by Laura Rose
A terrible confusion followed—the men stood, firing over one another’s shoulders. There was no room for a proper squad. The tsar fell forward, his chest exploded bright red. There was a pause as this action registered, then, as if with one cry, the daughters and mother screamed. One soldier was himself wounded in the confusions that followed; either by a ricochet or hit by one of the dazed shooters behind him.
The fire of their comrades behind them burned the skin on the ears and cheeks of the front row of shooters.
I confess, watching this scene, I began to shake uncontrollably, and I know this makes no sense—I, with quivering hands, lit my cigarette and inhaled…I was a spectator to the worst carnage possible—a room is far more hellish than a battlefield, and I had my own mission, the secret one, to perform if all did not proceed as planned. Why did I smoke? I had to do something with my hands, and to regulate my own breathing. I do not understand this myself—the way I puffed and stared at the dying.
I had to peer down into the semicircular window, and try to see who was still alive, who might have been killed. The subterranean room filled with smoke, and an acrid cloud struck my eyes…Blinking and leaning forward, I could discern flashes of white in the darkening murder room. I believe these were the blouses of the girls, the sisters, who still lived. The smoke rose, and I could see a terrible if farcical scene—only the lower halves of the victims were visible, their legs running and jumping, again as if on a silent, speeded film.
What followed was so bloody and terrible it will be impossible to recount in truest detail. As did the other guards, I lost control of some bodily functions. Horror grips those in the gut who perform it, as well as those who suffer.
Later, we would see that all had urinated and defecated but it is the blood that I can never forget. I had no concept of what the blood flow of eleven victims could be—I will tell you now it was a flood, ankle deep, and not entirely liquid. It moved slowly, like a liver-colored lava across the floor, and soon, all of us were basted in that thick blood. The blood seemed to darken as I watched, and it was part solid—tissue and brain matter, I suppose.
I vomited at once. I remembered my vow to my friend, however, and continued, between retches, to watch the hideous scene unfold. After the first round of shots, the air somewhat cleared, and three men slumped to the floor, into the area of visibility, below the layers of gun smoke that hung in an instant miasmic fog in the room. I would say, but doubt my accuracy for all was chaos such as I have never witnessed, that Botkin lay, wounded, reaching toward his master, the tsar’s body, and Kharitonov, the cook (whose bread we all still held in our bellies, unless all the other boys had, as I had, “given it up”) lay dead, and beside him the footman, an innocuous fellow, Trupp.
The first woman to die was the former tsarina. Ermakov had the assignment to kill her and the doctor. He was the single shooter awarded two target victims. He aimed first at the empress—as she had slumped back to her requested chair. As the bullet struck her, it happened that my eyes were in contact with hers. She was making the sign of the cross but did not complete the gesture. Ermakov’s bullet struck with accuracy into her head, and blood and brain exited in a projectile spray. The tsarina continued to face me, but the light was gone from her eyes, and she fell back, dead.
Empress Alexandra died a quick death, and that cannot be said for any of those who remained. Because he was small, and huddling on the floor, I could see Alexei, the former tsarevich, and this sight will haunt me forever—the boy clung to his dead father. Meanwhile, as I said all is chaos, but I had an awareness of the girls huddling together, all still alive in the southeast corner of the room. They were shrieking.
Because it was my mission to watch for Marie, I kept my eyes to her, and saw that she ran for the bolted storeroom doors, and clawed at them. The life force was fierce within her; she could have cut plaster with her bare hands to escape. She pounded and clawed the doors, worked the knobs… Of course, the door was now bolted from without, but against logic, I hoped she might force the door open and be able to flee. In the pandemonium, if the door had given way, she might have been able to run as far as me…
But Ermakov—and I know it was him, because he had a characteristic cry, the cry of the predator in the kill; he was so tall also, he towered above the other shooters—he aimed and (I think deliberately) fired into her thigh. She fell, unable to stand, and lay beside Botkin, whose two knees were shot out, as well.
