Exhumation of Jan Masaryk: anthropologist doubts only a skeleton will be found

On Wednesday, police forensic experts are exhuming the remains of former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk from the family crypt in Lány. According to Seznam Zprávy, modern forensic methods are expected to help clarify the circumstances of his death nearly 80 years ago.

Masaryk died on 10 March 1948 after falling from a window of his official apartment in Prague's Černín Palace — less than a month after the communist coup. The official version at the time held that it was suicide, but the Office for the Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism is examining the possibility of murder. Investigators have repeatedly reopened the case as new evidence emerged, and last year received translated documents from French, American and British diplomatic archives.

A body, not just a skeleton

Anthropologist Martin Hora from the Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics at the Faculty of Science, Charles University, told Seznam Zprávy what experts can still learn from remains even decades later. According to him, Masaryk's is a "fairly young body" for this type of research, so soft tissue preservation should be expected, not just bones.

"It seems to me too little time has passed for complete decomposition. If conditions in the crypt were suitable, I think they'll find more than just a skeleton," the expert noted. Much, he said, depends on the environment — humidity and air access to the body. As an example, he cited the exhumation of a 16th–17th century general whose hair, skin and even clothing had survived.

What bones can reveal

According to the anthropologist, bones can reveal old injuries and chronic illnesses, as well as show whether a crack or fracture was accidental, deliberate, fresh, or long healed. Height, weight and sex can also be estimated — though in Masaryk's case these are already known. Modern methods, including DNA analysis, expand the scope of such research.

However, determining the cause of death from an acute illness that kills quickly is impossible from bones alone — it simply doesn't have time to leave traces. Hora noted that bone is "plastic" and changes depending on the physical strain experienced during life — for instance, a tennis player's racket arm is noticeably more developed.

As for whether bones can show whether Masaryk jumped from the window himself or was pushed, the anthropologist could not say for certain: "I don't know what theory the police went in with, or whether they'll be able to rule out third-party involvement." He noted that biomechanical analyses of whether a fall could have happened independently had already been carried out earlier, without requiring exhumation — so the current study will instead document what injuries Masaryk sustained immediately after death.

Modern reconstruction technology

Specialists use software to reconstruct facial appearance from a skull, based on scans of numerous faces as well as CT and MRI data. At the Charles University laboratory, researchers also examine the long bones of the limbs to understand what physical strain a person endured during their lifetime — for example, whether they ran a lot or performed specific manual labor.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz