WEBVTT - S4 – 10: Ghosts 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.360 Welcomed, unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:13.000 Someone was shaking the girl awake. Maria Resputin had fallen 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.280 asleep in one world, she was waking up in another. 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.360 The maid got her out of bed alongside her sister 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.520 Varvara and told Grigory's two daughters that their father had 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.319 not returned from his night out on the town. She 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:29.320 was worried. At first. This was nothing to Maria. Her 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:32.600 father was often out late, sometimes he didn't come home, 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:36.200 and that was nothing unusual. But the hours ticked by, 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.960 and then the calls started to come in from the police. 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.560 They were trying to track down Gregory as well. Well. 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:46.319 All the maid could tell them was that she had 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:48.080 seen his friend come by to pick him up the 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:52.320 night before, the family friend, Felix Yusupov, and they had 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.120 left together, so Resputant must be at the Yusupov palace. 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.240 People started coming to their apartment. They started to line 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.120 up at the door as usual, bringing their pain, their needs, 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.160 their desires, but there was no sign of Gregory to 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:08.960 meet them. So Maria put in the call to her 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:12.040 friends of the Empress, and they promptly relayed the message 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:17.480 to Alexandra Grigory it seemed was missing. After that, Maria 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.600 called the woman who had introduced Rasputant and Felix use Upov. Together, 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:24.959 they tried to get in touch with Felix. After a 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.240 few tries, they had him on the phone, but as 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:29.840 Maria watched them talk, she saw something come over the 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.080 woman's face. By the time they ended the call, Maria 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:36.520 could tell she was deeply upset. Felix had sworn that 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:39.600 he had not seen Gregory the night before. He had 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:41.920 not picked him up, much less hosted him at the 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:44.600 use of haf Palace. That was all he had to say, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.160 and then he hung up. The two looked at each other. 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.360 One thing was clear. Felix was lying, and with Grigory missing, 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.000 they began to suspect why. It was a moment of 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:58.720 dawning horror that would stay with Maria for the rest 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.680 of her life. So and police agents were at the door. 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.560 They came to sweep the house. Of course, Maria left 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.160 them in and they marched into respute and study, where 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.120 they started to gather up his papers. Maria may not 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:12.960 have realized it right away, but they were wasting no time. 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:16.919 Anything in Grigory's possession that could embarrass the Czar needed 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.440 to be swept out of sights immediately. The empire was 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:23.960 the priority, but the respute and apartment wasn't the only 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:27.320 place getting the police sweep Because those gunshots in the 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.920 courtyard of the Yusupov Palace, they hadn't gone unheard. The 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:33.960 conspirators had planned for everything to be done quietly in 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.760 the prepared room of the palace basement. That plan had failed, 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.840 and the thing they were afraid of actually came true. 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.840 A person who heard those gunshots was a police officer, 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.720 and shortly after the shooting he had strolled up to 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:51.560 the Yusupov Palace and seeing Felix standing outside, so he 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.760 approached and asked what was going on. Felix tried to 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.280 play it off. Maybe it was nothing, Maybe it was 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.400 just some of his friends playing with the pistol. Nothing arius. 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.160 The officer had walked on, but around four am he 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.000 came back, something about Felix hadn't sat right with him. 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:10.520 If there was some horseplay with the handgun, he thought 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.680 he should probably report it. This time, though, he talked 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:16.720 with a man who had fired the gun. Vladimir Pershkevitch. 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.639 When the police officers started asking questions, Perishkevitch leaned in. 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.440 He put his arm around the officer's shoulder, and he 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.680 took the opposite approach from Felix, I mean, the exact opposite. 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.040 He asked the officer what he thought of Grigory Rasputin. 