[♫]
Narrator: An international team of forensic experts
is flying in to the scene of a 90 year old crime
in a far-flung Siberian forest,
including a leading forensic anthropologist
and veteran of the 9/11 investigation,
Anthony Falsetti.
Anthony Falsetti: It's really vast out here.
So desolate and so far away from civilization,
but that's where two bodies are supposed to be.
Narrator: It's another case of huge significance,
especially for Russia.
The remains of long lost members of its royal family
may have been found at last,
but nobody knows for sure.
The truth of what happened to the Romanovs
has long been blurred by myth and legend.
Did the royal line of Russia end in a violent murder
or did an heir to the throne escape and survive?
The investigation team also includes Dr. Michael Coble,
a leading forensic DNA expert
who works for the Pentagon,
identifying the remains of American soldiers.
With the American military's laboratories at his full disposal,
he'll attempt to put names to these mystery bones.
The team is headed into a remote forest,
20 kilometers outside the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg.
[♫]
This far-flung industiral outpost
is where the fate of Russia's royal family was written.
Five children,
born into royalty.
The grand duchesses Olga and Tatiana,
the flower of young womanhood.
Maria and Anastasia are beguiling teenagers.
13 year old Crown Prince Alexei
is the boy born to be king.
Millions of loyal Russians revere them,
even worship them.
A divine family set on Earth to rule the nation.
But the Romanov line would end with them.
1917, the Russian Revolution.
In its wake, a civil war raged,
the Bolsheviks against the Czarist loyalists.
[explosions/gunshots]
The royal family was imprisoned,
exiled to Siberia,
under house arrest in Yekaterinburg.
But their popularity among the masses
presented a problem for the fledgling Soviet administration.
The Bolshevik leadership planned a show trial
and execution for the Czar.
Perhaps wary of a Populist backlash,
some accounts say Lenin wanted the rest of the family kept alive
as political pawns.
From here, forensic anthropologist Dr. Anthony Falsetti
and the investigative team
have to complete their journey on foot,
to meet the man who may have made a stunning historical find.
[indistinct greetings]
Falsetti: So, what did you find?
Where did you find it?
[speaking Russian]
How deep was the burial?
Narrator: The remains have been moved to a morgue for safekeeping.
Falsetti: What else did you find with it, any artifcats?
[translating into Russian]
[speaking Russian]
Falsetti: What I'm hearing from these archeologists
is they have bones,
maybe some projectiles.
What we don't have is any evidence
of a really controlled excavation,
and it's quite frankly making me nervous.
Narrator: So far, there's not much to go on.
There's no evidence of the crime scene
and scant documentation to support the find.
The Romanov case has been plagued by hoaxes
and coverups over the years
and this latest find may be no different.
In the days after the murders,
newspapers reported only that the Czar had been killed.
For eight years, the Soviet state maintained
that the rest of the royal family was alive and well,
but the coverup failed,
forcing the Russian government to change its story
and make a shocking admission.
All 11 members of the royal household had been executed.
Then came reported sightings of Prince Alexei
and Princess Anastasia.
Were the children dead or alive?
Sensational rumors kept emerging.
In Mosow, there was unease
about the exact fate of the Romanovs.
An imposter claiming to be Alexei
was officially investigated.
Years pass.
Under Stalin's iron rule,
it was forbidden to even mention the royal family.
In the 1950s, a member of the original firing squad
surfaced in the United States.
Austrian Rudolf Lacher
claimed he had been left to guard a truck
carrying the royal bodies.
When it got stuck in the mud in the middle of a forest,
he said he helped a wounded Anastasia escape.
[pained breathing]
The Romanov legend and rumors of a surviving heir
were revived.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,
local academics armed with shovels and vital information
ventured into the Koptyaki Forest to dig.
Although the Romanovs executioners were long dead,
papers handed down by the commander, Yakov Yurovsky,
held clues as to where the bodies of the royal household might lie.
The dig revealed a shallow grave,
skulls, bones, full skeletons,
but something was missing.
Peter Sarandinaki: In 1991, nine sets of remains were found.
There were 11 people that were killed
in Yekaterinburg that night.
Two sets of remains were still missing.
Narrator: The Czar and Czarina,
three of their daughters,
and four attendants are identified,
but two of the youngest royal children
aren't among the dead.
Now, little more than 60 meters from the first grave,
a second find is being investigated
by leading American forensic experts.
