The movables belonging to the murdered family went to satisfy their rapacious instincts. Some of the witnesses describe tables laden with precious stones, jewellry, and all sorts of other articles scattered about the Commandant’s room. Everything had been ransacked, and what was not found to be worth keeping was thrown away or destroyed in the fireplaces, which were blazing despite the summer heat.
Yurovsky and Goloshchekin travelled by motor-car to the woods on the 17th, 18th, and 19th, remaining for many hours—in fact whole days—at the iron pits. But all this time the sentries were on duty outside the death-house as if nothing had
NEW ENVIRONS OF EKATERINBURG
Showing Road by which the bodies of members of the Imperial Family were carried, and the Pit where the ashes were buried.
Distances: Ekaterinburg, 11 miles, Pit to Koptiaki, 3 miles.
happened, so that the people should suspect nothing. They were removed only on the fourth day, when the cordon around the wood was also raised.
Only then (on July 20th) was the announcement made at Red meetings and in official proclamations that “Nicholas the Sanguinary” had been executed. The news was simultaneously transmitted by the wireless stations of the Bolshevist Government, and appeared in The London Times of July 22, 1918, in the following form:—
“At the first session of the Central Executive Committee elected by the Fifth Congress of the Councils a message was made public, received by direct wire from the Ural Regional Council, concerning the shooting of the ex-Tsar, Nicholas Romanov.