Original subtitles

On this episode of "Expedition Files"...

In 1975, union leader Jimmy Hoffa

vanishes from a parking lot without a trace.

Was it a mob hit? If so, where's the body?

A new theory may finally solve

one of the FBI's longest-running investigations.

Then, the Holy Grail, the cup of Jesus Christ,

has been hunted by kings and crusaders.

This biblical relic was said to be lost.

Has it now been found?

And groundbreaking engineer Rudolf Diesel disappears on

an ocean liner while transporting secret plans that

could change the course of World War I.

We reveal what may have been one of the greatest

espionage operations in history.

In the corridors of time...

are mysteries that defy explanation.

Now, I'm traveling through history itself...

on a search for the truth.

New evidence.

Shocking answers.

I'm Josh Gates.

And these...

are my Expedition Files.

One of my first jobs out of college was working as a waiter

at a Hollywood institution called The Magic Castle,

a private club for magicians.

I learned two things working there.

One, magicians are lousy tippers.

And two, there's nothing an audience loves more than

watching something disappear.

So tonight, prepare to be amazed

as we take vanishing acts to their most shocking extreme.

I promise, no top hats, rabbits, or $1 tips in sight.

We examine three of history's most

extraordinary disappearances-- people and things that were

suddenly gone without a trace,

leaving the rest of the world guessing.

That is, until now.

We begin on July 30, 1975.

It's a muggy afternoon just after 2:30 p.m.

I'm standing outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant,

about 20 miles northwest of Detroit.

The guy on the payphone here?

He isn't just your average angry diner.

In fact, he's one of the most powerful men in America.

This is Jimmy Hoffa.

At 62, Hoffa is the former president

of the Teamsters,

the most formidable labor union in America.

Right now, he's on the phone with his wife, Josephine,

upset that he's been stood up for a crucial meeting.

He tells her to throw some steaks on the grill

and expect him back by 4 o'clock.

But those steaks, well, they're gonna go cold.

And Jimmy Hoffa isn't coming home for dinner, because just

minutes from now, he'll disappear,

setting off one of the most extraordinary

missing persons cases in history.

For over 50 years, the world will ask

the same question-- what really happened to Jimmy Hoffa?

And why has his body never been found?

[big band music plays]

[Josh] In the middle of the last century, pretty much everyone

knows the name, Jimmy Hoffa. To millions, he's a hero.

As Teamster president, he stands up against

big business to secure better wages and benefits for

the blue-collar workers who depend on it.

[cheering]

You've heard of the supply chain?

The vast network that moves goods from factories to stores.

Well, in the 20th century, the Teamsters control it.

The organization of truck drivers and warehouse workers

literally keeps the American economy moving.

Hoffa rises through the ranks

as a street-fighting labor organizer.

- He becomes union president in 1957. - [indistinct chanting]

His influence is undeniable, but his methods are often

controversial, even illegal.

You see, in the '50s, organized crime has its hooks

in a lot of local unions.

- [phone ringing] - In return for their loyalty and occasional muscle,

Hoffa lets mob-connected businessmen borrow massive

chunks of money from the Teamsters pension fund.

That money helps build glitzy Vegas hotels and casinos.

The mob gets low-interest loans, and in exchange,

they give union jobs to Teamsters, everyone from

bellhops to cabbies.

Workers adore Hoffa. The government?

Not so much, especially Attorney General

Robert F. Kennedy.

See, it's not just Hoffa's mob buddies who are

breaking the law.

Hoffa plays dirty himself-- extortion,

wiretapping, embezzlement.

In 1967, after years of attempts, the Feds, led by

Kennedy, finally nailed Jimmy for jury tampering

and misusing union pension funds.

He gets 13 years behind bars.

[reporter, archived] With his raincoat covering handcuffs,

Hoffa arrives at federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

It seems the street-fighting labor boss has finally met his match.

But don't count Hoffa out just yet.

He's about to get help from a very unlikely friend,

President Richard Nixon.

On December 23, 1971, Nixon commutes

Hoffa's sentence, and Jimmy gets out after serving

less than five years.

Nixon thinks that freeing him will earn him support from

Hoffa's loyal followers.

But for Hoffa, freedom comes with a caveat.

