The Home of the Last Tsar - Romanov and Russian History

30 April 2008, 15:15

Yekaterinburg, April 30, Interfax - A U.S. DNA laboratory has confirmed that remains that were recently found outside Yekaterinburg are of the children of Russia's last Emperor Nicholas II's, Sverdlovsk region Governor Eduard Rossel said.

"Now we have found the entire family," Rossel said at a press conference on Wednesday.

It was reported earlier that parts of two human bodies bearing signs of a violent death were found during excavations outside Yekaterinburg in July 2007. Preliminary findings indicated that the remains could have been those of a teenager aged from 10 to 14 and a 20-year-old woman.

It was assumed that the remains could have been those of Prince Alexey, the only son of last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and heir to the throne, and Grand Duchess Maria, Nicholas II's daughter, who were executed outside Yekaterinburg in 1918.

The analysis of the remains was assigned to the Sverdlovsk regional forensic medical expert bureau, a Moscow laboratory, the U.S. Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, and the University of Massachusetts' genetic laboratory.

The experts from the Sverdlovsk bureau concluded preliminarily results based on anatomic and morphological analysis that there was "a high level of probability that the remains are those of Prince Alexey and Grand Duchess Maria."

Human remains found outside Yekaterinburg in July 1991 were later identified as those of Nicholas II, a number of his family members and people from the royal retinue. The remains were buried at the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998.