IMPERIAL YACHT MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

IMPERIAL YACHT MYSTERY.

ADMIRAL AND GIRL NIHILIST.

A SHOT AT THE TSAR'S SON.

The Tsar's eight-year-old heir, his only son,'is recovering from his; "illness, but the mystery maintained by the Russian Court and police daily deepens. The report of an attempt on his life in tho imperial yacht Standart is now given in Paris, with circumstantial detail, according to details by the lost mail. The explanation of the admiral's suicide, followed by the attempted suicide of a girl with whom he had relations, is said to be that the girl, a revolutionary, used her influence with the admiral to secure the presence of a Nihilist in the crew. TlO other conflicting accounts of the illness ■ or accident of the Tsar's son ascribe it to a fall from a pony, or a bicycle, or a spar in, the yacht, an accident in his bath, a hemorrhage, kidney disease, or peritonitis (inflammation of the membrane lining the , intestines). A Shot in the Yacht. The following are the details: — The young Prince was shot with a Browning pistol, and he owed his life to the fact that, when he saw an individual approaching with a pistol pointing at him Ihe attempted to escape. Bub his assailant I was too quick, and a 3 the startled boy turned to one side he fired and the bullet inflicted a deep wound in the lower part of the abdomen. Although of a grave nature the wound is not considered likely to have a fatal result. In the confusion the person who had fired slid down a rope over the side of the Sftandart and escaped either in a boat or by swimming ashore. He has succeeded in getting out of Russia. It was through his confession that the attempt became known outside court circles. Admiral Chagrin was not on board the yacht when the Prince was wounded. The role played by the girl student, Helen Sokoloff, who tried to commit suicide after the admiral's suicide and to whom he left a sum of money in his will, is serious than has yet bee.M hinted at, and m view of her responsibility in the matter it is perhaps not surprising that she attempted her life. It is necessary to recall that_ in 1882, the year following the assassination of tho Tsar Alexander 11. by a bomb, a military revolutionary party was formed in St. Petersburg, with branches at Cronstadt, Nicolaieff, and Sebastopol. It had as its chief Colonel Aschenbrenner, with whom were associated Lieutenants Baron Stromberg and Suchanoff. The famous nihilist, Mario Vera Figner, was also a member. Suchanoff. after being tried for complicity in a nihilist plot, was shot, and Mario Figner and Colonel Aschenbrenner were condemned to death, but their sentences were commuted to 20 years' detention in a fortress. Tho military organisation to which these revolutionaries belonged was disbanded, but it is believed that' it was recently reformed. Helen Sokoloff, with whom Admiral Chagrin was in love, is reported to have been one of its emissaries. Thanks to her influence with him, the unsuspecting officer was made use of to facilitate the access of revolutionaries to the' Imperial yacht, and tho attempt on the Tsar's son was rendered possible.