(Continued from page 15)

Some of the existing evidence might well support the notion that Yurovsky may have stepped to the left to give the order to fire.  Bullet paths in the discovered remains shown in a diagram published in John Klier's 1995 book might indicate that two and possibly three of the victims may have been looking to that side of the room when the bullets struck them in the head.  The most convincing point is that the right handed Yurovsky would have to be in this position in order to fire at the right ear of the young Tsarevich if the boy was still sitting in the chair and one of the first to be shot.

There is no reason to question the story that Yurovsky fired a gun at the right ear of the Tsarevich because that fits perfectly with the tale of Alexei's survival.  His Vancouver doctors confirm that his inner ear on the right side had been completely destroyed by some sort of concussion injury in his youth.  They also confirm that he had a number of scars on his right side that might have been caused by boots or bayonets.  However, while Alexei was completely deaf in his right ear, those same doctors could see no sign of damage to his skull.

Putting all those facts together brings us face to face with another new and crucial question.  What type of gun was Yurovsky using and how was it loaded?  The destroyed inner ear with no evidence of bone damage suggests the possibility that the gun must have been loaded with blanks.  The Vancouver coroner most familiar with this case who has thirty-five years of experience behind him concurs with this hypothesis.

The problem comes in trying to determine what type of gun was used.  In his book "The Last Tsar" Edvard Radzinsky quoted Yurovsky as having claimed that he had two guns: "Colt no. 71905 with a cartridge clip and seven bullets, and Mauser no. 167177 with a wooden gunstock and a clip with ten bullets".  Both guns are clip-loaded pistols but only a few sentences earlier on the same page Radzinsky quotes the Cheka guard Andrei Strekotin as saying: "At his (Yurovsky's) last word he instantly pulled a revolver out of his pocket and shot the Tsar".  So exactly what kind of weapon did Yurovsky have in his hand?  Was it a clip-loaded pistol or a revolver?  The answer to that question is critical to the question of Alexei's survival.

In 1935 journalist Richard Halliburton interviewed another of the assassins, Peter Ermakov, who said, "Yurovsky had a Nagant repeater.  Vaganov and I had Mausers".  A Nagant is a Russian made revolver of questionable reliability similar to the Smith and Wesson sidearm used by British troops of the era but with two differences: The cylinder springs forward to seal the chamber just before the bullet is fired and it holds seven rounds instead of six.

©  J. Kendrick 1997                                                                                                                                  (Continued on page 17)