He shot Rasputin in the shoulder and gut and left him for dead, but it takes more than that to take out a Siberian mystic. Yusupov went to check on him a little while later, and according to him Rasputin lunged at him and tried to strangle him. Rasputin somehow managed to get up the stairs and started to run. He was fired at again four times and a couple of bullets connected. Once he’d fallen in the snow he was badly beaten by a desperate Yusupov.

This time Rasputin seems to have perished. His body was unceremoniously dumped from a bridge at around 5am. The nobility, not used to murder it seems, had forgotten to weight his body down, so it was easily found by police the next day.

A rumour that circulated at the time was that Rasputin had still been alive in the river before he was found, but this seems like it’s probably based on balls.

Recent evidence has thickened the plot even further still. The bullet wound which seemed to have killed Rasputin was the one which went straight into his forehead. This was a close range shot that doesn’t appear in either of the alleged killer’s personal accounts. Also, the type of bullet that caused the wound was of a different type to the other wounds on his body. The type of bullet in his forehead was only used by one nationality at the time. Guess who? — the Brits…

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