of the daughters were still alive 10 minutes later, and were then bludgeoned with the butt of a rifle ending their lives. Later it was discovered that the bullets and bayonet stabs had been partially blocked by diamonds sewn into the children's clothing. Following the murder of the Romanov family, the Bolsheviks made several attempts to dispose of the bodies. Initially the bodies were to be thrown down a mineshaft, however the location of the disposal site was revealed to locals causing them to change the location. Instead of a burial, the Bolsheviks decided to burn two of the corpses of the former royal family. Burning the corpses proved to be difficult as it took significant time so the group resorted to disfiguring the pair with acid. In a rush, the Bolsheviks threw nine additional bodies into a grave and covered them with acid as well. The bodies of the Romanovs were then hidden and moved several times before being interred in an unmarked pit where they remained until the summer of 1979 when amateur enthusiasts disinterred and re-buried some of them, and then decided to conceal the find until the fall of communism. In 1991 the grave site was excavated and the bodies were given a state funeral under the nascent democracy of post-Soviet Russia, and several years later DNA and other forensic evidence was used by Russian and international scientists to make accurate identifications. The Ipatiev House has the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, where Mikhail Romanov had been offered the Russian Crown in 1613. The large memorial church "on the blood" has been built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood. Nicholas II and his family were proclaimed passion-bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. In Orthodoxy, a passion-bearer is a saint who was not killed because of his faith, like a martyr; but who died in'' faith at the hand of murderers. Remains of the Tsar In the mid-1970’s, Dr. Alexander Avdonin discovered the mass grave containing the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, and three of five Romanov children. The remains were found near Old Koptyaki road in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The grave contained 44 heavily degraded bone and tooth fragments. Avdonin released his discovery following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 prompting investigation by the Russian government. The area where the remains were found was near the