Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Someone was shaking the girl awake. Maria Resputin had fallen
Speaker 1: asleep in one world, she was waking up in another.
Speaker 1: The maid got her out of bed alongside her sister
Speaker 1: Varvara and told Grigory's two daughters that their father had
Speaker 1: not returned from his night out on the town. She
Speaker 1: was worried. At first. This was nothing to Maria. Her
Speaker 1: father was often out late, sometimes he didn't come home,
Speaker 1: and that was nothing unusual. But the hours ticked by,
Speaker 1: and then the calls started to come in from the police.
Speaker 1: They were trying to track down Gregory as well. Well.
Speaker 1: All the maid could tell them was that she had
Speaker 1: seen his friend come by to pick him up the
Speaker 1: night before, the family friend, Felix Yusupov, and they had
Speaker 1: left together, so Resputant must be at the Yusupov palace.
Speaker 1: People started coming to their apartment. They started to line
Speaker 1: up at the door as usual, bringing their pain, their needs,
Speaker 1: their desires, but there was no sign of Gregory to
Speaker 1: meet them. So Maria put in the call to her
Speaker 1: friends of the Empress, and they promptly relayed the message
Speaker 1: to Alexandra Grigory it seemed was missing. After that, Maria
Speaker 1: called the woman who had introduced Rasputant and Felix use Upov. Together,
Speaker 1: they tried to get in touch with Felix. After a
Speaker 1: few tries, they had him on the phone, but as
Speaker 1: Maria watched them talk, she saw something come over the
Speaker 1: woman's face. By the time they ended the call, Maria
Speaker 1: could tell she was deeply upset. Felix had sworn that
Speaker 1: he had not seen Gregory the night before. He had
Speaker 1: not picked him up, much less hosted him at the
Speaker 1: use of haf Palace. That was all he had to say,
Speaker 1: and then he hung up. The two looked at each other.
Speaker 1: One thing was clear. Felix was lying, and with Grigory missing,
Speaker 1: they began to suspect why. It was a moment of
Speaker 1: dawning horror that would stay with Maria for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. So and police agents were at the door.
Speaker 1: They came to sweep the house. Of course, Maria left
Speaker 1: them in and they marched into respute and study, where
Speaker 1: they started to gather up his papers. Maria may not
Speaker 1: have realized it right away, but they were wasting no time.
Speaker 1: Anything in Grigory's possession that could embarrass the Czar needed
Speaker 1: to be swept out of sights immediately. The empire was
Speaker 1: the priority, but the respute and apartment wasn't the only
Speaker 1: place getting the police sweep Because those gunshots in the
Speaker 1: courtyard of the Yusupov Palace, they hadn't gone unheard. The
Speaker 1: conspirators had planned for everything to be done quietly in
Speaker 1: the prepared room of the palace basement. That plan had failed,
Speaker 1: and the thing they were afraid of actually came true.
Speaker 1: A person who heard those gunshots was a police officer,
Speaker 1: and shortly after the shooting he had strolled up to
Speaker 1: the Yusupov Palace and seeing Felix standing outside, so he
Speaker 1: approached and asked what was going on. Felix tried to
Speaker 1: play it off. Maybe it was nothing, Maybe it was
Speaker 1: just some of his friends playing with the pistol. Nothing arius.
Speaker 1: The officer had walked on, but around four am he
Speaker 1: came back, something about Felix hadn't sat right with him.
Speaker 1: If there was some horseplay with the handgun, he thought
Speaker 1: he should probably report it. This time, though, he talked
Speaker 1: with a man who had fired the gun. Vladimir Pershkevitch.
Speaker 1: When the police officers started asking questions, Perishkevitch leaned in.
Speaker 1: He put his arm around the officer's shoulder, and he
Speaker 1: took the opposite approach from Felix, I mean, the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: He asked the officer what he thought of Grigory Rasputin.
Speaker 1: Was he an enemy of Russia and an enemy of
Speaker 1: the Czar? And the officer agreed, and so Perishkevitch told
Speaker 1: him that only hours before they had killed Grigory Resputin
Speaker 1: in that very courtyard. And if that sounds like an
Speaker 1: enormous mistake by Pershkevitch, then you're probably following along. The
Speaker 1: police officer promised not to tell, and Pershkevich slapped him
Speaker 1: on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: for the murderers, his way took him right back to
Speaker 1: the police station, where he immediately told his supervisors. Word
Speaker 1: flashed up the chain of command. By eight o'clock the
Speaker 1: next morning, the report already had reached the Minister of
Speaker 1: the Interior. Grigory Rasputin had been killed, and in the
Speaker 1: ranks of the Petrograd police they were celebrating his murder.
Speaker 1: This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. The photographer's camera captured
Speaker 1: the scene. A line of blood crossed the snowy courtyard
Speaker 1: leading away from the side entrance. Investigators were trying to
Speaker 1: argue their way inside the palace, but Felix was a
Speaker 1: relative of the czar. Only orders from the Emperor himself
Speaker 1: could authorize a search, and someone was saying that the
Speaker 1: blood they could see spilled on the ground came from
Speaker 1: the family dog, since one of the servants had shot
Speaker 1: it in the courtyard in the dark hours of the morning. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: the police were let into the palace, but they were
Speaker 1: guided from room to room and not allowed to wander
Speaker 1: on their own. They never saw the basement room. It
Speaker 1: was true about the dog, though, Felix had ordered one
Speaker 1: of his servants to shoot it outside and cover their tracks,
Speaker 1: but the splashes of its blood over the trail in
Speaker 1: the snow weren't enough to hide what had happened in
Speaker 1: his house, not least because Paraskevitch had been telling people
Speaker 1: their plans for weeks. He had been telling people in
Speaker 1: the Russian government. He had been telling journalists Russia had
Speaker 1: to be saved, so Rasputin had to go. It was
Speaker 1: the message he had been spreading everywhere, and there was
Speaker 1: no shortage of people eager to lap it up. Parashkevitch
Speaker 1: was always ready to clarify that he didn't think any
Speaker 1: of the rumors were true, for example about Grigory and
Speaker 1: the Empress being lovers, but it was bad enough that
Speaker 1: people believed it was true, and so Perishkevich said he
Speaker 1: was going to kill Resputin like a dog. Once. Perashkevich
Speaker 1: had even met with the head of the British secret
Speaker 1: intelligence in Petrograd and told him too. Apparently, Pershkevich even
Speaker 1: laid out the details of the plan. The British agents
Speaker 1: ignored the report only because he had already heard so
Speaker 1: many stories from other people saying they would kill Rasputin
Speaker 1: as well, and nothing had ever happened. Only this time
Speaker 1: there was blood in the snow, and the very next day,
Speaker 1: two workers who were crossing the Petrovsky Bridge saw blood
Speaker 1: on the railing too, not to mention the rubber burned
Speaker 1: into the road where a vehicle had sped away. When
Speaker 1: a watchman arrived to check out their reports, he went
Speaker 1: down onto the ice under the bridge, and there he
Speaker 1: spotted a boot that had been carelessly thrown from above
Speaker 1: and missed the hole in the ice. When he reported
Speaker 1: it to the police, it put them on the trail
Speaker 1: of grig Cory's body. Things that were moving fast now.