Nixon bars him from any union activity until 1980,

effectively minimizing his power and influence.

In 1974, Hoffa sues the government to lift the ban.

With an appeal underway, Hoffa tries to shore up support

for a run at the union presidency

at the next election... - [indistinct chanting]

...which brings us back to the restaurant parking lot

on that muggy day in July of 1975.

[chanting concludes]

When Hoffa fails to arrive home, his family

calls the police.

The next morning, investigators find Hoffa's car

in the Machus Red Fox parking lot.

There's no sign of a struggle and no sign of Jimmy.

Several people report seeing the famous labor leader at

the restaurant the day before.

One witness claims she saw Hoffa

get into a maroon Mercury sedan with three other men.

It is the last time anyone will report seeing Hoffa alive.

A nationwide manhunt is launched.

[sirens wail]

[indistinct police radio chatter]

As it heats up, rumors circulate that the mafia

is involved in Hoffa's disappearance.

Hoffa's family finds his date book, and it makes the mob

the prime suspect.

It reveals the names of two men he intended to meet that day

at the restaurant.

Tony Giacalone, aka Tony Jack, a senior figure in

the Detroit mob.

And Tony Provenzano, aka Tony Pro, a "capo" or captain

for the Genovese crime family.

Investigators track down both Tonys.

Each has a strong alibi and deny that a meeting with

Hoffa was even scheduled.

But there is a thread for the investigators to pull on.

Tony Giacalone's son happens to own a Mercury sedan,

just like the one the eyewitness described.

And there's another interesting wrinkle.

A man called Chucky O'Brien borrowed the car that morning

to supposedly run some errands.

Chucky was a known Hoffa Union associate.

Jimmy treated him like a stepson.

When authorities process the car, they find bloodstains

on the seat, and that's not all.

A few strands of hair matching Hoffa's color

also go into evidence bags.

Police dogs hit on Hoffa's scent, suggesting Jimmy was in

the back seat and, even more disturbingly, the trunk.

But O'Brien claims he didn't pick Jimmy up

at the Machus Red Fox that day.

And the blood on the seat?

Chucky says that comes from a salmon he delivered to

a Teamster's house that morning.

If this all sounds very fishy to you, you're not alone.

However, tests on the blood reveal O'Brien is telling

the truth, at least about the salmon.

It's fish blood, not human.

As to the hair, well, it's the mid-'70s,

and we're more than a decade away from DNA technology that

could confirm whether it belonged to Hoffa.

Days turn to weeks,

and there's still no sign of Jimmy.

In November of 1975, nearly four months

after the disappearance, investigators catch a break.

Ralph Picardo, a mob-connected convict serving

time for murder, claims he knows the truth of

Hoffa's disappearance and gives up the details to the Feds in

exchange for a reduced sentence.

Ralph points the finger at the two Tonys, saying they sent

four wise guys to kidnap Hoffa from the Machus Red Fox,

and that they took him to a second location

where he was shot and killed.

[gunshot blasts]

Then, according to Picardo, the body was packed into

a 55-gallon drum, loaded on a truck,

and driven to a mob-controlled landfill in New Jersey,

where it was buried.

However, several days of searching at the dump turns up

little more than toxic waste and animal bones, likely

discarded from nearby meat processing plants.

In late 1975, a grand jury grills Tony Pro, Tony Jack,

and several of the other alleged mob co-conspirators.

But nobody talks. They all plead the fifth.

With scant evidence and no body,

the case of the missing union leader goes colder

than the Detroit River in February.

In 1982, authorities declare Jimmy Hoffa legally dead,

despite never in any way answering what happened to him.

The world is left mystified as to his final fate.

But then, 19 years later, a game-changing revelation will

crack the case wide open.

In 2001, 19 years after Jimmy Hoffa went missing,

a shocking discovery jolts the case back into

the national spotlight.

DNA testing confirms the hair found in the car is Hoffa's.

There's no longer any doubt.

The infamous union boss was inside that vehicle.

But where was he taken? And what was done to him?

For over two decades, mafia historian,

Christian Cipollini, has dug into the blood-soaked theories

surrounding what happened to Hoffa and his body.

[Christian] The Hoffa case fascinates me because this is something that

doesn't have closure.

It's like the JFK assassination.

It's like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

We want some answers.

