Season 8

In this programme, former-tabloid editor, Kelvin Mackenzie re-examines the Ripper murders, uncovers startling documentary evidence and identifies a new set of suspects; the crooked journalists who faked evidence, printed fantasy and mislead the police investigation, all to keep the Ripper murders on their front pages.

In 1988, scientists ran a series of tests on the shroud of Turin, the Christian relic said to be the cloth in which the body of Christ was swathed after his death. The results dated the material's origins to the early 14th century, proving it to be a fake. In this documentary, historian Emily Craig examines claims that Leonardo Da Vinci was commissioned by members of a powerful Italian dynasty to produce the artefact, and used a primitive form of camera to create the image.

In the 60s British cinema audiences were transfixed as James Bond foiled the evil plans of a villain called ‘Goldfinger’. Little did they know that Goldfinger’s plot to break into Fort Knox was not just a work of fiction, but a version of a true story that happened in London in 1914… In this programme, new documentary evidence uncovered by historian Andrew Cook, reveals that the ‘Real Goldfinger’, was a cunning German Spymaster, who planned to blow up the Bank of England and devastate the British Economy on the eve of the First World War …

Edward VIII is remembered as the British King who gave up the throne to marry the woman he loved: American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Declassified FBI files suggest another story that Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were pro-German, that they maintained contact with Nazi Germany early in the war and may have leaked secrets to the enemy, and that Hitler wanted to see Edward return to England as his puppet king.

Recently uncovered archive footage from the 1960s shows late explorer Edmundo Bielawski's shocking encounter with Amazon Headshrinkers. Amazonian Indians would shrink the head of an enemy to take away the power of the victim's vengeful soul. The headshrinking process was thought never to have been captured on film - until now. Author and explorer Piers Gibbon ventures deep into the Amazon rainforest in search of the location and people involved, to determine if the footage could be genuine.

Archeologists explore the remains of what they believe to be Blackbeard's flagship, The Queen Anne's Revenge, and hypothosise that he may have deliberately destroyed the ship in order to steal its cargo.