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:34.880 Was he an enemy of Russia and an enemy of 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:38.600 the Czar? And the officer agreed, and so Perishkevitch told 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.240 him that only hours before they had killed Grigory Resputin 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.640 in that very courtyard. And if that sounds like an 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:50.320 enormous mistake by Pershkevitch, then you're probably following along. The 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.600 police officer promised not to tell, and Pershkevich slapped him 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.400 on the shoulder and sent him on his way. Unfortunately 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.040 for the murderers, his way took him right back to 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:04.160 the police station, where he immediately told his supervisors. Word 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:06.880 flashed up the chain of command. By eight o'clock the 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.480 next morning, the report already had reached the Minister of 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.640 the Interior. Grigory Rasputin had been killed, and in the 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.799 ranks of the Petrograd police they were celebrating his murder. 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:52.279 This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. The photographer's camera captured 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.640 the scene. A line of blood crossed the snowy courtyard 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.400 leading away from the side entrance. Investigators were trying to 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.120 argue their way inside the palace, but Felix was a 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.440 relative of the czar. Only orders from the Emperor himself 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.359 could authorize a search, and someone was saying that the 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:10.960 blood they could see spilled on the ground came from 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.640 the family dog, since one of the servants had shot 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:18.000 it in the courtyard in the dark hours of the morning. Eventually, though, 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.160 the police were let into the palace, but they were 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:22.800 guided from room to room and not allowed to wander 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:26.120 on their own. They never saw the basement room. It 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:28.720 was true about the dog, though, Felix had ordered one 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.560 of his servants to shoot it outside and cover their tracks, 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.320 but the splashes of its blood over the trail in 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:36.960 the snow weren't enough to hide what had happened in 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:41.239 his house, not least because Paraskevitch had been telling people 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:43.839 their plans for weeks. He had been telling people in 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:48.000 the Russian government. He had been telling journalists Russia had 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:50.960 to be saved, so Rasputin had to go. It was 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.760 the message he had been spreading everywhere, and there was 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.200 no shortage of people eager to lap it up. Parashkevitch 0:05:57.320 --> 0:05:59.920 was always ready to clarify that he didn't think any 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.200 of the rumors were true, for example about Grigory and 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.880 the Empress being lovers, but it was bad enough that 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.440 people believed it was true, and so Perishkevich said he 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.839 was going to kill Resputin like a dog. Once. Perashkevich 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:15.760 had even met with the head of the British secret 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:20.720 intelligence in Petrograd and told him too. Apparently, Pershkevich even 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.520 laid out the details of the plan. The British agents 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.720 ignored the report only because he had already heard so 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.920 many stories from other people saying they would kill Rasputin 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:33.520 as well, and nothing had ever happened. Only this time 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.520 there was blood in the snow, and the very next day, 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.880 two workers who were crossing the Petrovsky Bridge saw blood 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:42.880 on the railing too, not to mention the rubber burned 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.880 into the road where a vehicle had sped away. When 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:48.320 a watchman arrived to check out their reports, he went 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.960 down onto the ice under the bridge, and there he 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.880 spotted a boot that had been carelessly thrown from above 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:57.520 and missed the hole in the ice. When he reported 0:06:57.520 --> 0:06:59.640 it to the police, it put them on the trail 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.680 of grig Cory's body. Things that were moving fast now. 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.480 By midday on December seventeenth, the word was spread wide. 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:11.400 Prince Felix Yusupov, together with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, Vladimir 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:16.840 Perishkevitch and other conspirators, had murdered Grigory Rasputin. The French 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:20.280 Foreign Minister was reporting it back across Europe. The Stock 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.480 Exchange Gazette was running the story. The news was out. 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:28.160 All attempts to do things quietly had failed. The murderers 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:30.760 gathered to plot their next move. They agreed to keep 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:32.880 up the story about the dog for as long as 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.200 they could. No one would admit to the truth that 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.320 was now being published across Russia, but they knew that 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:41.360 they would only last so long, so they agreed they 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:45.400 needed to run. Pershkevitch didn't waste any time. He hopped 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.320 on a hospital train and raced toward the Romanian front. 