Banker From Florida Trying To Prove He Is Grandson Of Russia's Last Czar

NEW YORK - Russian courts will soon be pondering a case that history ultimately must decide: Could the hemophiliac son of the last czar somehow have survived a brutal execution in July 1918 and lived out his days peacefully as a schoolteacher in a tiny Russian village?

According to commonly accepted accounts, Czar Nicholas II, wife Alexandra, their five children and four servants were herded into a basement by their communist captors and shot, beaten and stabbed. The bodies were supposedly cut up, doused in acid, burned and buried.

The names of the killers are known, but the tale nonetheless remains one of the great mysteries of the century, in part because of persistent rumors that one or more in the party may have escaped.

When the grave site was finally located and excavated in 1991, it was found to contain the remains of only nine of the 11 victims. Forensic anthropologists identified the bones of the czar, the czarina, three daughters, the family doctor, a servant, a cook and a lady-in-waiting.

Those of Alexei, the hemophiliac 17-year-old heir to the throne, and one of his four sisters were missing. Russian scientists believe the missing daughter was the Grand Duchess Marie, 19. American experts who examined the remains believe it is the legendary Anastasia, 17.

Whichever is right, where are the two bodies? What happened to the brother and sister that summer night in the Urals, when the Bolsheviks decided to expunge the royal name Romanov from Russia's future?

Oleg Filatov, a middle-aged bank executive from Florida, thinks the young Alexei became his father, Vasily Filatov, who died in 1988.

As related in a new book, "The Escape of Alexei," written by three of Russia's leading genealogical scientists, Filatov maintains that the royal brother and sister were seriously wounded but did not die. Instead, they were rescued from the Bolshevik burial truck by sympathetic soldiers.

Alexei was taken to a rural village, he says, where peasants treated his wounds and his hemophilia with primitive medicines and brought him up as one of their own. It was not until decades later that Vasily Filatov, who became a village schoolteacher, told the true story of his past, Oleg Filatov said.

Filatov has asked a Russian federal court to rule on his claim, and has offered to take a DNA test. The court is expected to take up the case this year.

Historian Robert Massie, the author of "Nicholas and Alexandra," acknowledged that Oleg Filatov does resemble the late Nicholas II, in part because Oleg sports a similar regally trimmed beard and mustache. But he sees little resemblance between photographs of Oleg's father, Vasily, and either the czar or Alexei. A large part of Massie's doubt stems from the improbability of a hemophiliac, who bleeds profusely after even minor injuries, surviving his wounds.

Paul Gottlieb, president of Harry N. Abrams Inc., the publisher that is marketing "The Escape of Alexei" in the United States, noted, however, that Oleg Filatov and the three scientist authors of the book have produced a large body of corroborating evidence for Filatov's tale.

They offer the fact that the peasant schoolteacher had a wide command of foreign languages, an exhaustive knowledge of czarist palace life before the 1917 Russian Revolution and an uncannily detailed memory of the murders - details that were not revealed until secret archives were opened during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Oleg Filatov pursues his father's case. Even a positive DNA test result may not satisfy his detractors.