The Romanovs

by Robert K. Massie

  After Mary DeWitt disappeared, Schweitzer and Jenkins continued to talk. Jenkins realized that the hospital was vulnerable to an avalanche of demands for the tissue. Again Schweitzer offered to help. He looked up the appropriate statute and, working with Jenkins and the hospital lawyers, began drafting a petition which would permit Martha Jefferson Hospital to release the tissue to a qualified laboratory. The work proceeded slowly. The hospital’s attorneys, Schweitzer remembered, were “hand-holding lawyers, the kind that hold the hands of the trustees, fuddy-duddy lawyers, office lawyers, fiduciary lawyers, desk lawyers who work with wills and estates and never go to court, very thorough and picky and slow. They never met a date with me. They kept changing position, and I constantly drafted and redrafted to meet their demands. Finally, they put it into the hands of a skillful litigator, Matthew Murray, and we got it done. It took from May to September, but if Matt had handled it from the beginning, we’d have been finished in June.” By September, Schweitzer had satisfied everyone and written a nonadversarial document of which the hospital could say, “Yes, this is the kind of petition we want you to pose in court.”

  While working with the hospital, Schweitzer also began looking for a laboratory which could test the tissue once it was available. He contacted the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland, but he and they could not agree on terms. In addition, the AFIP had no DNA materials from the Romanovs or Hessians for use in comparing the Manahan tissue. Schweitzer therefore approached Dr. Peter Gill and the British Forensic Science Service, which, of course, possessed not only the DNA profiles taken from the Ekaterinburg remains but also the blood sample from Prince Philip linking him to the bones of the purported Empress Alexandra. During the summer, Schweitzer began negotiating with Home Office solicitors to work out a private commission. Ultimately, a written agreement was signed. Schweitzer made an initial down payment of five thousand pounds and placed another five thousand pounds in escrow in an English bank to be drawn on if needed.

  On September 30, 1993, Richard Schweitzer filed his wife’s petition for release of the tissue with the Virginia Sixteenth Judicial Circuit Court. Marina Schweitzer, the petition declared, had standing in the court on three counts: as a Virginia citizen, as the granddaughter of Dr. Eugene Botkin, and as the only resident of Virginia having a prolonged, serious connection with the life and identity of Anastasia Manahan. The basis of his wife’s suit, Schweitzer explained to the court, was that, as Dr. Botkin’s granddaughter, she had a right to know what had happened to her grandfather: “Identification of a putative survivor of the murders [that is, Grand Duchess Anastasia] would assist in the more certain identification of all, including petitioner’s grandfather, Dr. Botkin.” In the petition, Schweitzer did not ask the court to authorize release of the tissues to his wife; he asked only that the court permit access by Dr. Peter Gill to small samples of the tissue so they could be tested. Marina Schweitzer, her husband concluded, was prepared to pay all the costs and expenses of this DNA testing.

  Martha Jefferson Hospital took no position on the petition and told the court it would do whatever the court ordered. Informally, Matthew Murray declared, “If the plaintiff can prove she has a right to the tissue and that’s what the court orders, we don’t have any problem with that. We don’t stand to gain or lose anything.” Schweitzer believed that things were going smoothly. “I had even drafted the order for the judge to issue, the way the hospital wanted it,” he recalled. “The judge set a hearing for November 1. I thought we’d sail right through.”

  On the afternoon of November 1, 1993, Circuit Court Judge Jay T. Swett, a young-looking man with blond hair, gathered his black robe around him, seated himself high above everyone else in his courtroom, and prepared to deal with the matter of Anastasia Manahan’s tissue in Martha Jefferson Hospital. In front of and beneath him were three lawyers: Richard Schweitzer, attorney for his wife, Marina, who wanted the tissue made available for DNA testing in England; Matthew Murray, attorney for the hospital, who was willing that this happen providing the court approved; and an attorney for the Richmond Times, who wanted to make sure that the hearings were not closed to the press and public. This last matter was quickly dealt with when Schweitzer conceded that all hearings should be in open court and that no court documents should be sealed. There seemed little more to do, and Judge Swett instructed Schweitzer and Murray to get together and draft an order which he could sign. The case, apparently, was concluded; the tissue would soon be available to Dr. Gill.

