Last Russian Tsar’s Shirt Tested for Blood Traces

By Irina Titova
Staff Writer

Genetic experts and investigators from the General Prosecutors office arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to begin analysis of blood traces on a shirt that belonged to the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, to assist in the definitive identification of remains believed to be those of the monarch, who was murdered in 1918. The shirt is kept at the State Hermitage Museum.

The remains were found near the city of Yekaterinburg in 1991. An investigation concluded that the remains were those of the tsar and his family and were buried, with full honors, in 1998. However, with scientific advances, a greater degree of certainty in the identification is now possible.

“We are not planning to take the shirt from the Hermitage. We’ll do all the necessary work right at the museum,” said Vladimir Solovyov, investigator of high priority at the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, who is taking part in the analysis, Interfax reported.

Solovyov said they will soak the samples of the tsar’s blood in distilled water.

The blood dates from 1891 when Nicholas, then-heir to the throne, was attacked with a sword by a policeman in Japan in an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

The experts plan to compare the DNA of bone remains found in 1991, and stored, to that obtained from the blood.

However, Nikolai Nevolin, head of Sverdlovsk Oblast Court and Medical Expertise Bureau, said old blood spots are hard to extract, and that experts can obtain results only if the blood spots have been severely contaminated, the Novy Rayon news agency reported.

In July the investigators into the murder of the tsar and his family announced that exhaustive testing had established that remains discovered near Yekaterinburg were those of the last two children to be identified: Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Maria. The research is to be completed by the end of the summer.

The experts hope that the blood from the tsar’s shirt will help to not only identify the tsar’s remains but also help to confirm the identity of the remains believed to be those of Alexei and Maria, Novy Rayon reported.

The Russian Orthodox Church and some of the Romanovs’ descendants have raised doubts that the remains so far discovered and buried are those of the royal family.

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