101 Reasons AA was GD Anastasia

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

AA never mentioned anything about Alexei; that's a HUGE flaw in her story.

AA never once said anything about Alexei surviving or being rescued with her.  

Missing body= survival is not a logical conclusion to come to.

If Anastasia survived because her body is missing, Alexei surely must have done too, if we're following that logic.  But we know that's impossible, because a haemophiliac is not going to survive a shot to the head.  Let's be realistic here.

Yurovsky said there were two bodies burned and buried separately, one of whom was Alexei, another female whom he couldn't accurately identify because of the state of the bodies.  Lo and behold, two bodies are missing from the grave; Alexei and one of the GDs.  

I've said this before to you- Anastasia may not be the GD missing.  The disputed body HAS BEEN BURIED AS ANASTASIA.  Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to differentiate between the four GDs because there is no DNA to compare with the bones, we will NEVER KNOW who is infact missing FOR SURE, but the Russians were so convinced the missing body is actually MARIA'S that they buried the disputed remains as ANASTASIA.  So, Anna Anderson's claim is not as realistic or as coincidental as you think; Anastasia may have been in the grave all along.  We just don't know.

Also, as I explained to you before, there have been hundreds of claims to the identites of the entire Romanov family since 1918.  AA just had the right publicity.

No, there will never be absolute closure until the two missing bodies are found.  But Anna Anderson was not Anastasia Nicholaevna; the DNA tests prove she wasn't.  And if you'd done even the most limited of research, you'd see that the horrific injuries received in that cellar would mean no-one could survive for very long afterwards.  

So, let me clarify for you.

There were no survivors.  The missing body is not necessarily Anastasia's.  Anna Anderson was not the only claimant to Anastasia's identity, and she never mentioned anything about Alexei surviving too.

I am certain the missing bodies will be found one day.  Yurovsky said two bodies were buried elsewhere and I believe him.  Why would someone bother rescuing two corpses? Once again, get real.

Rachel
xx

[Lemur]

Didn't the Bolsheviks say two bodies were burned? Doesn't this make sense and tie into the 2 missing from the grave? The ashes will probably never be found. Why can't people believe what they told us? The rest of it turned out to be true.

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

Didn't the Bolsheviks say two bodies were burned? Doesn't this make sense and tie into the 2 missing from the grave? The ashes will probably never be found. Why can't people believe what they told us? The rest of it turned out to be true.

Yes, that's true.  Yurovsky said he wanted to burn the bodies of Alexei and the Empress, but because of the state of the bodies, he later thought he'd burned the body of Anna Demidova, the maid.  It turns out that who he actually buried was one of the Grand Duchess; the only Grand Duchess who has been positively identified and agreed upon is Olga; the other three are all disputed and any one of them could technically be the missing one.

So, yes, Yurovsky's story does tie in with the missing bodies, but you are wrong in thinking that the bodies would have been reduced to ash. Human bodies don't burn quickly or easily, and they do not reduce to ash unless there is intense heat, as there is in a cremation.  So, the bodies that would have been buried after burning would still be pretty much intact, especially as they had difficulties burning them and weren't burned for long because of time restrictions.  They would have been clearly identifiable as human corpses still, but very badly burned.  Have you ever seen the pictures of Adolf Hitler's body after it was burned? They would have looked something like that.

It is a possibility that whatever bones did remain were buried so shallowly that they have been scattered over time, either through weather or through animals disturbing the ground and carrying them off.  It's highly likely that the missing bodies will never be found, which means there will probably never be a 'final word' on the case.  Even so, if the bodies were all found, there still wouldn't be true closure, because there will always be people who question the veracity of the DNA tests and are convinced of some massive cover up over non existent money.

I do find it ridiculous that people are unwilling to accept Yurovsky's statement as truth and are constantly trying to find conspiracy theories as to why there are two bodies missing.  Yurovsky SAID there would be two bodies missing, and he said why.  I believe him.  I don't see why he would bother lying about it.  There is no chance Anastasia/Maria/Tatiana and Alexei could have wandered off and been rescued.  It's absurd to even question this.

Everyone died, and some people just can't deal with that.  As Simon pointed out, there seems to be a need for people to believe in survival rather than death, and as long as that exists in human nature, there is never going to be a fully accepted consensus on the fate of the Romanovs, regardless of what evidence there is to prove what really happened.