  “Is there anything else the court should know before we move on?” Judge Swett asked.

  “Well, Your Honor, there are some other people here who want to be heard because they think they have an interest in this,” replied Matthew Murray.

  At this point, a young woman with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail stood up in the back of the room. She introduced herself as Lindsey Crawford, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Andrews & Kurth, where Thomas Kline also worked. “Your Honor, we have a client who wishes and deserves to be heard,” she said. “I have just heard from Prince Nicholas Romanov, the head of the Romanov Family Association, whom most living Romanovs accept as the legitimate pretender to the throne. He has just literally this morning asked me to come and investigate what’s going on here and what effect, if any, this could have on his family.” She asked Judge Swett to hold up proceedings to give her time “to protect his interest and that of the Romanov family.” Crawford added that her firm also represented another client with an interest in the Anastasia Manahan tissue. This was a New York corporation called the Russian Nobility Association.

  “Do you have a petition to file?” asked Judge Swett.

  “No, we don’t, Your Honor, because our client spoke to me only this morning.”

  Richard Schweitzer, recognizing the name Andrews & Kurth, objected to any delay. “The real client of this law firm,” he told the court, “is not any member of the Romanov family or the Russian Nobility Association. It is a Mr. Korte.” Schweitzer pulled out a copy of the letter Thomas Kline had written in June to James Lovell in which Kline described the work of Willi Korte. “This firm, Andrews & Kurth, has been representing Mr. Korte for months before this hearing date,” Schweitzer told the judge. “They have been trying to get hold of this tissue for Mr. Korte’s purposes and to prevent others from getting access.”

  For several minutes, Judge Swett pondered. Then he told Crawford that he would hold things up for three days so that she could file a petition. Penny Jenkins, sitting near Lindsey Crawford in the courtroom, heard her say in disbelief, “There’s no way we can do this in three days.” Jenkins also noticed a tall, curly-haired man probably nearing forty, with a sharp nose, sitting next to Crawford. He wore no necktie, had sandals on his feet, and was carrying a backpack. Jenkins realized—“I don’t know how. I just knew,” she said later—that this was Willi Korte. Before the hearing was over, Korte rose and quickly left the courtroom.

  Looking back after the case was settled, Richard Schweitzer hypothesized what had happened up to this point: “Andrews & Kurth wanted to block Marina’s access to the tissue and gain exclusive control for their real client. I believed then that this client was Willi Korte. He had worked on acquiring the tissue for months, but, once he had failed with the Manahans and Jimmy Lovell, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t come into court in Virginia on his own because he had no standing. He needed a client who would be permitted as an intervenor in our lawsuit. So he and his colleagues in Europe went swinging through the world looking for a client—or a couple of clients. They came up with Nicholas Romanov and the Russian Nobility Association.”

  In Europe, one of Korte’s co-workers, Maurice Philip Remy, was trying to involve the Romanov princes in blocking the Schweitzers. Prince Nicholas, who lived in Rome, telephoned his cousin Prince Rostislav, who lived in London, and said he was being pressured to become involved in the Virginia case. Rostislav telephoned New York and Prince Alexis Scherbatow, the president of t
he Russian Nobility Association, whom he didn’t know, to ask what was going on. Rostislav and Scherbatow spoke for half an hour, and then Rostislav telephoned a London friend, Michael Thornton. “When Rosti got off the phone with Scherbatow,” Thornton said, “he called me and said, Jesus Christ! What is wrong with that man?’ Then he started telling me all the things Scherbatow had said: Schweitzer was a crook … he had a very dubious background … there were things about him that, if we knew, would make our hair curl.… They saw this as a sinister conspiracy to have the claimant recognized as genuine.” Scherbatow also had told Rostislav that Anna Anderson’s tissue must not be tested in England. “The only place it could be properly done,” Scherbatow had said, “was in California by a Dr. Mary-Claire King.”