Speaker 1: By midday on December seventeenth, the word was spread wide.
Speaker 1: Prince Felix Yusupov, together with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, Vladimir
Speaker 1: Perishkevitch and other conspirators, had murdered Grigory Rasputin. The French
Speaker 1: Foreign Minister was reporting it back across Europe. The Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange Gazette was running the story. The news was out.
Speaker 1: All attempts to do things quietly had failed. The murderers
Speaker 1: gathered to plot their next move. They agreed to keep
Speaker 1: up the story about the dog for as long as
Speaker 1: they could. No one would admit to the truth that
Speaker 1: was now being published across Russia, but they knew that
Speaker 1: they would only last so long, so they agreed they
Speaker 1: needed to run. Pershkevitch didn't waste any time. He hopped
Speaker 1: on a hospital train and raced toward the Romanian front.
Speaker 1: Felix Yusupov, though, wasn't so quick to turn tail. That night,
Speaker 1: he says he went to dinner with a British officer
Speaker 1: and fielded phone calls from friends who are rushing to
Speaker 1: congratulate him. Not that we can take his word for it,
Speaker 1: but there's no doubt Felix was proud of himself and
Speaker 1: he wanted to bask. After all, no authority below the
Speaker 1: Tsar could touch him. Not far off, though, the news
Speaker 1: was landing very differently in a different palace. Like she
Speaker 1: did so many other times, Alexandra put pen to paper
Speaker 1: and wrote to Nicholas. She told him what she knew.
Speaker 1: That Grigory was missing, that Perishkevitch was crowing about killing Rasputin,
Speaker 1: that Felix was denying it, but that he was definitely involved.
Speaker 1: She wrote, I cannot believe that our friend has been killed.
Speaker 1: God have mercy. In the following days, people who saw
Speaker 1: Alexandra said it was clear she was in anguish. She
Speaker 1: ordered that Felix Usupaf was forbidden to leave the capital.
Speaker 1: She placed the Tsar's cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri, under house arrest.
Speaker 1: She worried, she raged, and she refused to be swayed
Speaker 1: by the excuses and the lies they tried to send her.
Speaker 1: She was cut to the core, especially when there was
Speaker 1: no more denying the truth. In the early morning hours
Speaker 1: of Monday, December nineteen, a small piece of fabric was
Speaker 1: spotted downstream from the bridge, poking up through a crack
Speaker 1: in the surface of the frozen river. Divers broke through,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, right there, stuck to the underside of
Speaker 1: the ice was Grigory rest Mutant's body. They lowered hooks
Speaker 1: and dragged him from the water. A photographer's camera captured
Speaker 1: the scene. It was a stunning image rast mutants body
Speaker 1: on its back, dragged through the snow on a plank
Speaker 1: of wood. His legs are still wrapped in the cloth
Speaker 1: from the yusup off palace, and his ankles are still
Speaker 1: bound by a length of chain. His frozen beard points
Speaker 1: up towards the sky, and his arms are spread wide.
Speaker 1: They brought Maria resputant to the river. At the end
Speaker 1: of the bridge was a small hut where Maria and
Speaker 1: her sister were lead Inside. There they were shown a
Speaker 1: body a It was horrible. Maria remembered that the face
Speaker 1: was swollen and the hair was thick with clots of blood,
Speaker 1: but the debris had been cleaned off his features and
Speaker 1: Maria could see that it was her father. She said
Speaker 1: his clothes were frozen, stiff, and they peeled and flaked
Speaker 1: like sheets of micah. The investigators took note of the details.
Speaker 1: It was clear that whatever weights were tied to the
Speaker 1: body had slipped away, and Rasputant had not sunk when
Speaker 1: he hit the water. What's more, the fur coat that
Speaker 1: was thrown into the water with the body had trapped
Speaker 1: air and acted as a float. The gold cross still
Speaker 1: clung to his chest over the blue silk shirt he
Speaker 1: had gotten as a gift from Alexandra. The thin twine
Speaker 1: that had tied his wrists had obviously snapped. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: was when he hit the water, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: during the fall when the body was flung over the rail.
Speaker 1: The head seemed to have struck one of the supports
Speaker 1: on the way down, but there was no doubt this
Speaker 1: was Rasputant's body, and along with everything else, the bullet
Speaker 1: holes puncturing his head and chest told the tail this
Speaker 1: was murder. The next thing they needed, without a minute
Speaker 1: of delay, was an autopsy. Afraid of what might happen
Speaker 1: if his followers knew his body was in the city,
Speaker 1: the authorities bustled the girls away and packed resputants corps
Speaker 1: for travel. His arms frozen wide in the icy river,
Speaker 1: and rigor Mortis refused to fit into a coffin, so
Speaker 1: in an open topped wooden box, Grigory's body was carried
Speaker 1: seven kilometers outside the city limits to the Chessmenski Palace.
Speaker 1: The roads were blocked, guards were set, and the body
Speaker 1: was warmed up to thaw. The man called in for
Speaker 1: the work was Petrograd's senior autopsy surgeon, Dr. Dmitri Kosorotov,
Speaker 1: known as one of the leading forensic experts in Russia.