One of the first major theories that really stuck in

the American psyche came to light when a former mobster

named Tony the Greek, he said, Hoffa was killed

and then transported to New Jersey,

and buried under the Giants stadium,

which they were building at the time.

The problem with that theory is that the mafia

likes to do things in a practical way.

Keep it simple.

What the mob probably didn't do was pack the body of the most

famous missing man in America on a truck, taking it across

state lines to bury it in such an extravagant way.

[Josh] Rumors swelled into an urban legend that Jimmy Hoffa was

buried in the stadium's foundations.

But when it was demolished in 2010,

no trace of him was found.

[indistinct loudspeaker announcement]

Which leads us to popular theory number two, the Irishman.

In 2003, Frank Sheeran, a former Teamster official

and alleged mob hitman, is dying of cancer.

On his deathbed, he gives a jaw-dropping

confession to his lawyer.

He claims Hoffa was abducted and murdered by the mob.

Sheeran says he was not only there that day, but he was

the one who actually pulled the trigger.

[gunshot blasts]

Sheeran's confession becomes a best-selling book,

later adapted into Martin Scorsese's movie,

"The Irishman," in which he's played by Robert De Niro.

Sheeran gives the exact address of a house in Detroit where

he claims Hoffa was murdered.

In 2004, investigators tear up the floorboards

and they do discover blood.

Unfortunately, it's not a match for Hoffa.

The only evidence of Frank Sheeran being involved in

the Hoffa hit and disappearance were his own claims.

And his own story changed many times over the years.

The Irishman theory is great pop culture Americana,

but it doesn't rest on solid evidence.

[Josh] So what really happened to Hoffa's body?

Why hasn't it been found?

Over the years, dozens of theories have been put forward,

mostly by former wise guys looking for 15 minutes of fame

and a quick buck.

One claims Hoffa was dumped in the Florida Everglades.

Another swears he was dropped out of an airplane into

the Great Lakes.

Yet another says he buried Hoffa beneath a swimming pool.

It's estimated the FBI has spent tens of millions of

dollars chasing bogus leads.

In 2022, they even reinvestigated

the dump in New Jersey.

But once again, they came up empty-handed.

[Christian] 50 years of searching for the body of Jimmy Hoffa.

What they did right in this hit, we assume,

is they destroyed the body.

[Josh] So if it is the mob, how did they make Hoffa

disappear permanently?

In 2025, it's revealed that the FBI caught

a major break when Detroit mobster Anthony Palazzolo,

a.k.a. Tony Pal, confesses to the hit, saying he turned Hoffa

into literal mincemeat at his place of business,

the Detroit Sausage Company.

Supposedly, the remains are then cremated at a mob-owned

dump called Central Sanitation.

And Christian believes the evidence

was then further erased.

[Christian] From Machus Red Fox to the Central Sanitation is just

a short drive.

This entire crime could have been carried out in less

than an hour.

A year or so later, Central Sanitation burned to

the ground, and you wouldn't be able to find any evidence

even if it was there.

The key to pulling off this perfect crime...

was leave no body.

[Josh] Run through a sausage grinder and cremated

not once, but twice.

Tony Pal's confession suggests a logical and grisly

conclusion to the Hoffa mystery.

Jimmy Hoffa was a titan of his age, but in death,

his remains will never be found

because there's nothing to find.

Hoffa's final resting place has gone up in smoke, literally.

From a missing man who helped shape a century to a missing

object that shaped the last two millennia.

It's the year 33 AD,

just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.

This group of men here, they're guests at history's

most famous dinner party. That one there is Peter.

And over in the shadows, brooding and restless, Judas.

And then there's our host, Jesus of Nazareth.

According to Christian scripture, by this time

tomorrow, Jesus will be executed on a Roman cross.

And the simple cup he now lifts is about to

become Christendom's most sacred and most controversial

relic, the Holy Grail.

Many will come to believe the Grail grants divine power

or even eternal life, but soon it will vanish.

Will it be lost forever or will it end up hiding

in plain sight?

The story of the Grail is one of mystery.

The Bible doesn't even provide a physical description of it.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, written more

than a half a century after Jesus' death,

refer simply to a cup.

The cup is used ceremonially to represent Christ's sacrifice.

