Original subtitles

On this episode of "Expedition Files..."

1692 in Salem, Massachusetts,

a group of young girls accuse their neighbors of witchcraft.

Setting off hysteria that will end in 20 executions.

Now, we discover what may be the true cause

of the Salem Witch Trials.

Then, in 1980, at a military base in England,

a unit of U.S. airmen will all swear they witnessed a UFO

with stunning audio evidence.

We unravel the secrets behind the case known

as Britain's Roswell.

And at the turn of the 20th century,

a man known as Rasputin, the Mad Monk is famed

for his mystical powers.

Becoming an advisor to the Russian royal family

before he's violently assassinated.

Now we uncover a shocking theory

revealing who killed him,

and why.

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".

When I meet people on my travels, they often say,

"What you do for a living is crazy."

But hey, one person's insanity is another's Tuesday night

in a cursed Egyptian tomb, am I right?

The line between madness and normalcy,

well, sometimes it's just a matter of perspective.

And finding that perspective is the task at hand,

as we examine three remarkable mysteries of madness.

In each case, trying to find the sane within the insane.

We begin our journey in a Massachusetts court,

but these are no ordinary proceedings,

because the year is 1692,

and this is the town of Salem.

The Meeting House is packed with people here to see

the trial of the woman beside me.

Her name is Martha Corey.

Her crime?

Witchcraft.

They say she consorts with the devil,

that she wields dark forces to harm the innocent.

And she's not alone.

When all is said and done, hundreds will have been accused,

dozens imprisoned, and 20 executed in a community

gripped by fear.

But what is really happening here?

Religious hysteria? Mass paranoia?

Or is there something darker hiding in the shadows?

The jury's out, but it won't be for much longer.

Our story begins seven decades before the witch trials,

when Salem is founded in 1626 by Puritans from England.

Devout, disciplined,

and dedicated to carving out a new life

in an unforgiving wilderness.

Over the next century, their world is shaped by toil,

fear, and absolute devotion.

Add in tensions within the new community, not to mention

conflict with Native Americans, lurking French rivals,

starvation, disease, and a deep-seated fear

of the devil.

And you've got a powder keg just waiting to blow.

Oh, Father! Oh, Lord!

Ease her suffering. Oh, Lord! Oh, God!

We're inside the home of Reverend Samuel Parris,

and on the bed before me are his daughter Betty

and her cousin Abigail Williams.

No one knows what's wrong with the girls,

but their symptoms seem severe

as they suffer violent spasms and convulsions.

Desperate prayers are whispered,

herbal remedies tried, but nothing helps.

Oh, Lord! Oh, God!

A local physician is summoned.

He examines the girls,

and despite their terrifying condition,

finds no evidence of disease.

And jumps to the only other conclusion

his worldview allows--

an evil hand is upon them.

His official diagnosis?

Witchcraft.

Soon, the mysterious affliction spreads

as two other girls in the village--

12-year-old, Ann Putnam Jr.

and 17-year-old, Elizabeth Hubbard

also fall ill.

Others in the community also start reporting

seizure-like symptoms and claim to witness shadow figures

and invisible attacks of stabbing and choking.

Meanwhile, the girls who were first afflicted

named their tormentors.

They claim to be attacked by the specters

of three women-- household slave Tituba,

as well as local outcast, Sarah Osborne,

and a destitute beggar named Sarah Good.

All three are arrested.

Under pressure, Tituba confesses,

claiming the devil, quote,

"Came to me and bid me serve him."

And even more shocking, she implicates

the two other women.

Claiming they and unnamed others in the town are also witches.

During Sarah Good's trial,

accusers paint her as a bitter, envious outcast,

whose poverty and anger make her a prime vessel

for the devil's work.

Sarah passionately declares her innocence,

but her cries are ignored.

All three women are branded as heretics

and thrown into jail.

The incarceration of this trio, seen as social outcasts,

doesn't come as a surprise to some.

