothers mineshaft months after the murder, because they wanted there to be some definitive proof that the IF had been killed, in the absence of their bodies.

It's true that Yurovsky mentions Jemmy's corpse in his 1934 Note, but even then it's only to say that when removing the bodies of the IF and servants from the mineshaft, in preparation for the second burial, he and his men left various traces of evidence behind by mistake, including "apparently the body of a dog." Note the "apparently." It's significant because the only way Yurovsky could have known that Jemmy was "left behind" in the mineshaft was if he had actually read Sokolov's report. Obviously he hadn't read it in 1920 or 1928, when he wrote his first Notes, because he doesn't mention Jemmy in either one, but by 1934 he had read the report, and added details from it to his latest Note. This was in the interests of being thorough, and not from any attempt to deceive.

It's very strange that Penny and Greg doesn't mention Jemmy's death.

Not so strange, because as has been firmly established, Jemmy was not present in the murder room. I think King and Wilson also just didn't have the space in which to discuss the FOTT theory that Jemmy's corpse was planted by the Whites. At best, this would only have been a footnote anyway.

Other interesting point in the murderer witnesses, is the fact that the girls were shot in the head, one by one. They said that after the shots, all they head exploded in cerebral tissue and blood. But then, is not possible that two of them (some accounts said three) sat in their path to the truck, screaming...Not with such brain damage. Yurovsky claimed that Ermakov shot Maria in the head to "finish her off", but she was one of the girls who "waked up to scream" before being put in the truck. So...What happened? Someone is plainly lying here...

RealAnastasia.

King and Wilson don't say that Maria was shot in the head. They say she was attacked with bayonets and suffered only one bullet wound, to her leg. It's quite possible that Maria was one of the girls who woke up and screamed when the murderers were carrying her out to the truck. It's also possible it was Anastasia, since some of the witness accounts state that she was the daughter who sat up, screamed, and was then stabbed to death. One of the girls also made some kind of gurgling sounds in her throat, and in fact that could have been any of the daughters, because even head shots do not necessarily kill one instantly - as Dr. Maples said in one interview, people don't die the way you expect them to when you shoot them, they convulse, they slip in and out of consciousness.  

[AGRBear]

The dog is not mention by Yurovsky in his first testimony in 1920.

Testimony of Yurovsky given in 1 Feb 1934:

"The reasons for the chaos--that is, disorderly and confused shooting--became clear later.  Although I warned them though Botkin  that they didn't need to bring anything with them, they nevertheless gathered up various little things-- pillows, little bags, and so forth--and I believe, a little dog."

Why Yurovsky mentions the dog in his second testimony is not known to us.  We can speculate.  He had read Sokolov's report  [what report is unknown to us, many assume there is only one..] shortly before Yurovsky gave his  second report so maybe his memory was "improved" because of this read.

The dog Jemmy as found at the mine by the Whites just before they left Ekaterinburg nearly a year later.

The third dog was found running around Ekaterinburg and later ended up in England.

I'll go find the diagrams of the entries of the bullets and bring them here when I can.

AGRBear

[RealAnastasia]

So, Bear...Who is lying there? I read in FOTR that Ortino was "impaled" and put into the truck backside along with the other corpses.

As for Maria, Yurovsky states this : "The bayonet could not pierce her bodice" She was- Yurovsky wrote- "finished off" with a shot to the head. (FOTR. page 311)

Now; I'll quote what he said about Anastasia's death: she was "screaming and fighiting (with Ermakov) - Yurovsky wrote- she fell only after Ermakov put his gun to her head and pulled the trigger..."

Well; I checked the fact to see if I was wrong and I was not. If we must believe Yurovsky, the "Big Pair" and the "Little Pair" were both "finished off" with bullets in their skulls...Now; we have the skull of the one of the two younger girls, and there is no shot in her head. So, evidently, Yurovsky lied for some reason unknown for us. In my opinion (but, yes...I don't know all the facts there), there is no reason for such a lie.

