In 1918, Russ­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies forced Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, and chil­dren into the base­ment of a house where they’d been held cap­tive, opened fire, and killed them. They buried the corpses in an unmarked grave in a secret loca­tion. Days lat­er, a rumor sur­faced that one of the tsar’s daugh­ters had escaped the slaughter.

In 1920, a young woman jumped off a bridge in Berlin. Ger­man police res­cued her. Her body was riv­en by scars. She had no iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and refused to give her name. She was com­mit­ted to an asy­lum as Madame Unknown.

Peo­ple there said she spoke Ger­man with a Russ­ian accent and car­ried her­self with a noble bear­ing. One of them claimed she told her she was a daugh­ter of the tsar. Rumors about her spread far and wide. Romanov fam­i­ly mem­bers, for­mer atten­dants, and friends of the tsar’s chil­dren came to see her. For two years, she refused to dis­cuss her back­ground with them or con­firm their sus­pi­cion that she was a Romanov. Then a for­mer impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly guard final­ly drew her out, and she told him she was Anas­ta­sia, the tsar’s youngest daugh­ter. That state­ment ignit­ed a firestorm that burned for sev­en­ty years.

I met this woman in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, in 1968. I was a stu­dent at UVA. My room­mates and I rent­ed an apart­ment from Jack Man­a­han, a wealthy geneal­o­gist. One morn­ing when I deliv­ered the rent check, he intro­duced me to a lit­tle, old woman, reclin­ing on a divan in his liv­ing room. “This is my new wife,” he said, “the Grand Duchess Anas­ta­sia Niko­laev­na Romanova.”

The lofty title and their rel­a­tive ages (she looked twen­ty years old­er than Man­a­han) sur­prised me. Eager to explain, he coaxed the duchess to tell me her sto­ry in Ger­man, while he translated.

She said the base­ment gun­fire wound­ed her, and she col­lapsed on the floor. A sol­dier bay­o­net­ed her and bashed in her face with his rifle-butt to fin­ish her off. When she talked to me that morn­ing, she held a shawl over her mouth. Man­a­han said she did this to cov­er ruined teeth.

As the sol­diers hauled away the bod­ies, a guard real­ized she was still bare­ly alive. He dragged her away, escaped to Roma­nia, and nursed her back to health. After she bore his child, he was shot and killed, leav­ing her with no means of sup­port. She put the child in an orphan­age and went to Berlin to seek help from Ger­man Romanov fam­i­ly mem­bers, but no one believed her. She despaired and tried to kill herself.

She told her sto­ry well. She spoke soft­ly, but with inten­si­ty, her eyes riv­et­ed to mine, coy but insis­tent, gaug­ing my reac­tion to each detail, watch­ing my every move. It sound­ed like a fan­tas­tic lie, but I found myself hop­ing it was true.

That morn­ing, I won­dered why she spent so much time telling her sto­ry to a col­lege stu­dent with no influ­ence, but lat­er I learned that she had spent her entire adult life mak­ing her pitch to any­one who would lis­ten and she’d earned a large fol­low­ing of believ­ers that way, includ­ing mem­bers of the Romanov fam­i­ly and Anastasia’s child­hood friends. In the 30’s they helped her file suit in Ger­man court, lay­ing claim to the tsar’s wealth. They alleged she knew things only Anas­ta­sia could have known. Many court-appoint­ed foren­sic experts came down in her favor. Doc­tors con­clud­ed she suf­fered from a foot defor­mi­ty that had also afflict­ed Anas­ta­sia. Oth­ers com­pared the bio­met­rics of her ear to the princess’s ear and thought they were the same. Graphol­o­gists said her hand­writ­ing matched Anastasia’s penmanship.

While the case dragged on, her advo­cates brought her to the Unit­ed States. Using the pseu­do­nym, Anna Ander­son, she became the toast of New York City’s high soci­ety. The famous Russ­ian pianist and com­pos­er, Sergei Rach­mani­noff, paid for her lodg­ing. Her life inspired a host of books, plays, and movies. Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for por­tray­ing her in Anas­ta­sia in 1956.

