• Regicide in Ekaterinburg - Paul Gilbert and • Ritual Regicide – Dmitriy Kalyagin

• The Murder of the Romanovs

Although this post started out as a casual mention of the recent publication by Paul Gilbert, he actually only gets a secondary mention as the two-part essays (soon to be published as the basis of a book) by Dmitriy Kalyagin have overshadowed everything else I have read on this topic, including Paul Gilbert’s extraordinary body of work.

Paul promotes his book here.

NEW BOOK – Regicide in Ekaterinburg – Paul Gilbert

Gilbert’s book is not the place you would start on this topic but it fills in some nice anecdotal information for amateur enthusiasts and researchers like myself. However, it gives me an excuse to mention three other books:

· “The Romanovs: The Final Chapter” - by Robert K Massie

· “The Murder Of The Romanovs: The Authentic Account” - by Captain Paul Bulygin

· “The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence Could Not Conceal” - authored by St. John the Forerunner Monastery (multiple researchers and contributors)

as well as the most recent work by Dmitriy Kalyagin, and also some flashbacks to podcasts by Matthew Raphael Johnson.

Here are the links to Dmitriy Kalyagin’s work. I will repeat these below along with links to the Matthew Raphael Johnson podcasts

· Ritual Regicide: The Martyrdom of the Romanovs – by Dmitriy Kalyagin

Ritual Regicide: The Martyrdom of the Romanovs

Ritual Regicide: The Martyrdom of the Romanovs - Part II

**********

This post contains come distressing graphic detail, so you might want some calming background music …

· Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Hymn of the Cherubim

From “The Romanovs: The Final Chapter” - by Robert K Massie

Chapter 1 – Done Twenty-Three Steps

At midnight, Yakov Yurovsky, the leader of the executioners, came up the stairs to awaken the family. In his pocket he had a Colt pistol with a cartridge clip containing seven bullets, and under his coat he carried a long-muzzled Mauser pistol with a wooden gun stock and a clip of ten bullets. A knock on the prisoners' door brought Dr. Eugene Botkin, the family physician, who had remained with the Romanovs for sixteen months of detention and imprisonment. Botkin was already awake; he had been writing what turned out to be a last letter to his own family.

Quietly, Yurovsky explained his intrusion. "Because of unrest in the town, it has become necessary to move the family downstairs," he said.

"It would be dangerous to be in the upper rooms if there was shooting in the streets." Botkin understood; an anti-Bolshevik White Army bolstered by thousands of Czech former prisoners of war was approaching the Siberian town of Ekaterinburg, where the family had been held for seventy-eight days. Already, the captives had heard the rumble of artillery in the distance and the sound of revolver shots fired nearby on recent nights. Yurovsky asked that the family dress as soon as possible.

Botkin went to awaken them.

They took forty minutes. Nicholas, fifty, the former emperor, and his thirteen-year-old son, Alexis, the former tsarevich and heir to the throne, dressed in simple military shirts, trousers, boots, and forage caps. Alexandra, forty-six, the former empress, and her daughters, Olga, twenty-two, Tatiana, twenty-one, Marie, nineteen, and Anastasia, seventeen, put on dresses without hats or outer wraps. Yurovsky met them outside their door and led them down the staircase into an inner courtyard. Nicholas followed, carrying his son, who could not walk. Alexis, crippled by hemophilia, was a thin, muscular adolescent weighing eighty pounds, but the tsar managed without stumbling. A man of medium height, Nicholas had a powerful body, full chest, and strong arms. The empress, taller than her husband, came next, walking with difficulty because of the sciatica which had kept her lying on a palace chaise longue for many years and in bed or a wheelchair during their imprisonment. Behind came their daughters, two of them carrying small pillows. The youngest and smallest daughter, Anastasia, held her pet King Charles spaniel, Jemmy. After the daughters came Dr. Botkin and three others who had remained to share the family's imprisonment: Trupp, Nicholas's valet; Demidova, Alexandra's maid; and Kharitonov, the cook, Demidova also clutched a pillow; inside, sewed deep into the feathers, was a box containing a collection of jewels; Demidova was charged with never letting it out of her sight.

