So who or where is Anastasia?

[Villavic]

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday that charred remains found in a pit belonged to Tsar Nicholas II's only son and his daughter, exactly 90 years after the Bolsheviks shocked the world by murdering the last Tsar.

Moscow's confirmation that the remains included those of Tsar Nicholas's 13-year-old heir, Prince Alexei, came as hundreds of Russians flocked to a church built on the site where the family was gunned down by Bolshevik executioners.

Remains believed to belong to the Tsar, his wife and three of his daughters were exhumed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were reburied in 1998 in the imperial crypt of the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

But Prince Alexei Nikolayevich and 19-year-old Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna were not among those remains.

In January 2008 Russian scientists announced that the charred remains of a young boy and a young woman found near Ekaterinburg in August 2007 are most likely those of the thirteen-year-old Tsarevich and one of the four Romanov grand duchesses. Russian forensic scientists confirmed that the remains were those of the Tsarevich Alexei and one of his four sisters.

Several women have claimed to have been Anastasia, the most famous of whom was Anna Anderson. Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984. Despite support for her claim from several people who knew Anastasia and denial by many who knew the real Anastasia, DNA testing in 1994 on pieces of Anderson's tissue and hair showed no relation to DNA of the Grand Duchess.
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However the body of Anastasia has not been identified among all founded remains yet. Once opened, the excavators realized that instead of eleven sets of remains (Tsar Nicholas II; Tsarina Alexandra; Tsarevitch Alexei; the four Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; the family's doctor, Yevgeny Botkin; their valet, Alexei Trupp; their cook, Ivan Kharitonov; and Alexandra's maid, Anna Demidova) the grave held only nine. That has been keeping the mystery alive, feeded of course by Hollywood and popular rumours, gossip, etc.

Seems that with these 2 additional bodies the family is completed, but..American scientists found this method inexact.
American scientists thought the missing body to be Anastasia because none of the female skeletons showed the evidence of immaturity, such as an immature collarbone, undescended wisdom teeth, or immature vertebrae in the back, that they would have expected to find in a seventeen year old...

[JWS]

A mystery that will never be solved. I recommend the film "Rasputin" for the whole story of Tzar Nickie's family.

[petep9000]

The Tsar and his family were shot, but also bayonetted. Following this, they were tossed down a well and had acid toured all over them. Some time later (weeks?, months?) the bodies were pulled out of the well and then hacked into pieces and buried. Considering all the stuff that happened to the bodies, it doesn't suprise me that some pieces were missing.

The woman Anna Anderson who claimed to be The Grand Duchess Anastasia was proven to be a hoax in the late 20th century. There was a piece of her tissue in some pathologists lab, and after her death they used this tissue for DNA testing against that of the Prince Phillip (Queen Elizabeth's husband), because he had a very close maternal descent from Anastasia's grandmother. The result proved to be no match, which put an end to that particular mystery.