It is clear that he was not in good health when he set off up the mountains. The one surviving fingernail recovered from his remains showed that he suffered three significant episodes of disease in the last six months of his life, the last bout two months before to his death. His lungs were blackened, probably from breathing the smoke from camp fires. His ribs and nose showed signs of fractures that had healed and his hip joint showed evidence of aging. It had the type of small fracture that occurs after a lifetime of wear and tear. He had fleas and the eggs of the whipworm parasites were found in his intestines, causing diarrhoea or possibly dysentery. But he was not too ill to eat and there were small amounts of food residue in his intestines.
A day or two before his death, Ötzi had eaten a piece of wild goat and some kind of plant, and his very last meal was red deer and some cereals. The bran-like residues found in his digestive system contained barley and a primitive form of wheat known as einkorn. These were also found on his garments, indicating that the Neolithic settlement to the south of the Alps where he lived cultivated these grains. The small size of the wheat fragments found in the gut showed they had been ground. Indeed, small chips of mica from the grindstone were also found. The mica came from the Venosta valley where he had started his last journey. Tiny flecks of charcoal were discovered, suggesting that the ground grains had been baked on an open fire to make a primitive form of bread.
Archaeobotanists have analysed pollen and plant fragments to plot Ötzi’s last movements. No less than eighty distinct species of moss and liverworts were found in, on, or near his body. The most prominent was the Neckera moss that still grows in the valleys to the south, close to known prehistoric sites. James Dickson of the University of Glasgow believes that the clump found in Ötzi’s possession suggests that he was using the moss to wrap food. However, it is known that some ancient peoples used similar mosses as lavatory paper.
The pollen of the hop hornbeam, found in his digestive tract, strongly indicates that the Iceman’s last journey began in the low-altitude deciduous forests to the south in the springtime when hop hornbeams were in bloom. But it seems he did not head straight up the mountain. Traces of pine pollen were found both above and below the hornbeam pollen. This suggests that Ötzi climbed up to where pine trees grow in mixed coniferous forests at higher altitude, then came down again to the lower altitude where the hop hornbeams flourished, before making his final ascent in his last day or two. It has been suggested that he was trying to avoid the steep, thickly wooded gorge of the lower Senales Valley, a vital detour if he was in a hurry – or being pursued.
When he reached a mountain pass now known as Tisenjoch, he would have paused to rest after completing the near vertical climb of 6,500 ft (2,000 m) from the valley below. To the north, he faced a desolate, glacier-riven landscape. He was found in a rocky hollow that would have afforded some shelter from the wind. It is not known if his enemies caught up with him or were already there waiting in ambush. But he never left that hollow alive. Snow and ice then embalmed him, preserving him for the next five millennia until a thaw finally released him from his icy grave.
The crime scene also provided a few clues to who the killer may have been. The shaft of the arrow that killed him was not found. Someone had pulled it out, leaving behind the stone arrowhead.
“I believe – in fact, I am convinced – that the person who shot the Iceman with the arrow is the same person who pulled it out,” said Dr Eduard Egarter Vigl from the Department of Pathological Anatomy and Histology of the General Regional Hospital in Bolzano.
Dr Vigl argues that the shaft of a prehistoric arrow could be used to identify the archer in the same way that modern-day ballistics can link a bullet to a gun, so the killer pulled out the arrow shaft to cover his tracks. For the same reason, he did not run off with the valuable copper-bladed axe as its possession would implicate him in the crime. Consequently, the killer came from the same village or, at the very least, knew the victim. The motivation for the crime was not theft. It was something more personal.
Tom Loy, a molecular archaeologist from the University of Queensland, believes that more than one person was responsible for the death of the Iceman. He found microscopic specks of human blood on his leather coat, his knife and a broken arrow in his quiver, which Loy believes was the one his killer had pulled from his back. Using DNA analysis, he discovered the blood came from four individuals. The Iceman, Loy thought, had fought back against his attackers.
Alois Pirpamer, one of the climbers who found Ötzi, said that the Iceman had been clutching a knife in his right hand at the time of the discovery, indicating that, again, he was preparing to defend himself. The knife became detached when the body was pulled from the ice. On closer examination, Dr Vigl also found bruises on the body. However,
National Geographic
magazine pointed out that Loy’s research had only been aired in the popular press, and sceptics in the academic community said the claims were impossible to assess unless they were published in the scientific literature and peer-reviewed.
