The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (40 page)

When Crawford’s draft order arrived, Schweitzer was surprised to see that it contained a major shift in his opponents’ argument. Previously, Andrews & Kurth, accepting Dr. Maples’ opinion, had condemned Peter Gill’s laboratory as a place at which DNA evidence had possibly been contaminated and which offered only “second-best scientific testing.” Crawford’s draft proposed the judge direct that the tissue be made available to
both
Dr. Gill and Dr. King. Nevertheless, Schweitzer was irritated. He disliked what he regarded as Crawford’s arrogant detailing of the scientific procedures to be followed; he disliked her insistence that both King and Gill work without reimbursement (Schweitzer knew that the British Forensic Science Service would not work without a fee); and he insisted that each of the scientists be free to publish their results as soon as they had been obtained.

Schweitzer wrote to the hospital’s attorneys, “These documents are ample proof that we should first meet and confer as directed by the court and not be limited by an attempt by Counsellor Crawford to control the agenda by ‘drafts’ or otherwise.” The day after Christmas, Schweitzer, increasingly angry, returned to his fax machine and informed the hospital’s lawyers that “Counsellor Crawford has disdained our requests to meet as instructed and has elected to prepare and circulate a draft of what she purports to be an ‘order.’ ” Schweitzer added that he now wished to go ahead and meet with the hospital’s attorneys, “with Counsellor Crawford to attend or not as she wishes.”

This got Lindsey Crawford’s attention. She scheduled a conference of all the attorneys involved to discuss a response to Judge Swett’s letter. The time was January 10, 1994; the place, the Charlottesville office of Page Williams, the local lawyer whom Andrews & Kurth had brought into the case. The Schweitzers, learning that bad weather was predicted for the tenth, drove down the night before. On the afternoon of the tenth, as the meeting began, the Schweitzers, Page Williams, and hospital attorney Matthew Murray were there,
but Lindsey Crawford, who had called the meeting, was not. The weather was bad; it was impossible for her to drive, Williams explained. The weather, however, did not prevent the appearance of another figure who drove that day from Washington to Charlottesville.

As the attorneys were distributing copies of proposed consent orders to regulate distribution of the tissue, Dr. Willi Korte walked into the room. Schweitzer asked why Korte was present. Williams announced that Korte was there “to represent the Russian Nobility Association.” Schweitzer demanded credentials or evidence of authority, and Korte pulled from his briefcase a document signed that day by Alexis Scherbatow. “I hereby request and authorize Willi Korte to assist the RNA and its lawyers in the litigation,” the document read. “The authority granted herein authorizes Dr. Korte to work with the association’s attorneys in the U.S. in conducting negotiations, reviewing documents, providing advice and otherwise taking any necessary and appropriate steps to advance the interests of the Association in these matters.”

As the litigation progressed, Richard Schweitzer had a growing sense that he was battling multiple opponents, one standing behind another. For months, he had been aware of the presence of Dr. Willi Korte, but until January 10, he had not seen this antagonist in person. Even then, Schweitzer did not know much about him. Julian Nott, a British filmmaker working on a television documentary about Anastasia, learned more. “Korte is deliberately mysterious,” Nott said a few weeks after Schweitzer’s confrontation with him. “He won’t reveal much about himself or who is paying him. He’s German, but he lives near Washington, D.C. He’s a very good researcher. His normal job is working undercover, tracking down stolen works of art. A few years ago, he helped locate the missing Quedlinburg Treasure, valued at $200 million to ‘priceless,’ stolen immediately after the Second World War by a U.S. Army lieutenant and hidden in Texas. In the Romanov case, I’ve bumped into him in Boston at the meeting of forensic scientists when Avdonin delivered his paper, at Harvard looking at the Sokolov documents, and in London.

“He’s been very persuasive with some of these families, particularly the Hessians, and he has roped them in to help him,” Nott continued. “He’s scared them by saying, ‘Look, do you know what’s happening here? Do you realize that Gleb Botkin’s son-in-law, Richard Schweitzer, and James Lovell are about to perpetrate this amazing fraud on you? And here I am. Why don’t you give me a helping hand?’

“My feeling is that Korte is the brains and driving force behind this,” Nott continued. “He’s very determined, and he just won’t compromise. He wants the whole damn thing; he doesn’t want Schweitzer involved at all. But what he’s really doing is simply making this thing the most terrible mess.”

Nott was wrong, however; Willi Korte was not the motive force behind Schweitzer’s opponents. By January, a figure behind Korte had begun to emerge. Maurice Philip Remy was a German television producer from Munich, interested, like Julian Nott, in doing a film on Anastasia. A few weeks later, Nott went to Munich to meet this competitor. “He’s a wealthy man from an aristocratic family and his television company is quite successful,” Nott declared on his return. “And he wants to solve seventy-six years of mystery on one television show. Unfortunately, he’s got more money than decency. He’s going after this, and he’s not going to let go. He confirmed that he’s behind Korte; he talked about Korte as if Korte was something worse than his butler: ‘I sent Korte to do this, I sent him to do that.’ Speaking of the Russian Nobility Association, he was much more careful. ‘I have great influence with them,’ he told me.”

Remy’s position on Anna Anderson was vehemently hostile. “He is not out to be objective,” Nott declared. “He intends to prove that she was an impostor. He is in alliance with the Hessians, to whom, all along, he has presented himself as contemptuous of Anna Anderson.” Remy also made a useful ally of Dr. von Berenberg-Gossler, the former attorney for Mountbatten and the Hessians, who, at eighty-five, still describes Anna Anderson as a “con artist” and a “phony.”

