(Continued from page 4)

If a DNA extraction was begun on the Tammet-Romanov sample then that work would have been completed.  To do otherwise runs contrary to proper scientific procedure.  Assuming that proper procedure was maintained, then it logically follows that work on the Tammet-Romanov sample produced a result that would have been known BEFORE the identity of the Tsar's remains were published.

The only way that the scientists and the politicians behind them might maintain control of the timetable is by careful control of what is and is not published in that research paper.  One might speculate that if a match was already known then it would have been a simple matter to take measures that would block a third party attempt to produce a DNA match with a valid claimant to Russia's dormant throne.

In October 1994 British researcher Dr. Peter Gill published a second set of DNA tests confirming that the seventy-four year old story which claimed the late Anna Anderson was the Princess Anastasia is not true.  During the news conference held in a London television studio Dr. Gill was asked by reporters if the mystery is now over.  His response was, "That is not for me to say".

Nearly eleven months later, on the last day of August 1995, Dr. Ivanov confirmed what had already been announced two years previously about mitochondrial DNA tests on the remains of the assassinated Tsar.  Further testing proved to be necessary after the original work had revealed a mutation in the Tsar's DNA called a heteroplasmy.  The additional testing that compared the Tsar's remains to those of his brother Grand Duke George was completed at the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland.

That announcement was more political in nature, as the real purpose of the new tests was to satisfy the Russian Orthodox Church that the remains first discovered in 1979 and finally unearthed ten years later are genuine.  Church leaders had demanded additional proof because they were considering canonizing Nicholas and his family before the bones were formally buried in July 1998.

If Dr. Ivanov or Dr. Gill had been asked at either of their news conferences about the disappearance of the Tsar's son Alexei and the teeth that were sent to Dr. Ivanov while he was in Aldermaston then the stories coming out of those conferences might have been much different.

While all of this was going on, another two teeth had been sent to the American research team headed by Dr. William Maples of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida.  He sent those two teeth along with his other Romanov material to the lab of Dr. Mary-Claire King in Berkeley, California.  Dr. Maples told Mrs. Romanov during the summer of 1994 that "The evidence is complete".  Dr. King has yet to release any sort of report and Mrs. Romanov has yet to be told anything about the results of the tests.

© J. Kendrick 2002                                                                                                                                            (continued on page 6)