Yurovsky detected no signs of hesitation or suspicion; "there were no tears, no sobs, no questions," he said later. From the bottom of the stairs, he led them across the courtyard to a small, semibasement room at the corner of the house. It was only eleven by thirteen feet and had a single window, barred by a heavy iron grille on the outer wall. All the furniture had been removed. Here, Yurovsky asked them to wait. Alexandra, seeing the room empty, immediately said, "What? No chairs? May we not sit?" Yurovsky, obliging, went out to order two chairs. One of his squad, dispatched on this mission, said to another, "The heir needs a chair... evidently he wants to die in a chair."

Two chairs were brought. Alexandra took one; Nicholas put Alexis in the other. The daughters placed one pillow behind their mother's back and a second behind their brother's. Yurovsky then began giving directions-"Please, you stand here, and you here ... that's it, in a row"-spreading them out across the back wall. He explained that he needed a photograph because people in Moscow were worried that they had escaped. When he was finished, the eleven prisoners were arranged in two rows: Nicholas stood by his son's chair in the middle of the front row, Alexandra sat in her chair near the wall, her daughters were arranged behind her, the others stood behind the tsar and the tsarevich.

Satisfied by this arrangement, Yurovsky then called in not a photographer with a tripod camera and a black cloth but eleven other men armed with revolvers. Five, like Yurovsky, were Russians; six were Latvians. Earlier, two Latvians had refused to shoot the young women and Yurovsky had replaced them with two others.

As these men crowded through the double doors behind him, Yurovsky stood in front of Nicholas, his right hand in his trouser pocket, his left holding a small piece of paper from which he began to read: "In view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you." Nicholas turned quickly to look at his family, then turned back to face Yurovsky and said, "What? What?" Yurovsky quickly repeated what he had said, then jerked the Colt out of his pocket and shot the tsar, point-blank.

At this, the entire squad began to fire. Each had been told beforehand whom he was to shoot and ordered to aim for the heart to avoid excessive quantities of blood and finish more quickly. Twelve men were now firing pistols, some over the shoulders of those in front, so close that many of the executioners suffered gunpowder burns and were partially deafened. The empress and her daughter Olga each tried to make the sign of the cross but did not have time. Alexandra died immediately, sitting in her chair. Olga was killed by a single bullet through her head. Botkin, Trupp, and Kharitonov also died quickly.

Alexis, the three younger sisters, and Demidova remained alive. Bullets fired at the daughters' chests seemed to bounce off, ricocheting around the room like hail. Mystified, then terrified and almost hysterical, the executioners continued firing. Barely visible through the smoke, Marie and Anastasia pressed against the wall, squatting, covering their heads with their arms until the bullets cut them down. Alexis, lying on the floor, moved his arm to shield himself, then tried to clutch his father's shirt. One of the executioners kicked the tsarevich in the head with his heavy boot. Alexis moaned. Yurovsky stepped up and fired two shots from his Mauser directly into the boy's ear.

Demidova survived the first fusillade. Rather than reload, the executioners took rifles from the next room and pursued her with bayonets. Screaming, running back and forth along the wall, she tried to fend them off with her armored pillow. The cushion fell, and she grabbed a bayonet with both hands, trying to hold it away from her chest. It was dull and at first would not penetrate. When she collapsed, the enraged murderers pierced her body more than thirty times.

The room. filled with smoke and the stench of gunpowder, became quiet. Blood was everywhere, in rivers and pools. Yurovsky, in a hurry, began turning the bodies over, checking their pulses. The truck, now waiting at the front door of the lpatiev House, had to be well out of town before the arrival in a few hours of the July Siberian dawn. Sheets, collected from the beds of the four grand duchesses, were brought to carry the bodies and prevent blood dripping on the floors and in the courtyard. Nicholas's body went first. Then, suddenly, as one of the daughters was being laid on a sheet, she cried out. With bayonets and rifle butts, the entire band turned on her. In a moment, she was still

When the family lay in the back of the truck, covered by a tarpaulin, someone discovered Anastasia's small dog, its head crushed by a rifle butt. This little body was tossed into the truck.