Gradually, it became clear to Nott that Remy’s objective was to gain complete control of the Anna Anderson case. He would block Richard and Marina Schweitzer, obtain the tissue for himself, have it
tested, then dominate the release of information. He and his agents fanned out across Europe, not only consulting archives, letters, films, home movies, recordings, interviews, and broadcasts but trying to buy them. “No ordinary television program or station would do that; it’s too expensive,” Nott said. “But Remy’s behind in this race so he wants to stop the Schweitzers and Gill, at least until he can arrange to have everything released simultaneously. The reason given would be that it’s good science; that all the materials should be available to everyone as a public record of scientists at work. The real reason would be commercial advantage. Meanwhile, he’s quietly attempting to tie up the world’s supply. Then he’ll go around to all the networks and stations in Europe and the world and try to presell a film with exclusive rights to the Anna Anderson DNA tests. He’ll tell them he owns Anna Anderson.”

In January 1994, yet another figure appeared in the case. This was Baron Ulrich von Gienanth, an eighty-six-year-old former German diplomat who had become a friend of Anna Anderson after the war and during her Unterlengenhardt years had managed her scanty finances. In a series of five wills written between 1949 and 1957, the claimant had named von Gienanth as one of her four executors. (The others, all dead by 1994, were her friend Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg and her Hamburg lawyers, Kurt Vermehren and Paul Leverkuehn.) On January 21, 1994, in Bad Liebenzell, near Stuttgart, where he lived, Baron von Gienanth signed a declaration that, as the only survivor of the original four, he accepted the function of executor of Anna Anderson’s last will.

Von Gienanth’s declaration, if accepted by the court, would change the entire complexion of the case. Marina Schweitzer’s petition to the court had been based on there being no blood relatives, no heirs, and no executors. Clearly, if he were validated as executor, von Gienanth’s status would supersede Schweitzer’s and, therewith, any role whatsoever for the intervenors, the Russian Nobility Association and Anastasia Kailing-Romanov. Nevertheless, Richard Schweitzer saw a legal opening and determined to exploit it. Learning that von
Gienanth wished to proceed with parallel testing of the tissue by Dr. Gill and Dr. King, Schweitzer petitioned the court to name the baron as the claimant’s personal representative in Virginia. Schweitzer knew that if the court agreed, his own nonadversarial suit against the hospital would be dismissed. But, along with this, the participation of Andrews & Kurth and Anastasia Kailing-Romanov would be terminated. Trying to prevent this, Andrews & Kurth filed a motion to block von Gienanth’s declaration from being presented to the court.

At this point, Schweitzer’s opponents either misunderstood his objective or underestimated his legal acumen. On February 22, Schweitzer, Matthew Murray, Lindsey Crawford, and Page Williams appeared before Judge Swett ostensibly so that the judge could set a date for a hearing on the unresolved issues raised in his December 7 letter: how the two sides were going to agree on which laboratories would test the tissue and how they should deal with the publicity attending the results. The judge looked down and said, “Have you all agreed on an order?” Schweitzer said simply, “No.” The judge stared at the lawyers in front of him. Then Murray said, “Your Honor, we really think that the first hearing ought to be over evidence we have received that there is someone [von Gienanth] who meets the requirements of the statute. If this other hearing can be held, anything else would be moot. I’d like to show you this request we have received from the man who purports to be the executor.”

“Has that man filed any pleadings in this case?” the judge asked.

“No,” said Murray.

“Is he a party in this case?”

“No,” said Murray. “But if he is who he claims to be, then the hospital is entitled to have this case dismissed so we can deal directly with this man.”

“Well, Mr. Murray,” said the judge, “what the hospital should do is file a motion to dismiss and attach these new documents as evidence in support. This court can’t rule because we don’t have any motion to dismiss.”

Here, Schweitzer spoke up. “Your Honor, there is a prayer to dismiss. I filed it in response to the last pleading of the Russian Nobility Association.”

The judge looked surprised. “Do you understand that if I dismiss the hospital, you’re in effect dismissing [the legal term is
nonsuiting
] your own case?” he asked. “Are you aware that you would be pleading a nonsuit?”

“Yes,” said Schweitzer.

“Are you willing to take a nonsuit?”

“Yes,” said Schweitzer.

“Counselor, do you plead nonsuit before this court?”

“Yes.”

“This case is dismissed,” said Judge Swett.

The other side was stunned. “Your Honor, we object to the entry of a dismissal because we are the intervenors,” protested Lindsey Crawford. “We have an interest and a claim on this tissue.”

“Well, if you have a claim or interest in the tissue, you can bring your own lawsuit”—Judge Swett paused—“if you have standing.” When he heard this, Richard Schweitzer, who for months had been arguing the Russian Nobility Association’s lack of standing, wanted to cheer.

As a result of this hearing and the entry of Judge Swett’s dismissal order on March 1, Baron von Gienanth, temporarily at least, was in control of the tissue. He immediately wrote to Martha Jefferson Hospital, asking that it make the tissue available to Dr. Gill so that he could carry out the Schweitzers’ commission. Von Gienanth also wrote to Lindsey Crawford urging an agreement that would make the same tissue available to Dr. King. Given this fact, the subsequent behavior of Andrews & Kurth was strange. Even as the baron was offering to do exactly what Lindsey Crawford had proposed in her draft consent order, she was vigorously attempting to undermine his credentials.

Andrews & Kurth retained counsel in Germany and learned that Anna Anderson’s will had never been probated there because, at the time of her death, she did not live or own property in that country. Further, the will authorized “any two of my executors” to act, and—Crawford subsequently told Page Williams—since only one was still alive, the will “has not and cannot be probated under German law … [and] probably cannot be probated in Virginia.” This led
Williams to inform Matthew Murray that, in order for Baron von Gienanth to be appointed, he would “have to appear in person … in order to probate the will and be qualified as executor.” In fact, von Gienanth, elderly and deaf, was unwilling to fly.