  Thornton’s reaction to Rostislav was “This is all rubbish! For God’s sake, fax Nicholas and tell him to leave this thing in Charlottesville alone. It will be chaos.” Thornton himself then wrote a letter to Rostislav, which Rostislav faxed to Nicholas, saying that it would be a disaster for the Romanovs to become involved with the case. “I said they would be very badly criticized, having rejected Anna Anderson all her life, if they now started to claim parts of her body after her death,” Thornton recounted. “The media would crucify them. Furthermore, I said, it would represent a shift in the long-held policy of the Romanov family, which was that she wasn’t genuine. If you now start claiming parts of her body, it’s going to make everyone think that you’ve made a mistake. The best thing is to stay out.”

  Michael Thornton’s message had effect. Prince Nicholas Romanov immediately withdrew as a potential client of Andrews & Kurth, and there was no mention of him or of any Romanov in subsequent court documents.

  On Thursday, November 4, Lindsey Crawford was ready as instructed by Judge Swett to submit her petition to intervene. The document named only a single client, the Russian Nobility Association. Crawford had signed the petition, along with Thomas Kline of her law firm, and Page Williams, a Charlottesville attorney hired as local counsel. In the petition, the association represented itself as “an historic [sic] and philanthropic organization whose purpose is to protect the authenticity of the line of the Imperial family of Russia and the events prior to 1917 in Russia.” The association challenged the fitness of Marina Schweitzer to petition for the tissue, saying that she was not related by blood to either “Anastasia Romanov [the daughter of the tsar] or Anastasia Anderson [the claimant].” It denied that identifying the tissue samples in Martha Jefferson Hospital would be helpful in verifying Dr. Botkin’s remains. It agreed that mitochondrial DNA testing might be useful in determining the true identity of Anastasia Manahan but went on to say that “it is essential that any tests conducted on the tissue samples be of the highest scientific integrity which cannot be achieved in the manner requested by Schweitzer” (that is, in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Gill).

  In a memorandum attached to the petition, the Russian Nobility Association heaped further calumny on Dr. Gill: his laboratory was said to represent “second-best scientific testing,” and his samples were said to have been possibly “contaminated.” Finally, the association argued (inaccurately, it turned out), “There is no scientific evidence that the tissue samples can be split so that parallel testing could be conducted at two laboratories.” The Russian Nobility Association’s argument was that if the court awarded the tissue to Gill, it would be throwing away any chance of proving the claimant’s identity. The only solution, it urged, was for the tissue to be sent to its nominee, “the foremost genetics scientist in the United States,” Dr. Mary-Claire King at Berkeley.

  Attached to the Russian Nobility Association’s petition were affidavits from Prince Alexis Scherbatow, the organization’s president, and Dr. William Maples. Scherbatow’s affidavit mostly parroted the petition. What was significant was that the scientific statements and recommendations in all three of these documents—the Russian Nobility Association petition, its memorandum, and the affidavit of Prince Scherbatow—rested on the affidavit of Dr. Maples. Maples’ statement praised Dr. King and denigrated Dr. Gill. It said that Gill’s finding of 98.5 percent certainty that the Ekaterinburg remains belonged to the Romanovs was “not scientifically significant.” It referred to the heteroplasmy Gill and his colleagues had discovered in Nicholas II’s DNA as “more likely the result of contaminated samples.” It attempted to frighten the court that there would not be enough to go around: “If any blood or tissue samples from Anastasia Manahan are used in mtDNA testing, they are likely to be completely consumed in the process.… Therefore, it is unlikely that there would be sufficient genetic material for the sample to be split and tested by two different laboratories.”

  The Russian Nobility Association is an assemblage of descendants of the aristocratic families which once helped to rule Imperial Russia. In the 1990s, it is made up of perhaps one hundred dues-paying members, most of whom are children and grandchildren of men and women who emigrated from Russia at the time of the revolution. If they still lived in Russia under a tsar, many of these people would be called prince and princess, or count and countess. In America, they wear their honorifics only at charity events, hoping to add a little glitter and thus attract Americans impressed by titles. The organization’s primary source of income is a ball every May, which helps to pay the rent on a second-floor apartment on First Avenue where the association’s library of crumbling Russian genealogical books is housed. The rest is doled out to children, needy old people, and the sick.

