Bullets, Baubles and Bones — Douglas Keister

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Mother Russia was in turmoil. After Tsar Nicolas abdicated in April, 1917 and the Bolsheviks seized power, jewels and gold bullion streamed out of Russia. In July, 1918, the tsar's family was gunned down, but it took more than one volley of bullets to kill all of them, since hundreds of jewels had been sewn into their clothing. What became of the jewels? In 1920, photographs were taken of the most important pieces of the Russian Crown jewels, but four of the pieces, a brooch, a necklace, a bracelet and a tiara were missing by 1923. What became of the jewelry? Acting of a tip, in late summer 1920, United States agents in Brooklyn, New York boarded a ship that had originated in Vladivostok, Russia in search of contraband. What they did not inspect, was the coffin merchant seaman who had died under mysterious circumstances off the coast of Gibraltar. That coffin, now buried in a cemetery in Brooklyn, was unearthed by United States Treasury Office agents in January 1923. It was supposedly lined with bags of the jewels. The head Treasury Department agent, William B. Williams, then left for Los Angeles. In 1993, during a funeral service in a cemetery in Hollywood, California, a man named Anatoly Romanov tossed a mysterious pouch into the open casket. That pouch had been spirited away from a prison camp in Siberia decades before. What was in the pouch? In 2009, a woman whose stepfather helped transport seven coffins full of jewels to the Gobi Desert claimed that a map to the jewels was buried in Hollywood Forever cemetery. Will the boneyards give up their secrets? Join Chick Corbett and Tom Twotrees as they try to solve the mystery of the missing Crown Jewels of Russia.