Russia's Investigative Committee has exhumed the body of the country's last Tsar Nicholas II along with his wife Alexandra, as reported by BBC News. Samples were taken from the Tsar and his wife, as well as some from Alexander II's bloodstained uniform.

Tsar Alexander II is the grandfather of Nicholas II and was assassinated in the streets of St. Petersburg by members of the left-wing terrorist group Narodnaya Volya or "The People's Will." A bomb was thrown at the Tsar, mortally wounding him, according to History.

The Romanov family — Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Maria, Olga, Tatiana and only son Tsarevich Alexei — was famously murdered in 1918 along with four royal staff members in a house cellar in Yekaterinburg. BBC News reports that the Bolsheviks fired bullets straight at the victims with the survivors being killed using a bayonet.

In a separate report from BBC News, the Royal Couple, daughters Anastasia, Olga and Tatiana as well as their four servants were found in 1979. The bodies were later buried in St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998, exactly 80 years after their murders. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized the Royal Couple and their daughters in 2000.

BBC News further noted that the church was the one who ordered the remains be re-examined to confirm links to other relatives whose remains were found elsewhere. Maria and Alexei were later found in a different site in the Urals, prompting other church members to dissuade the idea that it was really the missing siblings.

The lawyer of the House Romanov, German Lukyanov, released a statement via Interfax, saying, "The resumption of the preliminary investigation indicates that not all questions raised by the Russian Orthodox Church have been answered and that not all circumstances of the case were established."

"Head of the House of Romanov Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna supports the resumption of the investigation and insists that all questions asked by the church would be given full and clear answers in the course of the preliminary investigation and that studies be of scientific nature," he added.

DNA tests will be used to determine if the bodies are of Maria and Alexei with Nicholas II, Alexandra and Alexander II as genome samples. The Tsarina's sister Elizabeth Fyodorovna, who is buried in Jerusalem will also be exhumed so samples can be collected.

The Russian Orthodox Church is planning to canonize the remaining two siblings, but they all want to be sure of the ancestry of the bodies before the 100th anniversary of their deaths in 2018. The bodies of Maria and Alexei are currently incarcerated in the Russian State Archives.