At Ekaterinburg, on the night of July 16, 1918, the Imperial family and their faithful attendants--eleven persons in all--were led into a small room in the house where they had been imprisoned and shot to death with revolvers. There had been no trial of any kind. Before their death, the captives were subjected to ill-treatment, amounting to horrible torture, mental if not physical. After death, the bodies were taken to the woods and completely destroyed. These acts had been premeditated and the murders elaborately prepared. The actual arrangements for the crime began some weeks before the advent of anti-Bolshevist forces. Neither fear of rescue by the Whites nor plots to release the captives--the existence of which is doubtful--can be reasonably alleged in explanation of the slaughter. The official statement issued by the Moscow Government on July 20--four days afterwards--spoke of the shooting of Nicholas as an act of necessity, but categorically affirmed that the ex-Empress and the children had been conveyed out of the city. These deliberately concocted reports of the safe removal of the family were intended to circumvent any investigation--and did so at first. It is established beyond doubt that the ex-Tsar fell a victim to his loyalty. He had refused offers from the enemies of Russia’s Allies, proposing that he should endorse the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.[2] Attempts to inveigle him into an unholy alliance undoubtedly preceded the murder. All the Romanovs who died violent deaths were, like the Tsar, inconvenient to German as well as to Internationalist plans. So many tales have been circulated regarding the fate of the Romanovs, in most cases without the slightest approach to the truth, that I consider myself bound to relate the circumstances which have (1) placed in my possession the complete history and documents of the case; and (2) imposed upon me a moral obligation to publish them to the world.