As for Ortino, here it is the quote from FOTR: "...In the  courtyard, Kudrin saw Goloshchokin, who warned him that he had been walking in the Voznesensky Square and clrearly heard the shots and screams form the basement. As they passed the secondary staircase, the two men saw Ortino, Tatiana's bulldog, whimpering at the top. The dog rushed down the staircase in search of his mistress. A nearby soldier grabbed a bayonet, impaled the wuivering body, then heaved it into the rear of the Fiat. '...A dog's death to dogs!...' Goloshchokin commented..."

No account of Jemmy's death in this book. Of course I read others where the Spaniel it's mentioned. (Robert. K. Massie; Radzhinsky, "The last Empress" by Greg King). As far as I know, his little body was indeed found by the White investigators. Ortino's corpse WAS NOT found. Some investigators said that, perhaps some of the little bones they found could have been those of Ortino, mixed up with those of a chicken eaten by the men who buried the IF and it retainers burial...

Some ideas here?

RealAnastasia.

[Elisabeth]

So, Bear...Who is lying there? I read in FOTR that Ortino was "impaled" and put into the truck backside along with the other corpses.

As for Maria, Yurovsky states this : "The bayonet could not pierce her bodice" She was- Yurovsky wrote- "finished off" with a shot to the head. (FOTR. page 311)

Now; I'll quote what he said about Anastasia's death: she was "screaming and fighiting (with Ermakov) - Yurovsky wrote- she fell only after Ermakov put his gun to her head and pulled the trigger..."

Well; I checked the fact to see if I was wrong and I was not. If we must believe Yurovsky, the "Big Pair" and the "Little Pair" were both "finished off" with bullets in their skulls...Now; we have the skull of the one of the two younger girls, and there is no shot in her head. So, evidently, Yurovsky lied for some reason unknown for us. In my opinion (but, yes...I don't know all the facts there), there is no reason for such a lie.

Yurovsky wasn't lying! If there's any inconsistency it's my own, in my previous post, because I'm on vacation and don't have my books at hand, so I was writing from memory. In actual fact we can't say with any certainty that Maria wasn't shot in the head. She could very well have been shot in the head - her skull was the most damaged of all the IF's, so damaged that any trace of a bullet wound (for example, to the face) could have been lost.

But RealAnastasia, are you sure you are quoting Yurovsky here and not some of the other killers? Did you check the Notes at the end of FOTR to verify that all of these quotes really were taken from Yurovsky's testimony and not from that of other witnesses such as Strekotin and Kudrin? Because the account of the murders that King and Wilson give in FOTR is based on a multiplicity of witness statements, not Yurovsky's alone.

As for Ortino, here it is the quote from FOTR: "...In the  courtyard, Kudrin saw Goloshchokin, who warned him that he had been walking in the Voznesensky Square and clrearly heard the shots and screams form the basement. As they passed the secondary staircase, the two men saw Ortino, Tatiana's bulldog, whimpering at the top. The dog rushed down the staircase in search of his mistress. A nearby soldier grabbed a bayonet, impaled the wuivering body, then heaved it into the rear of the Fiat. '...A dog's death to dogs!...' Goloshchokin commented..."

No account of Jemmy's death in this book. Of course I read others where the Spaniel it's mentioned. (Robert. K. Massie; Radzhinsky, "The last Empress" by Greg King). As far as I know, his little body was indeed found by the White investigators. Ortino's corpse WAS NOT found. Some investigators said that, perhaps some of the little bones they found could have been those of Ortino, mixed up with those of a chicken eaten by the men who buried the IF and it retainers burial...

Some ideas here?

RealAnastasia.

An account of Ortino's killing is given in Kudrin's testimony. It's more than likely that some of the animal bones found at the Four Brothers mineshaft were those of Ortino. If there's no account of Jemmy's killing it could very well be because Yurovsky played no part in it. Moreover, look at it this way, if you have the bodies of eleven human beings to dispose of, how concerned are you going to be about the fate of one or two dogs?

Please could I ask, why are you and AGR Bear so convinced that Yurovsky's testimony was based on lies and deception? Why do you think he was lying when his statements agree so much with those of the other witnesses and indeed, with the forensic evidence itself? So far in your lengthy examination of Yurovsky you have yet to unearth a single major inconsistency. Are either of you at least willing to consider the possibility that Yurovsky was telling the truth?