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.520 Felix Yusupov, though, wasn't so quick to turn tail. That night, 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.840 he says he went to dinner with a British officer 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:57.640 and fielded phone calls from friends who are rushing to 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.600 congratulate him. Not that we can take his word for it, 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.160 but there's no doubt Felix was proud of himself and 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:08.320 he wanted to bask. After all, no authority below the 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:12.080 Tsar could touch him. Not far off, though, the news 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:15.440 was landing very differently in a different palace. Like she 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.560 did so many other times, Alexandra put pen to paper 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.480 and wrote to Nicholas. She told him what she knew. 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:26.440 That Grigory was missing, that Perishkevitch was crowing about killing Rasputin, 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:30.240 that Felix was denying it, but that he was definitely involved. 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:34.200 She wrote, I cannot believe that our friend has been killed. 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:39.160 God have mercy. In the following days, people who saw 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:43.120 Alexandra said it was clear she was in anguish. She 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.480 ordered that Felix Usupaf was forbidden to leave the capital. 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.760 She placed the Tsar's cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri, under house arrest. 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.400 She worried, she raged, and she refused to be swayed 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.079 by the excuses and the lies they tried to send her. 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.960 She was cut to the core, especially when there was 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.640 no more denying the truth. In the early morning hours 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.720 of Monday, December nineteen, a small piece of fabric was 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.839 spotted downstream from the bridge, poking up through a crack 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.080 in the surface of the frozen river. Divers broke through, 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.680 and sure enough, right there, stuck to the underside of 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:21.040 the ice was Grigory rest Mutant's body. They lowered hooks 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:25.320 and dragged him from the water. A photographer's camera captured 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:28.720 the scene. It was a stunning image rast mutants body 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:31.400 on its back, dragged through the snow on a plank 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.200 of wood. His legs are still wrapped in the cloth 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:36.920 from the yusup off palace, and his ankles are still 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.680 bound by a length of chain. His frozen beard points 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.760 up towards the sky, and his arms are spread wide. 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.120 They brought Maria resputant to the river. At the end 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:55.520 of the bridge was a small hut where Maria and 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:58.720 her sister were lead Inside. There they were shown a 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:02.360 body a It was horrible. Maria remembered that the face 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.400 was swollen and the hair was thick with clots of blood, 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.120 but the debris had been cleaned off his features and 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:11.040 Maria could see that it was her father. She said 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.120 his clothes were frozen, stiff, and they peeled and flaked 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:18.760 like sheets of micah. The investigators took note of the details. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:20.800 It was clear that whatever weights were tied to the 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.880 body had slipped away, and Rasputant had not sunk when 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.640 he hit the water. What's more, the fur coat that 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:28.959 was thrown into the water with the body had trapped 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:32.360 air and acted as a float. The gold cross still 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.000 clung to his chest over the blue silk shirt he 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.880 had gotten as a gift from Alexandra. The thin twine 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:42.200 that had tied his wrists had obviously snapped. Perhaps it 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:44.280 was when he hit the water, or maybe it was 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.160 during the fall when the body was flung over the rail. 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:49.760 The head seemed to have struck one of the supports 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.720 on the way down, but there was no doubt this 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:56.760 was Rasputant's body, and along with everything else, the bullet 0:10:56.800 --> 0:11:00.199 holes puncturing his head and chest told the tail this 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.120 was murder. The next thing they needed, without a minute 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:07.880 of delay, was an autopsy. Afraid of what might happen 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.160 if his followers knew his body was in the city, 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.920 the authorities bustled the girls away and packed resputants corps 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.400 for travel. His arms frozen wide in the icy river, 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.839 and rigor Mortis refused to fit into a coffin, so 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.480 in an open topped wooden box, Grigory's body was carried 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.160 seven kilometers outside the city limits to the Chessmenski Palace. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.600 The roads were blocked, guards were set, and the body 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.880 was warmed up to thaw. The man called in for 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:39.239 the work was Petrograd's senior autopsy surgeon, Dr. Dmitri Kosorotov, 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.360 known as one of the leading forensic experts in Russia. 