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The Russia’s Investigative Committee has reopened investigation in the murder of the Romanov royal family and their attendants.

The case was initially opened in 1993, when a mass grave had been found near the city of Yekaterinburg. The investigators identified the remains as those of the members of the Russian emperor’s family shot at night of 17 July 1918 – former Russian Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, their children Olga, Tatyana and Anastasia, as well as their attendants: physician-in-ordinary Yevgheny Botkin, maid Anna Demidova, cook Ivan Kharitonov and lackey Alexey Trupp. After that, in 1998, the case was closed due to the death of those who had committed the crime.

On 29 July 2007, during excavations in search for the remains of Alexey Romanov and Grand Duchess Maria Romanov, fragments of bones and teeth of two people (a woman and a child) with signs of high temperature affect were found to the south of the site where the remains of the nine Romanovs family and their suite had been found. To find out new circumstances of their death and to bury members of the Tsar family, the investigation was reopened due to new evidence. The testing and other records of the case show that the remains belong to the children of Nicholas II – Alexey and Maria. After that the case was closed again.

On the request of the Russian Orthodox Church and following an order of the Chairman of the Russian Government there was an interagency working group created to investigate and bury the remains of Alexey and Grand Duchess Maria that are kept in the State Archives. The working group suggested some additional identification tests of the previously unavailable evidence – remains of Empress Alexandra Fyodorvna’s sister – Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Fyodorovna that are kept in Jerusalem (Israel) and bloodstains on the uniform of Tsar Nicholas’s grandfather Alexander II, killed in a bombing in 1881. To do that the remains of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna have to be exhumed from the peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint-Petersburg.

Besides the investigators are going to study archives found after 2011 and connected with the investigation conducted by the White Guard in 1918-1924 and with the evidence. The senior officials of the Investigative Committee made a decision to reopen the investigation to run the said tests.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                                             V.I. Markin