The bones were re-turned and left in Westminster Abbey in 1933 after the remains were examined. Since then, no one has been able to study them.
Princes residing in a tower: King Edward IV ruled over the two young half-brothers, Edward V, who was 12 years old, and Richard of York, who was 9 years old. When their father died in 1483, Edward V was the next in line to take the kingdom because he was the oldest.
The two lads were kept in the Tower of London for their own safety while arrangements were being made to crown King Edward V. After only a few months in power, it was revealed that Edward V and his half-brother were the offspring of a bigamous union, making neither of them able to hold the throne.
After Edward V was overthrown, Richard III, his uncle, became the new king. The lads were never again seen in public after their father passed away and they were eventually locked up in the tower. As King Richard III sought to ascend to the throne, rumors started to spread that the two had been slain.
The leftovers: Workers repairing the London Tower in 1674 discovered the corpses of two small infants. The children’s remains were deposited in an urn and transported to Westminster Abbey, where they still sit today, without being able to ascertain the children’s identities with any accuracy.
The bodies were reexamined in 1933 as forensic capabilities improved along with public curiosity. The remains were initially identified as belonging to two young boys who died in the year 1483, but as the bones could not be carbon-dated, it is likely that this examination yielded only conjectural information.
This examination marked the final opportunity for anyone to examine the remains.
There was again optimism for locating the princes in 2012 after Richard III’s remains were discovered buried beneath a parking lot in Leicester.
Members of the organization Revealing Richard III located a surviving distant relative of the late monarch in order to identify Richard III’s bones. It was believed that the forensic techniques utilized in this case would be able to identify the princes, Richard III’s nephews.
The following year, though, the request to reexamine the bodies was turned down. The Queen, the Church of England, and government officials all emphatically rejected the request, declaring that they were “fully in accord” that the investigation should not proceed.
The BBC and Channel 4 both requested the same probe in 1993 and 1995, but both requests were turned down.
The requests were turned down by the then-Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev. Michael Mayne, on the grounds that the results of carbon dating would only be able to pinpoint the death’s date to within plus or minus 50 years.
There were also worries that getting DNA samples from a prince’s close family would require digging up more graves. The Dean also brought up the issue of what to deal with the remains if it turned out that they didn’t belong to the princes.
Project Missing Princes: The Missing Princes Project was launched in 2015 by Philippa Langley MBE, who oversaw the hunt for Richard III and called for an investigation into the “bones in the urn.”
The techniques used in this Cold Case History inquiry are those used in contemporary police investigations. Volunteers with a variety of academic disciplines are being sought to help with the inquiry, which will concentrate on Paleography, archive searches, and important foreign languages.
The crew discovered proof of a bargain arranged in December 2021 that allowed Edward V to take the name “John Evans” and reside on his half-Devon brother’s estate.
According to the Daily Telegraph’s chief researcher for The Missing Princes Project “The evidence indicates that Edward was sent to spend the remainder of his days on his half-estate brother’s as long as he kept quiet, as part of a deal negotiated between his mother and Richard III, and later with Henry Tudor,” according to the evidence.
The story of the murdered princes of the tower, according to experts working on the case, might have been made up as a political ploy against King Richard III.