But it turns out this is only the beginning.

What happens next will change everything.

And that brings us back to Martha Corey.

Martha is considered a respected,

not to mention a devout member of the community.

But when she questions whether Salem's young women

are truly victims of witchcraft... - Silence!

she quickly finds herself... - You two, silence now!

accused by one of the young girls,

and standing trial herself.

She's a harlot! She lies! Call out the demon!

The community is shocked.

Unlike the other three accused women who had no defenders,

Martha Corey is known to some as "the gospel woman"

and is as pious as they come.

Martha stands her ground, denying everything.

But in this climate,

an accusation is as good as guilt.

And as the judge seals her fate,

the town crosses the point of no return.

If someone as faithful as Martha Corey

can be condemned, then everyone's at risk.

Soon, a tidal wave of accusations

sweep through Salem and the surrounding villages.

Dragging down residents like Elizabeth Proctor

and Rebecca Nurse.

Even the previously jailed beggar, Sarah Good,

finds her four-year-old daughter, Dorothy,

now locked up with her.

Officials encourage the accused to beg for forgiveness,

whether they're guilty or not.

The rules are brutally simple--

Deny it? You hang.

Confess? You live.

But remain locked up until you can pay off

your arrest fees.

Despite Boston judges warning not to allow so-called

"spectral evidence" in court, the advice is ignored,

and citizens continue to be arrested

due to invisible evidence.

In short, madness has come to Salem,

and death isn't far behind.

On May 10th, one of the original accused,

Sarah Osborne, dies in jail.

A month after that, five women will be hanged

at Gallows Hill in Salem,

including another of the original three, Sarah Good.

By the spring of 1692,

the witch hunt has spread far beyond Salem.

The breaking point finally comes when the governor

of Massachusetts, William Phipps, intervenes,

partly because his own wife has been accused.

He orders the witch trials stop and bans any future use

of supernatural claims as courtroom evidence.

Nearly a year and a half after the accusations began,

the spell is finally broken.

Over the next few weeks, arrests are suspended

and prisoners set free.

But the damage has already been done.

By the time the hysteria burns out,

nearly 200 people have been accused of witchcraft.

Of those, 19 have been hanged,

and one man, Giles Corey, is even pressed to death

under heavy stones.

As for Tituba, she's in prison for well over a year,

and records show that a landowner buys her

by paying her jail fees,

but her ultimate fate is lost to history.

For over 325 years,

the Salem witch trials have served as a warning

about the dangers of paranoid group think.

Arthur Miller's 1953 play, "The Crucible,"

even used the story as a metaphor

for McCarthy-era witch hunts.

But one question still lingers.

It's about Abigail and Betty's mysterious illness,

the event that ignited

all the chaos and tragedy that followed.

Safely assuming they weren't under a witch's spell,

what truly afflicted them?

Well, for years, one of the main theories

was that the young girls were simply faking it.

As adolescents in a strict Puritan society,

they had little control over their lives.

Their sudden sickness made them the center of attention

and gave them power over adults.

Others have claimed that existing tensions

between rival families and unhappy neighbors

may have inspired the initial accusations,

which then spiraled out of control.

But let's not forget,

Abigail and Betty weren't alone.

In total, 10 young girls,

many in different households, began displaying

the exact same bizarre symptoms.

To many, it's hard to believe they all conspired

to fake the same disorder.

So, if it wasn't a fabrication, what in the world caused it?

Now, a jaw-dropping theory aims to explain all.

She's gonna ruin our society!

The Salem witch trials remain a chilling cautionary tale

where fear ran wild and innocent lives were lost

after young girls claimed to be cursed by witchcraft.

But if it wasn't lies and it wasn't the devil,

then what was it?

In the 1970s, another theory emerges.

Maybe the girls weren't cursed.

Maybe they were poisoned.

The first two girls to experience the affliction

are Betty Parris and Abigail Williams.