Locked away in a Yekaterinburg city morgue,
the newly uncovered bones
will be subject to the most intensive
21st century forensic analysis.
[♫]
Did all of the Russian royals come to a violent end
at the hands of Bolshevik executioners?
Or could the legends be true?
Did two of Czar Nicholas's children survive?
Forensic anthropologist Anthony Falsetti
and DNA expert Michael Coble
are about to get their first look at the bones
that may answer these intriuging questions
once and for all.
Under lock and key in the Yekaterinburg morgue,
access to these potentially royal remains
is tightly controlled.
In the year 2000, the Romanovs were canonized as martyrs
by the Russian Orthodox Church.
If authenticated, these bones could become holy relics.
Anthony Falsetti is on stranger to these halls.
He was part of the original team
assembled in the 1990s
to investigate the first set of Romanov bones.
The investigation and its findings proved highly controversial,
sparking a very public row.
[indistinct speech]
Russian scientists used facial reconstruction techniques
to claim that one of the bodes was that of Anastasia,
but others were unconvinced.
Still more troubling was the body count discrepancy.
Man: Two bodies are still missing
and it is a mystery.
Narrator: If two bodies were missing,
was the entire grave unrelated to the Romanovs?
There were accusations of political interference
and rushed, rash conclusions.
In the end, the Russian Orthodox Church
rejected the DNA evidence as tainted
and refused to acknowledge that the remains
were in fact the Romanovs.
But now this new find could change all that,
and this time the team wants to avoid the storm of publicity
that engulfed investigations in 1991.
But the Romanov mystery is an enduring fascination.
[♫]
Man: We arrive into the lab and there's a massive number of cameras
and people doing interviews
while we're trying to look at the remains.
Narrator: The start of the latest investigation makes the evening news.
[speaking Russian]
But once the cameras have gone,
a critical story emerges.
Falsetti: Once the cameras were gone,
we get down to work
and what I discover is that
these 44 fragments,
many we're not going to be able to identify as being human.
Perhaps they're not.
There's just not enough material here.
Narrator: These shattered remains
look nothing like the nearly complete skeletons
found in 1991.
Broken, almost unrecognizable.
But careful inspection by expert eyes
reveals the fragmentary remains are human.
Man: Two people.
Narrator: But exactly who are they the remains of?
Could these be the bones of Alexei, Maria, or Anastasia,
or do they belong to someone else entirely?
Falsetti: The mystery within the mystery
is what happened to Anastasia?
Did she escape?
Or, is she here?
Right now, I can't tell whether I've two females
or a male and a female,
or whether these fragments
are part of the other bones that were already recovered.
Narrator: Handling and photographing what may be the bones of saints
is a delicate matter.
Each fragment must be handled
with the greatest respect and sensitivity.
[♫]
Then, after intricate examination,
a breakthrough.
Falsetti: It doesn't look like much.
It is a portion of the pelvis.
It is our os-cox.
And, as it turns out,
it is from a female.
We can deduce that by the sciatic notch.
In males, it would be more narrow.
In females,
it is quite wide.
That is critical.
We know we have two people.
Now we know that one of them is female.
Narrator: A male and a female.
Body parts from two individuals.
But are they the missing Romanov children?
Anthony Falsetti and the forensic anthropologists
will have to dig deeper.
For Mike Coble and the DNA team,
there's another problem.
These bones show evidence of burning.
Michael Coble: Looking at the remains,
I'm beginning to think
this is going to be a very difficult case.
When, when the bone is burned,
there's a lot of heat generated
which is not very good for DNA.
Take our sample from down here.
2.5, 3 centimeter cut.
Narrator: Michael Coble selects fragments
most likely to yield readable DNA.
Minute pieces will be cut off and sent to his lab in America
and to other researchers around the world
for independent analysis.
Coble: These are the fragments that we think...
Narrator: But teasing out the 90 year old genes
that may lie dormant in the fragments
will take weeks
and the chances that the DNA has survived intact
are slim.
[♫]
For the forensic team,
a few pieces of badly damaged bone
isn't much to go on.
But, in the town where the Romanov family met their end,
there are more leads to pursue.
[♫]
Local archeologist Sergei Prokofiev
was one of the excavators
who found the second lot of bones in 2007.
He has kept and carefully stored evidence
taken from the grave in the forest.
Among the artifacts he's preserved
are fragments of a wooden crate,
quantities of ash,
and some pieces of pottery.
Each is a clue to what might have happened
when the remains were buried.