The "whole procedure," as Yurovsky later described it, including feeling the pulses and loading the truck, had taken twenty minutes.

**********

From “The Murder of The Romanovs: The Authentic Account” by Captain Paul Bulygin

[Bulygin was formerly in Command of the Personal Guard of the Dowager Empress. The PDF also contains a hit piece by None other that Alexander Kerensky – he is particularly negative towards Alexandra – maybe that’s why she, too, had to be ritually murdered, along with her children]

“In the morning, on the 16th July, 1918, Yurovsky ordered that the kitchen-boy son of the prisoners' valet should be taken away from the Ipatiev mansion and kept, for the time being, in the guards' quarters at the Popov House opposite. At seven o'clock in the evening Yurovsky told Paul Medvedev to collect all the available revolvers from the outside patrols. Medvedev did as he was told, brought the revolvers to the office, and laid them out on the table. There were twelve of them - all of heavy military calibre. The same night Yurovsky told him their object:

"To-night, Medvedev, we shall shoot the family ... everybody" ... and he gave Medvedev instructions to speak to the outside patrols at ten o'clock and warn them that they might hear shots inside the house during the night, but that would be "all right."

At twelve o'clock, midnight, Yurovsky awakened the Imperial family. The prisoners rose, dressed, washed and came downstairs. They were taken outside into the courtyard and down through another door into the far end of the building, where they were led right down the basement corridor, past several doors, to the last room, which communicated only with a locked and sealed cellar. Yurovsky told the Tsar that in view of the approach of the Czechs and the "White Army bandit gangs" they would have to be taken away from Ekaterinburg - such was the decision of the Ural Regional Soviet. In the meanwhile, they would have to wait there, pending the arrival of the motor-cars to take them away.

The unsuspecting captives entered the trap, and asked for chairs to sit down while they were waiting. Yurovsky ordered three chairs to be brought. The Empress took one; the Emperor sat down on another and supported the Tsarevich, who sat on the third. Three of the Princesses stood behind the Tsaritsa's chair and the fourth - the Grand Duchess Anastasia - stood a little to the right of the Tsar. Doctor Botkin leaned on the back of the Prince's chair. To the left, near the wall, stood the valet Trupp and the chef Kharitonov. In the left-hand corner was the parlour-maid, Demidova, who held a pillow in her hand: she had brought two pillows with her into the room: one of them she placed on the Tsaritsa's chair, for comfort, but the other was held tightly in her hands - inside it was a box containing the Imperial family's jewels.

They did not have to wait long before the murderers came in. Apart from Yurovsky, there was Paul Medvedev, Nikulin, two members of the Executive Committee - Voikov and Goloshchekin - and seven Hungarians [*** another account states they were Latvians – whatever, they were almost certainly mercenary thugs]. Yurovsky had already distributed the heavy revolvers. He stepped forward and addressed the Tsar:

"Your relations have tried to save you; they have failed, and we must now shoot you."

The Emperor rose from his chair - his arm still round the Tsarevich - and had time to cry out:

"What?"

Yurovsky fired point-blank at his head, and the Emperor fell dead.

This was a signal for haphazard firing by the other assassins. The Empress had only time to raise her hand to make the sign of the cross before she, too, was killed outright with a single shot. Equally quick was the death of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana and Maria Nikolaevny who stood together behind her Majesty's chair. The Tsarevitch was still quivering as he lay in the arms of his murdered father, when two more shots, aimed at his head by Yurovsky, put an end to his life. Botkin, Trupp and Kharitonov fell one after the other. Demidova was the last to fall; she held up her pillow as a shield, and the box of jewellery which was inside stopped some of the bullets, protecting her heart and her stomach. She ran this way and that along the far wall, and screamed. They eventually murdered her with bayonets, borrowing rifles for this purpose from the guards who had led the captives across the courtyard.