The idea that Ötzi was attacked by more than one person chimes with the crime theory put forward by Walter Leitner, an archaeologist at the University of Innsbruck who is an expert in both archery and Stone Age culture. He believes the mountaintop murder was the last act of a political dispute that had begun down in the valley – and it was rivals in the Iceman’s own tribe who finally succeeded in assassinating him.
According to Leitner’s theory, Ötzi, with his copper axe, was top dog. But he was aging and younger men tried to overthrow him, first wounding him in the hand. Realizing that his reign was at an end, the Iceman fled, but was caught and killed on the mountaintop by his opponents. The reason that others in his tribe might had turned against him has also been discovered. Dr Franco Rollo of the University of Camerino examined his mitochondrial DNA and found sequences associated with low sperm motility. This increased the chance of infertility. The aging Ötzi may have had no sons to succeed him and no family to defend him.
We will never know the name of the Iceman, or his killers. But their final confrontation in the Alps might now benefit future generations. Nuclear DNA has been extracted from a bone in his pelvis and his entire genome has been sequenced. While the search is on for his descendents, his mitochondrial DNA indicates that there won’t be many of them. However, scientists now have a chance to study gene mutations over the last 5,300 years, which may shed light on hereditary aspects of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer.
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1917, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate the throne of Russia. Nicholas and the entire Romanov family were then arrested and held in the governor’s mansion in Tobolsk, Siberia. After the Bolsheviks came to power that October, the Romanovs were moved to the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, then dubbed “The House of Special Purpose”.
The new Soviet government wanted to put Nicholas on trial, but Russia had been plunged into a civil war between the Red Army, who supported the new regime, and the White Army, who opposed it. In July 1918, the White Army threatened to take Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks could not risk Nicholas or his heirs falling into the White Army’s hands and becoming a rallying point for opposition. So the decision was made to kill them. On the night of 16 July, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia, their son Alexei, his physician Dr Yevgney Botkin, the cook Ivan Kharitanov, and servants Anna Demidova and Alexei Trupp were woken and told to dress. They were taken down to the basement where they were told they were going to be photographed. Instead, a firing squad led by Yakov Yurovsky, the local head of the secret police, burst in and shot them. Nicholas died immediately, but some of the women had jewels sewn into their corsets and survived the initial fusillade. They were finished off with bayonets. As the order had come from Lenin, the head of the new Soviet State, the executions were kept secret until two years after his death in 1924, when a Soviet version of a book by the White Russian magistrate and crime scene investigator, Nikolai Sokolov, published in the west as
The Sokolov Investigation of the Alleged Murder of the Russian Imperial Family
, was authorized. It was rewritten for publication in the Soviet Union by Pavel Bykov, the new chairman of the Ural Soviet.
Eight days after the murders, the Whites had taken over Yekaterinburg. As the court investigator for the Yekaterinburg Regional Court, it was Alexei Nametkin’s job to look into the murder of the Romanovs. But as he drew his authority from the tsar – and it appeared that the tsar was dead – he dragged his feet. The military authorities suspected that he was doing this because he was afraid of the Bolsheviks, who still threatened Yekaterinburg, so Judge Ivan Sergeyev took over the case. There was then a consolidation of the administration of all Russian territory outside the control of the Bolsheviks. Power was concentrated in the hands of Admiral Alexander Kolchak at Omsk who, on 5 February 1919, put Nikolai Sokolov, the local examining magistrate, in charge of the case.
Sokolov first examined the evidence that Sergeyev had collected from the crime scene. These included pieces of wooden lath from the eastern and southern walls of the basement with bullet holes and bullets in them, usually from a Nagant-type pistol manufactured in Belgium for the Russians. There was also a bullet from an American Browning pistol. More bullet holes were found in pieces of wood taken from the floor. Some of the wood was stained with blood. Another Browning bullet was found in a floorboard, along with one from a Colt 45. Sokolov’s book shows a photograph of eleven of the bullets recovered but he notes that not all the bullets were shown in the picture as Sergeyev had given some of them away. Detailed chemical analysis of the stains on the wood, including those in the bullet holes, made by both Sergeyev and Sokolov showed that they were made by human blood. Strands of dyed wool from clothing were also found in the bullet holes.