The Scripture also has nothing to say about where this cup

went after the fateful supper, nor any of the subsequent

claims of its qualities.

For centuries, it seems to have simply vanished.

Then, in the Middle Ages, tales emerge of the Grail as

an artifact imbued with incredible power.

Mostly set in the mystical realm of King Arthur, these are

stories of heroic knights and sacred mysteries.

Think of them as the "Star Wars" saga,

only set a long time ago in a castle far, far away.

But here's where things get really interesting,

because at the same time that we get these medieval myths

about the chivalrous knights of the Round Table, there's also

a real-life group of God's warriors, the Knights Templar,

an order of military monks, equal parts holy and badass.

They roam the Christian world with one foot in the church

and the other on the battlefield.

[bell tolls]

After the First Crusade, they're charged with protecting

wealthy Christian pilgrims on their travels to the Holy Land.

The Templars' home base is in the heart of Jerusalem,

and it's said to contain vast wealth and holy relics.

Rumors begin to spread.

Did they discover Jesus' chalice and keep it

for themselves? If so, where did they put it?

The Holy Grail could be anywhere

across the vast Templar network,

stretching from England to Syria.

But in 1312, the Templars are forcibly disbanded,

without ever revealing if they did indeed get the Grail.

In the centuries that follow, the legend and lore of

Christ's cup only grows,

with many vessels emerging that people claim

are the real deal.

There's the silver Antioch chalice, found in the ruins of

a church in Turkey.

The onyx chalice of Dona Urraca,

housed in a basilica in Spain.

And who could forget the Nanteos cup,

a humble wooden bowl from a monastery in Wales.

At least that one looks like the cup of a carpenter.

In fact, over 200 vessels across Europe have, at one time

or another, been presented as the possible Holy Grail.

Most of them, well, let's just say they don't hold water.

[bell tolls]

[ethereal music plays]

But a couple seem real enough

to cause even skeptical Grail Seekers

to take a second look.

Behold the Sacro Catino,

a.k.a. the Genoa Chalice.

Sure, it looks like a satellite dish from the Emerald City,

but according to the medieval chronicle of the Italian city

of Genoa, Crusaders seized this mysterious green vessel during

the capture of the biblical city of Caesarea in

the year 1101.

Now, according to the chronicle, the chalice is

said to be crafted out of pure emerald and is with

the Last Supper, fueling the belief that it could possess

extraordinary powers.

The cup even appears to glow from within, radiating what

some have said is a divine light.

But can the Genoa Chalice be proven to be

the true Holy Grail?

[Josh] In the Middle Ages, the emerald Genoa Chalice is

considered by many to be the Holy Grail.

In the 1800s, when Napoleon annexes Genoa,

the French emperor personally demands that the prized chalice

is shipped to the Paris Academy of Sciences to

verify its authenticity.

But while in transit from Genoa to France,

the cup fractures.

Upon examination, Parisian scientists determined

the dish is not an emerald at all, but Byzantine glass.

That's a big problem because this particular style of glass

was not in use until hundreds of years after Jesus' death.

And so it becomes another failed contender in

the enduring quest for the Holy Grail.

And as it turns out, Napoleon isn't the only

power-hungry authoritarian to seek the Grail.

[crowd roaring]

A century later, Adolf Hitler becomes fascinated with

the Grail and its supposed powers.

His most lethal enforcer, Heinrich Himmler,

reportedly dispatches the Nazi SS

on expeditions across Europe in search of the relic.

For more on this, please see

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

And Indy's adventure is just one of many modern spins on

the Grail legend.

If you look around, Grail mythology is everywhere

in pop culture,

from Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code"...

to "Monty Python" to gaming's

"Assassin's Creed" franchise.

To the faithful, the Holy Grail remains

not a thing of fiction, but a divine relic

that could still be found.

Despite centuries of pursuit, though,

it has remained elusive.

But now, professor of history and folklore

Dr. Lynn McNeill claims there may be

compelling new evidence for the Grail's existence.

[Lynn] Within the context of Christianity, the Grail is one

of the most sacred objects on this planet today.

And we're left wondering what happened.

If we still have it, if it is findable, if it exists,

if it is extant in the world, this would be magnificent.

Recent research is starting to show that

the Chalice of Valencia is the historic Cup of Christ.