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.120 He was the man trusted to write manuals on forensic 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.600 medicine and lecture at the Military Medical Academy. But it 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:51.559 didn't take his fine tuned expertise to detect the cloud 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.520 of alcohol around the body. Resputants corpse, he said, smelled 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.440 like Kognak. There was a challenge of determining what had 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:01.800 been done to the body after death, where it was 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.680 smashed against the bridge supports and gashed open by the 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.120 edge of the river ice. And there was the challenge 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.640 of tracing the three bullet wounds that Dr Kosrotov identified 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.559 and the shot to Grigory's forehead he determined had been 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:17.080 close enough to leave powder residue. As he tallied up 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:19.720 the injuries and started to come to a determination of 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.160 what had killed the Siberian holy Man, Dr Kosotov drew 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.120 a picture that was sound and reasonable and based on 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.920 the evidence in front of him. Unfortunately, that picture is 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:32.319 not the one that the world would see. In fact, 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.960 the story of Resputant's death was already being told without 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:39.680 the benefit of knowing what the autopsy found. Void of evidence, 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:43.480 these stories were free to include whatever speculations seemed best 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.280 to fit the legends and rumors already swirling about Grigory's 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.200 life and death. And that was all before Felix Yusupov's 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.839 own myth making through a shroud over Resputant's corpse, one 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.680 that would hide the realities from our eyes for generations. 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.760 Here's historian Douglas Smith to help us unravel the legend. 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:07.000 So much of the myth of resputants murder, which is 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.880 something that everybody seems to know in some sort of detail, 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:16.520 comes from your supers memoirs. You supers memoirs are sort 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.600 of network of lies, the tissue of have truths and 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.319 an attempt to bade himself in glory, if you will, 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:29.160 for a truly horrible deed. He depicts himself, he soup 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:32.200 of does as like sort of Sat Michael slaying the dragon. 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.960 He depicts Resputin as a man that was impossible to kill, um, 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.840 that he had sort of superhuman power in him, that 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.800 he was Satan himself, And in fact, in the various 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.880 versions of the memoirs that you super frights he and 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:54.960 each one exaggerates the impossibility of killing Rasputin with each 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.560 retelling of the tale. Felix didn't want to think of 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.880 himself as a cold blood murderer. He certainly didn't want 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.480 others to think of himself that way. He and his 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.520 accomplices needed to believe that they were something more, and 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.120 so the story that they told grew from the cold 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:16.160 realities into something far more sinister, spiritual, legendary, but completely false. 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.040 With each retelling of the tale, that you know, they 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:23.360 beat him, they poisoned him, they shoot him, he refuses 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.200 to die, that they dump him in a hole in 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:29.480 an icy branch of the Nieva River, and even then 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.560 he still breathes his last and tries to make the 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:35.960 sign of the cross, and eventually only dies of drowning. 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.760 I mean, this is all just a pack of lies 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.800 that you Soup have told to make himself feel better, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:47.240 to aggrandize himself, and quite frankly, to earn money, because 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.000 he was now living in in exile after the Revolution 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.080 in Europe and had no way to make a living 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.520 other than to keep retelling the story of how he 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.760 had killed Resputant. When Dr Kosaratop opened the body, he 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.480 own no water in the lungs. Grigory didn't drown. He 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:06.560 was dead before he hit the water. But that's just 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:10.000 one aspect of Felix's myth, dissolved by the findings of 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.440 the autopsy. Chief among the details that Felix would build 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.080 his story on was the thing that he couldn't shake 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.680 that Grigory had swallowed an army's worth of cyanide that 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:24.400 night and remained unscathed. As Felix told the story, he 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:27.360 had added massive doses to the cakes and wine, and 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.640 Rasputant had taken it all. As far as he was concerned, 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.480 some malignant spiritual energy had preserved him from its effects. 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:36.920 That would become one of the key details of the 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:39.800 Resputant myth that would be told and retold down the 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:43.800 generations up to today. But traces of cyanide is something 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.080 Dr Kassarotov would have been able to spot right away. 