When the smoke of the firing cleared a little and the murderers began to inspect the bodies, they found that the Grand Duchess Anastasia was alive and unhurt. She had fallen in a dead faint when the firing began, and so escaped the bullets. When the assassins moved her body, the Grand Duchess regained consciousness, saw herself surrounded by pools of blood and the bodies of her family, and screamed. She was killed.

The bodies were then wrapped up in bed-sheets brought from upstairs, and in long pieces of khaki cloth which had been prepared for this special purpose. They were carried out to the lorry (which had been standing in readiness outside all night), taken ten miles out of town into the woods, to the abandoned mine called "The Four Brothers," and there destroyed by fire. Such parts of the body as were particularly difficult to burn - the thigh bones, for instance - were dissolved in acids.

The lorry which carried the bodies to the abandoned mine was accompanied-apart from the guard-by Yarmakov and the members of the Executive Committee, Goloshchekin and Voikov. Voikov, incidentally, played a very prominent part throughout, organising the murder and supervising the disposal of the bodies (having undertaken the work at Sverdlov's personal request}, and he was subsequently killed in Warsaw by a " White " Russian, Koverda. It was Voikov who wrote the cryptic words in the room where the murder was committed, and he was also the author of the famous boast:

"The world will never know what has become of them."

Voikov was wrong-the world has learnt the truth, in spite of all the precautions that were taken.

I shall describe the actual work of destroying the bodies later, and must now return to the scene of the murder, and to the efforts that were made to obliterate all traces of the crime at the Ipatiev House.

Before the bodies of the martyrs were taken to the forest, they were robbed. Rings, watches, bracelets and all other valuables were removed and handed over to Yurovsky.

Every blood-stained article that was movable was taken away together with the bodies, but there was blood everywhere in spite of that; there was so much blood that it had even soaked through the floor and stained the ground beneath it. There was blood on the floor in every room through which the bodies were carried, blood on the gate, blood on the front steps, and blood outside, where the lorry stood waiting.

When the lorry had gone, the men of the outside patrols were called in and set to work washing and scrubbing the house. Their work was long and thorough, but even so certain marks were left through oversight.

On the whitewashed wall of the house, near the steps leading down from the verandah, there were thirteen splashes of blood, all in a line, as though one of the men had shaken the blood off his hand. Who could it have been? It must have been one of the murderers, because the men of the outside patrols who were called in to wash off the stains after the bodies had been taken away must have been dealing with partly congealed blood - however promptly they arrived; and congealed blood does not splash. The man must have been one of the murderers, and his hand was wet with blood that was still warm, because he had been handling the bodies of his victims.

These thirteen drops of blood are amongst the material evidence collected during the investigation and are carefully preserved to this day in arsenic capsules.

Another sinister mark was left by one of the guards who scrubbed the floors after the crime. The white outside wall, immediately below the windows of the basement, was splashed with a mixture of blood, dirt and water: someone had carelessly emptied out of the window a bucket of water that had been used in mopping the floor.

It is almost an axiom that a murderer always leaves a clue; the very precautions which he has to take to obliterate all traces will very often result only in providing the most damning evidence. Something of this nature happened.at the Ipatiev House. In their anxiety to destroy as quickly as possible all traces of their monstrous act, the murderers piled on the lorry everything that happened to be stained with blood; and needless to say, the pillow containing the Imperial family's jewel box which had shielded the unfortunate parlour-maid Demidova, must have been amongst such articles ; for Demidova met a slow and painful death, and finally fell down into the pool of her own and other victims' blood. The murderers, in their hurry, flung the pillow on to the lorry, and did not discover the jewels until they came to the business of destroying the bodies.

However, I shall have more to say of this box of jewels when I give Sokolov's conclusions. as to what happened at the mines, because it provided valuable clues which neither time nor the negligence of his predecessors was able to obliterate.