Rachel
xx

[Lemur]

I believe Yurovsky too. It all makes sense even if they couldn't tell one girl from the other. They probably didn't know who was who when they were alive, and dead and damaged it was even harder to identify.

Thanks for the info about burning, I didn't know it wasn't the same as cremation. Is there a chance that over time these charred bones disentigrated into the soil?

No I haven't seen a picture of Hitler's body, do you have one you can post or send me a link in PM? Speaking of Hitler, there were also rumors he escaped and lived to be 100 in Brazil!

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

That's ok, Lemur.  I don't have a pic of Hitler's body to post, I'm afraid, but if you go onto google and type in 'burned corpse' under an image search, you will see how bodies that have been burned are still intact and obviously human.  I won't post a photograph directly on here because this is an educational site visited by children and it might be distressing for some people to see such an image.

I'm afraid I don't know enough about the decomposition process of bones to know whether bones can disintegrate.  I don't believe it is possible, because I vaguely remember us discussing that possibility before, but I could be wrong.

The most likely outcome was that the burned bodies had to be buried in a hurry, so they were only placed in a shallow grave.  The main grave had wooden railway sleepers placed over it to protect the bones, but the grave of the burned bodies did not.  So, if they were just covered with a shallow layer of soil, it's perfectly possible, and even probable, that weather or animals disturbed the ground where the bones were and scattered them to the winds.  I doubt very much that there is anything recognisable as Alexei and one of the GDs left to be found.

Rachel
xx

[Lemur]

Thanks. I agree no part of the bodies are likely to be found. This is unfortunate because this means the mystery can never be ended. Even if partial bones were found and identified there would still be people who claimed it was  tampered with and some kind of coverup anyway

I googled for Hilter's body and didn't find it, but I did find this site about how his death was faked and he got away. Thought it might be interesting  considering the subject matter here on this forum about people claiming dead folk really got away.

http://www.blackraiser.com/nredoubt/identity.htm

Even though there were rumors like this I never heard of a Hitler claimant. Who'd want to be him with all those war crimes and everybody hating you?

[Louis_Charles]

The coincidences are just so much.  Why would AA claim AN and Alexei survived when the possibility of Alexei's survival is so unlikely?  Yet theirs are the ONLY two bodies NOT found with the others, when an imposter COULDN'T have known what the grave contained.  No one did except the people in on the actual burial, and how could a would-be imposter have contacted them and made them talk?  I don't believe Alexei could have survived long.  Even if he escaped being shot, he was too gravely ill and with no family to take care of him.  There's still no "closure" until we know for sure what happened to him.

Had those two bodies been with the others, I'd have immediately dismissed the claims of Anna Anderson despite all the other coincidences, BUT THEY'RE NOT.  And without them there is no closure.

I think you may be arguing backwards here, with all due respect. When Andersen claimed survival, the gravesite itself was unknown, not just the contents, and there was no expectation that it was going to be either found or the contents made available --- the Soviet Union (or the perp, as CSI would say) was very much in existence. I think it's more correct to say that she never thought there would be any forensic evidence to challenge her assertion. And of course, an imposter would HAVE to claim that at least one body would have been missing from the tomb. Heino Tamnet would have said it was Alexei, Granny Alina would have said it was Maria, Marga Boodts, Olga's, etc. It was Andersen's luck (and Eugenia Smith's, for that matter) that when they found the grave, the bodies of Anastasia (or Maria) and Alexei were missing. Of course Andersen/Schanzkowska didn't live to see it. Moreover, is there any evidence that she claimed Alexei had "escaped" as well? I am reasonably familiar with the Story, and he is noticeably absent.

[ChatNoir]

If Anastasia's body was burned, why would Red soldiers have to go looking for her? Carl Bonde's train was stopped while the Reds came on board looking for Anastasia. Soldiers went house to house in Ekaterinburg searching for her after the execution. Something is amiss here.

Kind regards
Chat Noir

[CorisCapnSkip]

AA never mentioned anything about Alexei; that's a HUGE flaw in her story.

Someone here said she did, but I don't have that from any reliable source.

And if you'd done even the most limited of research, you'd see that the horrific injuries received in that cellar would mean no-one could survive for very long afterwards.