Speaker 1: He was the man trusted to write manuals on forensic
Speaker 1: medicine and lecture at the Military Medical Academy. But it
Speaker 1: didn't take his fine tuned expertise to detect the cloud
Speaker 1: of alcohol around the body. Resputants corpse, he said, smelled
Speaker 1: like Kognak. There was a challenge of determining what had
Speaker 1: been done to the body after death, where it was
Speaker 1: smashed against the bridge supports and gashed open by the
Speaker 1: edge of the river ice. And there was the challenge
Speaker 1: of tracing the three bullet wounds that Dr Kosrotov identified
Speaker 1: and the shot to Grigory's forehead he determined had been
Speaker 1: close enough to leave powder residue. As he tallied up
Speaker 1: the injuries and started to come to a determination of
Speaker 1: what had killed the Siberian holy Man, Dr Kosotov drew
Speaker 1: a picture that was sound and reasonable and based on
Speaker 1: the evidence in front of him. Unfortunately, that picture is
Speaker 1: not the one that the world would see. In fact,
Speaker 1: the story of Resputant's death was already being told without
Speaker 1: the benefit of knowing what the autopsy found. Void of evidence,
Speaker 1: these stories were free to include whatever speculations seemed best
Speaker 1: to fit the legends and rumors already swirling about Grigory's
Speaker 1: life and death. And that was all before Felix Yusupov's
Speaker 1: own myth making through a shroud over Resputant's corpse, one
Speaker 1: that would hide the realities from our eyes for generations.
Speaker 1: Here's historian Douglas Smith to help us unravel the legend.
Speaker 1: So much of the myth of resputants murder, which is
Speaker 1: something that everybody seems to know in some sort of detail,
Speaker 1: comes from your supers memoirs. You supers memoirs are sort
Speaker 1: of network of lies, the tissue of have truths and
Speaker 1: an attempt to bade himself in glory, if you will,
Speaker 1: for a truly horrible deed. He depicts himself, he soup
Speaker 1: of does as like sort of Sat Michael slaying the dragon.
Speaker 1: He depicts Resputin as a man that was impossible to kill, um,
Speaker 1: that he had sort of superhuman power in him, that
Speaker 1: he was Satan himself, And in fact, in the various
Speaker 1: versions of the memoirs that you super frights he and
Speaker 1: each one exaggerates the impossibility of killing Rasputin with each
Speaker 1: retelling of the tale. Felix didn't want to think of
Speaker 1: himself as a cold blood murderer. He certainly didn't want
Speaker 1: others to think of himself that way. He and his
Speaker 1: accomplices needed to believe that they were something more, and
Speaker 1: so the story that they told grew from the cold
Speaker 1: realities into something far more sinister, spiritual, legendary, but completely false.
Speaker 1: With each retelling of the tale, that you know, they
Speaker 1: beat him, they poisoned him, they shoot him, he refuses
Speaker 1: to die, that they dump him in a hole in
Speaker 1: an icy branch of the Nieva River, and even then
Speaker 1: he still breathes his last and tries to make the
Speaker 1: sign of the cross, and eventually only dies of drowning.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is all just a pack of lies
Speaker 1: that you Soup have told to make himself feel better,
Speaker 1: to aggrandize himself, and quite frankly, to earn money, because
Speaker 1: he was now living in in exile after the Revolution
Speaker 1: in Europe and had no way to make a living
Speaker 1: other than to keep retelling the story of how he
Speaker 1: had killed Resputant. When Dr Kosaratop opened the body, he
Speaker 1: own no water in the lungs. Grigory didn't drown. He
Speaker 1: was dead before he hit the water. But that's just
Speaker 1: one aspect of Felix's myth, dissolved by the findings of
Speaker 1: the autopsy. Chief among the details that Felix would build
Speaker 1: his story on was the thing that he couldn't shake
Speaker 1: that Grigory had swallowed an army's worth of cyanide that
Speaker 1: night and remained unscathed. As Felix told the story, he
Speaker 1: had added massive doses to the cakes and wine, and
Speaker 1: Rasputant had taken it all. As far as he was concerned,
Speaker 1: some malignant spiritual energy had preserved him from its effects.
Speaker 1: That would become one of the key details of the
Speaker 1: Resputant myth that would be told and retold down the
Speaker 1: generations up to today. But traces of cyanide is something
Speaker 1: Dr Kassarotov would have been able to spot right away.
Speaker 1: In fact, he didn't find any food in Grigory's stomach
Speaker 1: at all, no cakes poisoned or not, And if there
Speaker 1: had been something put in Rasputant's drink, it couldn't have
Speaker 1: been a lethal dose of cyanide. The body would have
Speaker 1: given off a signature scent of almonds, among other tell
Speaker 1: tale effects, but the autopsy report noted nothing of the kind.
Speaker 1: Maybe Felix was telling outright lies about the attempt to
Speaker 1: poison Grigory, But the other possibility is that they dosed
Speaker 1: him with something other than cyanide without knowing it. Some
Speaker 1: historians think it was just an inert powder substituted along
Speaker 1: the way, perhaps by someone with a pang of conscience.
Speaker 1: Felix and his friends were simply too ignorant to know
Speaker 1: what they had wasn't the real deal. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: Grigory had miraculously survived poisoning. It was simply that his
Speaker 1: murderers bungled just about every part of their attempt to
Speaker 1: kill him. Dr Kosaratov found when he examined the body
Speaker 1: that the killing looked messy, but fairly ordinary, fairly easy,
Speaker 1: that is, to explain an ultimate fact. There was probably
Speaker 1: never any poison, And in point of fact, we know
Speaker 1: from photographs taken at the autopsy of Resputent's body after
Speaker 1: it was pulled from the ice, that he was shot
Speaker 1: three times at close range, twice in the torso, and
Speaker 1: a third and final time at point blank rage, right
Speaker 1: into the middle of his forehead. Rasputin was more than
Speaker 1: dead when they finally dumped his body into the icy river.
Speaker 1: Gregory had been shot once through the stomach and liver,
Speaker 1: He had been shot again in the back, and the
Speaker 1: bullet pierced his kidney and lodged against his spine. Either
Speaker 1: one of those could have killed him given enough time,
Speaker 1: and the shot to his head was certainly enough to
Speaker 1: end his life. But generations of historians, investigators, and writers
Speaker 1: have had to cut through Felix Yusupov's tall tales to
Speaker 1: get at the truth. The man was mortal with a
Speaker 1: legend has proved impossible to kill. The rumors spread Grigory
Speaker 1: Rasputant was protected from poison by dark spiritual powers. We
Speaker 1: know that's false, but it was so much more fun
Speaker 1: to leave it. Resputant was nearly immortal and survived being shot, beaten, stabbed,
Speaker 1: and poisoned, only to be killed by the rivers of Russia.