This may be more than just a local belief.

This could actually be possible.

[Josh] The Holy Chalice of Valencia,

also known as the Santo Caliz, has been protected

in the Cathedral of Valencia, Spain, for the last 600 years.

Although details are spotty, it is believed the chalice came

from the Holy Land to Rome

with Saint Peter in the 1st century AD.

Later, in the 3rd century, Saint Lawrence brought the cup

to his native Spain,

where it has been safeguarded for centuries.

Since arriving in Valencia, religious pilgrims have

traveled from all around the world to glimpse what

they believe to be the one true cup.

But others are unconvinced.

After all, it's kind of hard to imagine Jesus would use

something this ornate.

But in 1960, a Spanish archaeologist

discovers this chalice is actually three separate pieces.

He claims the stand of the cup comes from the medieval period,

while the base dates to the 9th century.

But here's the kicker.

The cup itself was crafted between the 2nd century BC

and the 1st century AD, and the agate stone it's made

from is only found in the Holy Land.

This cup really could date from the time and place of Jesus.

The entire cup itself

is not what Jesus would have drank out of.

Just that top part, that simple stone cup.

That would be the Grail.

The rest of it would be casing placed around it, and this is

a common practice of putting sacred objects in

an intentionally ornate container to show

their importance through the way we display them.

Another interesting element is the idea that this cup

would have needed to meet certain ritual requirements.

A lot of people forget that the Last Supper wasn't just

any meal-- it was a seder.

It was a Passover meal.

Any cup used in the Passover meal needs to hold

a minimum amount of liquid.

And this particular cup is just the right size to hold

the required two revits-- is the Talmudic measurement

that's needed to be held with wine.

And this holds 2.5.

So to know that this holy chalice, that it's dated to

the right time period, that it is ritually correct for

a Passover dinner--

for believers, these elements really just become the final

proof that this is, not just in our hearts, but in history,

the Holy Grail.

[ethereal music plays]

To many, this case is far from closed.

After all, the chalice has many gaps in its history before

arriving in Spain.

Like many religious mysteries, this ultimately comes down to

a question of faith.

The Grail's significance lies in what it represents to those

who seek it, whether that means it's a physical cup or not.

I'll raise a glass to that.

Nearly 2,000 years after the Grail vanishes,

another disappearance sends shockwaves through history.

It's September 29, 1913.

I'm about to board aboard the SS Dresden,

a British passenger liner sailing from Belgium

bound for England.

Checking in behind me, a brilliant engineer

named Rudolf Diesel.

The very name powers the world, engine and fuel alike.

And in his suitcase are revolutionary designs,

ideas that could challenge empires, rattle industries,

and maybe even get a man killed.

And sure enough, by dawn, Diesel will disappear.

For over 100 years, historians will spin

their wheels asking what really happened to him.

That is, until a new theory fuels the search for answers.

[steam engine chugging]

[Josh] In the late 19th century, the world is racing

toward the future, but its steam-powered engines

are stuck in the past, burning through coal,

guzzling water, and constantly breaking down.

Enter Rudolf Diesel, a German engineer with a mind

like a finely-tuned machine-- precise, relentless,

and absolutely obsessed with efficiency.

[gears clicking]

In 1897, he unveils his masterwork,

the engine that bears his name.

The Diesel engine's innovation? Compression ignition.

That means air inside the engine cylinder

gets squeezed really hard until the pressure

makes it white-hot.

Then, fuel is injected and spontaneously combusts,

creating a massive amount of power.

It's cheaper than steam, and best of all,

no more coal shoveling.

Diesel's prototype is fueled with peanut oil.

[vintage car horn honks]

Almost overnight, Diesel's engine becomes

an economic and industrial game-changer around the world.

Soon, Diesel achieves incredible wealth and fame.

But success comes with serious headaches.

Rivals want his secrets.

Powerful industries feel threatened.

The German government wants greater control of

their favorite son.

And over the next decade, Diesel's fortune slips away,

lost to bad investments, legal battles,

and his own lavish lifestyle.

By 1913, Europe is at a crossroads.

The storm clouds of World War I are gathering.

Desperate for cash to pay down his debts, Diesel makes a bold

and risky move, taking on a business partner to open

a Diesel engine plant in England.

