In 1983, Manahan removed Anderson from a care facility where she had been placed and drove with her through multiple states in a journey that attracted considerable attention and eventually ended with Anderson’s return to care. The episode reflected Manahan’s resistance to his wife being separated from him and his custody of her case and identity.
Anderson died on February 12, 1984. The cause of death was pneumonia. She was cremated, in accordance with her stated wishes, and her ashes were buried at Castle Seeon in Bavaria — the Leuchtenberg estate where she had lived in the early 1930s, during one of her periods of German residence supported by a ducal patron.
Manahan survived her by several years, continuing to maintain the Anastasia claim and to preserve the records and materials associated with her case.
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## The Hair Samples: A Second Biological Source
The 1979 surgical tissue was the primary biological material used in the DNA testing, but it was not the only material. Hair samples attributed to Anna Anderson were also tested as part of the 1994 analysis.
These hair samples were found in a book that had belonged to John Manahan. The circumstances under which they had come to be in the book — whether they were deliberately preserved, incidentally collected, or of uncertain provenance — was a matter of some discussion. The chain of custody for the hair samples was potentially less secure than for the hospital-retained tissue.
The testing protocol addressed this by treating the samples as independent lines of evidence. If the hair samples produced the same mitochondrial DNA profile as the intestinal tissue, that convergence would strengthen confidence in both results. If they produced different profiles, or profiles inconsistent with the tissue, that would raise questions about the hair’s attribution.