Speaker 1: That's false too, but there's a sick pleasure in recounting
Speaker 1: the amount of punishment one body could absorb before nature
Speaker 1: steps in to finish the job. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: there's the story that comes from the most salacious rumors
Speaker 1: about Grigory's sexual conquests and the gossip that he was,
Speaker 1: as we've all heard, the lover of the Russian Zarina.
Speaker 1: It's those earlier stories that gave rise to the idea
Speaker 1: that Felix or someone among the killers cut off Resputant's
Speaker 1: penis and preserved it. After all, it had grown its
Speaker 1: own legends, all blown out of proportion with each time
Speaker 1: they were repeated. It was even enough for collectors and
Speaker 1: museums to claim over the years that they have its
Speaker 1: inhuman mass pickled in brine. While it's unbelievable size makes
Speaker 1: it a marvel to visitors today, and what could tickle
Speaker 1: fancies more than a story like that. Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable, because it's not true. Gregory's body was intact
Speaker 1: at the autopsy, but as with so many other parts
Speaker 1: of Rasputant's life, the truth never got in the way
Speaker 1: of a juicy anecdote. The truth about his exploits was
Speaker 1: far from mystical. As we know by now, he was
Speaker 1: simply a man who used his position and his preaching
Speaker 1: to take sexual advantage of women who were vulnerable. But
Speaker 1: that truth doesn't lend itself to playful retellings. In reality,
Speaker 1: Gregory's whole corpse was embalmed, dressed in white silk, and
Speaker 1: sealed in a zinc coffin. Before the lid was closed,
Speaker 1: he was joined by some dried flowers and an icon.
Speaker 1: It was far quieter than the storytellers would have us believe.
Speaker 1: Also far quieter was the Royal household. Nicholas arrived back
Speaker 1: in Petrograd on Monday, December. The year nineteen sixteen was
Speaker 1: coming to a close on a sober note for the
Speaker 1: Imperial household. They were shaken, but one attendant noted that
Speaker 1: the name Grigory Rasputin was never spoken that night. In
Speaker 1: the following days, though they were all asking what should
Speaker 1: be done with the holy man's body. Alexandra started putting
Speaker 1: the question to her advisers directly, the Palace commandant suggested
Speaker 1: that it be shipped back to Siberia. Other officials responded
Speaker 1: with worry. What if the news got out that rest
Speaker 1: Mutant's corpse was traveling by train, there might be a
Speaker 1: violent demonstration on the way. Even with his death, the
Speaker 1: hatred of Gregory Resputant had not dissipated. That was clear
Speaker 1: to see for just about everyone, which is also why
Speaker 1: they started to worry when Alexandra insisted that he be
Speaker 1: buried nearby. In fact, Resputant had participated in laying the
Speaker 1: cornerstone of a new church at Alexander Park, near the
Speaker 1: Imperial residence. Alexandra wanted him there, so in the early
Speaker 1: morning of Wednesday, December one, soldiers began to dig a
Speaker 1: shallow grave in the foundations of the church. A police
Speaker 1: fan arrived with its heavy burden. By the time the
Speaker 1: Imperial family followed, the Zinc coffin was already in the ground.
Speaker 1: Only a few people were there beyond Nicholas, alex Xandra,
Speaker 1: their daughters, and a few of their household. No one
Speaker 1: in Rasputant's family was consulted. Maria and her sister Varvara
Speaker 1: had left the capital without an invitation to their own
Speaker 1: father's burial. Alexandra and each of her daughters tossed a
Speaker 1: white rose down into the hole in the earth. Nicholas
Speaker 1: wrote a brief account in his diary, A sad spectacle,
Speaker 1: he said. Then the imperial family went back to their
Speaker 1: daily lives, meetings with officials, war briefings, and even with
Speaker 1: Grigory now gone the revolving door of ministers, Alexandra and
Speaker 1: her daughter's returned to nursing duties, attending hospital trains and
Speaker 1: celebrating their care for Russia's wounded sons with ornate faberge eggs.
Speaker 1: At the graveside, a military guard prohibited anyone from approaching.
Speaker 1: For a while, Alexandra made daily visits, holding herself together.
Speaker 1: There were times it seemed that she still believed she
Speaker 1: was under her friend's protection. A few months later, she
Speaker 1: wrote to Nicholas that even though God had sent them
Speaker 1: a hard burden to bear, they should have courage. You
Speaker 1: should wear the cross, she wrote. It seems she had
Speaker 1: taken the one Resputin was wearing on his chest when
Speaker 1: he died, and she had given it to the Czar.
Speaker 1: The fact that nestling it against his heart failed to
Speaker 1: save Grigory from the bullets that killed him didn't seem
Speaker 1: to occur to Alexandra. She said it would help Nicholas
Speaker 1: when he was making difficult decisions. Besides, she was praying
Speaker 1: fervently for her husband, and she believed she wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one. Another voice was still reaching out to God
Speaker 1: on the Romanov's behalf. She told Nicholas that Resputin was
Speaker 1: nearer to them than ever, even in the world beyond,
Speaker 1: and Alexander was far from alone in that thought. It
Speaker 1: was widely reported that the Minister of the Interior was
Speaker 1: regularly attending seances. They whispered that he was always trying
Speaker 1: to summon rest Sputin and to get advice from the
Speaker 1: murdered peasant from beyond the grave. As the days went by,
Speaker 1: other government officials started to observe that he attended to
Speaker 1: his duties less and less and spent his time at
Speaker 1: the Imperial Palace more and more. His motives, though, were
Speaker 1: more than suspicious, especially when he decided to take things
Speaker 1: up a notch. He started telling Alexander that he wasn't
Speaker 1: just getting messages from Rasputin. No, he said that the
Speaker 1: spirit of Rasputin had come back from the other side
Speaker 1: and taken up residence inside a new body. With Rasputin dead,
Speaker 1: Russia was saved. At least that's what the killers hoped.