That's where he's headed on the SS Dresden

to cut the ribbon on his brand-new English factory.

But with pre-war tensions rising between Britain

and Diesel's native Germany, transferring cutting-edge

technology is a dangerous game.

[boat horn blows]

The morning of September 30th, Diesel's business partner

expects to meet him for breakfast.

When the famously punctual Diesel doesn't show,

his partner pays a visit to his cabin.

Inside, Diesel's nightshirt lays neatly atop the bed,

which hasn't been slept in.

His gold watch, luggage, and his wallet are

in the room.

But neither Diesel nor the important documents

he's said to be traveling with are anywhere to be found.

His diary is empty, save for the sign of a cross penciled

next to yesterday's date, September 29th,

the last time anyone saw Rudolf Diesel.

[boat horn blows]

[Josh] Famous inventor Rudolf Diesel is on his way to England on

the SS Dresden when he mysteriously vanishes.

The crew scours the decks for any sign of

the missing engineer.

At the stern of the ship, a curious discovery--

Diesel's hat and jacket neatly folded near the railing.

The crew declares him a man overboard.

Almost immediately, news of Diesel's disappearance

makes international headlines.

And 11 days later, the story takes

a truly tragic turn.

Sailors aboard a Dutch steamer find a body floating in

the North Sea.

Given the state of decomposition,

they retrieve a few personal effects before returning

the dead man to a watery grave.

Diesel's son later identifies a pillbox

and an eyeglasses case as belonging to his father.

Diesel's family claims it must have been an accident.

But the sea was calm that night,

and the Dresden's railings were too high

for a simple misstep.

If Diesel went overboard, it wasn't by chance.

But could it have been by choice?

Perhaps Diesel's dire financial situation

prompted him to commit suicide.

For a man who revolutionized engines, his bank account was

running on fumes.

Before he set sail, he gave his wife a sealed bag,

instructing her not to open it for a week.

After his presumed death, she looks inside,

finding documents revealing his deep debt and 20,000 marks,

worth about $120,000 today.

This final gesture would seem to frame this as a suicide.

But is it?

Because here's the thing.

No one who knows Diesel believes he's capable of

self-harm-- not his friends, not his family,

not his colleagues.

Yes, he was in debt, but he was also on the verge

of winning another fortune.

And for a man as meticulous as Diesel,

there was no note, no will, just that enigmatic cross

in his diary.

It all seems very out of character.

And then there's the missing important documents Diesel was

said to be traveling with, which leads many to believe

that this isn't a suicide on the high seas,

but a maritime murder.

The approach of World War I

makes the Diesel mystery even murkier.

At the time, submarines are the hottest thing in warfare,

and Diesel's engine could superpower them, making them

cheaper, faster, with more range,

giving whoever has Diesel's technology

a deadly advantage.

The Kaiser wants that tech locked down in Germany.

The government warns Diesel,

"Share it with foreign powers, and it's treason."

But the engineer believes his invention is for everyone,

not just one military.

And there's more.

Diesel's journey has a double agenda.

Publicly, he was set to attend the ribbon-cutting

of his new factory, set to build engines

for agricultural machines and cargo ships.

But behind the scenes, he was meeting

with British military officials, discussing how his engines,

German-designed engines, could power specialized

British warships, including submarines.

Some believe German agents silenced Diesel to keep

his plans out of enemy hands.

- [thwack] - [grunt]

[thwacking continues]

[ominous tones play]

Possible, but as it turns out, the Kaiser isn't the only one

with the motive and means to do Diesel in.

His engine doesn't just threaten military power,

it threatens big oil.

Unlike gasoline, Diesel's engine runs on

peanut oil or coal-tar, cheap fuels that don't require

massive oil empires.

Empires like that of the world's richest man,

J.D. Rockefeller, who has a reputation

for protecting his riches by any means necessary.

As intriguing as the murder theory may be,

there is a glaring problem.

Not a shred of evidence has surfaced in over a century to

prove Diesel was assassinated by the German government

or Big Oil-- operations that would surely have left witnesses

and some sort of paper trail.

So if he wasn't murdered and he didn't commit suicide,

then what happened to Rudolf Diesel?

Could it be that he didn't die at all?

