The Romanovs
Page 24
During their conversation, King asked Schweitzer to speak to Lindsey Crawford to see whether there was a way that she and Dr. Gill could work in collaboration or, at least, in parallel. The following day, Schweitzer passed this message to Crawford, proposing that Dr. King be included in his wife’s petition and that Andrews & Kurth withdraw from the case. For two weeks, Schweitzer heard nothing; then, on December 4, he learned that Andrews & Kurth had no intention of withdrawing; on December 6, he was told that Thomas Kline was complaining that Schweitzer was interfering with “his” expert. Schweitzer immediately telephoned Kline, who backed down and admitted that Dr. King did not belong to him and that Schweitzer’s contacts with her were entirely proper.
Subsequently, however, Crawford wrote to Schweitzer asking for copies of “all six of the facsimile transmissions to Dr. King.” A week later, Crawford wrote again, sternly demanding that the six fax transmissions be sent to her “upon receipt of this letter. This incident,” she continued, “emphasizes the need to centralize through me all communications concerning or in any way related to the Proceeding.” Schweitzer sent copies of his faxes to Judge Swett but never to Lindsey Crawford.
Meanwhile, Mary-Claire King was putting her own views in writing. On December 7, 1993, she wrote and notarized an affidavit contradicting what Dr. Maples had said about Dr. Gill’s competence. Although her affidavit had been summoned by Andrews & Kurth and was written ostensibly in support of the Russian Nobility Association, King took a separate course. “I have been working for the past seven months on the identification of the skeletal remains of the nine individuals believed to include Tsar Nicholas II and members of his family,” she said. “I have also received blood and tissue samples from descendants of Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra.* I am in the process of preparing a report on my findings. I am familiar with DNA research into the remains from Ekaterinburg being conducted by Dr. Peter Gill. If there is sufficient mtDNA bearing material, it would be ideal to have two qualified laboratories carry out the mtDNA testing and compare their results. I have spoken with Dr. Gill and would like the opportunity to work collaboratively with him in the analysis of the samples.”
Because Dr. King’s affidavit overturned much of the scientific argumentation on which Andrews & Kurth had based its case, it was withheld by that law firm and not submitted to the court or read by opposing attorneys until three months later.
Meanwhile, the number of parties attempting to participate in Richard Schweitzer’s lawsuit was growing. On November 10, a fifty-six-year-old woman from Mullan, Idaho, Ellen Margarete Therese Adam Kalling, born in Germany on October 23, 1937, and still a German citizen, petitioned to intervene. She was, she swore, “the long-lost daughter” of Grand Duchess Anastasia and Prince Henry of Reuss. She said that in January 1993, only ten months before, she had changed her legal name to Anastasia Romanov. Her argument was “If Mrs. Manahan is proven to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, then I, Anastasia Romanov, as her daughter, am a member of the Imperial family of Russia.” Therefore, she told the court, she alone had a right to her mother’s tissue, and she alone would decide whether, where, and by whom the tissue would be tested.
Mrs. Kailing-Romanov explained that her mother, later Mrs. Manahan, did not raise her because relatives believed that the grand duchess was incompetent after the murder of her family. Mrs. Kailing-Romanov said that she had been saved from a concentration camp and placed in a German family: “I was told in 1964 … that I was a princess.” She came to the United States in 1968, married an American, and had children. “The truth of my identity was kept from me until June 10, 1990,… [when] I was told that I was the daughter of Anastasia Romanov by Mother Alexandra, abbess of the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. When I did see the pictures in Peter Kurth’s book, I knew this was my story.… Actually, Lovell in his book gave me the right informations [sic],… Now the picture was compleat [sic] and fitting.… The last information came from the book of Edvard Radzinsky.”
To strengthen her case, Mrs. Kailing-Romanov contacted a Charlottesville company called Locators Inc., whose stationery promises “Missing Persons Located—Fast Action—Amazing Results.” The company’s finders fee contract stated that if it was determined that the claimant was entitled to share in the estate of Nicholas Romanov, Alexandra Romanov, and Anastasia Romanov, then Locators Inc. would receive 33 percent of the claimant’s share of the estate. Further, “in the event it is determined that claimant is a lawful heir of Tsar Nicholas II and this in turn results in establishing claimant in a position of governmental authority in Russia,” additional compensation would come in the form of payment of Russian government bonds issued in 1916, “together with accrued interest, as the first official act under claimant’s government.” Mrs. Kailing-Romanov decided that she did not trust Locators Inc. and did not sign the contract.
Subsequently, Mrs. Kailing-Romanov made other declarations to the court: “I am just overcoming arsenic poisoning. My income is below the poverty line.” She asked that all court dates be fixed in advance because “the petitioner does not fly, she only travels by train or by car. The petitioner lives in Idaho, more than 2,000 miles away, and it takes by train more than three days to get to Charlottesville, Virginia. The office of the Tsar is given by God over which the earthly has no power. I, Anastasia Romanov, have a son and he continues the line.”