Speaker 1: The dark forces that affected the Empire through their Siberian
Speaker 1: puppet had that tool ripped from their hands, the Czar's
Speaker 1: family would move on and God would once again bless
Speaker 1: the empire. With the enemy's plots overthrown, they would have
Speaker 1: victory in battle and a time of peace and plenty
Speaker 1: would follow. The French Foreign Minister wrote in his diary
Speaker 1: on December that the public was rejoicing. They were kissing
Speaker 1: in the streets, he said, and marching to the churches
Speaker 1: burning candles to the saints. That fish agents wrote that
Speaker 1: the people of Petrograd were acting as if they were
Speaker 1: suddenly freed from a great weight. It was, they were saying,
Speaker 1: better than Russia's greatest victories in the war, all thanks
Speaker 1: to Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri and their band of heroes.
Speaker 1: Right Once again, a far bleaker reality would shatter the
Speaker 1: myths spun up by the propagandists of Russian aristocracy, and
Speaker 1: it was Nicholas first of all, who felt the pinch
Speaker 1: because it felt to him like the attack on rest
Speaker 1: Sputin had a secondary target his wife, so he felt
Speaker 1: he didn't have a choice. The murderers had to be
Speaker 1: dealt with. The rest of his family urged Nicholas to
Speaker 1: let the issue go. The murder had perhaps been misguided,
Speaker 1: but Grigory was only a peasant. Was Nicholas really going
Speaker 1: to pursue the members of his own bloodline over the
Speaker 1: death of someone like that. Alexandra had begun the prosecution,
Speaker 1: She had even put a Grand Duke under house arrest,
Speaker 1: but surely Nicholas would see that all of this as
Speaker 1: an overreaction. If the murderers and their social set thought
Speaker 1: that the Tsar would see things their way, they once
Speaker 1: again misunderstood just how much Grigory Resputant had meant to
Speaker 1: the Romanovs. On the twenty three December, Grand Duke Dmitri
Speaker 1: received orders he was being sent away from Petrograd to
Speaker 1: the Persian Front. He was leaving the very next morning.
Speaker 1: In strict secrecy. He boarded the train and left the capital.
Speaker 1: No one was confused about why he was being pushed
Speaker 1: out into the war zone. Other aristocrats tried to push back.
Speaker 1: They got together and co signed a letter asking for
Speaker 1: Nicholas to show mercy on the Grand Duke's youth and
Speaker 1: ill health. The Czar's response he scrawled by hand across
Speaker 1: the top of the letter, no one has a right
Speaker 1: to commit murder, and he returned it to sender. Felix
Speaker 1: was also exiled, not that it was hard for him.
Speaker 1: He retreated from the capital only as far as his
Speaker 1: comfortable estate in the south. There he started to receive
Speaker 1: visits from the rush and nobility, people who wanted to
Speaker 1: congratulate him, and people who simply wanted to thumb their
Speaker 1: nose at the Czar. Any bonds of love and trust
Speaker 1: that had existed between Nicholas and the nobility were broken,
Speaker 1: and that had massive implications for what came next. As
Speaker 1: the Russian elites took all their venom, all their spites,
Speaker 1: and all their grievances and poured them out on the
Speaker 1: Czar's doorstep and on his German wife. Here's historian Joshua
Speaker 1: Sanborn to say more. The criticism of Alexandra and then
Speaker 1: by extension, rast putin a lot of it is wrapped
Speaker 1: up in quite um uh i don't know the best
Speaker 1: way way to put it. I mean, a lot of
Speaker 1: it is wrapped up obviously anti Germanism, a lot of
Speaker 1: it is wrapped up in in in sexism obviously. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that that's a lot of the criticism that's
Speaker 1: happening for them, um, But it also doesn't reflect the
Speaker 1: fact that I talked about before, which is that the
Speaker 1: decisions they're making in nineteen six after Nicholas leaps for
Speaker 1: the front in the nineteen sixteen, let's say they're not
Speaker 1: that consequential. I don't think it actually matters that much
Speaker 1: through the minis sor of Interior, Minister of Communications, It's right.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it matters too much. Most of
Speaker 1: the actual work that's being done is being done by
Speaker 1: people that that they don't have control over, especially in
Speaker 1: the military, and so you know, I don't see them
Speaker 1: as that important now in terms of the loss of
Speaker 1: public faith on the part of the Petersburg elite, which
Speaker 1: is something important that the faith of your political elite
Speaker 1: is something important in a political system. It's obvious that
Speaker 1: they have an effect on that. So for sure they
Speaker 1: have an influence on that, and that's why the you know,
Speaker 1: that's why it's conservatives and ultra right right wing people
Speaker 1: that assassinate rest Putin. And one thing is clear, Nicholas
Speaker 1: was right to worry. By the end of nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: Russian aristocrats weren't satisfied with the death of rest Sputin.
Speaker 1: There were at least a few who considered killing Alexandra
Speaker 1: as well. Some even plotted a full blown coup. In
Speaker 1: the end, Russian elites and government officials spent much of
Speaker 1: their time stewing over the ways that the Czar was
Speaker 1: fumbling the reins, that they failed to see their own
Speaker 1: part in tearing the social fabric to shreds. They wanted
Speaker 1: someone to blame for what they were doing themselves. It's
Speaker 1: that blindness that Douglas Smith describes here so well. I
Speaker 1: came away after six years of research and writing and
Speaker 1: thinking about Respute, and you know, seeing him as this
Speaker 1: great scapecoat, sort of one of the great scapegoats of history.
Speaker 1: And it's not to deny his faults, it's not to
Speaker 1: deny him of responsibility for things that he did to
Speaker 1: further the demise of the autocracy. But everyone wants to
Speaker 1: put it all on his shoulders. It was strange to
Speaker 1: just read account after account after account of people who
Speaker 1: were part of Russia at the time, in the government,
Speaker 1: in the army, at court, and they all want to
Speaker 1: place it on resputing shoulders, as if it hadn't been Resputing,
Speaker 1: none of this would have happened. There would have been
Speaker 1: no war, there would have been no revolution, there would
Speaker 1: have been no downfall of the dynasty. And that's so
Speaker 1: utterly simplistic and incorrect that I hope, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: I can move us off of this simplistic way thinking
Speaker 1: about him and his role in his place in history.
