Defrosting Cold Cases

A medical team exhumed the body of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu last Wednesday to try to ensure that the remains are really his, Romanian state media reported. Ceausescu was executed on Christmas Day 1989 in the only post-Berlin-Wall-fall of a Communist regime in Eastern Europe that got really bloody. 

His remains were “quite well preserved,” his son-in-law Mircea Oprean told Romania’s Pro TV. The body of Ceausescu’s wife also was unearthed, but was not in such good condition, Oprean said.

Elena Ceausescu was executed by firing squad along with her husband in the last anti-Communist revolution of 1989 in Eastern Europe. Their children want to be sure that the bodies in the graves are those of the Ceausescus.

Many Romanians have doubted for years that the Ceausescus were really buried in the Ghencea military cemetery in west Bucharest. Still, they were shocked by the unannounced early-morning exhumation, part of a five-year lawsuit. Conspiracy theories have ranged from the graves being empty to the Ceausescus’ bodies being spirited off by supporters and replaced in their coffins by anonymous victims of Europe’s bloodiest anti-communist revolt. By the end of the day, one theory had been ruled out. “There weren’t empty graves, there were bodies,” Valentin Ceausescu, the couple’s 62-year-old son, told The Associated Press. He declined to participate in the exhumation.

A team of pathologists and cemetery officials hoisted the wooden caskets of Ceausescu and his wife out of their graves, took DNA samples from the corpses, then reburied the coffins. The process took over two hours. Officials say it will take up to six months to scientifically determine the true identity of the remains.

An AP reporter saw a dirty cloth being removed from Ceausescu’s alleged remains and what looked like a thick gray fur hat at one end of the coffin. The remains will undergo DNA testing by the Institute of Legal Medicine, Romania’s national news agency Agerpress reported.

Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania from 1965 until his death. He became infamous for his lavish lifestyle, and started to build a palace for himself in the 1980s with miles of marbles floors and thousands of crystal chandeliers. He was toppled by revolution, tried hastily and executed before the building was completed.

Valentin Ceausescu, his sister, and Oprean’s wife, Zoia Ceausescu, had sued the defense ministry in 2005, saying she had doubts that her parents were in the cemetery. She died of cancer in 2006 and Valentin took up the case. The couple’s other son Nicu died of cirrhosis in 1996 and is buried in the same Ghencea cemetery.

To be continued…

The article is here.

Categories: Forensics

Tags: DNA, Evidence, Forensics, Identification