GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA AND ANNA ANDERSON

DNA Proves What Facial Features Experts Already Knew

by Joelle Steele

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. She was born in 1901 and was 17 years old on July 17, 1918 when she was murdered, along with the other members of her family, by a firing squad of Russian Bolshevik secret police. From the time of her death there were rumors that Anastasia had escaped this mass execution. In 1991, the rumors escalated when the remains of the Romanovs were revealed to have been found ten years earlier in a mass grave near Yekaterinburg (Ekaterinburg), Russia, and one of the sisters (either Anastasia or a sister) and the only brother, Alexei Nikolaevich, were not in that grave. But in 2007, that mystery was solved. Remains found near the mass grave were DNA tested and confirmed to be those of the missing Romanov siblings.

THE GREAT IMPOSTER

Over the years, a variety of women claimed to have been Anastasia, but the best-known imposter was known as Anna Anderson. Fished out of a Berlin canal and placed in a mental hospital, she came to the public attention in the early 1920s when she claimed she had pretended to die in the Romanov execution and was rescued by a sympathetic guard who saw she was still alive. Anderson went on to pursue, but did not win, a 32-year long legal battle in the German courts to prove her identity as Anastasia. While there were some alleged physical resemblances between Anderson and the young tsarina, such as scars, severe bunions, and a foot deformity, DNA testing in 1994 revealed Anderson to be unrelated to the Romanovs and to be instead a match for a missing Polish woman, Franziska Schanzkowska.

EARS COMPARED

And then we have the ears ... If you've read my other articles, you know that the first thing I look at when comparing faces is the ears. Like bones, ears never lie! They are entirely unique to each person. They were used in identifying people long before fingerprinting was discovered. They don't change with age or facial expression. Anastasia's ear is on the left, and Anderson's is on the right. It is very easy to see, without any skill whatsoever, that nothing about their ears is the same. There are about 25  distinct ear traits that can be compared, and not a single one of them is a match.

ABOVE: The ear of Anastasia Romanov (left) and the ear of Anna Anderson, an Anastasia imposter (right). DNA ultimately proved what facial features analysts already knew, that Anderson was not Anastasia.

FACIAL FEATURES COMPARED

Facial features experts had long known that Anderson was not a match for Anastasia. Here is the photographic evidence that ruled the two women out as a match long before DNA testing entered the picture.

Anastasia (above)

Anna Anderson (above)

The top two photos illustrate how different the faces are shaped. This is so important to note, because the bones of the skull form the underlying structure of every face and the placement of all the features on the face. For any two images to be of the same person, that bone structure must match 100%. But the bone structure doesn't match at all. Anastasia's face is very clearly an oval while Anderson's is quite obviously squared, particularly in the jaw line.

The facial features themselves are not a match. Anastasia's eyes are closer together (the placement of the orbits or eye sockets); and her nose is different as you can see in the profiles, with the one on the left a blurry enlargement that still manages to show the variation in shape. And most striking are the differences in their mouths. Anastasia has a very sharply defined philtrum, the little furrow that runs vertically between the base of the nose and the crista philtri (the "points" of the upper lip). Anderson's philtrum is practically invisible and is not as deeply etched in any of her other photos either. Anastasia has a small, almost cupid-like mouth with defined crista philtri on the upper lip. Anderson's mouth is overly large and full by comparison with no visible points on the upper lip. The proportions of the mouth sizes to the faces alone is more than enough to rule out a match between these two women.

SUMMARY

It can be so tempting to believe a lie rather than to accept the truth. For years, experts in facial features analysis agreed that Anna Anderson was not the young Anastasia. But, despite photographic evidence to the contrary, movies were produced and books were written about Anna Anderson being Anastasia, and she duped a great many people along the way. Her story was evidently far more compelling than the real tragedy of the Romanovs.