When I met her, those hal­cy­on days were gone. Her case, by then the longest run­ning lit­i­ga­tion in Ger­man judi­cial his­to­ry, remained unde­cid­ed. Push­ing sev­en­ty and out of mon­ey, she was stay­ing with a sup­port­er in Char­lottesville when Man­a­han stepped in, paid her liv­ing expens­es, and mar­ried her to pre­vent her deportation.

She moved in with him in the win­ter of 1968, and for the next eigh­teen months, I and my room­mates watched her bizarre and unsta­ble behav­ior in amaze­ment, while Man­a­han seemed to fol­low her down the rab­bit hole. They were con­vinced KGB agents were out to kill them. Anas­ta­sia refused to eat any­thing oth­er than pota­toes on some the­o­ry that the KGB couldn’t poi­son spuds. She wouldn’t let Man­a­han turn on the heat for fear the KGB would pump poi­so­nous gas through the air ducts. When one of my room­mates deliv­ered the rent check, she met him at the door, emit­ted a blood-cur­dling scream, and faint­ed on the floor, claim­ing he was the spit­ting image of Grig­ori Rasputin, the Romanov’s holy man, who died forty years earlier.

By the time we grad­u­at­ed and moved out, I wasn’t sure they should be run­ning around free, but things only got worse after we left. The Ger­man court final­ly hand­ed down a rul­ing in Anastasia’s case. Forty years of lit­i­ga­tion end­ed in a draw. The court found insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to estab­lish or refute her claims.

That seemed to be a tip­ping point for them. Over the next decade they dumped garbage off the back stoop, took in six­ty stray cats, and let the front yard grow into a jun­gle of bri­ars and brush. Neigh­bors filed com­plaints, but they some­how man­aged to fend them off and stay in the house until 1983 when a neigh­bor found them in Manahan’s liv­ing room suf­fer­ing from Rocky Moun­tain Spot­ted Fever.

A judge ruled that Man­a­han wasn’t fit to take care of Anas­ta­sia and com­mit­ted her to a psy­chi­atric ward. Man­a­han prompt­ly smug­gled her out. A thir­teen state man-hunt ensued. Police found them in a field in Amherst, fifty miles south of Char­lottesville, liv­ing in Manahan’s car. Anas­ta­sia died two months lat­er in 1984, and Man­a­han sol­diered on alone until his death in 1990. For an inter­est­ing arti­cle about them, see Jack & Anna, Remem­ber­ing the Czar of Char­lottesville Eccentrics at http://www.readthehook.com/86004/cover-jack-amp-anna-remembering-czar-charlottesville-eccentrics.

Not long after Manahan’s death, evi­dence sur­faced that seemed to ver­i­fy her sto­ry. The Rus­sians found a mass grave, con­tain­ing the bones of the tsar’s fam­i­ly. Mys­te­ri­ous­ly, the remains of his son and one of his daugh­ters were miss­ing. Anna Anderson’s sup­port­ers exult­ed, pre­sum­ing that the miss­ing daugh­ter proved her claim.

The tri­umph was short-lived. DNA analy­sis came along in 1994 and proved she was Franziska Schan­skows­ka, a men­tal­ly ill Pol­ish fac­to­ry work­er, who dis­ap­peared in 1920, about the same time Madame Unknown jumped off the bridge in Berlin. And the grave with the miss­ing corpses? In 2007 a sec­ond grave coughed up bones with DNA that matched the tsar’s miss­ing son and daughter.

Reflect­ing back on those days in Char­lottesville, I find the truth more incred­i­ble than the fraud. Franziska Schan­skows­ka lived into her eight­ies. For six­ty years, from the bridge in Berlin to her deathbed, her admir­ers housed, fed, clothed, and bankrolled her. She nev­er had a job, nev­er earned a pen­ny. This unschooled impos­tor deceived inter­na­tion­al sophis­ti­cates and fought the Romanov fam­i­ly to a draw in the courts for a half century.