  No one in the world at this time is more expert at tracing the bloodlines of the Russian aristocracy than the president of the Russian Nobility Association, eighty-four-year-old Alexis Scherbatow Scherbatow has lived his life as an emigre. His family lost everything except their lives in the revolution. They moved to Bulgaria; he lived in Italy, graduated from the University of Brussels, came to the United States in 1938, and, during World War II, was a sergeant in the U.S. Army. After the war, he taught history at Fairleigh Dickinson College in New Jersey and translated documents in Russian and Latin for other historians and writers. His views are typical of many Russians of his generation: he hates Communism, is suspicious of post-Communist Russia, and despises England (“They are a bunch of liars in England”). He never accepted Anna Anderson’s claim to be Anastasia. As an argument he cites the fact that he personally saw the grand duchess in 1916, when he was five years old.

  Richard Schweitzer responded to the Russian Nobility Association’s intrusion into his wife’s lawsuit by saying that “the issue was not one of the comparative merits of respective scientific facilities. The real issue is whether or not the Russian Nobility Association has any standing whatsoever to participate in any way in selection of a scientific facility. There is no evidence before the court of any such standing.” He pointed out that the association had not filed a certificate of its officers or certified resolution of its directors or trustees consenting to the Charlottesville court taking jurisdiction over its activities in these proceedings. Privately, Schweitzer believed that the officers and membership of the Russian Nobility Association had no idea what was going on. He also was convinced that somebody else was paying the association’s legal bills.*

  Schweitzer launched a barrage of documents. He said that he never sought exclusive authority from the court for access to the tissue. He doubted that there was any danger of serious erosion to the tissue samples; he had been told that scientists needed only the tiniest slice, 24/10,000 of an inch thick, from each of the one-inch preserved units. On November 16, he told the court that he would not oppose tests by Dr. King at Berkeley; he would only oppose testing exclusively by Dr. King. On another tack, he said that the Russian Nobility Association should not be given standing in the case because Anastasia Manahan never claimed membership in the Russian nobility; she had always said that she was a member of the Russian Imperial family. Privately, both Schweitzers were contemptuous of Alexis Scherbatow for signing himself “Prince” in his sworn affidavit. “When he became an Ame
rican citizen, he swore to give up foreign titles,” Schweitzer said. “I find it hard to accept the oath of one who claims a foreign title in an affidavit under oath, if that same person has, on naturalization, forsworn all foreign titles and allegiances. Either one oath or the other has dubious validity.” Schweitzer also poured scorn on William Maples: “Maples’ affidavit is not a credible basis [for selecting a laboratory to do the testing],” he told the court. “He has categorically asserted on public television that Grand Duchess Anastasia could not have survived. He is not a disinterested scientist. Maples is an anthropologist, not a geneticist. He states no expertise qualifying him to set criteria for genetic work.”

  Richard Schweitzer was not the only one immediately critical of Dr. Maples’ affidavit. When Mary-Claire King read the affidavit a few days after it was filed, she too was upset. On November 19, she telephoned Peter Gill in England, disassociated herself from Maples’ remarks about Gill’s incompetence, and told him that she would be pleased to work in collaboration with him on the Anastasia Manahan tissue. Later that day, she spoke by telephone with Marina and Richard Schweitzer. By fax that day to King, Schweitzer attempted to spell out his and his wife’s position: they were issuing a privately funded commission to Dr. Gill with no control: “no strings, no spin.” Gill’s report, whatever its conclusions about Mrs. Manahan’s claim to be Anastasia, would go directly to the court and the hospital, not to the Schweitzers. As for a role for Dr. King, Schweitzer told her, “It is not our wish to exclude you from participation with Peter Gill in what should be a purely scientific, totally disinterested series of procedures and conclusions.” Indeed, Schweitzer offered to include King in his own petition to the court. “Unfortunately,” he told her, “your name has been brought into court by a New York genealogical society which has attempted to have the court prevent access sought by us for Dr. Gill. In our view, this is really a law firm action by Andrews & Kurth on behalf of undisclosed parties which have been in the background since March or April 1993.”