In this chapter I only want to reconstruct the events of that terrible night at the lpatiev House as they appeared in the light of the Investigation, and to show what vivid detail was provided at times by a few drops of blood or a splash of dirty water.

The language of an official enquiry, the language of testimony, material evidence, and official records, is the hardest, the most merciless language of all. It leaves no room for doubt as to the truth, and permits no overstatement, no deepening of colours, no note of indignation, which weaken the effect of a story told by an outraged witness. And so the language of official records provides the most pitiless indictment of the cowardly and despicable Ekaterinburg Crime - the murder of the Russian Emperor, his family, and the few faithful servants who had accompanied them even to the grave.

**********

From “The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence Could Not Conceal”

12 July 1918. As the White Army and the Czech Legion approached Ekaterinburg closer by the hour, Ekaterinburg was as if on the crater of a volcano. At 5 clock in the afternoon, Goloshchekin called an extraordinary meeting of the Regional Soviet of the Urals. At that time in room 3 of the Amerikanskaya Hotel now headquarters of the Soviet, the most important members of the Ural Soviet and of the local Cheka met. Goloshchekin had just returned from Moscow, where he hastened to inform the Central Executive Committee of a terribly burning issue: Ekaterinburg was in danger of falling into the hands of the Czechs and the Whites very soon. To avid attempts to rescue the Tsar, the Soviet of the Urals resolved to expedite his immediate execution. Does Moscow approve this decision?

Less than twenty-four hours earlier, a former miner saw Yurovsky together with the bloodthirsty Commissar Peter Yermakov and one other soldier in the Koptiaki forest. The three men were going around near the abandoned Four Brothers mine. They were searching for a suitable place for their purpose: the disposal of the bodies.

[…]

16 July 1918. Afternoon. After four agonizing days for the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, the awaited reply came from the front. The forecast of Commandant Berzins was timely: the fall of Ekaterinburg could come within the next three days. Inside Room 3 of the Amerikanskaya Hotel silence spread. In a few moments the decision was taken for the great "when” - that very evening.

A little after the meeting, at 7 o'clock in the evening, Goloshchekin sent a telegram to Saint Petersburg, because the lines to Moscow were not working regularly that day, in which he wrote:

To Moscow, Kremlin, to Sverdlov, copy to Lenin

The following has been transmitted over the direct line from Yekaterinburg:[”]Let Moscow know that for military reasons the trial agreed upon with Filipp (Goloshchekin] cannot be put off; we cannot wait. If your opinions differ, then immediately notify without delay.

Goloshchekin, Safarov. ["]

Moscow’s reply: Silence …

[…]

Yurovsky stands outside the double door of the salon. The time is 1:30 AM. He knocks on the door. Doctor Botkin, surprised, awakens and comes out. He asks what is the matter.

"The situation in the city is bad. There are disturbances and unrest. The family's stay here on the first floor is insecure. They must all come downstairs. I must transfer them to a safer location. Wake the rest and tell them to get ready. They do not need to take anything with them for now."

Botkin goes inside to awaken the rest and Yurovsky returns to his office.

A few minutes later, Lyukhanov's truck is heard approaching. It is the only vehicle that moves outside at this hour. Passing into the open entrance of the fence, the truck enters the yard of the house. Yurovsky gives final instructions to his men for their assignment. The hour approaches 2:00 AM and Medvedev makes a round to inform the guards of the events that would follow.

A little after 2:00 AM, the prisoners are ready and leaving their rooms. None of them seems uneasy. Noth of them speaks. Nicholas emerges first, carrying Alexis on his chest. Both are wearing military tunics and peaked caps on their heads. Alexandra follows, holding Olga by the arm; then there girls, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia holding her little dog. They are all wearing long dresses and blouses without jackets or hats. With them they are holding cushions, purses, and other small items. Anna Demidova follows the girls, also holding a cushion or two. Finally, Dr Botkin, Alexei Trupp, and Ivan Kharitonov emerge.

