Cold Case Geschichte - Season 1

A sensation: During a computer tomography examination, the paleopathologist Albert Zink discovered a seven centimeter wide wound on the neck of the mummy of Ramses III. . An incision that completely separates the esophagus and the trachea. The Egyptian ruler Ramses III. was murdered. A court document from the time accuses his harem women of plotting against the Pharaoh.

According to tradition, Ramses III. many women. They live together in the royal women's house. Usually the Pharaoh chooses his "Great Royal Wife" from among them. Only her firstborn son succeeds Pharaoh on the throne. But Ramses III: can't decide. He lets three queens become powerful at court. A power struggle breaks out among Ramses' sons, which results in the death of the pharaoh?

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most important artists in human history. His painting style was revolutionary, his brushwork unique, his play of colors unrivaled. But Van Gogh was also a difficult character. Insecure, manic, extreme. The painter always lived and worked on the borderline between genius and madness. And this madness drove him to suicide with a death wish. This has been the official thesis of experts for more than 100 years.

Biographer Steven Naifeh disagrees with this view. He wants to prove that van Gogh didn't fire the shot himself, but that it came from a 16-year-old boy named René Secrétan, who always carried a gun and liked to wave it around in a cowboy costume. Possibly, according to his theory, van Gogh was accidentally shot.

In August 1962, America lost its blonde angel: Marilyn Monroe died under mysterious circumstances. The official cause of death: "probably suicide." But that is more than doubtful. Her death is as contradictory as she is: Marilyn was dazzling and doubtful, glamorous and unhappy, a puritanical soul who sold sex and became a projection screen for generations. What really happened?

After her housekeeper discovers her body, six hours pass before the police are called - the officers find a beautifully draped body, sleeping pills in the blood but no pill residue in the stomach. Today no police files can be found. Several men play shadow roles in this drama: Marilyn's psychiatrist as well as two of the most powerful men in the world at the time: John F. and Bobby Kennedy.

The Medici are the most powerful family in Renaissance Florence. They dominate politics and economics. The long-established Pazzi family wants to break the influence of the Medici and is planning an assassination attempt on the two Medici brothers, Giuliano and Lorenzo. During Easter mass in 1478, Francesco de' Pazzi and a group of men attacked the unsuspecting brothers. Giuliano dies immediately under Francesco's angry knife stabs.

The brutality of the crime can still be seen today in the victim's bones. But Lorenzo can escape. The coup in Florence fails. The perpetrators are quickly caught and the search for those behind the conspiracy begins. Florence Kasumba, together with historians such as Marcello Simonetta, collects information from medicine, psychology and art history.

Two boys wait in the Tower of London for their big day. The elder is just 12 years old this summer of 1483 and is about to be crowned King of England. But suddenly doubts arise among the nobles about the succession to the throne and his uncle receives the crown. After the coronation, the two young pretenders to the throne seem to have been swallowed up by the earth. Were they kidnapped or murdered? The new King Richard III is silent about it. But doubts about his accession to the throne remain. In the 17th century, bones were found during construction work, which confirmed the old suspicions against Richard III. confirmed as a child murderer.

What happened to the two boys in the tower? A cold case from the knightly era in England, in which numerous new clues have been found in recent years. Florence Kasumba takes up the new track again.

It was November 1, 1957, when the police noticed an acrid smell when they opened an apartment on Stiftstrasse in Frankfurt. He streams out of the living room. There she lies – the noble whore Rosemarie Nitribitt.

Her death hit like a bomb in the middle of the economic miracle of the 1950s. Nitribit is not just anyone. It is a sensation and a provocation at the same time. Rosemarie Nitribitt, always elegantly dressed, goes out in public to attract customers with a Mercedes convertible and a white poodle. Not where other prostitutes wait for clients. Rosemarie Nitribitt also attracts male society from the luxury hotels, who are only too happy to use her services. The nitrite is secretly traded as a kind of trophy among the moneyed nobility.

Her murderer will never be found. Cold Case reopens the case.