Remem­ber­ing the gnomish woman who sat across from me in Manahan’s liv­ing room and told me her sto­ry, I under­stand how she fooled so many. Her charm­ing fairy tale was much more appeal­ing than the harsh truth. I want­ed to believe it, and I can attest that she clear­ly seemed to believe it, too. I won­der if the men­tal­ly ill Madame Unknown lost her real iden­ti­ty in her web of lies some­where along the line, like an actress lost inside the fic­tion­al per­son she played.

What­ev­er she thought, I’m glad Man­a­han nev­er learned the truth. An avid geneal­o­gist, he val­ued blood­line above all else and remind­ed me every chance he got that he was the son-in-law of the Tsar of Rus­sia. Despite his crazi­ness, I liked him and I’m glad he nev­er knew that his Russ­ian princess was real­ly a Pol­ish peas­ant, for it sure­ly would have bro­ken his heart.

I met Muham­mad Ali in the mid-1980’s. One of my for­mer UVA law pro­fes­sors called me. “There’s a hear­ing in Los Ange­les Supe­ri­or Court this week in a case against Muham­mad Ali. His attor­ney, Richard Hirschfeld, needs a mem­ber of the Cal­i­for­nia bar to serve as local coun­sel. How’d you like to rep­re­sent the champ?” After I suc­ceed­ed in de-swal­low­ing my tongue, I grabbed the chance.

I met Hirschfeld for din­ner in a Bev­er­ly Hills restau­rant the night before the hear­ing. He and I arrived before Ali and his wife, Lon­nie, so he could brief me on the case. In the process, I learned that he and Ali were close friends, he act­ed as a gen­er­al coun­sel for Ali, and he and Ali had teamed up on var­i­ous busi­ness ven­tures. I liked Richard, but some­thing I couldn’t put my fin­ger on gave me a vague sense of unease about him.

When Ali and Lon­nie walked into the place, every head turned. He looked great. Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, he stood tall and had a slim waist and broad shoul­ders, but he walked slow­ly and his motions looked stiff. He had been diag­nosed with Parkinson’s Dis­ease the pre­vi­ous year. In tapes of his last fights and inter­views, you can see what may have been symp­toms of the dis­ease eat­ing away at his tal­ent. His punch­es are slow­er and weak­er; his moves more slug­gish; his speech qui­eter and raspi­er. When I met him that night, his speech was slurred and mut­ed, but if you lis­tened care­ful­ly, you could still hear Ali in his voice. Despite the dis­ease, he was good-natured and mis­chie­vous. He was plen­ty smart, too. He had his own ideas about the case and he made clear he was in charge.

Lon­nie was fun, kind, per­son­able, and warm, but she was tough when she need­ed to be. She was a great match for Ali in that stage of his life, I thought, in part because she struck a per­fect bal­ance between being solic­i­tous of his con­di­tion with­out patron­iz­ing him or smoth­er­ing him with over-protectiveness.

We met at the cour­t­house at eight the next morn­ing. The hear­ing didn’t start until nine so we went to the cour­t­house cafe­te­ria for cof­fee. When we walked in, the crowd went still. Then came breath­less mur­murs: “Ali” and “the champ.” Every eye in the room fol­lowed us as we got cof­fee and sat at a table by the windows.

It devel­oped spon­ta­neous­ly. They approached him ten­ta­tive­ly, a few at a time, and then more of them, and then every­one in the place was crowd­ed around us, some with lit­tle-kid grins on their faces, oth­ers with awe in their eyes. They want­ed to shake his hand, touch him, see him up close.