Speaker 1: There's a bitter irony to the ways that the Russian
Speaker 1: aristocrats obsessed over the Tsar and his wife because resputant
Speaker 1: or no, the truth is that the empire had long
Speaker 1: since slipped beyond the Tsar's control. If he or anyone
Speaker 1: had wanted to see a different future for Russia at
Speaker 1: the end of nineteen sixteen, they would have to make
Speaker 1: those changes in the past. As historian Helen Rappaport explains,
Speaker 1: I think the big crucial turning point could have been
Speaker 1: five after you know, the fiasco the Russo Japanese wore
Speaker 1: terrible disaster for Russia politically, Um after that, and then
Speaker 1: the bloody Sunday protest march where innocent workers marched without
Speaker 1: weapons or anything, asking for reform and for letter working
Speaker 1: conditions when they were attacked by Cossack troops. When that happened,
Speaker 1: that turning point, That was the point where Nicholas should
Speaker 1: have introduced major political concessions. If it introduced decent, democratic
Speaker 1: constitutional government, if he'd allowed the Duma, the State Duma,
Speaker 1: to flourish instead of constantly censoring it and shutting it down,
Speaker 1: then I don't see why Russia could not have evolved
Speaker 1: into the kind of constitutional monarchy that was made such
Speaker 1: a success by King Edward the seventh in the years
Speaker 1: leading up to World War One, because Russia was beginning
Speaker 1: to grow economically, beginning to catch up with Western Europe
Speaker 1: in those terms, and it could have flourished differently under
Speaker 1: a much more benign and democratic constitutional monarch. But as
Speaker 1: we know, Nicholas was never willing to give up what
Speaker 1: he considered a god given right. He was the czar
Speaker 1: by heaven and he was meant to rule on are
Speaker 1: A Romanov There would never truly be a democratic constitution.
Speaker 1: Nicholas was an autocrat from the beginning to the bitter end,
Speaker 1: the bodies piled up the war continued on. One death
Speaker 1: could easily get lost among the many millions of poor
Speaker 1: soldiers being killed on every side in a clash between empires.
Speaker 1: It is the peasants who suffer. At least some of
Speaker 1: the aristocrats saw that. Like the wealthy woman who followed
Speaker 1: Alexander's lead and tied on a nurse's gown, she believed
Speaker 1: that as a powerful matron, charity was her duty, so
Speaker 1: she took up work in the hospitals. But simple charity
Speaker 1: fell far short of what the Russian elites would have
Speaker 1: needed to do to truly turn Russia toward a different future.
Speaker 1: That began to dawn on her when she overheard a
Speaker 1: few of the wounded soldiers talking together. They were peasants,
Speaker 1: like many Russian fighting men, and they were talking about Rasputin.
Speaker 1: He was like them, a peasant. Whatever else might have
Speaker 1: been true about him, all the rumors and dark whispers
Speaker 1: about his evil proclivities, they saw that he had climbed high.
Speaker 1: He had done what peasants who farmed the land, who
Speaker 1: raised horses, and who worked in the factories could only
Speaker 1: dream of. They said, there he was the one peasant
Speaker 1: who had reached the czar himself, but what did he
Speaker 1: get in return? The real masters of society had him
Speaker 1: murdered by the dawn of nineteen seventeen. The Russian people
Speaker 1: had decided long ago that they suffered more than enough
Speaker 1: at the hands of these masters of society. If the
Speaker 1: aristocrats talked idly about a coup to overthrow the czar,
Speaker 1: the Russian people were about to show their ruling class
Speaker 1: what it really looked like to seize power from abusive masters.
Speaker 1: Here's historian Joshua Sandborn to describe the outbreak of revolution.
Speaker 1: It begins on International Women's Day, which was a relatively
Speaker 1: new socialist holiday instituted in UH as a result of
Speaker 1: the Triangle shirtwaist fire in New York City. UM and
Speaker 1: UH and and UH again driven by socialist parties and
Speaker 1: by labor movements as as a way to sort of
Speaker 1: recognize women within within the socialist movement and UM so
Speaker 1: International Women's Day is provides the the opportunity for many
Speaker 1: women across the city of Petrograd to UM to go
Speaker 1: out on marches and and what they want to protest.
Speaker 1: At this point, UM is a series of things. The
Speaker 1: war uh, the Tsarist administration and the fact that their
Speaker 1: lives have now been taken over by increasingly long breadlines,
Speaker 1: and they're putting the blame for this where it actually
Speaker 1: belongs on the sar and on the and on the
Speaker 1: war itself. They're they're not wrong about who has led
Speaker 1: them to this, to this situation. And when the defense
Speaker 1: factories also go out on strike and join them, it
Speaker 1: becomes a crisis for the police in Petrograd. They attempt
Speaker 1: to deal with this by blocking off bridges, by doing
Speaker 1: a series of other things. They shoot into the crowd
Speaker 1: at several moments, but then they feel that they have
Speaker 1: to call in the army. The army has several barracks
Speaker 1: in the city and they have to call those soldiers
Speaker 1: up to help them police the city. And when they
Speaker 1: do that, it turns out that the soldiers are on
Speaker 1: the on the side of the protesters. You have mass
Speaker 1: mutinies among the soldiers in the Petrograd garrison. They drive
Speaker 1: the police away, The police throw away their uniforms, they
Speaker 1: flee on trains, they hide um uh, they break open
Speaker 1: the jails, they start burning court records. All this stuff
Speaker 1: is happening. That's are orders troops to be sent to
Speaker 1: from the front to put down the rebellion in the
Speaker 1: city Um, and the first groups of those when they
Speaker 1: arrive in the outskirts, their commanders quickly realized that Um
Speaker 1: that if they said troops into the city, those troops
Speaker 1: are also going to rebel and then they're gonna have
Speaker 1: a real problem on their hands, so they start to withdraw.
