World Notes HISTORY

New versions of just how Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena died keep surfacing. The official story, according to an attending prosecutor, is that following their trial, the couple were escorted into a barracks courtyard, still believing that their lives would be spared. When they saw a firing squad forming, the two began "running wildly" around the courtyard. Nicolae was trapped in a corner and shot. Elena, still running, was shot in the back by an army officer. Other soldiers proceeded to riddle the bodies with submachine- gun fire.

That, says Bucharest lawyer Nicu Teodorescu, 57, is not quite how it happened. Teodorescu, who claims he was called in at the last minute to defend the Ceausescus, told the London Times last week that the end was considerably less dramatic, if no tidier. After the trial, during which they refused to cooperate (Teodorescu tried unsuccessfully to persuade them to plead mental instability), the Ceausescus were taken into the courtyard. "It was a mere quarter-hour or so after the death sentence was pronounced," he says. "They thought they were walking to a cell, when suddenly there was a huge burst of fire. Elena and Nicolae fell head to head. Their bodies spun round, and they fell close to each other." The Times concludes that the bodies were then placed against a wall for the benefit of photographers -- and history.