The True Story - Season 5 / Year 2008

Indiana Jones was inspired by the mysterious life of one man, Otto Rahn. Like his onscreen legend, Rahn had an unstinting desire to find ancient sacred relics, spending much of his life trying to locate the Holy Grail. He also possessed a love of ancient maps to help solve the mystery of where treasures were located and a spirit for intrepid adventure. In one instance, he found himself crawling through caves looking for the Holy Grail when he was hit by a torrent of water and nearly drowned, a scene later depicted in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.

Indeed, Rahn even had a complicated relationship with the Nazis, who were always breathing down his neck. Desperate to find the Holy Grail because they believed it would help their quest for world domination, Otto Rahn helped the Nazis as a strategic means to continue his search. But he was never a Nazi supporter, not least because he was a practicing homosexual.

Explore the story of Rahn's remarkable life in this episode of The True Story. Using photographs, personal testimony, surviving records, recorded interviews, and reconstruction, we follow in the footsteps of the explorer in his quest for the Holy Grail.  We also try to solve the mystery of how Rahn died; Was he murdered by the Nazis? Was it suicide? Or simply natural causes?

Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service. He was debonair, spoke many languages and was said to be as charismatic as he was brilliant. He was a compulsive womaniser (married four times – without ever divorcing); he loved the high-life, casinos, and fast cars. His missions took him, amongst other places, to Russia to help bring the Czar back to power after the Revolution, and to Japan where he was involved in smuggling secret documents. Sharing a mutual friend with Ian Flemming, he was to become the basis for James Bond.

Along with Sidney Reilly there are a number of other factors included in the films that have also been taken from real life. Many of the gadgets are based on new technology, some of which we have access to and will dust down and demonstrate. Some of the Bond Girls are also based on real people. Vesper Lynd, from Casino Royale, is believed to be based on Christine Granville, a real-life agent in the British Secret Service, who had an affair with Ian Flemming. Some of the villains are even inspired by reality. The real Scaramanga was two years below Fleming and was known to be an intimidating character.

Using photos, film footage, personal affects, dramatic reconstruction and clips from the Bond movies, we bring Reilly to life and reveal the origins of some of the key Bond girls and Bond villains.

Alcatraz was the world's most impregnable prison: insurmountable walls, one guard for every three prisoners, a gun gallery at the end of every cell block, frequent inmate counts, constant search lights and the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay. But three prisoners believed they could achieve the impossible.

The brains behind the escape bid was Frank Lee Morris, known to have a very impressive IQ (played in the movie by Clint Eastwood). From the moment he arrived in Alcrataz, he began plotting his escape. Two and a half years later, three prisoners removed the grids in the rear of their cells, carefully replacing them with papier-mâché replicas. After many manoeuvres the men scaled a 15-foot fence, and hurried down to the island shore where they inflated rafts and life vests and ventured out into the Bay waters. 

Back at the cell house, during the routine morning count, a guard probed his club into one of the inmates' cells, and the dummy head rolled off the bed and onto the floor.  The alarm was raised. But despite the authorities' strenuous efforts to track them down, none of the escapees have ever been found. For years the FBI continued to try to find them, but to no avail. So did the men escape?

Bits of raft, life preservers and wooden paddles were later found in the bay.

In this episode of The True Story, we use remnants of the raft, and the knowledge of what materials were available to the prisoners at the time to recreate their escape. Placing three men on board who would have been the same weight as the escapes, will the raft survive the choppy waters? Will the men make it ashore? Or will they have to admit defeat and be picked up by the support boat?

Amongst various key interviewees, we speak with a fellow inmate, Darwin Coon, who was in Alcatraz during the time of the escape and helped provide the materials for it. We also speak to the wardens who were foiled by the escape and the FBI agents who tried to tack down the prisoners.

Al Capone and his Mafia chiefs ruled over Chicago for years through corruption and fear. If they had been allowed to continue, there was a distinct danger that the rot would have spread and spead. Drastic measures were therefore needed to defeat Capone and the Mafia. Many had tried and failed. But against all odds, ten men, who came to be known as the Untouchables, brought down the hitherto invincible Capone and his henchmen. So remarkable was this story that it has subsequently been immortalised in blockbuster movie of the same name, starring Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery.

The man given this unenviable task was Eliot Ness. Ness launched an attack on Capone's stills. As his alcohol empire began to crumble, Capone became desperate. He tried to bribe Ness, and when unsuccessful, tried to bump him off by planting dynamite in his car. Eventually Ness outwitted Capone and he was found guilty of twenty one counts of tax evasion. Capone was sentenced to 11 years in jail.

The dramatised story of the Untouchables is similar to real life events. But there is one major error. The assumption throughout is that Al Capone was the main man. We reveal in this documentary, using Capone's biographer, Laurence Bergreen, that Capone was not the true boss of Chicago Mafia. He was merely a front. The real power was a group known as the Outfit. They kept a deliberately low profile – and it was they who gave Capone his orders. Their insistence on anonymity meant that while Eliot Ness was in constant pursuit of Al Capone, they were free to run the Chicago underworld.

We interview surviving Mafia bosses about the role of Capone and the Outfit to demonstrate the nature of this relationship. We hear how the Outfit rewarded the Capone family generously, in return for their silence about the identity of the real power of the Chicago underworld. Using interviews, footage and dramatic reconstruction, we will tell the remarkable story of how Ness courted Al Capone, but how ultimately it was the Mafia who had the last laugh.

On 13 November 1974, police discovered six members of the De Feo family shot dead; the father, mother and four of the five children, at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. Attention turned to Ronald, the only child to survive the ordeal. He was soon declared guilty of the murders, his motivation supposedly being that he did not get on with his father and saw the killings as retribution for the years of hell his Dad had put him through.

After the trial, a newly wed couple in search of their dream home bought the house. But one month later their dream had turned into a nightmare. The couple fled from the house claiming it was possessed with demonic spirits.   

They organised for two psychics to enter the house and carry out a séance. The supposed ghosts they identified were those of Native American Indians. The piece of land where the house had been built had formerly been a place where sick and insane members of the tribe were isolated until they died.  This revelation became a national story. It wasn't long before the book Amityville Horror shot to the top of the best seller list and a blockbuster movie followed.

This alone is an intriguing story. But the next chapter – not commonly known – is a remarkable twist. Two paranormal investigators weren't satisfied with the published version of events, and began delving into the case. They eventually revealed that the hautings were an elaborate hoax – concocted as a money making con.

In this episode of The True Story, we meet the key people behind this amazing story.