(Continued from page 16)

The Colt that Yurovsky had described was a seven shot .45 calibre semi-automatic pistol designed by John Browning and known as the 1911 which is still in production in a number of variations to this day.  The serial number is from a group of weapons made in the United States in 1914 and last reported to have been in the American state of Kentucky in 1915.  I cannot help but ask how such a weapon could find its way from the U.S. into the hands of a Bolshevik assassin in the Russian Urals during the last half of the First World War.

There is another reason to rule out the Colt that Radzinsky refers to in his book and that is provided by the lead American forensic investigator in the recent discovery of the Tsar's remains.  In his book "Dead Men Do Tell Tales" Dr. William Maples says that fourteen bullets were recovered from the grave where five of the seven Romanovs are said to have been found.  He explains that all of the bullets are 7.62, 7.63, or 7.65 millimetre rounds or about the same size as a .32 calibre.  As I have mentioned earlier, the Colt is a .45 calibre weapon.  Dr. Maples also points out that the Russian investigators think nine of the bullets came from Nagant revolvers, four from a Browning (according to Radzinsky, Pavel Medvedev was armed with a ten shot Browning pistol), and one from a Mauser.  Not one came from a Colt.

The Colt is a big bore hand held cannon-like weapon with a big kick but little accuracy over long distances.  The Mauser was designed in 1895 and was a favourite of Winston Churchill's.  Its holster can be clipped to the back of the handle to turn it from a handgun into a small rifle.  With a muzzle velocity of nearly 1500 feet per second, it is dangerous up to a thousand yards.  Both weapons need to be modified to fire blanks and even when firing blank rounds they can be deadly within six feet.

There is another piece to this puzzle in the testimony from the son of the Chekist Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin who had said that Yurovsky had burned his finger.  As Colts and Mausers are both pistols with sealed chambers and loaded with clips it is practically impossible to burn a finger firing one.  On the other hand, an old revolver with its spinning cylinder can easily cause injury to its user if the cylinder is worn from heavy use.  The hot gases produced by the igniting gunpowder can escape around the sides of the cylinder and burn the trigger finger.  Such a gun can also fire blank rounds without modification... which could deafen ears at close range without doing major external physical damage to the victim.

It should be considered here that in the traditional firing squad only one or two of the guns handed to the executioners are loaded with live rounds.  The rest are loaded with blanks.  The reason for this is so that no one knows for certain who fired the fatal shot.  Practically all of the accounts explain that on the evening before the murders Yurovsky called on the captain of the guard, Pavel Medvedev, to collect all of the revolvers and deliver them to his office on the upper floor of the Ipatiev House.  If Yurovsky was alone in that room with the guns, as this would tend to suggest, then he was the only one who knew how the guns were loaded.
©  J. Kendrick 1997                                                                                                                                    (Continued on page 18)