Without a judicial inquiry, Vetsera's uncles were summoned to remove their niece's body from Mayerling as secretly as possible and to bury it just as discreetly. Her mother was forbidden to attend. One account posits that this was accomplished that night, with the body of their niece sitting in the carriage between them, propped up by a broomstick pushed up the back of her dress. Vetsera's body was taken to a cemetery at the Cistercian monastery a few miles away in Heiligenkreuz, but because her death was thought to be a suicide, her uncles had to persuade the abbot to give his permission for a Christian burial on the grounds that she had committed suicide because of a temporary loss of her senses. It was only later that the official version of the story surfaced, affirming that Rudolf had shot Vetsera and then himself.