In the 1970s, it was proposed by one researcher

that maybe the affliction in Salem was caused by ergot.

Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye or wheat.

But when we really zoom in and look at the evidence

of the Salem witch trials,

ergot actually doesn't make sense.

There are multiple people living in the house

with Betty Parris and Abigail Williams.

So why would just two people become sick?

Why wouldn't everyone in the house,

eating the same bread, become ill?

And with several thousand people living in and around Salem

at the time who were not afflicted,

the moldy bread theory is, well, toast.

But something set off their unsettling symptoms.

So if it wasn't a cursed carb, what was it?

Recent revelations in mental health

may finally offer an alternate explanation.

Perhaps the girls' affliction was real,

but its roots weren't physical, they were psychological,

due to something known as conversion disorder.

Conversion disorder is a real medical issue people experience,

and it can convert into physical symptoms.

Twitching, jerking, outbursts,

uncontrollable behavior like that.

Also called Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder,

it is a mental affliction that can manifest physically as well,

in ways that are often completely bewildering

to the patient. The cause?

Extreme stress.

If we think about the conditions

that Betty Paris and Abigail Williams

were living in in 1692, this does make sense.

They're children living in a very strict Puritan household,

hearing these sermons constantly

about the dangers of the devil and the invisible world.

They're hearing from their peers about the wars going on

with the indigenous tribes of the area,

that they could be attacked at any moment.

It's a really stressful situation,

particularly for kids that young.

So the theory is that, because of the hard

and isolated life of Puritan colonists,

the young women of Salem

had a very particular type of breakdown.

In cases like that, of...

if some people are complaining of this illness,

others soon think that they might be susceptible

to it as well.

You would call that mass psychogenic illness.

It's interesting to observe

that when the afflicted witnesses were separated

from the other witnesses, they did recover.

Betty Paris is separated from the rest of the family.

Her illness resolves itself. She makes a full recovery.

Could it be that four young girls suffered

a neurological condition that then snowballed

throughout their community until tragedy ensued?

Remarkably, evidence that may support the theory emerged

more than 300 years later.

In 2012, 18 cheerleaders in Le Roy, upstate New York,

all began exhibiting inexplicable tics and twitches,

terrifying their small town and drawing a media circus.

Soon, community tensions boiled over in a desperate search

for the truth, just as they did four centuries earlier.

But unlike colonial Salem, cooler heads prevailed,

and in time, the girls' symptoms mysteriously vanished

without hauling anyone to the gallows.

It makes you think perhaps the only bewitching thing

at work in Salem was the human mind.

300 years after the hysteria of Salem,

we're about to experience a very different case

of what some will say is collective madness.

It's just after midnight on December 26th, 1980,

a blisteringly cold night in the Rendlesham Forest

near Suffolk, England.

Did you see that?

Something is moving in these woods,

something strange.

And what happens here over the next few hours will become

one of the most baffling UFO encounters of all time

because the key witnesses are serving members

of the American Air Force.

But is it really something out of this world?

One thing's for sure, I won't be needing this anymore

because the real light show is about to begin.

At Royal Air Force Base Woodbridge,

U.S. Air Force security are on routine patrol.

It's the height of the Cold War,

and the U.S. operates the base on English soil

under a NATO agreement.

At 3:00 AM, Airman First Class, John Burroughs spots

an odd light in the forest beyond the East Gate.

Staff Sergeant, Jim Penniston, also on patrol,

sees the light as well.

Together with a third serviceman,

Edward Cabansag, they head deeper

into Rendlesham Forest to investigate.

According to the men's accounts,

the lights grow brighter and stranger

with every step.

Their radios crackle, then cut out entirely.

Finally, they see it.

The men will claim that a metallic, triangular object

appears to hover just above the forest floor.

Its smooth, black surface, reflecting an eerie light.

No sound, no wind, just an otherworldly energy

that seems to vibrate through the air itself.

Penniston would later contend that he actually touches

the mysterious craft.

