Sunday 8 October 2017

Death Of 'Mad Monk' Rasputin & Handgun Stopping Power:

The following sorry tale of the cyanide poisoning - prolonged clubbing, torture - shooting & drowning of mystic fraud Grigori Rasputin ("The Mad Monk") on 30 December 1916 should impress anyone interested in the "stopping power" of handguns .. it is compiled from a mix of official reports.
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- Having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Russian Emperor Tzar Nicholas II (Nicholas The Bloody) and his Tsarina had made him a threat to the Empire & Great Britain during WW I -  a group of nobles & British MI6 led by Prince Felix Yusupov (who used to wear his mother's gowns), the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and the right-wing politician  Vladimir Purishkevich concocted a plan to kill Rasputin after luring him to PrinceYusupov's Moika Palace where the UK's Embassy was also based.
Yusupov's Moika Palace, St. Petersburg.
(Upper Floors Were Used As The British Embassy).
Russian Tzar 'Nicholas The Bloody' Dressed As British Navy Admiral Of The Fleet.

Tzar Nicholas II with King George V (Queen Elizabeth's Grandfather) In Berlin 1913 - Both Wearing German Uniforms - Their Mothers Were Sisters.
Rasputin was murdered during the early morning on 30 December 1916, at the home of Prince Felix Yusupov. - He died of three gunshot wounds after cyanide poisoning - one shot was at close-range to his forehead (- followed by being heavily beaten, and then thrown into a frozen river.) The body was recovered with water-filled lungs indicating that he actually drowned.
Autopsy Photo Of Rasputin After His Supper With Russian Nobles & British Agents.
.. At around 2:30 am, Prince Yusupov excused himself to go upstairs, where his fellow conspirators were waiting.

Imperial Russian Nagant Revolver.
- Taking a revolverfrom Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, the weird transvestite Prince Yusupov returned to the basement and, referring to a crucifix that was in the room, told Rasputin that he'd "better look at the crucifix and say a prayer," then shot him once in the chest.
- Using Yusupov’s wife to lure Rasputin to their home, the conspirators had fed Rasputin wine and cakes laced with cyanide. Though it was reportedly enough poison to kill five men, Rasputin was unaffected.
The Basement at Yusupov's Palace.
- "Quick, quick, come down!" I cried, "He's still alive." He was crawling on hands and knees, grasping and roaring like a wounded animal. He gave a desperate leap and managed to reach the secret door which led into the courtyard. - Knowing that the door was locked, I waited on the landing above grasping my rubber club. To my horror I saw the door open and Rasputin disappear. Politician Purishkevich sprang after him. Two shots echoed through the night. I heard a third shot, then a fourth. I saw Rasputin totter and fall beside a heap of snow.

- And then after a time he rose and walked to the door. We were afraid that our work had been in vain. Suddenly, as he turned at the door, some one shot at him quickly.
With a frightful scream Rasputin whirled and fell, face down, on the floor. The others came bounding over to him and stood over his prostrate, writhing body.
It was suggested that two more shots be fired to make certain of his death, but one of those present said, "No, no; it is his last agony now."

-As he seemed to be disappearing in the darkness,  Purishkevich, who had been standing by, reached over and picked up an "American-made automatic revolver"? and fired two shots swiftly into his retreating figure.

 We heard him fall with a groan, and later when we approached the body he was very still and cold and - dead.


The first bullet passed through the stomach and the liver. This mortal blow had been shot from a distance of 20 centimeters. The wound on the right side, made at nearly exactly the same time as the first, was also mortal; it passed through the right kidney. The victim, at the time of the murder, was standing. When he was shot in the forehead, his body was already on the ground.

 He was shot several times, with three different weapons, with all the evidence suggesting that Rayner fired the final fatal shot, using his personal Webley Revolver. Rasputin's body was then driven to the river & dumped through an ice hole in the Neva.

  Lieutenant Oswald Theodore Rayner, a British Intelligence officer attached to the SIS station in St Petersburg burned all his papers before he died in 1961.


Professor Dmitri Kosorotov also examined the three bullet wounds in Rasputin's body. "The first has penetrated the left side of the chest and has gone through the stomach and liver," he wrote. "The second has entered into the right side of the back and gone through the kidney." Both of these would have inflicted terrible wounds. But the third bullet was the fatal shot. "It hit the victim on the forehead and penetrated into his brain." The corpses testicles were terribly crushed as by a flexible club.
It was most unfortunate that Professor Kosorotov's post-mortem was brought to an abrupt halt on the orders of the Tsarina. But the professor did have time to photograph the corpse and to inspect the bullet entry wounds. He noted that they "came from different caliber revolvers."
On the night of the murder, Yusupov was in possession of Grand Duke Dmitrii's Browning #, while Purishkevich had a Savage. Either of these weapons could have caused the wounds to Rasputin's liver and kidney. But the fatal gunshot wound to Rasputin's head was not caused by an automatic weapon: it could only have come from a revolver. Forensic scientists and ballistic experts agree that the grazing around the wound was consistent with that which is left by a lead, non-jacketed bullet fired at point-blank range.
They also agree that gun was almost certainly a British-made .455 Webley Revolver.
This was the favourite gun of Oswald Rayner, a close friend of Yusupov since the days when they had both studied at Oxford University.

 Sir Samuel Hoare – a future British Government minister wrote: "True to his nickname ('the rake') it was at an orgy that Rasputin met his death." Jeffery notes simply that Rasputin "was murdered in the early hours of the morning of Saturday 30 December". In his recently published book Six, the author and journalist Michael Smith refers to a number of claims that Rasputin was shot several times with three different weapons "with all the evidence suggesting that MI6 officer Oswald Rayner fired the fatal shot, using his personal Webley revolver".

Smith writes that the British theory "suffers from a number of problems," because it focuses on the gun that was used to shoot Rasputin, when neither the authorities at the time nor later forensic experts have "been able to say with any accuracy the caliber or make of gun that had been used in the murder,"

Stopping Power.

Prince Felix & Irina Yusupov fled the Russian February revolution (with their diamonds) on-board the British warship HMS Marlborough and lived in Paris & London (They owned chateau in France) until his death in 1967 (Irina in 1970).

Marty K.

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