Kevin Peterson

Job pic. Most days it's casual attire though or jeans. I don't do the court thing hours on end everyday anymore. Seven years was enough.

Kiev, Ukraine with brother Craig. Had a beer in the Jim Bull pub. Trains, planes and automobiles around the former USSR.

Red Square, Moscow. Lenin's Tomb in the background. That ol' boy looks pretty good for a 5'1" pickle. His protoge, Joseph Stalin, has to rank #1 in gratuitous killings. Hitler was an apprentice in comparison. Collectively, both probably were responsible for 40+ million people perishing. Most Americans immediately think of Hitler as the worst mass murderer of WWII or last century. Stalin's obscurity probably resides in the fact that he was regarded as one of the Allied leaders, wearing a white hat, and having England and America shaking hands with this murdering wretch was unsavory to discuss so it wasn't discussed. Russians are still finding mass graves where Stalin had people "disappeared." There is an apartment building within view of the Kremlin where high ranking Party officials were given homes to live in. It wasn't until faces began disappearing at 3:00 a.m. routinely that it was figured out Stalin had the whole complex bugged.

Church of the Blood, Ekaterinburg, Russia. Built on the site of the Impatiev House, site where Nicholas II, last Czar of Russia and family were murdered. I was able to get a private tour of every part of the Church, including the basement and towers. The well that was there when the Impatiev house existed is still there, and it was the source of all the measurements for locating the exact room position where the executions occurred. Ekaterinburg is also the nearest city to where Gary Francis Powers was shot down in a U-2 spy plane. The wreckage is housed in Ekaterinburg. This city has not been open to the West for very long since it was a Soviet military stronghold.

This is a shrine near Pigs Hollow/4 Brothers Mine where the Czar's family and others killed were disposed of between the 4 Brothers mine and here. It is believed Anastasia and Alexei were dissolved in acid and that is why no trace has been found of either. The Russians claim Anastasia is among the remains retrieved, but experts from the West determined it was Maria, an older sister. It's politics. Russia cannot afford to have a surviving Romonov show up having been through a few fakes already so the government maintains Anastasia is in their possession and buried with the Family. At the time it was announced it was Anastasia, the most convincing huxter was not dead or proven to be a fake so the claim was politically based and not scientifically based. The Russians were stuck with that position. Just to show the state of the Soviet forensic sciences, when scientific experts from the West analyzed the remains, the Russians had mixed remains from different bodies.

Last resting place for the Czar and his Family. Canonized earlier this century in St. Petersburg. The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years after they were murdered. The Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize these remains as being those of the Royal Family, and considers the grave at the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral to be purely symbolic. Religion and politics.

Saints Peter & Paul Cathedral, and Chapel lower left, St. Petersburg Russia. Interment site of the Czar. Built by Peter the Great on marsh land, much of the reclamation work being done by hand with no tools. Lots of workers died. So goes the history of Russia.