Yurovsky leads the prisoners toward the stairs on the other end of the floor. From there they descend to the ground floor, emerge into the yard and walk three or four meters, and Yurovsky opens the double doors making a sign to the prisoners to pass on again into the house. Then they descend a few steps and pass into a hallway leading back again to the other end of the house where "that" room was located, under the girls' bedroom. Adjoining, the men of the assassination squad are inside a second room.

At the south end of the corridor, Yurovsky opens another double door. This is now the last door that will open to the family in this life, it is the door to "that" room. He makes a motion for them to pass on in. There, in the depth of the room is one more double door, locked. The room, strangely enough, is completely empty and Alexandra asks if it is permitted to sit while they wait. Yurovsky asks one of the men to bring two chairs. Nikulin, emerging from the room to bring the chairs, whispers wryly to Strekotin who is there outside, "The heir needs a chair. Apparently, he wants to die in a chair. Well, let's bring them, please.”

As soon as the chairs are brought, the girls place the cushions they are carrying on them. In one chair, next to the arched window, Alexandra sits. In the second, at the center of the room, Nicholas affectionately places Alexis and sands directly in front of him, as if he wishes to hide him. Behind Alexis stands Dr Botkin. The girls stand behind their mother. Next to them in front of the locked door stands Demidova holding her cushions. Trupp and Kharitonov lean on the north wall of the room. The only light in the room comes from an electric lamp that hangs from the center of the ceiling. The light in the room is so dim that the women who passed into the far side of the room seem like shadows. Only the cushions that Demidova is holding are clearly discernable.

When all the prisoners are inside, Yurovsky realizes that the room is too small for his "special purpose." But there is now no margin for changes. However, it is necessary to space out the victims, so that the murderers would be able to do their deed. With a calm and low voice, he begins to indicate to each one the proper place to take: "You, please, stand here, and you, here; like that, in a row." It seems that at that hour Yurovsky remembers the time when he worked as a photographer and uses this knowledge for his purpose." Once the scene is set, he leaves the room, closing the double door behind him.

Going into the adjoining room where the men waited, Yurovsky sends Yermakov to command Lyukhanov to step hard on the gas in order to cover the noise that a few moments hence would horrify history. Yermakov returns, and all the men follow Yurovsky out into the hallway, right in front of the closed doors of "that" room. The truck's engine shatters the absolute silence. With a quick motion, Yurovsky opens the doors of the room and enters the room suddenly. Behind him follow the rest of the men, who crowd in front of the surprised prisoners. Some of these men, such as Yermakov, are new faces, unknown to the prisoners. They look at them with bewilderment as they take their places, one next to the other, forming two lines.

Yurovsky commands all the prisoners to stand upright. Alexandra arises, but Alexis remains seated. Yurovsky takes out a sheet of paper from his pocket. This is the most important moment in his life, his very own hour in history. Unfolding the paper that he is holding, he begins to read loudly:

"In light of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault against Soviet Russia and your close collaborators, both within and outside the country, attempt to liberate you, the Presidium of the Regional Soviet of the Urals has resolved to condemn you to death by firing squad."

Before Yurovsky is even finished, Nicholas turns toward the back and looks with terror at his family. He turns again forward. With a face as white as a sheet, he interrupts Yurovsky, "Lord, my God! What?! What?!" Behind him are now heard voices, "O my God! No!" Dr Botkin, with a choking voice asks, "So you are not transporting us anywhere?" Nicholas, who seems nearly unable to comprehend what he just heard, continues to ask, "What?" Yurovsky reads the document quickly for the second time and, having given command to the men to get ready, shouts loudly, "Fire!"

Alexandra and Olga raise their hands to make the sign of the Cross. The same second, contrary to their orders, all the men fire ceaselessly at Nicholas. They all wish the great honor of the murder of the Tsar. Just as his chest erupts and his blood spurts out, his body remains for a moment upright as it is shaken and then collapses downward, dead.