[♫]
The ash corroborates with burn marks
found on the bones.
A grim picture is beginning to materialize.
Falsetti: What kind of container...
[Grunt]
Narrator: The pottery shards are perhaps the most compelling evidence.
They match similar fragments found in the nearby grave
uncovered in 1991.
Falsetti: These are the ones from 1991?
Sergei Prokofiev: Da [continues in Russian]
Narrator: Other pieces of the puzzle
will have to be found and put together correctly
before a true picture can emerge
of exactly what happened in the forest
outside Yekaterinburg more than 90 years ago.
[indistinct speech]
The most important pieces to that puzzle:
three bullets.
Exhumed from the grave,
these projectiles may be the very bullets
that killed the heir to the Romanov throne.
[gunshot]
If they match the bullets found in the nearby grave in 1991,
a conclusive forensic connection could be made
between the two graves.
[♫]
The bullets are taken for expert analysis.
When fired from a gun,
a bullet is scored with distinctive scratches
as it travels through the barrel.
These so-called ball markings are like fingerprints.
The first of the three bullets found in the 2007 grave excavation
is too damaged for analysis,
but the other two have survived intact.
Initial tests show the other two bullets have nearly identical ball marks,
implying that the same kind of gun was used.
Tech [interpreted from Russian]: We can determine that the bullets
were shot from the same weapon, a browning pistol.
Narrator: The type of weapon may have been identified,
but the results have exposed yet another twist in the tale.
Tech [interpreted from Russian]: These bullets are different in caliber
than the ones found in 1991.
Narrator: The bullets don't match those found in the earlier grave,
meaning a different gun had to have been used
to kill those buried in the other grave nearby.
Falsetti: We know that this gun is from the same time period,
but we don't have a direct tie to the '91 finds.
Narrator: No link.
A new and previously unknown weapon.
If there's no hard evidence linking the graves to the same crime,
then perhaps the remains in the latest grave belong to nameless victims
and have nothing to do with the slaughter of the Romanov family.
[♫]
So far, forensic investigations haven't been able to link the graves
or the remains found inside them.
In Russia, the forensic investigator Anthony Falsetti's trail is running cold.
But the answer to the lost bones' identity
and to what really happened to Anastasia
and the rest of the Romanov children
may be inside this box.
These are the samples DNA expert Michael Coble
selected back at the Yekaterinburg Morgue.
They've made the journey halfway around the world to the United States,
sealed in contamination-proof containers.
Other samples are on their way to Austria and other labs around the world.
[♫]
The package is brought into a sterile room.
At each stage, proper procedures are followed
to make sure that the samples aren't damaged or contaminated.
The tiny samples inside weigh just a few grams each.
Are these the remains of Alexei, Maria, or Anastasia Romanov?
To find out, viable DNA will have to be extracted,
then traced back through the generations
to genetic markers shared by a select group of people:
the intermarried households of European royalty.
[♫]
The Romanov children, like the British royal family,
were descended from Queen Victoria.
The DNA in this royal bloodline
bears unique identifying genetic characteristics.
[♫]
Michael Coble and his team are more used to dealing with modern remains.
These bone fragments are nearly a century old,
and teasing viable DNA out of them won't be easy.
DNA is fragile and easily damaged by the ravages of time.
They've endured almost a century below ground
in a climate of extremes, well below freezing in winter
and swelteringly hot in summer.
[♫]
To extract and test the DNA,
most of the powdered sample will be used up.
If this first attempt fails,
there might not be enough material left over
for a second definitive DNA analysis,
and the mystery of Russia's royal grave may never be solved.
An international effort is underway
to solve the 90 year old murder mystery of the Russian royal family.
American forensic anthropologist, Anthony Falsetti, has a lead
that may help him piece together separate shreds of evidence
recovered from the crime scene.
It's a testimony from a long dead witness.
Years ago, it would have been unthinkable,
but now an American investigator
has high level access to Moscow's state archive.
Falsetti: Here I am, an American scientist, two floors below ground,
a hundred years worth of communist secrets.
Narrator: The keeper of those secrets is Dr. Ludmila Levkova.
Giant blast doors designed to protect the Kremlin's most precious records
from nuclear attacks swing open.
Falsetti: We're down here.
It's 30 feet, walls are two feet thick, and this is Lenin's archive.
Narrator: If Soviet archives hold the missing pieces to the Romanov puzzle,
this is where they'll be.
