The Three Tests That Ended a Legend

Name: The Three Tests That Ended a Legend
Genre: Documentary

Three independent forms of DNA analysis converge on the missing Romanov children and close the survival mystery that defined a century.

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Transcript

In summer 2007, three amateur Russian archaeologists discovered 44 bone fragments and teeth, leading to re-analysis.
The find lay about 230 feet (70 meters) from the larger grave discovered near Yekaterinburg.
The first grave held nine sets of remains, but two children were missing.
Those missing children were believed to be Alexei and one younger daughter.
Scientists tested the fragments with mitochondrial DNA, autosomal STR, and Y-STR analysis.
Nuclear DNA testing verified a family group among the 1991 remains; two children were missing.
The new results identified the pair as Alexei and one sister of Nicholas and Alexandra.
But before testing, the sister’s identity remained disputed: Maria or Anastasia.
Sidney Gibbes was tutor to the imperial family from 1908 until evacuation from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg.
For decades, missing bones gave survival stories somewhere to hide.
Re-analysis confirmed the earlier DNA testing and brought finality to the mystery.
The case became an important breakthrough for testing compromised skeletal remains.
DNA identified the dead—but no written order named who commanded their deaths.

DNA could identify the dead—but it could not produce the missing written order naming who commanded their deaths.

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