Using DNA tests, scientists have confirmed the authenticity of a morbid souvenir: bloodstained leaves that were taken from the death site of Belgium's King Albert I more than 80 years ago.
The results of the new study might help put to bed some conspiracy theories that claim Albert was the victim of murder, not a climbing accident.
Albert, who ruled from 1909 until his death, was celebrated for his role in World War I, as he refused to let German troops through Belgium to attack France. An avid mountaineer, he died on Feb. 17, 1934, when he was climbing alone near the village of Marche-les-Dames, southeast of Brussels. His body was found on a rock at the foot of a cliff. [Photos: Squash Contains Louis XVI's Blood]
The king's death, at age 58, came as a shock for the public. People flocked to Marche-les-Dames to pay their respects —and to take part in the spectacle, according to news reports. An Associated Press report from Feb. 26, 1934, said the rock where Albert fell to his death had to be surrounded by barbed wire to protect it from "the depredations of thousands of curious visitors." The site had become such an attraction that it was being "plucked bare of stones, leaves, branches and everything else removable by souvenir hunters."
A journalist bought one of those supposed relics, a set of bloodstained tree leaves, at auction in 2013. That journalist then teamed up with scientists for an investigation. The researchers were able to find two of Albert's living relatives who agreed to help confirm the authenticity of the bloody leaves: King Simeon II, the last tsar and former prime minister of Bulgaria, and a German baroness named Anna Maria Freifrau von Haxthausen.
"They gave up DNA samples that we compared with the DNA of the trails of blood," the leader of the study, forensic geneticist Maarten Larmuseau of the University of Leuven in Belgium, said in a statement. "We found that the blood is indeed that of Albert I."
End of conspiracy theories?
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