World Famous Crooks & Con Men by Vikas Khatri & Vikas

Author:Vikas Khatri & Vikas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World famous, crooks, con men, criminals, mysterious
Publisher: Pustak Mahal
Published: 2011-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

Mysterious Anastasia

Tsar Nicholas II rose uneasily to his feet as the door burst open and the cellar filled with grim-faced men carrying revolvers and bayonets. At their head stood Jacob Yurovsky, the Russian Royal family’s gaoler. He quickly read out a few words from a piece of paper clutched in his hand: it was an execution order, signed by the Ekaterinburg Soviet.

The Tsar started to protest, but Yurovsky was already giving the order to fire. Nicholas died first, vainly trying to shield his wife, Alexandra. Those not killed by the bullets were stabbed, pathetically attempting to ward off the thrusts with cushions. It was soon over. None had been spared. Even the family’s pet spaniel had been clubbed to death. The Tsar, his immediate family, their physician and two servants lay in a tangled, bloody heap on the floor.

The bodies were left in the cellar for a few days, and then they were taken out, soaked in gasoline, burnt beyond

recognition and thrown down a disused mine shaft. The grisly remains were discovered eleven days later by soldiers of the White Armies, when they captured Ekaterinburg on July 27, 1918. There was, of course, an international outcry against this latest Soviet atrocity. Lenin’s Moscow government denied responsibility and ignored the protests. But their blame was never in doubt, as the subsequent murders of other members of the Imperial Romanov family proved.

Improbable Story

Those supporters of the Tsar who remained alive fled and established aristocratic but poverty-stricken little groups throughout the capitals of Europe. And it was to one such group in Berlin that a woman, telling a strange and improbable story, presented herself in 1920. Giving her name as Madame Tchaikovsky, she claimed that she was in fact the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the Tsar. Not everyone, it seemed, had died in the cellar. . . .

The Berlin Tsarists were led by Prince Constantine Gabriel, and he was impressed with “Anastasia”. So too was Gleb Botkin, whose father was the physician who had been killed with the Royal family. Madame Tchaikovsky’s story was certainly gripping. She said that she had miraculously escaped both the bullets and the bayonets and had been rescued from the cellar by a soldier called Tchaikovsky. They had then made off together in a covered wagon while the Bolsheviks searched frantically for the missing body.

After crossing war-torn Russia, they arrived in Bucharest, where “Madame Tchaikovsky” gave birth to a child. It was the shame of this, she said, which prevented her from contacting her Rumanian relatives. Tchaikovsky then disappeared. No one knows where, although it was later rumoured that he had been murdered by Soviet agents. Madame Tchaikovsky decided the only thing she could do was make her way to Berlin and seek safety and recognition there.

Incredible though her story was, there were a great many influential people, such as Gabriel and Botkin, prepared to believe it; there were others, notably her paternal aunt, the Grand Duchess Olga and the Grand Duke Andrew, who believed her at first but changed their minds later.

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