Falsetti: So, these are Lenin's documents? These originals?
Ludmila Levkova: Telegrama. [speaking indistinctly]
Falsetti: This one's from Copenhagen, correct?
Ludmila Levkova: Yeah.
Falsetti: Okay.
Rumor here going that the Czar has been murdered.
Kindly wire facts.
Narrator: This inquiry was one of many sent to Lenin
in the weeks and days before the killing.
This was his reply.
Falsetti: "Rumor not true. Czar safe.
All rumors are only lie of capitalist press."
And it's signed Lenin.
Narrator: When Lenin wrote this reply,
the royal family was alive, asleep.
But they had only hours left to live.
By daybreak on the 17th of July,
the deed had been done.
But exactly what happened in the cellar is still open to question.
Only the executioners knew,
and their statements are on file in another basement.
The report filed by the head executioner, Commander Yakov Yurovsky,
is regarded as the most accurate account,
and makes chilling reading.
Likova [interpreted from Russian]: Yurovsky said this about
the execution of the emperor's family.
They stood along the wall,
and here he said the following words to them:
"The Reign of the Romanovs has reached its end.
Despite the fact that relatives both outside
and inside the country are trying to liberate them,
the Euro-Soviet of the workers' deputies has decreed they must be shot."
[♫]
Gregg King: When the executioners opened fire,
there were a number of problems.
Amongst them, they were in a basement room with stone walls,
which sent the bullets sort of ricocheting around the room.
Likova [interpreted from Russian]: The firing, Yurovsky says,
becomes ever so confused,
and when this confused fire ended,
the shooters saw the daughters were still alive.
They shot the girls, but nothing happened.
They weren't able to kill them.
Narrator: Incredibly, eyewitness accounts agree
that the duchesses seemed to be protected
by jewel-filled corsets that acted like bulletproof vests.
Statements by surviving firing squad members
recorded in the 1960s confirmed this.
[Recording] It appeared they'd sewn diamonds into their bras,
a variety of necklaces, pearls, etc. etc.
Bullets were bouncing off.
There was somebody, well, so to say,
as if they are not finally killed.
This woman, Anastasia.
Narrator: A botched execution.
Anastasia may have survived the initial gunfire.
Could she really have cheated death
with a gem-laden corset?
And if that was true,
then what else might be possible?
Falsetti: All the accounts go on to say that
everyone was finally killed with a gunshot wound to the head.
But what if that's a lie?
What if there were co-conspirators?
Narrator: Co-conspirators that could've helped her escape.
It's another unsubstantiated story.
[girl crying]
The forensic investigator decides to stage an experiment,
to put the first part of the story to the test.
Falsetti: Could jewels stop a bullet?
Narrator: Diamonds are the hardest
naturally occurring substance known to man,
but aren't practical
or within the budget of this experiment.
Scoring a respectable 8 out of 10
on the gem hardness scale,
zirconias are a more realistic alternative.
The replica corset is finished
with rose quartz and carnelian.
Bullets will smash into it at 1,000 feet per second.
Will they be deflected?
Interior Ministry Colonel Vladimir Solovyov,
is the leader of the Romanov investigation.
He's got special permission
to handle the actual guns fired by Yurovsky and his execution squad.
Col Solovyov [interpreted from Russian]: Czar Nicholas II was killed with this pistol.
This second pistol was also in the basement of the Ipatiev House
and it may have been used to kill other members of the Czar's family.
This pistol was also used in all the events in the Ipatiev House.
Falsetti: It's a grotesque feeling,
to be in the presence, to hold the weapons,
that killed this family.
Narrator: The original guns can't be used in the experiment,
but the investigation has provided duplicates,
guns from the same era
but with less iconic value.
The reconstructed jewel corsets
are placed on a mannequin.
For safety, only the shooter is allowed in the room.
[gunshot]
Could a diamond corset have shielded Anastasia
from a hail of bullets?
Falsetti: We had different powered weapons.
They were fired sequentially,
and what we have on the first two
is clearly some fragmentation.
There was, these projectiles
did not pass through on these first two.
There's an impact site here from the second.
But none of these were what we would consider
penetrating gunshot wounds.
This acts like a bulletproof vest.
Maybe the legend is true.
Narrator: Perhaps the bones found in the forest
aren't from people killed in the basement that night after all.
A gunshot aimed at the heart,
deflected by jewels sewn beneath the clothes.