The weapons of the murderers immediately turn clumsily in all directions. The bullets hit Alexandra mortally. Just as the first gunshots kill his parents Alexis remains seated in his chair petrified. Across from him stands Nikulin, who was assigned to execute him. With shaking hands, he shoots him repeatedly until he empties his revolver. The child sags somewhat and remains motionless in his chair. The bullets continue to fall as rain in all directions and mortally wound Kharitonov and Trupp, who falls on his knees and sags down dead.

The girls gather back into the right corner of the room screaming with fright for help. But there is none. Maria breaks away from the rest and hurls herself with force on the locked doors in the back part of the room. She pounds them with all her strength, pulling and pulling on the knobs as she cries for help. Seeing her, Yermakov begins to fire in her direction. Maria falls to the floor, dead.

Only a few minutes have passed when the room fills with smoke and caustic fumes. There is absolutely no visibility. Chaos now reigns, and all shoot blindly in the dark room. Only women’s screams of terror are heard, loud cries, moans of the dying Yurovsky, with a loud voice commands, “Cease fire!“

The murderers go out and open the double doors. Their eyes burn from the smoke, the dust from the plaster walls, and the toxic fumes of the gunpowder, they cough, some feel nauseous. But their work is not yet done. Inside the room, voices and cries are still heard. The tragedy now reaches its tensest moment.

When the men return to the room, the smoke has dispersed somewhat. But the sight is terrible. Absolute terror. The terrified victims are crawling and wallowing on the floor in puddles of blood. Yurovsky sees Dr Botkin soaked in blood trying to get up from the floor, supporting himself on his right elbow. He approaches him and shoots him point blank in the left side of his skull.

Olga and Tatiana and Anastasia are also still alive. They are undergoing the most frightful suffering that the human mind can grasp. The men again begin to shoot at them. But while they hit the girls in the chest, the bullets ricochet in all directions. The murderers stand stunned before this inexplicable phenomenon. Yermakov, who approaches them like a demonized beast, tries to solve the problem. The girls, having their backs pressed to the wall sit on the floor squatting and weeping attempting to cover their heads with their hands.

Yermakov begins to stab them in the chest with his bayonet. Drunken and carried away as he is from blood lust, he hits the girls without being able to kill them, but only wounding them randomly. Being unable to stab them with his bayonet, he begins to club them in the face with the butt of his rifle. The terrified voices and cries of the girls continue dramatically. While Anastasia is lying on the floor, Yermakov stands over her and stamping her two hands with his feet he tries to kill her. Seeing the inability of Yermakov to finish his satanic work, Yurovsky approaches with cold calm and successively pumps a gunshot into the heads of each of the three girls. The bullets pass through their skulls and the girls fall down lifelessly.

Suddenly the voice of Demidova is heard. The pillows she was holding had saved her life from the bullets and she had simply fainted. As soon as she regains her senses, she cries out: "Thanks be to God! God has saved me!" She attempts to rise when one of the murderers' bayonet descends on her. In a last hopeless attempt, Anna tries to defend herself grabbing the bayonet with her bare hands. Finally, they shatter her head with their riffles' butts.

From Demidova's cries, Alexis, who is still alive and sagged into his chair, revives! He begins to moan painfully. Yurovsky approaches him and shoots him point-blank three times. The child slides slowly from his chair and his lifeless body falls next to the feet of his father. And so, the scene of the slaughter is now finished.

As the dust and smoke begins to disperse completely, the murderers could now admire their great feat: bodies mangled, and punctured by countless bullets, shredded with knife wounds, and disemboweled. Faces with expressions of extreme agony, eyes wide open with the terror of the final chapter of this tragedy. On the floor, masses of warm, clotted blood, brains, and bodily fluids: The majesty of revolutionary justice that has triumphed tonight.

This task, which, had the executioners been professionals, would normally not have taken more than a mere thirty seconds, lasted more than fifteen minutes at the Ipatiev House, transforming the suffering of the innocent victims into a hideous tragedy.

