One of the most riveting detective stories of the last century supposedly ended when the Russian government declared that bones excavated from a Siberian mass grave belonged to the Romanovs, Russia's last royal family, who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918

One of the most riveting detective stories of the last century supposedly ended when the Russian government declared that bones excavated from a Siberian mass grave belonged to the Romanovs, Russia's last royal family, who were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Alec Knight, a researcher in the Stanford (Calif.) University lab of anthropological sciences, however, argues that previous DNA analyses of the purported Romanov remains--nine skeletons unearthed near Ekaterinburg--are invalid.

Knight bases his claim on molecular and forensic inconsistencies he sees in the original genetic tests.

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