“The Mad Monk”… “The Black Monk”…Russian mystic in the Imperial inner circle, particularly close to young Tsarevich Alexei and, later to his mother, Tsaritsa Alexandra… Rasputin widely believed to have grossly manipulated the head of the family, Tsar Nicholas II, during the later years of the Romanov Dynasty.
Dec 16: A group of Russian nobles murder Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin by poisoning him and shooting him… and then, as an insurance measure, clubbing the dead body and submerging/drowning it… Then, still wary of him, to further “play it safe” with the former formidable mystic, they burnt the corpse…