The Romanov Royal family was executed by a group of soldiers on July 17, 1918, in Yekaterinburg. Then, their bodies were buried in an unknown location near the city.
The criminal case was first launched in 1993 after the discovery of the remains of the Royal family. Experts confirmed that the remains belonged to the Romanovs by matching DNA samples from their remains with a blood-stained shirt worn by Tsar Nicholas II. After that the remains of Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, daughters Anastasia, Olga and Tatiana and several of their servants were re-buried in St. Petersburg in 1998.
The criminal investigation, launched in 1993, was stopped five years after due to the death of executioners.
There is quite a bit of mystery involved around the execution of the Romanov family. Among the most famous was the story of Polish-born Franziska Schanzkowska, who was later known as Anna Anderson. The woman claimed to be Princess Anastasia, Nicholas' youngest daughter who managed to miraculously escape the execution in 1918.
Veniamin Alekseyev, a historian from the Russian Academy of Sciences and a former member of the government's commission that investigated the remains of the Royal family, said that Princess Anastasia might in fact have escaped from Yekaterinburg alive.
