Skullduggery of Hitler

Scientist at the University of Connecticut have examined a piece of skull with a bullet hole long thought to have belonged to Adolf Hitler, concluding the cranial fragment that’s housed at the Russian State Archive in Moscow actually belongs to a woman.

Though Russian officials claimed the skull and bloodstained pieces of the sofa where Hitler reportedly shot himself after taking a cyanide pill belonged to the Fuhrer, Connecticut archaeologist Nick Bellantoni, who was asked to examine the skull and several swabs of blood for a History Channel documentary on Hitler’s death, said the initial forensic exam was not conclusive with what he knew of Hitler’s biology.

“The bone was very small and thin, and normally male bones are much more robust in our species,” Bellantoni said Tuesday. “I thought it probably came from a woman or a younger man.”

Contributor Linda Strausbaugh, a professor of molecular and cell biology, said analysis indicate the DNA came from a 20 to 40-year-old woman, possibly Eva Braun, Hitler’s girlfriend who famously committed suicide with Hitler in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

The blood DNA samples were severely degraded, making identification almost impossible but revealing some of it came from a man.

An autopsy supposedly shows Hitler’s body missing a part of his skull but Braun has long believed to have died of cyanide poisoning.

“My gut feeling is he did commit suicide there,” says Bellatoni. “If this is not him who is it?”