The accounts that bullets ricocheted,
that Maria or Anastasia and Alexei
perhaps survived the initial gunfire
are becoming plausible.
For almost a century, these accounts have been
the basis for many spurious claims to the Russian throne.
Anna Anderson's claim was the most famous.
She went to her grave claiming to be the last Grand Duchess Anastasia.
She convinced many people,
including the family of Peter Sarandinaki
whose ancestors were part of the Czar's inner circle.
[♫]
Peter Sarandinaki: My mother-in-law, to her dying day,
to her last day believed that Anna Anderson was Anastasia.
For instance, she had a triangular injury on her foot
which was probably a bayonet stab.
She also had the same
stubbed toe problem as Anastasia.
She had the same ear as Anastasia.
There were a lot of similarities between the two.
Narrator: Despite her persuasive story,
DNA testing after her death
revealed her true identity.
She was not a royal,
but a former factory worker from Poland.
But determining whether the latest remains
are those of the Romanov family
or simply another case of mistaken identity
will take time.
The DNA is so degraded
that it must be copied or amplified
to recover and identify any surviving fragments
of genetic information that remain.
At his lab outside Washington D.C.,
DNA expert Michael Coble and his team
are using a process called PCR,
or Polymerase Chain Reaction.
By exposing the faint traces of DNA that remain
to a bacterial enzyme,
a single piece of DNA can be multiplied,
generating millions of copies.
But even after amplification,
there are no guarantees that any readable DNA
will emerge to make identification possible.
For now, the identity of the two individuals in the grave
remains a mystery.
[♫]
While the search for viable DNA continues in America,
in Russia the search for clues has come to an end.
Forensic expert Anthony Falsetti
is going back with more questions than answers
about the most recent grave.
In the 1991 excavation,
nearly intact, full skeletons were found.
But in the grave uncovered in 2007,
only fragments were unearthed.
Why were there so few bones?
Less than 10% of a full skeleton was found.
But even these scant remains
can reveal more than DNA.
The degraded condition of the most recently discovered bones
might actually be a clue in itself.
Anthony Falsetti is about to take another look
at the information he's collected
at his laboratory at the University of Florida.
[♫]
Drawing on his long experience
of bringing stories of the dead back to life,
he's looking for any patterns
or links with other evidence.
He'll come through the accounts of the executioners
and see if the history and bones tell a common story.
He already knows that this will be a harrowing tale.
The savagery did not end
when the shooting stopped.
Firing squad leader Yakov Yurovsky wrote
that after the killing was done,
he feared that Loyalist troops might catch them red-handed.
The plan was for a quick and clean disposal.
But as the bodies were being loaded into a truck,
the plan unraveled.
King: As they were lifting up one of the bodies,
she sat up and screamed.
It was either Maria or Anastasia.
We know that two of the grand duchesses
left that room alive.
Ermakov grabbed a nearby rifle
and ended up smashing them repeatedly in the face
until they stopped screaming.
Narrator: The bodies were then transported
a dozen miles outside Yekaterinburg,
to the Koptyaki Forest,
to an area of abandoned mineworks.
Falsetti: So here's what we know.
The bodies were taken into the forest.
They were thrown down a mineshaft.
Grenades were thrown after them
in an attempt to collapse the walls.
[explosion]
Narrator: The bodies were only partially hidden.
As dawn approached, Yurovsky returned to Yekaterinburg
to report to his superiors.
Misfortune struck again.
Yurovsky's men got drunk and bragged to locals,
telling them how they killed the royals
and the location of the bodies.
Their commander insisted on keeping the burial secret.
The corpses had to be moved.
Falsetti: The next day, the bodies were retrieved
and Yurovsky has his men
looking for a new location.
Narrator: But after the bodies were exhumed,
summer rain turned the ground to a gluey mud.
The truck got stuck.
The corpses had to be offloaded.
Commander Yurovsky was exhausted
and his men became mutinous.
He decided to try burning two of the bodies.
To make the process easier,
his men were ordered to dismember the corpses.
Physical damage to fragment #147
supports the dismemberment story.
The royal remains were allegedly subject
to another indignity,
but the evidence wouldn't be visible.
Yurovsky claimed that his men poured acid over the corpses,
to disfigure them beyond recognition.
Chemical composition tests on the bones conducted in Russia
revealed faint traces of sulfuric acid.
According to Yurovsky, it was then that his men
burned what was left of the two bodies.
It's another element of the story
that can be put to a forensic test.
