The biggest Mystery today which surrounds the end times of the Imperial Romanov family is the whereabouts of the bodies of Grand Duke Michael Romanov and his faithful British secretary Nicholas Johnson.

It is well known what happened to the unfortunate Romanovs who did not escape Russia during that time of retribution and murder by the Bolsheviks, and more so the fate and discovery of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinburg.  But Grand Duke Michael Romanov is a pure mystery and is shrouded in the probability that he was not assassinated and indeed Lenin let it be known shortly after the night of 13th. June 1918 that he had in fact escaped from Perm.

Sightings of him from time to time were common place and were widely reported in Russian and world newspapers.  He was seen then as a major threat to the Bolshevik cause as it was regularly reported that he was heading up armies of sorts to combine and defeat in battle the Bolsheviks and the rising communist power base.

Eventually over a period od 2/3 years after the alleged assassination attempt, Lenin announced that Grand Duke Michael was dead and had been assassinated at a forest clearing in Perm.  This was historically recorded as fact by a several Bolshevik thugs who claimed to have carried out that mission on the orders of the local Cheka and the assumed authority of Lenin.

Because Michael had not been seen for a long period of time, it eventually wore down his wife Natasha and their son George to a point where they had to finally admit that he was very likely dead.

However, the story does not end there as a search for the bodies was conducted in 2013, 2014 and 2015, by an international team of investigators carrying specialist equipment and sniffer dogs to determine a search in the hope of success.  They were in fact the same team who had assisted in the discovery of the bodies of Tsar Nicholas and his family some years earlier, so they carried a fair amount of expertise.  The search was abandoned in 2016 and 2017, due to apparent failure. However, in 2018, there is now a Russian team working on site with the assistance of the FSB (ex KGB) and they seem confident of finding the bodies from further extensive research into Russian archives. You can read more about this recent search and the digging sites in Perm region hoping to find the remains of Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov and his secretary Nicholas Johnson: http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/excavations-underway-for-graves-of-murdered-tsar-for-a-day-grand-duke-mikhail-romanov-and-faithful-british-servant/

The story of the Two Lives of Grand Duke Michael promotes an entirely different theory of the whereabouts of the bodies of Michael and Johnson.  The storyline quite clearly announces that Michael was indeed shot 100-years ago but he survived and was rescued by Sidney Reilly the British MI6 `Ace of Spies`.  Through his head would, he was barely alive and taken to Archangel and then onto Great Britain to start a knew second life.  So, on this account then the body of Grand Duke Michael Romanov will never be found in Russia.  The second part of the trilogy now being written will show very clearly where his body lays today after his death in 1947.

Tragically Nicholas Johnson did die at the scene.  However, the novel goes on to tell that the body was removed from the assassination site and reburied several miles away from the murder scene.  The author goes on to describe the hidden whereabouts of a small horde of buried Faberge artefacts which were retrieved from his nationalised factory in St. Petersburg in 1918.

There are other accounts which have been put forward as to the reasons why the first attempts to discover the remains have never produced any positive results.  They range from their semi naked bodies being blood splattered, therefore could have been easily noticed by animals.  To support that theory from reports by the murderers in Russian archives, they were covered in twigs and branches, and then stripped of their clothes by the murderers (and Johnsons wrist watch was stolen) so they could show the evidence of the deed to the Cheka in Perm. The other theory as similarly reported from archives is that local Police, 24 hours after the event, are said to have taken the bodies and reburied them elsewhere, or even burned them to destroy any evidence.

It was essential that there should be no incriminating evidence in the same way as Nicholas II and his family were burned and treated with acid to remove any possible detection of them.

In that case however it was a bungled attempt and the bodies, whilst unrecognisable, were eventually discovered.  Through DNA testing it was revealed that the remains were as claimed.

To learn more about The Two Lives Of Grand Duke Michael Romanov, see the rest of the website (https://tsar-michael-romanov.com/) where you can also have a preview of some of the chapters.