750-Year-Old DNA Solves a Century-Old Cold Case: The Murder of Duke Béla of Mascó Reconstructed

750-Year-Old DNA Solves a Century-Old Cold Case

Summary: A Hungarian-led multidisciplinary team has confirmed that skeletons unearthed in 1915 under a 13th-century monastery on Margaret Island, Budapest, belong to Duke Béla of Mascó. Using radiocarbon dating, dental calculus analysis and ancient DNA, researchers reconstructed the duke’s final moments and determined he was the victim of a coordinated assassination in November 1272.

Discovery and historical context

The human remains were discovered in 1915 beneath the floor of a medieval monastery and long suspected to belong to a high-status victim from the 13th century. Historical records had suggested that Duke Béla of Mascó — a descendant of Hungary’s royal house connected to King Béla III and the Rurikid line — was murdered in November 1272. A new study led by researchers at Eötvös Loránd University and published in Forensic Science International: Genetics confirms that identification.

How the identification was made

The team applied a suite of complementary methods:

• Radiocarbon dating, adjusted for reservoir effects associated with a high-protein (notably fish-rich) diet, placed the burial in the mid-13th century.
• Osteological analysis matched an adult male in his twenties.
• Dental calculus analysis (hardened plaque) revealed a high-status diet heavy in animal proteins, especially fish, and processed cereals such as milled wheat and barley.
• Ancient DNA demonstrated genetic descent linked to King Béla III and a Y-chromosome profile consistent with the Rurikid lineage; the genome also shows substantial Scandinavian and Eastern Mediterranean ancestry with a smaller early-medieval Central European component.

Forensic reconstruction of the killing

Forensic study documented 26 peri-mortem injuries, including 23 separate sword wounds: nine to the skull and 17 to the torso and limbs (some wounds overlap in these counts due to multiple strikes). The distribution and severity of the injuries indicate the duke was surrounded and repeatedly struck by multiple attackers rather than engaged in a single-on-one duel.

The pattern of wounds suggests at least three assailants: one confronting the victim from the front and two attacking simultaneously from the left and right. The attackers appear to have used two different blade types — likely a saber and a longsword. Many cuts continued after the duke had fallen and include clear defensive wounds, which together point to both planning and intense emotional involvement by the attackers.

“Our finding provides the first genetic identification of a medieval royal, resolves a century-old archaeological question, and illustrates the power of integrating multidisciplinary methods to confirm historical hypotheses and reconstruct violent deaths from the past with unprecedented detail,” the authors write.

Conclusion

When genetic, archaeological, and historical evidence are combined, the researchers conclude the remains are those of Béla, Duke of Mascó, a fourth-degree descendant of King Béla III. Contemporary sources recording an assassination in November 1272 by Ben Henrik of the Héder family and his followers align with the forensic evidence and the burial context, closing a 100-year-old mystery more than 750 years after the event.

Publication: The study appears in Forensic Science International: Genetics and was led by scholars from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.