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:50.040 In fact, he didn't find any food in Grigory's stomach 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.680 at all, no cakes poisoned or not, And if there 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.760 had been something put in Rasputant's drink, it couldn't have 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.640 been a lethal dose of cyanide. The body would have 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.880 given off a signature scent of almonds, among other tell 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:07.160 tale effects, but the autopsy report noted nothing of the kind. 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.560 Maybe Felix was telling outright lies about the attempt to 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.960 poison Grigory, But the other possibility is that they dosed 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.760 him with something other than cyanide without knowing it. Some 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.320 historians think it was just an inert powder substituted along 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.040 the way, perhaps by someone with a pang of conscience. 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.160 Felix and his friends were simply too ignorant to know 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.360 what they had wasn't the real deal. It wasn't that 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:35.080 Grigory had miraculously survived poisoning. It was simply that his 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.480 murderers bungled just about every part of their attempt to 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:42.680 kill him. Dr Kosaratov found when he examined the body 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:47.080 that the killing looked messy, but fairly ordinary, fairly easy, 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:51.600 that is, to explain an ultimate fact. There was probably 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.920 never any poison, And in point of fact, we know 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:59.160 from photographs taken at the autopsy of Resputent's body after 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.600 it was pulled from the ice, that he was shot 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:05.119 three times at close range, twice in the torso, and 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:08.720 a third and final time at point blank rage, right 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.120 into the middle of his forehead. Rasputin was more than 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:16.040 dead when they finally dumped his body into the icy river. 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.880 Gregory had been shot once through the stomach and liver, 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.320 He had been shot again in the back, and the 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.879 bullet pierced his kidney and lodged against his spine. Either 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.639 one of those could have killed him given enough time, 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.159 and the shot to his head was certainly enough to 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:35.920 end his life. But generations of historians, investigators, and writers 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.560 have had to cut through Felix Yusupov's tall tales to 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:43.760 get at the truth. The man was mortal with a 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:52.800 legend has proved impossible to kill. The rumors spread Grigory 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:57.280 Rasputant was protected from poison by dark spiritual powers. We 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.720 know that's false, but it was so much more fun 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:05.400 to leave it. Resputant was nearly immortal and survived being shot, beaten, stabbed, 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.680 and poisoned, only to be killed by the rivers of Russia. 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:12.520 That's false too, but there's a sick pleasure in recounting 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.760 the amount of punishment one body could absorb before nature 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:18.440 steps in to finish the job. And then, of course, 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:21.119 there's the story that comes from the most salacious rumors 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.800 about Grigory's sexual conquests and the gossip that he was, 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:28.280 as we've all heard, the lover of the Russian Zarina. 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.000 It's those earlier stories that gave rise to the idea 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:34.880 that Felix or someone among the killers cut off Resputant's 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:39.160 penis and preserved it. After all, it had grown its 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.400 own legends, all blown out of proportion with each time 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:45.159 they were repeated. It was even enough for collectors and 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:47.560 museums to claim over the years that they have its 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.680 inhuman mass pickled in brine. While it's unbelievable size makes 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.879 it a marvel to visitors today, and what could tickle 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:58.240 fancies more than a story like that. Here's the thing, though, 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:04.280 it's unbelievable, because it's not true. Gregory's body was intact 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.320 at the autopsy, but as with so many other parts 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:09.800 of Rasputant's life, the truth never got in the way 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.960 of a juicy anecdote. The truth about his exploits was 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:15.840 far from mystical. As we know by now, he was 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:18.800 simply a man who used his position and his preaching 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.119 to take sexual advantage of women who were vulnerable. But 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:26.640 that truth doesn't lend itself to playful retellings. In reality, 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.760 Gregory's whole corpse was embalmed, dressed in white silk, and 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.840 sealed in a zinc coffin. Before the lid was closed, 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.920 he was joined by some dried flowers and an icon. 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.439 It was far quieter than the storytellers would have us believe. 