As an alternative to human flesh,
pork is a good substitute.
The composition and structure of the meat
is similar to its human equivalent
and pigs are often used in forensic comparisons.
Falsetti: We know that they had
between and hour and a half and three hours
to completely consume two human bodies.
Narrator: Three hours later,
the pig carcass is charred but still intact.
Falsetti: What we've demonstrated here
is it's not possible to consume a body in a fire,
certainly not one for three hours,
relatively low temperatures.
Narrator: Yurovsky's plan to incinerate the corpses
was more than a failure.
It was a fiasco.
Dawn was breaking and there were still nine bodies in the truck.
A drastic change in tactics was in order.
He claimed his men dug a second pit,
further to the west.
That they threw the remaining nine bodies into the pit,
poured acid on them,
and then covered them with planks and soil.
Falsetti: What we know about history
is being reflected by the evidence.
Narrator: But circumstantial evidence will not be enough
to put the legend of Anastasia's escape to rest.
To prove that the remains are not part of some elaborate hoax,
historical accounts must be corroborated by the irrefutable:
DNA.
Do these new bodies belong to Russia's royal bloodline?
By most accounts, Czar Nicholas II and his royal family
were a close, tight-knit group,
frequently seen together,
filmed here on a cruise when the children were still very young.
Then, playing tennis while on holiday a few years later.
And, parading together in this 1913 celebration
of 300 years of Romanov rule,
starring the nine year old Crown Prince Alexei
and the four daughters about to bloom into womanhood.
But were the Romanovs as inseparable in death
as they were in life?
DNA evidence gathered from the second
and most recent grave attributed to them
will tell the story.
Five months after first selecting the bone samples for analysis,
DNA expert Mike Coble is now ready to share his findings.
Falsetti: Let's see what you've got.
Coble: The first thing that we should look at is here.
This is the marker that determines sex.
And, sample 146,
there's an XY,
which means this is a male sample.
Falsetti: Right.
Coble: And then 147 has one X peak
and this is what we see with females.
Narrator: So far, the DNA only demonstrates
that there were two bodies in the grave,
one male, one female.
Mike Coble's next step
was to compare the male sample
with DNA from Czar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra.
Coble: So, what we have here on top,
this is a profile from the Czar.
And this on the bottom is a profile from the Czarina.
And here is the male sample from the second grave.
We expect that this particular profile
is going to be a combination of the Czar and the Czarina
if this is truly Alexei.
This male, got this 25 repeat peak from the Czar
and this 23 peak was passed to him
from the Czarina.
And here is the male sample...
Narrator: That makes 17 out of 17 possible matches.
Coble: The evidence is overwhelming.
Falsetti: Yeah, absolutely.
That's their son. Coble: Exactly.
Falsetti: And they had one son,
and that's Alexei. Coble: Exactly.
Falsetti: Right.
Narrator: Finally there's compelling forensic evidence
that 13 year old Crown Prince Alexei
was executed,
along with the rest of his family,
though not buried with them.
But what about the female found in the second grave?
Mike Coble compared Alexei's DNA with hers.
Coble: What's interesting though
is that notice, they both share 23.
They both share this marker,
which is a 33.2 repeat.
Narrator: Once again, one genetic marker after another is shared.
Coble: ...147 has 17 repeats,
23 repeats...
Narrator: Leading to another overwhelming statistical probability.
Coble: It's over a million times more likely
that these remains are siblings
than if they were completely unrelated. Falsetti: Okay.
Coble: Very strong evidence here
that we have a brother and a sister.
Yeah.
Narrator: That sister was either Maria
or Anastasia.
But beyond that, the DNA evidence has nothing else to suggest.
Coble: Of course, there is a limitation here.
The DNA can't tell us
exactly which child is Anastasia
and which child is Maria.
Falsetti: The bottom line is really it doesn't matter anymore
because they're all present and accounted for.
Coble: Yeah.
Narrator: After almost an entire century,
the final chapter of the Romanov dynasty
can be written at last.
Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter,
did not escape the firing squad.
Like her mother,
her father,
her baby brother,
and her three older sisters,
Anastasia was shot to death in July 1918,
one month after her 17th birthday.
She was buried along with the others
among the towering birch trees.
It was surely not the end any of them expected
or des--
But the DNA evidence makes it clear,
that's what really happened.
On the night when Russia's longest lived dynasty
came to its abrupt
and bloody end.
[♫]