He car­ried with him every­where an end­less sup­ply of pam­phlets about Islam. He had writ­ten on each one: “To: ___________” and he had signed it “Muham­mad Ali.” These weren’t com­put­er gen­er­at­ed sig­na­tures. He had writ­ten them out some time ear­li­er in the tor­tured scrawl that the dis­ease inflict­ed on his hand, every sin­gle one of them, know­ing he could cov­er more peo­ple if they didn’t have to wait for him to strug­gle with his signature.

As each per­son came up to him, he rasped, “What’s your name?” He wrote the names slow­ly as best he could in the blank space and hand­ed the pam­phlets to them. He turned no one away. I sat beside him that morn­ing and watched him sign those things for the bet­ter part of an hour, mar­veling at the amount of time he must have spent prepar­ing them beforehand.

In the court­room at the hear­ing, the judge held set­tle­ment dis­cus­sions with each side indi­vid­u­al­ly. We sat on bench­es out in the hall­way while the judge met with the oppos­ing party.

“You read the Quran?” Ali asked me.

“No, but I’ve read big chunks of the Bible. My dad’s a Methodist preacher.”

“I know,” he said, although I don’t know how he knew. He hand­ed me a pam­phlet. “Read the Quran.” I put it in my breast pocket.

Before our ses­sion with the judge start­ed, Ali told Richard and me he want­ed to talk to the judge alone, with no lawyers present. Richard said it’s a hard and fast rule that lawyers don’t allow their clients to speak to judges alone. I agreed. Ali told us what we could do with our lawyers’ rule. Richard smiled. We sat out in the hall­way while Ali talked to the judge alone for almost an hour.

It worked. The case set­tled. My job was done. Ali thanked me for my help and shook my hand. I’ll nev­er for­get look­ing down at that big hand, scarred and rough and strong. This is the hand that knocked out Floyd Pat­ter­son, I thought, and pound­ed on Joe Frazier’s head in the Thril­la in Mani­la and felled George Fore­man like a big red­wood tree in the eighth round in Zaire. I didn’t know it then, but this would also be the hand that Ali some­how man­aged to still from its Parkinson’s pal­sy long enough to light the Olympic caul­dron with a torch in Atlanta in 1996.

I wasn’t there lat­er that after­noon when Ali told the limo dri­ver to take him to South Cen­tral LA, but oth­ers told me about it. He told the dri­ver to stop in a bombed-out area and got out of the car. Traf­fic in the streets and on the side­walks stopped dead. They crowd­ed around him and he talked to them and hugged some of them and gave them all signed pam­phlets. For hours.

Lon­nie sent me a warm let­ter a few weeks lat­er. Enclosed was an auto­graphed pic­ture of Ali addressed to my son, who was still a boy then. I didn’t ask for it. She was just being gracious.

My uneasi­ness about Richard Hirschfeld was pre­scient, I sup­pose. In the 1990’s Ali sued him, alleg­ing he had tricked Ali into sign­ing away the rights to his life sto­ry. Lat­er, Richard served four years in fed­er­al prison for tax eva­sion and oth­er crimes. After his release he was indict­ed on fraud charges and fled the coun­try. In 2006, the feds caught him, and at the age of 57, he hanged him­self with a plas­tic wrap in a jail­house laun­dry room. He left behind a 32 page sui­cide let­ter. Along with pro­fess­ing his inno­cence to all charges, he declared his con­tin­u­ing affec­tion for Ali. A Wash­ing­ton Post obit­u­ary, which chron­i­cles some of these events, can be found here. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5384-2005Jan12.html

This week, the air waves are full with com­men­tary about Ali’s life and deeds and what he has meant to the world. Most sing his prais­es. A few high­light his flaws. I only clocked about eight hours with Ali, not near­ly enough to gauge the full mea­sure of a per­son, but this much I know: He was a devout Mus­lim. He fought his best fight against Parkinson’s Dis­ease. He put the pow­er of his pub­lic image to what he con­sid­ered to be its high­est and best use. And I was priv­i­leged to spend a short time with him.