Speaker 1: The one person who could never withdraw from his most
Speaker 1: disastrous decisions, from his most self destructive beliefs, was the
Speaker 1: Czar himself. He had denied the truth for so many years,
Speaker 1: saying that the Russian people could never turn against him,
Speaker 1: and he surrounded himself with advisors who agreed. The only
Speaker 1: friends the Romanovs were willing to entertain were fierce champions
Speaker 1: of the monarchy. It was shortsighted he was blind, But
Speaker 1: over the course of their reign, Nicholas and Alexandra had
Speaker 1: built themselves an echo chamber, and for years the loudest
Speaker 1: voice in that room telling them exactly what they wanted
Speaker 1: to hear had been Grigory Rasputin, but of course it
Speaker 1: was others before him, and after his death it was
Speaker 1: men like the Minister of the Interior who floated in
Speaker 1: on his wake. All of that had insulated the Romanovs
Speaker 1: from really understanding what was happening in Russia until, of course,
Speaker 1: it was too late and the revolution had begun. When
Speaker 1: Nicholas finally faced that reality, it washed over him like
Speaker 1: a tidal wave. Here's more from Helen Rappaport. Nicholas I
Speaker 1: feel was duped into abdicating. There is hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: away from home, when two members of the government, the Duma,
Speaker 1: came out by train and persuaded him that that revolution
Speaker 1: of broken Impactrickrad. That was disarray in the army. People,
Speaker 1: the conscript arm lots of them were deserting at the front.
Speaker 1: Morale was low, and it was you know, there was
Speaker 1: so much disaffection with the czar and the old imperial
Speaker 1: regime that the best thing he could do save Russia
Speaker 1: and the country and the war effort was to give
Speaker 1: up the job. He allowed himself to be persuaded. I
Speaker 1: think that his application would save Russia and it would
Speaker 1: also save the war effort, because obviously, with the revolution,
Speaker 1: everyone was worried that Russia was now going to pull
Speaker 1: out of the war effort as well on the Eastern Front.
Speaker 1: So Nicholas abdicated, thinking that he by his him removing
Speaker 1: himself as the hated cs are, the situation could be saved.
Speaker 1: And of course, in this time, as in so many others,
Speaker 1: Romanovs look for strength not to the powers of the
Speaker 1: earthly realm, but to the heavens. It was divine guidance
Speaker 1: they had always saught, and it was to God's messengers
Speaker 1: on earth that they bent their ear. After all, the
Speaker 1: was no one on earth above them, so it was
Speaker 1: only to the powers of God's Church that they were
Speaker 1: truly willing to bend. In revolutionary Russia, though, even the
Speaker 1: church was changing, and soon enough it was the church
Speaker 1: itself that was beginning to pave the way for the
Speaker 1: Russian people to go in a new direction. As historian
Speaker 1: Heather Coleman describes, the church did not stand up for
Speaker 1: the CSAR. The official church said goodbye when that's ore, abdicated,
Speaker 1: and the next morning got to got to work reforming
Speaker 1: itself and got to work getting on with the things
Speaker 1: that it wanted to do. And the main thing that
Speaker 1: the church wanted to do was to call a great
Speaker 1: Church Council to rethink the relationship between the Church and
Speaker 1: the state. And the relationships within the church between the
Speaker 1: the bishops and the parish clergy and the laity, and
Speaker 1: to re organize the church for the modern world and
Speaker 1: so um. Almost immediately after the collapse of the of
Speaker 1: the Empire, the the the the Church Council was called
Speaker 1: and it met in Moscow, UM starting in August of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, and was was going right through during the
Speaker 1: revolution of October and into early nineteen eighteen. During the
Speaker 1: revolutionary days in the spring of nineteen seventeen, local diocese
Speaker 1: are choosing their representatives and there is a great revolution
Speaker 1: that is going on in the church, and people are
Speaker 1: transforming the church from below into a democratic organization. There
Speaker 1: are there are dioceses that that ejected their bishops and
Speaker 1: voted for bishops, which was not canonical, unheard of. But
Speaker 1: we can see how how people are living out the
Speaker 1: implications of that democratic revolution of February nineteen seventeen in
Speaker 1: their church life. And these are people of all social
Speaker 1: groups who are doing this because the church incorporates all
Speaker 1: social groups. And so I really think that but the
Speaker 1: way that the Church um is having its own revolution
Speaker 1: that is part of this broader revolution of nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the last pillar supporting imperial rule had been pulled away.
Speaker 1: Once the leaders of the Church had been introducing Nicholas
Speaker 1: and Alexandra to mystical guides like Gregory Resputant, and as
Speaker 1: they work to take on the modern world, the Church
Speaker 1: in Russia remade itself into an institution that would endure
Speaker 1: long after the doomed Romanovs. We're finally gone. They had
Speaker 1: always done things their own way. For a while, after
Speaker 1: Nicola stepped down, Alexander continued to say that the uprisings
Speaker 1: around them were nothing serious. They were just hooligans screaming
Speaker 1: for bread. Sometime soon the excitement would pass away and
Speaker 1: Russia would quiet down again. But oh how wrong she was.
Speaker 1: Riots grew worse. A new government was created in October
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen. That provisional government was overthrown by Vladimir
Speaker 1: Lenin and the Bolsheviks. All of Russia was consumed by
Speaker 1: civil war. Nicholas and Alexandra became what they had never
Speaker 1: been before, citizens under a new civilian authority, and then
Speaker 1: they became its prisoners. Let's turn to Helen Rappaport one
Speaker 1: final time to tell us about the last days of
Speaker 1: the Romanovs. Nicholas later realized, I think in captivity in
Speaker 1: the last months of his life, that he had been
Speaker 1: tricked into abdicating, that it had not achieved anything. The
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks had taken over Russia pulled out of the war,
Speaker 1: which any in March nine, and things were even worse
Speaker 1: from Russia for Russia. He hadn't saved Russia by abdicating.
Speaker 1: Alexandra just retreated more and more into religiosity. Every day
Speaker 1: the girls, one or other girl would hurt when that
Speaker 1: they had their brief exercise periods morning and afternoon. One
Speaker 1: of the girls always had to stay with mother indoors.