It is my memories of the wounded that will deprive me of a peaceful sleep for the remainder of my life. The dead find their peace, but the writhing injured, they suffer and call to me still…
The servant woman, Nyuta, Demidova, had an animal instinct, and cowered in a corner, her back to the scene, as if she could escape that way. She held her pillow, which was white. Then she too crumpled to the floor.
By now, the noxious fumes billowed from the window into my face. I could hear, dimly, when Yurovsky demanded the shooting to stop. Not to spare the victims, of course, but to allow the air to clear so that he might see the targets more clearly, and sort through the bodies—who was dead, and who needed finishing off.
At this point, more than half the shooters fled, coughing and puking. Medvedev, whom we always regarded as a decent sort, came out to where I stood, shaking, and vomited beside me. Many of the younger boys wept openly—they were as frightened as the victims by these deeds.
There passed several tense moments—I cannot judge how long—while they waited for the air to clear and the poisonous gasses of the smoke to dissipate. Then Yurovsky ordered, “Go back! Finish!”
Yurovsky, to begin the next series of killings, approached the doctor Botkin, who was profoundly crippled but trying to raise himself up by his elbows. Yurovsky held his Mauser close to the doctor’s head and fired directly.
In the middle of this, the boy Alexei now sat in his chair, covered in his father’s blood. One of the shooters fired repeatedly at him, but his cartridge clip had emptied, and nothing happened. Yurovsky took over then, and fired at the boy’s chest. The child slumped, but somehow remained alive and moaning on the floor. Yurovsky called to Ermakov, and Ermakov pulled the bayonet from his belt, and used the eight-inch blade—plunging into the boy, repeatedly, and yet the child lived. To end this, Yurovsky produced another gun, a Colt, and fired twice into the boy’s ear, to finish him. Two shooters near fainted at this sight, for the child had been said to have the bleeder’s disease and to have been so frail all his life—how could he live through this butchery?
“He is holy,” one boy said. “They are of God. They will not die. We must stop.” He dropped his revolver into the sludge of blood and brain, and walked away. No one stopped him. Many wondered how the others survived the gunfire, as well?
Three daughters still stood—alive, unhurt—Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia—all the men fired at them. I think the squad needed this slaughter to end as much as the victims. They could not bear the living wounded, their screaming… The room had turned to a charnel house, where the butchered would not die as planned. Something had gone terribly wrong—–we would not uncover the reason until later, when the bodies were stripped naked.
The girls would not die. In fact, the bullets ricocheted from their chests—and flew about the room like hail. Three of the shooters, seeing this, made the sign of the cross and fled, believing the girls were immortal. They did indeed show a strange vitality.
Yurovsky and Ermakov, moving as a pair, lunged at the two sisters. Olga and Tatiana clung together, their arms locked round each other. Yurovsky attacked Tatiana from behind, fired square into the back of her skull, blowing off her face in a shower of blood and brains that covered her sister, the blond one, Olga. Olga fell back and it was as she tried to rise that Ermakov kicked her and fired at her face with his Nagant revolver—in a moment, she fell across her sister, dead.
Two of the other shooters, Kudrin and Kabanov, saw the younger girls, clinging together, crying out for help. Marie had survived hidde
n under Nyuta, who was a mass of quivering hysteria, and Anastasia, who also lay across Marie, holding on to her older sister. At that moment, so far as I could see—only Marie was wounded, and not fatally—the crippling wound to her leg.
Ermakov, wild-eyed—dripping red from head to toe—approached Marie and stabbed her in the chest, over and over again, with that eight-inch bayonet blade. Yet, she did not die. His blade bent, broke. He made a grunt of irritation.
“Why won’t these girls die? Shoot for the head!” he screamed.
At this moment, I remembered my promise to Peter Malakovich, and aimed my own revolver through the window. I had promised my friend to do what he could not— dispense the mercy shot. He knew he could not save her, but he also could not watch her die, or try to kill her cleanly, for her own sake. This, he asked me to do, and I did so.
I will never know if it was my bullet or Ermakov’s that finished the poor girl. He drew his Colt as I fired mine—a bullet struck Marie in the head, and she was no more; she fell in a heap to the floor, her arms still embracing her younger sister.
