Gory details of the execution of Romanovs
The execution of the Romanov family in the basement of the Ipatiev House on the night of July 17, 1918, devolved into a prolonged, chaotic bloodbath because the daughters' corsets were packed with hidden diamonds, effectively acting as bulletproof vests.
Eleven executioners opened fire at point-blank range. Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra died instantly. The children survived the first wave of bullets, which ricocheted wildly off their gemstone-lined clothing, filling the small room with smoke, plaster dust, and screams.
As smoke blinded the shooters, they lunged at the screaming children with bayonets. The blades bent against the hidden diamonds in the dresses of Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.
The executioner Peter Ermakov and others began clubbing the girls in the face and chest with heavy rifle butts to break their ribs and knock them unconscious. Tsarevich Alexei, groaning on the floor in a pool of blood, was kicked repeatedly in the head before Yakov Yurovsky fired two bullets directly into his ear. Anastasia, terrified and screaming, was pinned against the wall and beaten with rifle butts until her skull was fractured, followed by a final point-blank gunshot to the head.
The killers panicked about the bodies being discovered by the advancing White Army and spent the next 36 hours attempting to completely erase the remains.
At the Four Brothers mine, the bodies were hacked out of their clothes with knives and hatchets to retrieve the hidden jewels.
The executioners used axes to chop the eleven bodies into smaller pieces, severing limbs and smashing faces to make the remains completely unrecognizable.
The killers poured 400 pounds of highly corrosive sulfuric acid directly onto the severed limbs and faces, dissolving the flesh into a gray slime to destroy the features and prevent identification.
In a secondary pit at the Porosenkov Log, the killers built massive bonfires using kerosene.
They chopped up the limbs and burned the bodies of Alexei and Maria separately firstly, roasting the bone fragments for hours until they were reduced to brittle, charred splinters, which were then smashed into the mud with shovels.