Peter Ermakov, one of the Bolshevik assassins was interviewed in 1935 by the American journalist Richard Halliburton. Ermakov’s account of the destruction of the bodies partially buttressed (In his interview Ermakov stated that the ashes were “thrown to the wind” thus he could never have supported Sokolov’s description.) Sokolov’s assumptions, but while his words must be treated cautiously, Ermakov had stated that: “We built a funeral pyre of cut logs big enough to hold bodies two layers deep. We poured five tins of gasoline over the corpses and two buckets of sulfuric acid and set the logs afire...

I stood by to see that not one fingernail or fragment of bone remained unconsumed…We had to keep the burning a long time to burn up the skulls.’ Ermakov concluded his account of the disposal of the remains by stating, “We didn’t leave the smallest pinch of ash on the ground…I put tins of ashes in the wagon again and ordered the driver to take me towards the high road…I pitched the ashes into the air—and the wind caught them like dust and carried them out across the woods and fields," According to Alexander Avdonin, the vehicle could only be used at Four Brothers Mine area and the high road was the Koptiaki Road where the truck got stuck.