(Continued from page 27)

Is it possible that all of the events of 1918 as we know now them were contrived from the very beginning?  If there was an agreement made to save the heir to the throne then, knowing what we do about the dealings between the governments of Lenin and the Kaiser, the most likely place for such a thing to happen is at Brest-Litovsk.  If that was the case then there were four and a half clear months from the beginning of March when the treaty was signed to the middle of July to plan the event.

Everything from a mystery family in Koptyaki to bouncing bullets and lorries stuck in the mud just seems to be a little too convenient... deliberate overkill designed to mislead!  Is it possible that every bit of it was planned in advance... including a new family for the Tsarevich?  Such a possibility might well explain the coincidence of a Benckendorff living so close to the site of the murders.

Paula von Benckendorff-Känna-Veermann-Tammet was born on an Estonian manor house estate called Löwenwolde.  The von Benckendorff family genealogy shows that the Löwenwolde estate was the family home of Gustav Hermann von Benckendorff at the time of Paula's birth on that same estate in March of 1865.  Gustav Hermann von Benckendorff was a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II's Grand Marshal Count Paul Benckendorff and his older brother Count Alexander, who was Russia's ambassador to Britain until his death in London in December of 1916.

A page from an old  Estonian church register has also revealed that Paula Veermann-Tammet was still living on the von Benckendorff's Löwenwolde estate at the age of 24 when her marriage to Johann Veermann was recorded in 1889.  Both names appear on the register together, and this is the very same Johann Veermann who would take the injured Tsarevich Alexei to safety on his farmer's cart 29 years later in July of 1918.  A stamped and dated addition in the church register's margin also records Paula's legal change of surname from Veermann to Tammet in 1938.

These facts now prove that there is a verified connection that links the story of Alexei Tammet-Romanov to the Tsar's Imperial Palace and predates the Revolution by several decades.  This documented evidence has proved beyond question that the foster mother who cared for Alexei Tammet-Romanov following the Imperial murders of 1918, and her husband who took the boy to safety on his farmer's cart, had both been known to the family of the Tsar's Grand Marshal for more than thirty years BEFORE the Revolution had even started. 

The missing son and sole heir of Russia's last Tsar cannot have passed from the armed custody of the Bolshevik commander Yakov Yurovsky to the safe care of a family known to the Tsar's Grand Marshal by mere accident.  Such an occurrence can only have been the result of a pre-arranged plan that required some degree of collusion that was seen to be of political advantage to both sides.

Who pulled the strings that led to Alexei's survival?  Was it Lenin, Yakov Yurovsky, or someone else?  How was the Tsar's Grand Marshal involved? And who could keep a secret as big as this?

©  J. Kendrick 2002                                                                                                                                        (Continued on page 29)