the ground, the sex of the victims would have been obvious, but beyond that the naked bodies would have bloated to unrecognizability. Maples sometimes sees the bodies of adolescent girls, which, a few days after death, have ballooned to resemble obese middle-aged women.
There is more to the process of decomposition. In the open air, flies easily find their way to recent death. They lay eggs in eyes, nostrils, and—as in these victims—in the bloody flesh of mutilated faces and mangled bodies. Within two days in these temperatures, the eggs would have hatched into maggots. No more need be said except that Maples understands why Yurovsky might not have been sure which female body he burned.
In April 1993, Dr. William Hamilton, the Gainesville medical examiner, accompanied Maples on Maples’ second trip to Ekaterinburg. Later I asked them, based on their experience, what occurs in the mind of an executioner who is shooting, bayoneting, and crushing the faces of helpless people. Hamilton was first to answer: “I think it’s fairly typical of this kind of assassination. You depersonalize the victim and make him or her into a symbol, something other than an individual human being. You are killing the regime, the tsar, getting rid of the whole hated past and creating a new world order. Serial killers do the same thing. Commonly, they compartmentalize and completely dehumanize their victims and then can commit atrocities impossible for an ordinary person to imagine.” Maples agreed. “Once the decision was made to kill, under the circumstances you had that night in the Ipatiev House, I suspect that most of the participants wanted to make sure that it was done completely,” he said. “People don’t die the way you would like them to when you shoot them with handguns. They continue to live, they continue to moan, they convulse. And so, after emptying your handguns, you tend to use other means. And the rifle butts and bayonets were close at hand. That’s why I’m certain there were no survivors.”
CHAPTER 7
THE EKATERINBURG CONFERENCE
Maples and his team did not return directly home after their three days with the Romanov bones. Instead, they remained in Ekaterinburg for a two-day conference organized by the government of the Sverdlovsk Region, “The Last Page of the History of the Imperial Family: The Results of Studies of the Ekaterinburg Tragedy.” About a hundred people attended, and twenty papers were presented, mostly by scientists from different parts of Russia and the former Soviet Union. The governor of the Sverdlovsk Region, Edvard Rossel, opened the conference. Alexander Avdonin described how he and Geli Ryabov had found the bones. Professor Krukov of Moscow denounced the “rude violations of archaeological and forensic norms” involved in the exhumation of the bones. Nikolai Nevolin analyzed the condition of the bones taken from the grave. Professor Popov from St. Petersburg described the damage done to the bones by pistol bullets. Dr. Svetlana Gurtovaya of Dr. Plaksin’s office in the Ministry of Health described finding pubic hair from Bodies No. 5 and No. 7 and “objects resembling hair” from Body No. 4. All of these objects, she reported, “turnedout to be extremely fragile and breakable and if they were touched would turn practically to powder.” Dr. Abramov described his identification of the family using computer-assisted superimposition. Dr. Filipchuk from Kiev explained his determination of age, sex, and height obtained by examination of the skulls, long tubular bones, and pelvises of the victims. * Victor Zvyagin from Moscow insisted that Body No. 1 (whom both Abramov and Maples had identified as the maid, Demidova) was a male; Filipchuk gently corrected Zvyagin, saying, “According to our data, this skeleton belongs to a large female … there is absolutely no doubt that the pelvis of this skeleton is that of a female.” † Dr. Pavel Ivanov of the Molecular Biology Institute
There is more to the process of decomposition. In the open air, flies easily find their way to recent death. They lay eggs in eyes, nostrils, and—as in these victims—in the bloody flesh of mutilated faces and mangled bodies. Within two days in these temperatures, the eggs would have hatched into maggots. No more need be said except that Maples understands why Yurovsky might not have been sure which female body he burned.
In April 1993, Dr. William Hamilton, the Gainesville medical examiner, accompanied Maples on Maples’ second trip to Ekaterinburg. Later I asked them, based on their experience, what occurs in the mind of an executioner who is shooting, bayoneting, and crushing the faces of helpless people. Hamilton was first to answer: “I think it’s fairly typical of this kind of assassination. You depersonalize the victim and make him or her into a symbol, something other than an individual human being. You are killing the regime, the tsar, getting rid of the whole hated past and creating a new world order. Serial killers do the same thing. Commonly, they compartmentalize and completely dehumanize their victims and then can commit atrocities impossible for an ordinary person to imagine.” Maples agreed. “Once the decision was made to kill, under the circumstances you had that night in the Ipatiev House, I suspect that most of the participants wanted to make sure that it was done completely,” he said. “People don’t die the way you would like them to when you shoot them with handguns. They continue to live, they continue to moan, they convulse. And so, after emptying your handguns, you tend to use other means. And the rifle butts and bayonets were close at hand. That’s why I’m certain there were no survivors.”
CHAPTER 7
THE EKATERINBURG CONFERENCE
Maples and his team did not return directly home after their three days with the Romanov bones. Instead, they remained in Ekaterinburg for a two-day conference organized by the government of the Sverdlovsk Region, “The Last Page of the History of the Imperial Family: The Results of Studies of the Ekaterinburg Tragedy.” About a hundred people attended, and twenty papers were presented, mostly by scientists from different parts of Russia and the former Soviet Union. The governor of the Sverdlovsk Region, Edvard Rossel, opened the conference. Alexander Avdonin described how he and Geli Ryabov had found the bones. Professor Krukov of Moscow denounced the “rude violations of archaeological and forensic norms” involved in the exhumation of the bones. Nikolai Nevolin analyzed the condition of the bones taken from the grave. Professor Popov from St. Petersburg described the damage done to the bones by pistol bullets. Dr. Svetlana Gurtovaya of Dr. Plaksin’s office in the Ministry of Health described finding pubic hair from Bodies No. 5 and No. 7 and “objects resembling hair” from Body No. 4. All of these objects, she reported, “turnedout to be extremely fragile and breakable and if they were touched would turn practically to powder.” Dr. Abramov described his identification of the family using computer-assisted superimposition. Dr. Filipchuk from Kiev explained his determination of age, sex, and height obtained by examination of the skulls, long tubular bones, and pelvises of the victims. * Victor Zvyagin from Moscow insisted that Body No. 1 (whom both Abramov and Maples had identified as the maid, Demidova) was a male; Filipchuk gently corrected Zvyagin, saying, “According to our data, this skeleton belongs to a large female … there is absolutely no doubt that the pelvis of this skeleton is that of a female.” † Dr. Pavel Ivanov of the Molecular Biology Institute
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