Rasputin’s Daughter Tells of Slaying

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 460, 15 September 1928, Page 27

Rasputin’s Daughter Tells of Slaying

(Continued from Page 26.)

“Youssoupoff, who was the richest man in Russia, had long wished to fcnow my father. He also was ill and hoped, or pretended to hope, to be cured by him. He finally came to my father and pretended to be friendly to him, as my poor parent never suspected any one. Several times I saw with my own eyes how, after my father had drunk, Youssoupoff took the glass and drank after him, thinking that he would be cured. The same thing happened on that awful night. He came in, ate and drank with us, and then asked my father to come to his house later on. My father promised and went away late in the evening. My sister, my brother and myself—my mother was away —went to bed early, as we never waited up for him. “In the morning I was awakened by a servant, who said that father had not come back. I rushed to the telephone and rang up Youssoupoff’s house. He himself replied and said that my father was not with him. A feeling had seized me that something terrible had happened, but 1 could not understand what. This feeling increased when a man brought me a snow boot, asking if it had not belonged to father. It had, but the second was missing, i rang up Tsarskoe Palace and asked for the Empress. 1 told her my anxiety, but when she heard that Rasputin, my father, had gone to Youssoupoff’s palace she said there was no reason to fear; he would be all right.

‘‘Then I rang up Protopopoff, the Minister of the Interior, a friend of the family. He told me the terrible news; father had been found under the ice of the Moika River, under the Petrovsky Bridge. I went and saw his body. It was tied with ropes, but as he was not yet dead when they threw him into the water, he had made an effort and torn the rope holding his arms. One of his hands was free, and his frozen and dead fingers were making the sign of the cross. Even at that moment he was praying. A few minutes later we were taken to the palace. It was the first time I had ever gone there. Distress and sorrow were reigning in the Czar’s family. When they saw me the Princesses began to cry. But the Czarina was too self-possessed. She only looked at me so sadly; who could now save her son and support her? There was terrible anxiety on her face.” Marie Rasputin is now working as. a governess. “When I think of my present situation I often remember the words my father said to me once: ‘lf I die, they will also die; all of them an awful death. And an end will come to our Russia.’ You know what happened there. "This Prince Youssoupoff has said all sorts of terrible things about father in his book, but he was a wonderful man. You have probably heard that he received a lot of money and presents from the Czar and Czarina, but no one has ever told yon what we did with them; he took with one hand and gave away with the other hand. That is why we always had so many poor people, so many beggars, in our home. “I shall never forgive Youssoupoff the dishonour he brought on me by writing that horrible book about how he murdered father,” she concluded bitterly. “Every one looks on us as the daughter and granddaughters of an immoral peasant who sold Russia to her enemies, and who begged all he could at court. It is a lie, and I wish you would tell the whole world so.”