It was noted that there were no signs of violence in the upper floor of the Ipatiev House where the imperial family lived, but only in the rooms of the lower, basement floor, from which there was no escape. The only window was covered by a thick iron grate. It was sunk in the ground and concealed from the outside by a high fence.
If the imperial family and their retainers were indeed the victims killed in the basement, “there is no doubt that they were lured here from their living quarters on some false pretext,” Sokolov said. Consequently, the murders were plainly premeditated.
Sokolov concluded from the crime scene evidence that the murders were perpetrated with revolvers and bayonets. Evidence from the crime scene indicated that several people had been murdered as one person could not have changed their position in the room during the slaughter. The spread of the bullet holes and the bloodstains indicated that some of the victims were positioned along the eastern and southern walls, while others were nearer the centre of the room. Several were hit while they were already lying on the floor. Sokolov estimated that more than thirty bullets were fired as some of them would have remained lodged in the victims’ bodies.
According to Sokolov, Nametkin looked into rumours that the imperial family had been rescued and, to conceal the fact, other people had been shot in the basement. The tsar’s valet Chemodurov testified that Nicholas had a great deal of clothing with him that had disappeared. The reasoning was that, if the tsar had been rescued, he would have taken it with him. But it was known that many things were stolen by the guards, including the tsarevich’s diary and his favourite dog, a spaniel named Joy.
Sokolov pointed out that the Tsarevich Alexei, a haemophiliac, had been ill throughout his time in captivity, but his medicines were found in the Ipatiev House. Why would these be left behind when the boy suffered from a life-threatening condition?
The killers took what they wanted and left behind anything that was of no use to them. More than sixty icons were found, including icons of Rasputin – the tsarina’s favourite – and his inscriptions. Another was an icon of the Feodorov Mother of God. Alexandra Feodorovna, born a Lutheran, converted to Orthodoxy when she married the tsar. Chemodurov said: “The empress never went anywhere without this icon. To take the icon from the empress would be the same as taking her life.” The diamonds had been removed from it, but the icon itself had been left behind.
Prayer books, hymnals and religious tracts were left in the Ipatiev House. Burnt bits of clothing and linen, the scorched remnants of handbags, purses, cases, buttons, brushes, needles, thread, articles of female handiwork and other items were found stuffed in the stove.
Holy pictures of Saint Simeon Verkhoturye and Saint Seraphim Sarovsky were found in a rubbish pit, along with a disfigured icon, bearing the tsarina’s inscription: “Keep and preserve. Mama, 1917. Tobolsk.” This icon was Alexei’s last Christmas gift from his mother, which she had given him when they were still at Tobolsk and it hung above his bed at Yekaterinburg. Also found in the rubbish pit was an officer’s cockade and a ribbon of St George. Chemodurov testified: “The ribbon of St George was taken from the emperor’s overcoat. The emperor never parted with this overcoat and always went about with it.”
Sokolov interviewed a man named Loginov, who said that a woman doctor named Golubeva, the director of a Bolshevik hospital train, told him that she had a pillow and some boots that had been taken from among the Romanovs’ possessions. They had been given to her by Shaya Goloshchekin, the general administrator of Yekaterinburg.
In 1935, one of the assassins, Peter Yermakov, told American journalist Richard Halliburton that, two days before the murder, he had been assigned to find a place to bury the bodies. In the forest about 12 miles (19 km) north of Yekaterinburg, he found a place called the Four Brothers, named for the four towering pine trees that had once overlooked the site. Amid the swamps and peat bogs were the shafts of abandoned coal mines. Yurovsky brought the bodies there on the back of a truck. On the way, they met a party of twenty-five men on horseback and in peasant carts. Most were drunk. They were factory workers, some members of the new Ural Regional Soviet, who had been tipped off by Yermakov. He had promised them the four grand duchesses – the tsar’s daughters – plus the pleasure of killing the tsar.