He said he heard a crunching sound and knew it meant either coal or bone. First he dug up a chunk of pelvis then a piece of a child’s skull. The archaeologists swarmed the place and declared it was obvious that Alexei and Maria didn’t die peacefully because their remains were very damaged. They’d been beaten and kicked around, their bodies doused in acid and burned. I know the Bolsheviks hated the Imperial family because they’d been living off the serfs and all that, but I still don’t think that justifies a blood fest. That’s what I mean when I say revolutions turn rotten. You don’t wake up a family in the middle of the night, drag them to the basement and blast them. Alexei was only thirteen. Czar Nicholas – imperialist tyrant that he was – had already abdicated, everything had been taken from him, it wasn’t like he was a threat. The soldiers totally humiliated the family; they couldn’t even take a piss without a soldier watching. They transported them to Moscow in peasant carts.