I know there were skulls smashed and so on, but much of that damage was done after the execution and before the burial to try to render the remains unrecognizable.  They weren't necessarily in that state when they left the cellar--they may not even all have been dead.  Why Alexei would have been spared, when he was the heir and too ill to live without extreme care or possibly even with it anyway is beyond me--but if Anna Anderson said it I would be interested in the details, or any others as to where his remains may be found.

[CorisCapnSkip]

I'm afraid I don't know enough about the decomposition process of bones to know whether bones can disintegrate.  I don't believe it is possible, because I vaguely remember us discussing that possibility before, but I could be wrong.

Bones can disintegrate in some places, especially Asia, where the soil is very acidic.  I don't know how like Asian soil Russian soil may be.  There was even a Chinese princess sewn up in a jade suit, and when the suit was opened, all that was left was one tooth!  Of course, that was after thousands of years, but in unprotected conditions remains would be gone pretty fast.  That's why people argue that life didn't necessarily begin in Africa--remains just last longer there.

The most likely outcome was that the burned bodies had to be buried in a hurry, so they were only placed in a shallow grave.  The main grave had wooden railway sleepers placed over it to protect the bones, but the grave of the burned bodies did not.  So, if they were just covered with a shallow layer of soil, it's perfectly possible, and even probable, that weather or animals disturbed the ground where the bones were and scattered them to the winds.  I doubt very much that there is anything recognisable as Alexei and one of the GDs left to be found.

Even were the site known I am afraid you are right.  I did a lot of research about a massacre with a similar number of victims and similar burial conditions.  This was a rural area in America where wolves were present, as presumably they also are in rural Russia.  After only 50 years only enough remained of 13 people to fit in one very small casket (very sad as, unlike the Romanovs, none of these people were photographed, and it would have been interesting to see facial reconstructions based on the bones.)  Even so much as a tooth would provide DNA.  Teeth last the longest but are the smallest hard-to-find things in a large area!

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

AA never mentioned anything about Alexei; that's a HUGE flaw in her story.

Someone here said she did, but I don't have that from any reliable source.

And if you'd done even the most limited of research, you'd see that the horrific injuries received in that cellar would mean no-one could survive for very long afterwards.

I know there were skulls smashed and so on, but much of that damage was done after the execution and before the burial to try to render the remains unrecognizable.  They weren't necessarily in that state when they left the cellar--they may not even all have been dead.  Why Alexei would have been spared, when he was the heir and too ill to live without extreme care or possibly even with it anyway is beyond me--but if Anna Anderson said it I would be interested in the details, or any others as to where his remains may be found.

Anna Anderson has NEVER said ANYTHING about Alexei.  I've read everything I can get my hands on about the case, so I think I would have come across something if she had mentioned him.  I think you must have misread or been mistaken.

Yes, we know that at least two of the GDs were still alive after they left the basement, but they were dying.  None of them could have lasted long with the injuries they sustained.  Being stabbed and shot repeatedly at close range is going to cause a lot of internal damage. With no medical help and being left outside for hours on end, no one was going to walk away alive from that.  The odds are so slim as to be virtually impossible.  Read the accounts of what happened.  It was horrific.  Plus all of the GDs were finally shot through the head to finish them off.  I know it is possible to survive shot wounds to the head, but come on now. Do you really think, after all of the trouble these men went to to kill the family and destroy all the evidence, that they'd 'mislay' a body and then lie about it all these years?

They weren't to know the grave would ever be found or that DNA testing would be invented.  Yurovsky didn't need to say anything about two bodies being separate from the rest if two had gone missing; he couldn't know that they would later be dug up and DNA tested.  So why say that two bodies were buried seperately if it wasn't true? HE HAD NO REASON TO LIE ABOUT IT.

No one survived.  No one escaped.  Anna Anderson was NOT Anastasia Nicholaevna, and the missing body may not even be Anastasia Nicholaevna anyway.  The missing body has actually been buried as Anastasia, so if the Russian scientists are indeed correct in their identification, it means that Anna Anderson was an imposter regardless of the DNA, doesn't it?

Rachel
xx

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

If Anastasia's body was burned, why would Red soldiers have to go looking for her? Carl Bonde's train was stopped while the Reds came on board looking for Anastasia. Soldiers went house to house in Ekaterinburg searching for her after the execution. Something is amiss here.

Kind regards
Chat Noir

Everyone knows this was a distraction technique by the Bolsheviks.

