Grand Duke Dimitri Constantinovich of Russia - Murder

Murder

There are no eyewitness accounts of the execution. What is known is based on versions that are derived from rumors and second hand information. They vary on the details, some have an overly dramatic air about them, but they all have a similar ring.

At 11:30 pm on the night of 27–28 January, guards awoke Grand Dukes Dimitri Constantinovich, and Nicholas Mikhailovich and George Mikhailovich, in their cells at Spalernaia prison, telling them that they were going to be moved and they had to pack their belongings. They initially assumed that they were going to be transported to Moscow. Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich even thought that they might set free, but his brother George said that it was more likely; they were heading to another place to be shot. The Grand Dukes had an ominous hint of what was going to happen to them, when at the time of departure, they were told to leave their luggage.

The grand dukes were taken outside and loaded into a truck that already held four common criminals and six red Guardsmen. At 1:20 am on 28 January they left the prison. They drove towards the river by the fields of Mars, where the truck stalled. While the driver was trying to restart it, one of the convicts tried to run and was shot in the back as he fled. The truck eventually began running again, and they drove to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. The prisoners were roughly pushed from the truck into the Trubetskoy bastion. They were told to remove their shirts and coats, despite the fact that it was almost twenty degrees below zero. By then they had no doubt what was about to occur and the Grand Dukes embraced each other for the last time.

Some different soldiers appeared carrying another person, whom the grand dukes finally recognized as their cousin Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich. They were then each escorted arm in arm with a soldier on each side towards a trench that had been dug in the courtyard. As they passed the cathedral of St Peter and St Paul were their ancestors were buried, the Grand Dukes crossed themselves. The prisoners were lined up before the ditch, in which there were already thirteen bodies, Nicholas Mikahilovich who had been carrying his cat handed it to a soldier asking him to look after it. All of the grand dukes faced death with the greatest courage. George and Dimitri prayed quietly, Dimitri for the forgiveness of his murderers “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” seemed to be his last words. Paul, who was very sick, was shot on a stretcher. Grand Dukes Nicholas, George and Dimitri were killed by the same blast. The fusillade of shots sent their bodies reeling into the trench.

Although the bodies of the other three grand dukes were thrown into a mass grave within the fortress, that of Dimitri Konstantinovich was secretly collected the next morning by his devoted former Adjutant, von Leiming, rolled up in a rug and taken away for a private burial in the garden of a house in Petrograd, where he remains to this day.