While Jimmy Hoffa vanished without a trace, leaving only

rumors of his fate, other mob hits unfolded in broad daylight,

designed to stun the public.

In 1957, Albert Anastasia, once head of Murder, Inc.,

was gunned down in a New York barbershop... - [gunshots popping]

- [sirens wailing] - ...a towel over his face as bullets tore him apart.

In 1979, Carmine Galante was murdered mid-meal in Brooklyn,

a cigar clenched between his teeth.

Then, in 1985, Gambino boss, Paul Castellano,

was brazenly executed outside

Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan, - [gunshots blast]

ambushed in the street as crowds looked on.

These assassinations were more than power plays.

They were spectacles.

Unlike Hoffa's vanishing act, they left indelible,

gruesome evidence, reminders that the mafia often

preferred its messages written in blood.

[Josh] Rudolf Diesel was one of the greatest engineering minds

our world has ever known.

Now, a bold new theory shakes up everything we thought

we knew about what happened to him.

Author and historian Douglas Brunt claims

that there's a shocking truth behind Diesel's disappearance,

something you'd never expect.

[Douglas] Rudolf Diesel is the most underappreciated inventor

of his time.

He had a very sort of liberal approach

to the sharing of information around the technology.

And Diesel abhorred the nationalism and the more

aggressive foreign policy of the Germans.

There was also evidence that he had very high contact with

the British Royal Navy, which was at that time

run by Winston Churchill.

And so the most likely conclusion

of the Diesel mystery, looking at all the evidence,

is that he did not slip and fall overboard,

he did not commit suicide,

[thwack]

he was not murdered, but with the assistance of

British naval intelligence, he staged

his own disappearance.

Brunt believes the British government orchestrated one of

history's greatest cover-ups, faking Rudolf Diesel's death to

secretly harness his genius while protecting him from

deadly German retribution.

[Douglas] My belief is that Rudolf Diesel got on the Dresden...

[indistinct crowd chatter]

and then got right back off.

And then the Dresden left without him.

This is supported by the steward's cabin list saying

he was not aboard when the Dresden set sail.

In the very first days after Diesel's disappearance,

the mysterious details of his financial position start to

show up in the media to try to

get the suicide theory some traction.

They wanted to get it to look like Diesel was sad

and depressed and suicidal and bankrupt.

It'd be very easy to plant those kinds of stories

and get it printed.

Spinning a tale of Diesel's despair may have fueled

the suicide theory.

But what about the body found at sea?

The one bearing his belongings,

yet, strangely, never recovered for autopsy?

[Douglas] It's possible there may have been a corpse

as part of this deception.

Perhaps British intelligence felt they needed to float

a corpse out there...

some happenstance steamer would come upon.

But then, strangely, there are no interviews with

the fishermen on record.

There's no record of their names.

And they returned the corpse to the water, which is not

the custom of the day.

Okay, so we've got young Winston Churchill

and the British Royal Navy executing a plan

to drop a dead body into the ocean,

one that isn't Diesel, to mislead the German government.

Sounds a little out there, but what if I told you that

Churchill pulled exactly the same stunt 30 years later

during World War II in something known as

Operation Mincemeat?

[Douglas] Operation Mincemeat was a World War II

deception operation using a corpse.

They handcuffed a briefcase with fake battle plans to

a corpse and floated it into the coast of Spain

where they knew Nazi agents would find it.

And Hitler took the bait.

He thought we were going one way, we went the other.

Operation Rudolf Diesel could be a precursor to

Operation Mincemeat.

And then there's the bizarrely exceptional performance of

the submarines of the British Navy in the war.

And they're all diesel-powered.

So it seems like Diesel might actually have been alive in

the service of Churchill's Royal Navy building

submarine diesels in Canada for the war effort.

There's an interesting final twist to this theory.

In 1914, a newspaper ran a story claiming Rudolf Diesel

was alive and living in Canada.

Maybe the story was a hoax, or maybe British Intelligence

had it buried.

Coincidentally, around that time, Vickers Shipyard in

Montreal suddenly became much more successful at churning out

diesel engines for submarines.

Today, a century after his disappearance,

Rudolf Diesel's engines are still running all over

the world, proving, if nothing else, his legacy is

alive and well.

I'm Josh Gates, and I'll see you on the next expedition.