Finally, Yurovsky tested the pulse of all the victims, and once he had ascertained that they were all dead, he commanded the men to begin moving the corpses to the truck. But no one had considered the matter of their transportation ahead of time. They began by wrapping the corpses in blankets and tried to move them in this manner. Once they moved some of the victims, the blankets had become completely soaked in blood and slipped out of their hands. Then they made improvised stretchers to continue their macabre work.

As they were moving the victims, some of the soldiers began to steal various articles that were on the corpses: diamond brooches, pearl necklaces, gold watches and whatever was in the pockets or purses of the victims. When Yurovsky threatened to execute on the spot those that did not immediately return the loot, one by one they began to give up the spoils.

The truck was already prepared with its horrible cargo. When they counted the corpses once more, they covered them with a khaki sheet. Normally at this point, Yurovsky's mission would be finished. Goloshchekin, knowing that Yurovsky was sick, had told him that it was not necessary to go to the forest to deposit the corpses. This mission would be undertaken by Yermakov. However, Yermakov was completely beside himself. As Yurovsky wrote, "I was worried that he [Yermakov] would not be able to accomplish this work in the necessary manner, so I decided to go myself." Yurovsky sat in front with Yermakov and the driver Sergei Lyukhanov. Three other men of the guard came, riding in the back with the bodies. Lyukhanov put the truck in gear and went out from the Ipatiev House taking the road for the Koptyaki forest. The time was exactly 3:00 AM.

Among the few personal effects of the family that remained behind scattered at the Ipatiev House, the prison of their martyrdom, there was a notebook of Olga's. On one of its pages, written in the hand of the young girl, was the following prayer:

Grant us Thy patience, Lord,

In these our woeful days,

The mob's wrath to endure,

The torturer's ire;

Thy unction to forgive

Our neighbors' persecution,

And mild, like Thee, to bear

A bloodstained Cross.

And when the mob prevails,

And foes come to despoil us,

To suffer humbly shame,

O Saviour, aid us!

Master of the world, universal God,

Bless us in prayer

And grant rest to our humble soul

In this unbearable, dreadful hour.

And when the hour comes

To pass the last dread gate,

Breathe strength in us to pray,

"Father, forgive them."

**********

Once again, here is a masterful two-part essay (soon to be part of a book, I believe) by Dmitriy Kalyagin on substack channel “World War Now”:

· Ritual Regicide: The Martyrdom of the Romanovs

Part I, Part II

These are behind a paywall, but the first part can be found in full here on the Unz Review.

· Ritual Regicide: The Martyrdom of the Romanovs, Part I - Dmitriy Kalyagin

https://www.unz.com/article/ritual-regicide-the-martyrdom-of-the-romanovs-part-i/

Kalyagin gives a masterclass presentation on Russian History here for those with the time and interest.

· The Truth About The History of Russia – Dmitriy Kalyagin with Truth-teller on Twitter-Space

https://x.com/truthtellerftm/status/1840282949805056260?s=46

**********

Finally, here is a selection of podcasts by Matthew Raphael Johnson:

· Murder of the King meaning - Matthew Raphael Johnson

https://odysee.com/@InvincibleOrthodoxy:3/murder-of-the-king-meaning-matthew:8

· Martyrdom of the Tsar and his Family [100 Year Anniversary; Part 1] - Matthew Raphael

https://odysee.com/@InvincibleOrthodoxy:3/martyrdom-of-the-tsar-and-his-family-100:f

· Martyrdom of the Tsar and his Family [100 Year Anniversary; Part 2] - Matthew Raphael

https://odysee.com/@InvincibleOrthodoxy:3/martyrdom-of-the-tsar-and-his-family-2:a

· Judeo-Masonic Ritual Murder of the Czar and the Russian Royal Family (Romanovs) - Matthew Raphael Johnson

https://altcensored.com/watch?v=o022IGYkA5I

and finally, here is the reading of a related article by Michael Walsh

· The Ritual Murder of the Romanovs (Czar Nicholas II) – Michael Walsh (Defeat Modernism channel)

https://odysee.com/@defeatmodernism:c/the-ritual-murder-of-the-romanovs-(czar:6