To Richard Schweitzer, it seemed that the Russian Nobility Association and Mrs. Kailing-Romanov were turning his wife’s lawsuit into a circus. Declaring that Mrs. Kailing-Romanov’s pleading was “too incoherent to merit response,” he suggested the court determine “the competence of the petitioner to represent her own or any other interests” and asked for immediate denial of her petition to intervene. Again, as it had done with the Russian Nobility Association’s petition, Martha Jefferson Hospital, hoping to litigate the tissue matter only once, took the opposite course and asked that Mrs. Kailing-Romanov be admitted as an intervenor.
On December 7, to Richard Schweitzer’s dismay, Judge Swett announced that both the Russian Nobility Association and Mrs. Kailing-Romanov were permitted to intervene in the suit.
* In fact, as Schweitzer suspected, neither the members nor any of the other officers of the Russian Nobility Association were aware of their president’s action. Also, as Schweitzer suspected, the association was not paying its own legal bills. In November 1994, Alexis Scherbatow admitted that the eight months of lawsuits in which the Russian Nobility Association was the nominal client had cost his organization nothing: “Not a cent! Not a cent! Not a cent!” he chortled.
* Undoubtedly, King meant relatives of the tsar and his wife; all of their descendants were with them in the Ipatiev House cellar.
Lt. Col. Michael Goleniewski, the Polish CIA agent who claimed to be Tsarevich Alexis.
Eugenia Smith, the Chicago woman who said she was Grand Duchess Anastasia.
The woman who was later called Anna Anderson in a Berlin hospital, 1925.
Anna Anderson.
Anna Anderson married Dr. John Manahan and became Anastasia Manahan on December 22, 1968. She was seventy-two; he was forty-nine.
Richard and Marina Schweitzer.
Prime Alexis Scherbatow.
Charlottesville, June 21, 1994: Dr. Peter Gill (with glasses) puts Anna Anderson’s tissue sample into a bag for transport to England. He is assisted by technician Betty Eppard. Dr. R. Hunt Macmillan, the hospital pathologist, observes.
Ed Deets (left) and Matthew Murray watch Dr. Gill at work.
The seven Romanov princes in Paris, 1992. Left to right: Nicholas, Dimitri, Michael, Alexander, Andrew, Rostislav, Nikita.
Grand Duke Vladimir, pretender to the Russian throne, 1938–1992, and his wife, Grand Duchess Leonida, in Madrid.
Grand Duchess Maria, the current pretender, and her son, Grand Duke George.
Prince Nicholas Romanov.
CHAPTER 16
THESE PEOPLE HAVE NO STANDING
Richard Schweitzer and Lindsey Crawford immediately disagreed on the starting point for this process. Schweitzer wanted to begin by meeting and conferring; Crawford, on the other hand, quickly began preparing her own version of a draft order for the judge. Schweitzer wrote repeatedly, pushing for a meeting: “I am willing to come to your offices at your convenience at the earliest possible date, preferably this week, prior to the Christmas holidays,” he wrote on December 20. Crawford replied, “We are in the process of drafting a proposed order which we hope to circulate to all parties within the next few days. I will consult with you regarding scheduling a meeting after I circulate this draft.”
When Crawford’s draft order arrived, Schweitzer was surprised to see that it contained a major shift in his opponents’ argument. Previously, Andrews & Kurth, accepting Dr. Maples’ opinion, had condemned Peter Gill’s laboratory as a place at which DNA evidence had possibly been contaminated and which offered only “second-best scientific testing.” Crawford’s draft proposed the judge direct that the tissue be made available to both Dr. Gill and Dr. King. Nevertheless, Schweitzer was irritated. He disliked what he regarded as Crawford’s arrogant detailing of the scientific procedures to be followed; he disliked her insistence that both King and Gill work without reimbursement (Schweitzer knew that the British Forensic Science Service would not work without a fee); and he insisted that each of the scientists be free to publish their results as soon as they had been obtained.
Schweitzer wrote to the hospital’s attorneys, “These documents are ample proof that we should first meet and confer as directed by the court and not be limited by an attempt by Counsellor Crawford to control the agenda by ‘drafts’ or otherwise.” The day after Christmas, Schweitzer, increasingly angry, returned to his fax machine and informed the hospital’s lawyers that “Counsellor Crawford has disdained our requests to meet as instructed and has elected to prepare and circulate a draft of what she purports to be an ‘order.’ ” Schweitzer added that he now wished to go ahead and meet with the hospital’s attorneys, “with Counsellor Crawford to attend or not as she wishes.”
This got Lindsey Crawford’s attention. She scheduled a conference of all the attorneys involved to discuss a response to Judge Swett’s letter. The time was January 10, 1994; the place, the Charlottesville office of Page Williams, the local lawyer whom Andrews & Kurth had brought into the case. The Schweitzers, learning that bad weather was predicted for the tenth, drove down the night before. On the afternoon of the tenth, as the meeting began, the Schweitzers, Page Williams, and hospital attorney Matthew Murray were there, but Lindsey Crawford, who had called the meeting, was not. The weather was bad; it was impossible for her to drive, Williams explained. The weather, however, did not prevent the appearance of another figure who drove that day from Washington to Charlottesville.