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.360 Also far quieter was the Royal household. Nicholas arrived back 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:49.440 in Petrograd on Monday, December. The year nineteen sixteen was 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.720 coming to a close on a sober note for the 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:55.679 Imperial household. They were shaken, but one attendant noted that 0:19:55.720 --> 0:20:00.119 the name Grigory Rasputin was never spoken that night. In 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.119 the following days, though they were all asking what should 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.280 be done with the holy man's body. Alexandra started putting 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.960 the question to her advisers directly, the Palace commandant suggested 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.240 that it be shipped back to Siberia. Other officials responded 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:15.640 with worry. What if the news got out that rest 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.680 Mutant's corpse was traveling by train, there might be a 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.720 violent demonstration on the way. Even with his death, the 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:26.400 hatred of Gregory Resputant had not dissipated. That was clear 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.200 to see for just about everyone, which is also why 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.199 they started to worry when Alexandra insisted that he be 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.919 buried nearby. In fact, Resputant had participated in laying the 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.480 cornerstone of a new church at Alexander Park, near the 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:44.080 Imperial residence. Alexandra wanted him there, so in the early 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.560 morning of Wednesday, December one, soldiers began to dig a 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.719 shallow grave in the foundations of the church. A police 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.320 fan arrived with its heavy burden. By the time the 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.719 Imperial family followed, the Zinc coffin was already in the ground. 0:20:57.119 --> 0:21:00.399 Only a few people were there beyond Nicholas, alex Xandra, 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:03.760 their daughters, and a few of their household. No one 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:08.320 in Rasputant's family was consulted. Maria and her sister Varvara 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.200 had left the capital without an invitation to their own 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:15.320 father's burial. Alexandra and each of her daughters tossed a 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.520 white rose down into the hole in the earth. Nicholas 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:22.240 wrote a brief account in his diary, A sad spectacle, 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:26.000 he said. Then the imperial family went back to their 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:30.399 daily lives, meetings with officials, war briefings, and even with 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.840 Grigory now gone the revolving door of ministers, Alexandra and 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.520 her daughter's returned to nursing duties, attending hospital trains and 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:43.520 celebrating their care for Russia's wounded sons with ornate faberge eggs. 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:48.080 At the graveside, a military guard prohibited anyone from approaching. 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:52.320 For a while, Alexandra made daily visits, holding herself together. 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:55.479 There were times it seemed that she still believed she 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.480 was under her friend's protection. A few months later, she 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:00.960 wrote to Nicholas that even though God had sent them 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.879 a hard burden to bear, they should have courage. You 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.760 should wear the cross, she wrote. It seems she had 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:10.400 taken the one Resputin was wearing on his chest when 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:12.600 he died, and she had given it to the Czar. 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:15.560 The fact that nestling it against his heart failed to 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.200 save Grigory from the bullets that killed him didn't seem 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:21.240 to occur to Alexandra. She said it would help Nicholas 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:25.280 when he was making difficult decisions. Besides, she was praying 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.119 fervently for her husband, and she believed she wasn't the 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:31.640 only one. Another voice was still reaching out to God 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.080 on the Romanov's behalf. She told Nicholas that Resputin was 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:38.080 nearer to them than ever, even in the world beyond, 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:41.679 and Alexander was far from alone in that thought. It 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:44.399 was widely reported that the Minister of the Interior was 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:48.159 regularly attending seances. They whispered that he was always trying 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:50.600 to summon rest Sputin and to get advice from the 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:54.040 murdered peasant from beyond the grave. As the days went by, 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:57.199 other government officials started to observe that he attended to 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.159 his duties less and less and spent his time at 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.880 the Imperial Palace more and more. His motives, though, were 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:07.160 more than suspicious, especially when he decided to take things 0:23:07.240 --> 0:23:10.399 up a notch. He started telling Alexander that he wasn't 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.679 just getting messages from Rasputin. No, he said that the 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:16.919 spirit of Rasputin had come back from the other side 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:26.960 and taken up residence inside a new body. With Rasputin dead, 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.680 Russia was saved. At least that's what the killers hoped. 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:34.119 The dark forces that affected the Empire through their Siberian 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:37.520 puppet had that tool ripped from their hands, the Czar's 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:40.399