Anastasia fought him. Watching, I could not believe the spirit in that girl. She resisted Ermakov to the end—raising her hands against his bayonet, shoving him back. But there is no resistance to a bullet in the brain. As her sister perished, so did the youngest girl. Anastasia’s bodice too had seemed strangely impenetrable.
The shooters were now almost paralyzed by their own actions; frightened and sickened, save for the two leaders, Yurovsky and Ermakov. They had one moving victim left, the terrified servant, Demidova, who clutched a pillow in front of her.
She had fainted and revived, still unhurt. “God has saved me!” I heard her say, before Ermakov raised his bayonet high. The poor woman grabbed the blade with her hands, which were immediately sliced open. In a few more moments, she too lay still.
Then I witnessed the savagery of Ermakov—he attacked the dead. He was in some blood-fevered trance—he used the bayonet on the lifeless Nicholas, pinning him to the floor, and continued to move about the room, spearing those who lay fallen. He drove the bayonet through the empress, cracking her spine.
At this point, more guards appeared from outside. I tried to warn them of what they would see when they entered. But who could be prepared for such a sight—the tangle of bodies, deep dredged in blood and matter? Who can look into the eyes of the dead, staring; their mouths hung open, slack from the final screams.
Many of our good men called the others “Butchers!” But then Goloshchokin himself appeared. He came to report that he had heard the shooting, and screaming. He was angry, as he accused the shooters of bungling the execution.
“The whole city heard you.” He waved his arm—commanding the removal operation proceed.
The Fiat truck, after much difficulty, had been angled in the courtyard. Someone had placed a khaki tarp in the truck bed, to absorb the blood. How to carry so many corpses to the truck? The men improvised—taking the runners from the Ipatiev sleighs, and draping sheets across them—on these homemade gurneys, the Imperial bodies were laid and then dumped into the back of the truck. The door to the house was left open to facilitate the removal of so many dead.
At this moment, Tatiana’s dog, the bulldog, Ortino, appeared at the top of the stairs, whimpering. The dog was wild to reach his mistress. One soldier speared the animal, and tossed it, like trash into the heap at the back of the Fiat.
“A dog’s death to dogs,” Goloshchokin shouted. He had kept his hands clean, but his heart was as cold as Ermakov’s, his intellect as self-justifying as Yurovsky.
Yurovsky himself looked pale and ill. He went inside during the cleanup operation, lay down and held a compress to his head for a time. He was sickened, in this aftermath, but not Ermakov, no; Ermakov drew strength from these deeds. For a man such as Ermakov, the revolution was license to exploit his violent inclinations. His reputation as a killer had preceded him, and he loved the blood; no bother for him.
By this time, the tenderhearted and religious boys had fled, and those who remained had the stomach for this, or were afraid of being shot in the back for desertion. Others began to rifle the clothes of the dead. One soldier produced a unique cigarette holder from the dead tsar’s pocket. The girls and the empress had gold bracelets and rings that had been too tight to remove while they were alive. Some of the men now yanked the rings and bracelets free, their removal lubricated by the slippery blood. One soldier simply chopped off a finger to get at a large stone in an ornate setting.
Then, when I thought no more horror could occur, one of the girls sat up in her stretcher and made a terrible sound—blood gurgling up from her mouth. By then, they were so bloodied and disfigured I could not identify one former grand duchess from the other. Ermakov used the bayonet again, and again. The girl, her face a slick, bloodied pulp, fell back and was still.
I went into the house to vomit and I confess lose all control of my other functions. I washed myself in the lavatory the prisoners had used, and found myself face-to-face with the painted visage of Rasputin, their Grigory, as he rode the cartooned empress to his unholy conclusion. The obscene image sickened me further, and my gut heaved again, in both directions.
As I stared down at my boots, I was shocked to see that blood oozed from the soles. I thought at first I must have somehow been injured, but a quick investigation proved that I had not been hurt—I had waded through such a river of hemorrhagic flow that my boots were as saturated as if I had stepped through a mudslide.
