A Modern Day Rasputin: June 2006

Have you ever heard the story of Grigori Rasputin, the Russian monk and confident to Tsar Nicholas II? Now a lot of this is just legend, and some of it appears to be heavily contested, but it still makes a damn interesting story. In 1914, Rasputin was stabbed in the abdomen resulting in what appeared to be a fatal wound, but he lived through it. That in itself is not so crazy. Maybe the wound wasn’t as bad as it appeared (his entrails were hanging out of his abdomen) or maybe he just had good surgeons. Regardless of why, there is no doubt that he did survive the attack. But the story gets really bizarre about two and a half years later.

On December 16, 1916, a group of Russian nobles had decided they could no longer tolerate Rasputin’s meddling in their political affairs. They came up with the ingenious idea of serving him wine and cakes that were heavily laced with cyanide. After realizing Rasputin was unaffected by the poison, one of the assassins shot him in the back with a revolver. The man left the room, but returned a short while later. Upon this man's return, Rasputin opened his eyes and the two began struggling with each other. During the fight, several others entered the room and Rasputin was shot by them another three times, including once in the forehead.

As the men approached the fallen body of Rasputin, he began to get up once more. At this point he was beaten, wrapped in a curtain, and thrown into the icy waters of the Neva River. Three days later, the mutilated body of Rasputin was pulled from the river. The body was no longer wrapped in the curtain and it appeared as though Rasputin had attempted to claw his way through the ice. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was hypothermia. And if all this isn't enough, it was also reported that as the body of Rasputin was being cremated (a full two months after he had been killed) he sat upright in the fire.

Poor Grigori, it only took about six attempts before he finally expired. I guess that compared to this, the story I’m going to tell here isn’t really that strange. Although the victim did survive, his attackers only tried to kill him twice. I was first alerted to what was going on that night around 11:00 in the evening, when several police and fire vehicles began descending upon Carl’s drug house just down the street from me. As the night turned into morning, there were police and fire officials still coming and going.

From my position, it was difficult to see exactly what was going on. The guys at Carl’s house would sometimes use a small portable grill to cook on when they were setting outside and the police seemed to be paying a lot of attention to the grill this night. Although I never did see any flames, and there did not appear to be any damage to the exterior of the house, I just assumed that the grill had started a small fire. But as the number of emergency vehicles in the area rapidly grew larger, it began to appear that something big was going on there. FWPD Chief Rusty York was at the scene, and I also think that I spotted FWFD Chief Tim Davies.

A while later, I spotted another noteworthy person. An older gentleman arrived and met with some of the police officers there. He was wearing a suit, and he did not appear to me to be a police officer. After talking with the police for a moment, he seated himself on a neighbor’s steps and was handed a stack of papers by one of the officers. He quickly flipped through them, adding his signature several times. I’m assuming he was a judge, and that he was authorizing the police to enter Carl’s house.

Although I don’t think it was necessary, the police were smart to take this step. I doubt that anyone could reasonably argue that they didn’t have cause for entering the house. There had been a fire and the front door was standing open. I think that they would probably be opening themselves up to charges of neglect if they didn’t investigate.
But the police knew what went on at Carl’s house. Although their cause for entering was not to search for drugs, I am certain that they had high expectations of finding that inside. So they covered their asses by getting a judge to authorize the entry. That way anything they happened to accidentally stumble across while performing a necessary safety check would most likely be admissible in court.

I watched through the windows as the police and fire officials made their way through the house. The crime scene vans were there, and I am sure that the police anticipated finding a lot of interesting substances inside that would be worthy of analyzing. Over the next few hours though, I watched as an untold number of police officers entered the house, and all seemed to emerge empty handed.

I have said before that it took me a long time to realize this house was just a front for drug activities as nobody actually lived there. But, on the other hand, they kept the house in good shape. The lawn was always cared for, and only a couple years prior they had re-sided it. With as much activity that sometimes went on there, and as good shape as they kept he house in, I really expected that it had something significant going on inside. But apparently they did not store their wares inside, as the house was very quickly back in operation. I guess that Officer Monroe’s “Summer Project” wasn’t working out so well.

It was the next day before I finally heard what had happened. A man had gasoline poured on him and was set on fire. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he also had a screwdriver plunged into his head. I actually had the occasion to meet Evan several months after this occurred and he appeared to have healed pretty well. I wonder if they fed him cyanide also. It was rumored that Evan had been attacked by one of his own brothers. He has three brothers, that I know of, one of them being Carl. But this doesn’t seem like Carl’s style to me, although I could be wrong.

I’ve often wondered about the intentions of some of the guys here. For as many gunshots as I have heard through the years, there have been relatively few people actually shot. Either they have really bad aim, or perhaps their goal is to just send a message rather than actually kill most of the time. But I’d say that when you set someone ablaze, and stab them in the head, the intent to kill is pretty obvious. The fact that someone did this to their own brother is even more telling about what we're dealing with here.

As a final note about Grigori Rasputin, it is said that he had predicted his own death. In a letter written shortly before his December murder he wrote:

I write and leave behind me this letter at Saint Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the Children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people. I go, and I feel in me the divine command to tell the Russian Tsar how he must live if I have disappeared. You must reflect and act prudently. Think of your safety and tell your relations that I have paid for them with my blood. I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family. -Grigori

It is interesting to note that it was the nobles who ended up killing Rasputin. Could it be just a coincidence that only two months later the tumultuous revolution began? This revolution ultimately ended the life of the Tsar and his family.

As I said, it was rumored that Evan's was attacked here by one of his own brothers. Had they succeeded in killing him, I wonder if they would have shared the curse of the Russian nobles. I hate to wish harm on anyone, but had Evan died that night, and the Warsaw dynasty fell, perhaps my own home would never have been attacked by them later in that same year. But then again, revolutions can be pretty unpredictable, so this might have actually resulted in something worse happening.