Investigators stated that the executions had increased in pace after 1940, once Bessarabia and Bukovina were occupied by the Soviet Union. "Ioan Halip, Grigore Tatarcu and Alexandru Ivanov, from Bessarabia and Bukovina, currently living in Odessa, have recognized at the place among the bodies their relatives deported by NKVD after the occupation. [...] The Commission to examine the corpses and determining the circumstances in which the victims died has determined that the victims were generally shot in the back of the head from a very short distance. The age of the executions is estimated at 2-3 years, the clothes were characteristic to those of inhabitants of Bessarabia and Bukovina."