They didn't want people to know the girls and Alexandra had been murdered because they were a useful bargaining tool with the Germans.  So, they circled rumours that Anastasia/Alexandra/the Grand Duchesses as a whole had been seen on trains, in houses, etc, so people didn't know they'd murdered the whole family and it seemed like they were still alive.  We know for months afterwards that the Bolsheviks were still telling Germany the Alexandra and the girls were safe and well.  

The Bolsheviks were the originators of the conspiracy theories. We have evidence of this! You know this.  We know this.  Stop bringing it up like it's some sort of evidence that someone escaped.  

And can I add that the people who 'sighted' the IF had never seen them before in real life; how the hell would they know it was the IF they were seeing?

AND as I have just said in about five previous posts, there is NO CONCRETE EVIDENCE that the missing body IS Anastasia's.  In fact, Anastasia has been buried alongside her family and the official missing body is actually Maria's.  So, that kind of puts a spanner in the works, doesn't it? Anna Anderson can't have been Anastasia regardless of the DNA if her body was in the grave, can she?

Rachel
xx

[CorisCapnSkip]

Do you really think, after all of the trouble these men went to to kill the family and destroy all the evidence, that they'd 'mislay' a body and then lie about it all these years?

They weren't to know the grave would ever be found or that DNA testing would be invented.  Yurovsky didn't need to say anything about two bodies being separate from the rest if two had gone missing; he couldn't know that they would later be dug up and DNA tested.  So why say that two bodies were buried seperately if it wasn't true? HE HAD NO REASON TO LIE ABOUT IT.

Do you have the "Unsolved Mysteries" and "Nova" programs on this subject?  Someone suggested that Yurovsky had to make an account of all the bodies to officials, was afraid of being checked as to all being present and accounted for, and of a terrible retribution if it seemed orders had not been carried out exactly by the number coming out wrong.  He made up the "we burned two" story to account for Anastasia being removed by men who noticed she was still alive, which doesn't really account for Alexis, though.  One of the programs interviewed a man related to one of the executioners who gave the name of the person who killed Anastasia--but this was secondhand, according to his relative who was there, the actual eyewitness being long deceased and the relative very old.

[Forum Admin]

The major flaw in the theory that Yurovsky lied to cover his tracks is the fact that his "report" wasn't made until 1920, TWO YEARS after the fact...IF the Bolshevik Government was pressing him for the "details" don't you think they might have been concerned just a little sooner? Doesn't the fact that TWO years went by really say that the Bolsheviks already KNEW they were all dead? Is sure does to me...

[Louis_Charles]

Do you really think, after all of the trouble these men went to to kill the family and destroy all the evidence, that they'd 'mislay' a body and then lie about it all these years?

They weren't to know the grave would ever be found or that DNA testing would be invented.  Yurovsky didn't need to say anything about two bodies being separate from the rest if two had gone missing; he couldn't know that they would later be dug up and DNA tested.  So why say that two bodies were buried seperately if it wasn't true? HE HAD NO REASON TO LIE ABOUT IT.

Do you have the "Unsolved Mysteries" and "Nova" programs on this subject?  Someone suggested that Yurovsky had to make an account of all the bodies to officials, was afraid of being checked as to all being present and accounted for, and of a terrible retribution if it seemed orders had not been carried out exactly by the number coming out wrong.  He made up the "we burned two" story to account for Anastasia being removed by men who noticed she was still alive, which doesn't really account for Alexis, though.  One of the programs interviewed a man related to one of the executioners who gave the name of the person who killed Anastasia--but this was secondhand, according to his relative who was there, the actual eyewitness being long deceased and the relative very old.

I think it is mutually contradictory that Yurovsky was so afraid of the repercussions that would have ensued from the escape of one of the Grand Duchesses that he made up the story of the burned bodies, but the Bolsheviks were willing to launch official searches for Anastasia that became known. The story of the train search doesn't exist in a void --- there were supposedly sightings in other places, and much more elaborate rumors about the survival of the whole family for a couple of years. The women were in Perm, they were all hiding in a convent, they were in Japan, they had escaped through India, etc. These sounds more like a disinformation campaign, or even more clearly, like an uncordinated mess of a situation.

And Yurovsky died in a bed. Surely if he had bungled the execution of the Tsesarevitch and a daughter, and it was known, Stalin would have had him popped off?

I have the Unsolved Mysteries; it's too sensational to take seriously, I think. The NOVA is better.