As the attorneys were distributing copies of proposed consent orders to regulate distribution of the tissue, Dr. Willi Korte walked into the room. Schweitzer asked why Korte was present. Williams announced that Korte was there “to represent the Russian Nobility Association.” Schweitzer demanded credentials or evidence of authority, and Korte pulled from his briefcase a document signed that day by Alexis Scherbatow. “I hereby request and authorize Willi Korte to assist the RNA and its lawyers in the litigation,” the document read. “The authority granted herein authorizes Dr. Korte to work with the association’s attorneys in the U.S. in conducting negotiations, reviewing documents, providing advice and otherwise taking any necessary and appropriate steps to advance the interests of the Association in these matters.”
As the litigation progressed, Richard Schweitzer had a growing sense that he was battling multiple opponents, one standing behind another. For months, he had been aware of the presence of Dr. Willi Korte, but until January 10, he had not seen this antagonist in person. Even then, Schweitzer did not know much about him. Julian Nott, a British filmmaker working on a television documentary about Anastasia, learned more. “Korte is deliberately mysterious,” Nott said a few weeks after Schweitzer’s confrontation with him. “He won’t reveal much about himself or who is paying him. He’s German, but he lives near Washington, D.C. He’s a very good researcher. His normal job is working undercover, tracking down stolen works of art. A few years ago, he helped locate the missing Quedlinburg Treasure, valued at $200 million to ‘priceless,’ stolen immediately after the Second World War by a U.S. Army lieutenant and hidden in Texas. In the Romanov case, I’ve bumped into him in Boston at the meeting of forensic scientists when Avdonin delivered his paper, at Harvard looking at the Sokolov documents, and in London.
“He’s been very persuasive with some of these families, particularly the Hessians, and he has roped them in to help him,” Nott continued. “He’s scared them by saying, ‘Look, do you know what’s happening here? Do you realize that Gleb Botkin’s son-in-law, Richard Schweitzer, and James Lovell are about to perpetrate this amazing fraud on you? And here I am. Why don’t you give me a helping hand?’
“My feeling is that Korte is the brains and driving force behind this,” Nott continued. “He’s very determined, and he just won’t compromise. He wants the whole damn thing; he doesn’t want Schweitzer involved at all. But what he’s really doing is simply making this thing the most terrible mess.”
Nott was wrong, however; Willi Korte was not the motive force behind Schweitzer’s opponents. By January, a figure behind Korte had begun to emerge. Maurice Philip Remy was a German television producer from Munich, interested, like Julian Nott, in doing a film on Anastasia. A few weeks later, Nott went to Munich to meet this competitor. “He’s a wealthy man from an aristocratic family and his television company is quite successful,” Nott declared on his return. “And he wants to solve seventy-six years of mystery on one television show. Unfortunately, he’s got more money than decency. He’s going after this, and he’s not going to let go. He confirmed that he’s behind Korte; he talked about Korte as if Korte was something worse than his butler: ‘I sent Korte to do this, I sent him to do that.’ Speaking of the Russian Nobility Association, he was much more careful. ‘I have great influence with them,’ he told me.”
Remy’s position on Anna Anderson was vehemently hostile. “He is not out to be objective,” Nott declared. “He intends to prove that she was an impostor. He is in alliance with the Hessians, to whom, all along, he has presented himself as contemptuous of Anna Anderson.” Remy also made a useful ally of Dr. von Berenberg-Gossler, the former attorney for Mountbatten and the Hessians, who, at eighty-five, still describes Anna Anderson as a “con artist” and a “phony.”
Gradually, it became clear to Nott that Remy’s objective was to gain complete control of the Anna Anderson case. He would block Richard and Marina Schweitzer, obtain the tissue for himself, have it tested, then dominate the release of information. He and his agents fanned out across Europe, not only consulting archives, letters, films, home movies, recordings, interviews, and broadcasts but trying to buy them. “No ordinary television program or station would do that; it’s too expensive,” Nott said. “But Remy’s behind in this race so he wants to stop the Schweitzers and Gill, at least until he can arrange to have everything released simultaneously. The reason given would be that it’s good science; that all the materials should be available to everyone as a public record of scientists at work. The real reason would be commercial advantage. Meanwhile, he’s quietly attem
pting to tie up the world’s supply. Then he’ll go around to all the networks and stations in Europe and the world and try to presell a film with exclusive rights to the Anna Anderson DNA tests. He’ll tell them he owns Anna Anderson.”
In January 1994, yet another figure appeared in the case. This was Baron Ulrich von Gienanth, an eighty-six-year-old former German diplomat who had become a friend of Anna Anderson after the war and during her Unterlengenhardt years had managed her scanty finances. In a series of five wills written between 1949 and 1957, the claimant had named von Gienanth as one of her four executors. (The others, all dead by 1994, were her friend Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg and her Hamburg lawyers, Kurt Vermehren and Paul Leverkuehn.) On January 21, 1994, in Bad Liebenzell, near Stuttgart, where he lived, Baron von Gienanth signed a declaration that, as the only survivor of the original four, he accepted the function of executor of Anna Anderson’s last will.