Speaker 1: She rarely went outside because she was so sickly or indisposed,
Speaker 1: and read the Gospels to her or read the Bible
Speaker 1: or some pious work. The last few letters she wrote
Speaker 1: were very laden with religious references and in a very
Speaker 1: profound sense I think of reconciliation, acceptance fatalism. Both she
Speaker 1: and Nicholas were deeply, deeply fatalistic. And you get the
Speaker 1: same thing with Nicholas's last few letters and then his
Speaker 1: sense of utter despair. The last journal entry he wrote
Speaker 1: was about I think it was the eleventh of July I,
Speaker 1: about six days before they were murdered, where he just
Speaker 1: you could sense him giving up. He said, we've had
Speaker 1: absolutely known news from outside. The sense of despair because
Speaker 1: they didn't know what was going on in Russia, how
Speaker 1: their relatives were, what was happening in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. That the sense of abandonment I think was
Speaker 1: pretty profound in Nicholas, and I think he was obviously
Speaker 1: deeply religiously resigned to his fate. As well as for
Speaker 1: resputants family, he left very little for them. Despite the
Speaker 1: stories about how much wealth he must have hoarded by
Speaker 1: playing parasite on the aristocracy, Grigory didn't have a pile
Speaker 1: of gold to give to Maria. All the money and
Speaker 1: gifts that had been showered on him were in turn
Speaker 1: given away. He had a little property and some money
Speaker 1: in the bank, but given the state of the Russian
Speaker 1: economy at the time, it didn't add up too much
Speaker 1: at all. At first, after Gregory had been killed, Maria
Speaker 1: and her sister were held by the Russian police. When
Speaker 1: they were finally released, they were able to go back
Speaker 1: to Siberia in the spring of nineteen seventeen, but leaving
Speaker 1: the capital didn't mean they were returning to the home
Speaker 1: they had left. All of Russia was changing. In April
Speaker 1: of that year, a group of soldiers came through and
Speaker 1: they ransacked the resputant home. Whatever was valuable, they stuffed
Speaker 1: it into sacks and carried it off. Even the clocks
Speaker 1: were taken. Any pictures or images of Grigory were smashed,
Speaker 1: torn and stomped into the dirt in front of Maria's eyes.
Speaker 1: She begged them to stop, but they wouldn't listen. Eventually,
Speaker 1: there was nothing left for Maria in her father's house.
Speaker 1: She went looking for something new, something more stable than
Speaker 1: her father Grigory's legacy, something that would provide her a future.
Speaker 1: So she found her way into a marriage with a
Speaker 1: local man, but it wasn't a happy one. The following spring,
Speaker 1: the weather it was bad. River travel wasn't safe, and
Speaker 1: the only way to travel from place to place was
Speaker 1: over tracks through Siberia that also offered from the storms.
Speaker 1: Despite the dark clouds, though, the Romanov family was on
Speaker 1: the move. They were being taken from Tobolsk to Eketteringburg,
Speaker 1: where their fate awaited them. They're in a locked room.
Speaker 1: A team of gunmen would execute them one and all,
Speaker 1: it was the death that none of them would escape,
Speaker 1: whatever the stories would later say. To reach that doom, though, Nicholas,
Speaker 1: Alexandra and their children had to travel rough roads, a
Speaker 1: journey that brought them to the Siberian town of Pokrovsko.
Speaker 1: As we've said before, it was the crossroads, the place
Speaker 1: along the way for changing horses. As they came to halt,
Speaker 1: the Romanov family looked up and realized that they were
Speaker 1: facing the largest house in town. It was the house
Speaker 1: that had been purchased for his family by Grigory Resputant.
Speaker 1: It took a long time for their captors to make
Speaker 1: the change, so Nicholas, Alexandra and their daughters stood by uneasily,
Speaker 1: looking at the house of their murdered friend. One of
Speaker 1: the Romanov daughters even made a sketch while they waited.
Speaker 1: It took so long, in fact, that the Rasputant family
Speaker 1: saw them outside Grigory's wife, Prescovia and his daughter Maria.
Speaker 1: One was the woman whose husband had left her, the
Speaker 1: other the daughter left destitute by his death. They stood
Speaker 1: together in the house, but did not dare to approach
Speaker 1: the doomed travelers. There was no sense in trying to
Speaker 1: push past the line of armed guards. Maria Rasputin simply
Speaker 1: said that they gathered at the window. The two families
Speaker 1: faced each other across the distance, the Resputants on one side,
Speaker 1: the Romanovs on the other. While Nicholas and Alexandra looked on,
Speaker 1: the daughters of their families raised their hands and blue
Speaker 1: kisses through the air. It was a brief moment of tenderness.
Speaker 1: Although I have to believe kisses blown at gunpoint might
Speaker 1: struggle to find their target. It was the final brief
Speaker 1: moments of connection that Nicholas and Alexandra would have with
Speaker 1: their friend, the only respite to be found on the
Speaker 1: Romanov's final journey to the death of their dynasty. Hey folks,
Speaker 1: Aaron here. Today's episode was the final chapter in our story.
Speaker 1: If you've enjoyed the results of our team's hard work,
Speaker 1: your reviews and ratings would be incredibly welcome over on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. Your kind words go a long way toward
Speaker 1: helping newcomers tap that subscribe button, and all of that
Speaker 1: helps our show. It's been an honor to be your
Speaker 1: guide over the past few weeks, and I look forward
Speaker 1: to our next tour through the dark corners of history.
Speaker 1: But we're not quite done with this season just yet.
Speaker 1: Starting on January five, will be releasing all four of
Speaker 1: our incredible history and interviews in full. These are powerful
Speaker 1: conversations with leading scholars in the world of Resputant and
Speaker 1: the Romanovs, and the insight and detail they bring to
Speaker 1: the topic are perfect for those who want more. Just
Speaker 1: stay subscribed to the show in your app and those
Speaker 1: interview episodes will arrive automatically every week. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a taste of what's to come. The theory goes
Speaker 1: was at British agents killed Resputant as a way to
Speaker 1: prevent some sort of peace treaty between Russia and Germany.
Speaker 1: Now there's no truth in any of this, and there's
Speaker 1: no reality that this ever happened, um, But there have
Speaker 1: been been books written about it, there have been documentaries
Speaker 1: made about it, and there's even been this theory put
Speaker 1: forward that if you look at the the bullet hole
Speaker 1: in resputants head, that the markings around the whole proved
Speaker 1: that it was a bullet fired by a British gun,
Speaker 1: by an endfield pistol, and that this means that whoever
Speaker 1: fired the fatal shot was a British agent. Unobscured was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: with research by Sam Alberty, writing by Carl Nellis, and
Speaker 1: original music by Chad Lawson. Learn more about our contributing historians,
Speaker 1: source materials and links to our other shows over at
Speaker 1: grimm and mild dot com, slash Unobscured, and as always,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening all