Within a few minutes of their entering the room, all was over. No time was to be lost in removing traces of the crime. The floors and walls had to be washed quickly and the bodies sent away. Daylight would soon appear. There was a long way to go through the city. Hardened and ruthless, secure in the impunity of murder under the Soviet system, Yurovsky and his associates were none the less hurrying desperately. They knew that the arrangements for “executing” the Romanovs could not be regarded as a trial, nor would the people approve the deed. And so like common murderers, they were desperately anxious to get rid of the corpses. Here Ermakov and Vaganov became invaluable. The evidence of three eye-witnesses is given below, namely of Medvedev, one of the actual murderers, of Yakimov, who was present at the shooting, and of a Red Guard named Proskuriakov, who helped to remove traces of the murder. The necessary comments of the investigating magistrate accompany the depositions so that the reader is able to study them in their true perspective. Medvedev told his wife all about it directly after the murder. He did not conceal the fact that he himself had fired his revolver at the Romanovs. He even emphasised his active complicity, boasting that he was the only Russian “workman” who had taken part in the shooting, and that all the others, besides Yurovsky and his assistants, were “not ours”--_i.e._, foreigners. Medvedev was caught at Perm while trying to blow up the bridge over the Kama to cover the retreat of the Red Army. He confirmed all the statements that he had made to his wife except in one particular: he denied having stated that he had himself done the shooting. It is a customary reservation in the case of all who take part in a joint and prearranged murder. The witness testifies to the fact of the murder and names the actual murderers, but persists in declaring that he himself did not do the killing, although he admitted to holding a revolver in his hand at the time of the shooting. To divert the evidence from himself he had to invent an _alibi_. Hear what he says in his signed deposition:--