At this point, I kicked away the boots and ran barefoot to the room which the tsar and tsarina and the tsarevich had shared and seized a pair of the emperor’s fine boots, so that I might be able to walk. As if by its own volition, my hand also reached out to the bedside bureau and closed over a fine golden watch, which I pocketed…
I did not take the camera until I returned to the entrance, and saw that a small trunk, in which the tsar’s personal valuables had been locked, was cracked open—and I lifted the lid and saw this camera, which had been confiscated upon his arrival.
It happens that photography is a secret passion and goal of mine, and I saw a chance to change my life by taking possession of the dead emperor’s camera. I tucked the camera, a simple black box, behind the palm tree that stood in the dining room, and vowed to get it when I returned for the dog, which I did within two days’ time.
Wearing the tsar’s boots, I ran out to the courtyard as I heard more shouts, and from there, I was able to observe the most gruesome part of this horrendous crime.
Other men made lewd jokes, and made free with their hands as they placed the girls in the truck. It would get worse, later, in the dark of the forest. We can pray they were truly dead by then, and their souls had escaped from their bodies and this further violation was not experienced. The bodies are only cases for the soul; what happened all through the night and the next day and night, we must hope they never felt or knew.
Yurovsky reappeared and took charge when he saw the men who were stealing. He announced that anyone who took jewels or valuables would be shot on this spot. So there, in the courtyard, beside the truck with its grisly cargo, the men produced what they had stolen—bracelets, rings, watches—and offered muttered excuses. They had wanted a reminder, a souvenir of a historic night. “A keepsake.”
DISHONOR
They had all the bodies stripped naked. That was when we made the interesting discovery—the girls had been wearing what amounted to eighteen pounds of diamonds and precious stones. The empress had a concealed belt of priceless pearls. The fortune of the Imperial jewels was sewn and tucked, for the most part, into the bodices of the four grand duchesses. The layered gems, impacted in the camisole linings, and protected by thick wadding, with yet more precious stones sewn tightly inside, had acted as bulletproof vests. Even the tsarevich had worn an undershirt layered with diamonds. This is why the bullets had bounced like hailstones, and it had taken head injuries to kill them all.
***
/> Every base instinct came into use in that woods by moonlight. The men were angry. More men, marching through the woods, intercepted us and screamed, “Why did you not give them to us alive?” I shudder to imagine for what purpose.
The empress herself was stripped, and a soldier invaded her with his hand. “Now I can die happy,” he screamed. “I have touched the privates of an empress!” Dr. Botkin’s body was dragged across the ground—I watched as his teeth caught in the mud, and the set of dentures remained, biting dirt. Dr. Botkin’s spectacles fell off and broke. All the victims’ clothing was searched and then burned. The jewels were set aside on a blanket.
One of the most chilling sights that night was perhaps the most ordinary—Yurovsky, sitting on a tree stump, peeling eggs.
This would not have horrified me so if I had not known he had ordered the eggs for Alexei at his mother’s request. Then, as I watched, he finished eating, moved a short distance away, dropped his trousers, and reared back to relieve himself. I saw him wipe himself with the page of a book that one of the victims had concealed in her clothing. I imagine it was a book of poems or prayers, as the girls all cherished such volumes. Now, you have that soiled paper in evidence, I believe.
There was a vile clownishness to the crime. While the Four Brothers burial place was supposed to be a great secret—the site was soon swarming with guards and soldiers. The truck had passed several peasants, who were told to turn back, but who nonetheless looked wise to what was going on back there, in the moonlit woods.
Even the train sentry, down the road, who needed to raise and lower the barricade across the road, knew of the truck and the massive number of guards and swearing drunken peasants, who had disappeared into the Koptyaki forest. With only four hours of darkness to work with, the burial plan was not even feasible. How to dispose of eleven corpses without leaving evidence? They failed of course. You have the evidence—the jewels, many bone slivers from the hatchet work on the bodies, but also dozens of diamonds and emeralds, intact. The diamonds, they were indestructible, and lay, in plain sight, in the mud and blood by the bonfire.