Moika Palace Basement, Petrograd 1916: Crime Scene Reconstruction

experimentNo. 0114categoryHistory & trainingrecordingpendingdataCC BY 4.0

The fly is the monk in an all-fly reconstruction of the night of 29–30 December 1916 (16–17 December Old Style) in the Moika palace basement, Petrograd, the disposal of the body through the ice at the Petrovsky Bridge, its recovery on 1 January 1917 and the autopsy, with legend and record labelled in the scene.

What the fly saw

Frames rendered from the fly’s eye camera at four points in the timeline, each with the 32-column retinal input the connectome model receives at that moment.

Timeline

15 steps, with their times in the experiment

1. 0:00
   The side door, 12:30 am

   Snow lies in the courtyard of the Moika palace. The prince brings his guest in through the small side door and down the stair into the vaulted basement, fitted out for the night: a log fire in the red granite hearth, red vases in their niches, a white bearskin before an ebony cabinet.

2. 0:08
   Cakes and Madeira

   At the tea table the prince offers pink and chocolate cakes and pours Madeira. The monk eats two cakes and drains glass after glass. Nothing happens. The cyanide is the conspirators’ story; the autopsy found no poison.

3. 0:22
   Yankee Doodle

   Upstairs a gramophone plays the same record over and over while the others wait. The monk asks for more wine; the prince sings to the guitar. The clock moves toward half past two.

4. 0:32
   The crystal crucifix

   The prince asks him to look at the rock-crystal crucifix on the cabinet, draws a revolver behind his back and fires. The monk crumples onto the white bearskin.

5. 0:40
   Pronounced dead

   The others hurry down. The doctor pronounces him dead and they move the body off the bearskin, leaving a red stain in the white fur. The prince stays alone with the body.

6. 0:48
   He rises

   One eye opens, then the other. He springs up, seizes the prince by the throat and tears an epaulette from his tunic.

7. 0:56
   Up the stairs

   He crawls up the stair on all six legs and through the courtyard door, which was thought to be locked, into the snow.

8. 1:03
   The courtyard

   He runs for the gate through the snow. The deputy fires: two shots miss, the third hits him in the back. He falls beside a snowdrift by the fence, bleeding into the snow.

9. 1:15
   The shot to the forehead

   A pistol is pressed to his forehead and fired at point-blank range. Who fired it is disputed. Blood and brain spray across the snow.

10. 1:23
    The beating

    The body is dragged back to the stair landing and beaten with a rubber club. One eye is torn from its socket and hangs on the face.

11. 1:30
    Wrapped and bound

    The body is wrapped in heavy cloth, tied with rope and loaded into a motor car, which drives off across the city in the dark.

12. 1:38
    The Petrovsky Bridge

    On the wooden bridge over the Malaya Nevka the body is swung over the railing and dropped through a hole in the ice. Blood is left on the railing; one boot is left on a bridge support.

13. 1:48
    Under the ice

    The body sinks and drifts under the ice. The bound forelegs float up above the head. Drowning is the legend; the autopsy found no water in the lungs.

14. 1:58
    Found, 1 January 1917

    Three days later river police cut through the ice and pull out the frozen body, the bound forelegs still raised above the head.

15. 2:06
    The autopsy

    On the table: a wound through the stomach and liver from the first shot, one through the right kidney from behind, and the point-blank shot to the forehead. No poison, no water in the lungs.

Setup

• Fifteen seekable stages over 136 seconds: the side door at 12:30 am, cakes and Madeira, waiting while a gramophone plays upstairs, the crystal crucifix, pronounced dead, he rises, up the stairs, the courtyard, the shot to the forehead, the beating, wrapped and bound, the Petrovsky Bridge, under the ice, found on 1 January 1917, and the autopsy.
• The vaulted basement follows the prince’s memoir: a granite floor, a red granite hearth with a log fire, red vases, coloured-glass lanterns, a white bearskin before an ebony cabinet of little mirrors and bronze columns, and the rock-crystal crucifix on top.
• The monk has a long dark beard, long hair parted in the middle and a large cross. The others are flies identified by uniform and dress: the prince in a tunic with epaulettes, the deputy with pince-nez and an overcoat, the grand duke, the doctor, another conspirator, a driver, three river police and three morgue attendants.
• The bridge is a generic five-span wooden trestle over the Malaya Nevka; the bundle is dropped through a hole in the ice at the fourth span, leaving blood on the railing and a galosh on a support. Falling snow over the courtyard and the bridge reaches the eye.
• The monk’s dress (black cassock by default, or the embroidered blouse the memoir describes), Legend / record labels (on by default, display only), Cooling input (VP3) (off by default), and Gore (Low / Standard / Extreme, default Extreme) with blood tone (cinematic red or fly hemolymph) as scene controls; the eye camera sees the splatter. A replay control returns to the courtyard.
• Eight cameras: Director (auto), the basement dining room, the cabinet and the bearskin, the courtyard from the gate, the Petrovsky Bridge from the ice, under the ice following the body, the autopsy table, and the fly’s eye.

Measurement

• Retina plus one optional drive (assay backend). With Cooling input (VP3) on, each live window from the moment the body enters the water (about 105 s) until it is pulled out (about 120 s) requests a bounded cool drive (0.6 rising to 1.2) to the VP3 cooling thermosensors; otherwise only the retina is driven. The drive is off by default, and responses report it.
• In every window the eye camera’s 32 luminance columns reach the fixed connectome model, measured spikes drive the neural display, and neural weights are not updated.
• The eye sees black while the monk lies feigning death and opens onto the prince’s face at “He rises”; it then sees the night sky and the pistol’s flash, the inside of the cloth wrapping, the ice from below, the grey sky and the autopsy lamp. The labels and the monk’s own beard, hair, robe and cross are excluded from the eye image.
• The fly’s movements and the cast follow a pre-programmed timeline; measured spikes do not move the fly.

Limitations

• Labelled against the record in the scene: the cyanide is legend (the autopsy found no poison; a participant later said he used aspirin), and so are drowning and freed hands (no water in the lungs; the hands were still bound). The autopsy records three gunshot wounds.
• Who fired the forehead shot is disputed; the scene shows the deputy firing it and labels the shooter as disputed.
• The black cassock is the popular image and the default; the memoir describes a silk blouse embroidered with cornflowers, a raspberry cord belt and velvet breeches, which the dress control provides.
• No plan of the basement was published, so its size, the stair and the courtyard are approximations; the courtyard is shown by its railings rather than the exact gate, the drive across the city is cut, the body is found about 30 m downstream (accounts give 65–200 m), and wounds and splatter are modeled at the chosen gore level.

Sources

No external sources are cited for this experiment.