He says the surface is perfectly smooth and warm,

marked with strange symbols that he later records

in a notebook.

Then, in an instant, the metallic enigma blasts off,

with a blinding streak of light

that disappears into the night sky.

If that were the end of the story,

Rendlesham would go down as one of the most intriguing,

unexplained events in history,

a close encounter of the second kind,

if I'm remembering my Spielberg correctly.

But this mystery, it's just getting started.

In the early morning hours, investigators locate

three strange imprints in the soil,

spaced evenly apart in a nearly a perfect triangle.

Their Geiger counter also spikes,

showing higher than average radiation

as they investigate the mysterious clearing.

Two days later, on the night of the 28th,

more lights are reported darting through the forest,

moving erratically, defying logic.

Deputy Base Commander,

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, has had enough.

He personally leads a team into the woods

armed with radiation meters, night vision scopes,

and a tape recorder.

What follows is the actual audio from that night.

Even stranger, only the trees facing the clearing

have fresh damage.

Then a sergeant spots something.

Back at the base, Halt documents the series

of strange encounters in a memo titled Unexplained Lights.

The British Ministry of Defense

launches an official investigation,

but things only get murkier.

Despite the eyewitness reports,

despite the radiation readings,

and despite a high-ranking U.S. officer filing

an official memo,

the Ministry of Defense quickly concludes there was

"no defense significance" to the events.

Perhaps they just wanted the whole story to go away.

But it doesn't.

In 1983, the top-secret encounter is finally revealed

when a government memo is released

under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

And just like that, Rendlesham becomes the biggest

UFO bombshell, since Roswell, in 1947.

But while believers see proof of alien visitation,

skeptics have a more down-to-earth explanation.

Just a few miles away from the base,

the now-defunct Orfordness Lighthouse

used to emit powerful beams of light.

Some suggest that when it shined through the trees,

it created the illusion of a hovering craft.

Back in 2017, I traveled to the English Air Base

for an exclusive interview with Lieutenant Colonel Halt himself,

the man who witnessed the event

and who wrote the infamous memo.

Do you think what you saw was extraterrestrial?

I'm firmly convinced myself that yes,

it was extraterrestrial.

Colonel, what do the skeptics say?

How do people explain this away?

The biggest story is the lighthouse.

To test that theory, we trekked to the lighthouse

and got it operational for the first time in decades.

Aha! Look at that!

Then we ventured into Rendlesham Forest

and located the reported landing site

to see firsthand how the lighthouse's beam

appears from the ground.

Boom.

One, two, three, four, five.

Just light clockwork, every five seconds.

And these guys worked at this base for years.

This lighthouse would have been something that they saw

pretty regularly.

I think it's really safe to say that's not what they saw.

I left England convinced of two things.

One, whatever Lieutenant Colonel Halt saw that night

in Rendlesham Forest, it wasn't just the rhythmic flash

of a lighthouse, and two, he is steadfast and unwavering

that he witnessed something not of this world.

So what on earth did he see?

Now a former UK Ministry of Defense official

reveals a shocking new theory.

In 1980, US Air Force officers stationed in Britain reported

what they believed to be a close encounter

with an alien spacecraft.

Over the years, another theory has persisted,

that the entire incident was an elaborate prank.

A U.S. military police officer came forward in 2003,

claiming he was trying to scare a fellow guard

by flashing the lights on his patrol car.

But the story doesn't match up with the hovering lights

in the sky that were spotted over multiple nights.

A more recent theory is that

disgruntled British special forces were playing a prank

on their American counterparts.

But former UK Ministry of Defence official

turned UFO investigator, Nick Pope isn't convinced.

I should say that in strict evidential terms,

the prank story is just a classic

friend-of-a-friend story.

It seems to have been invented by a ufologist who wanted

to write himself into the narrative.

If it's not a prank and not a lighthouse, was it aliens?

The UK military conducted a detailed investigation

into unidentified aerial phenomena,

including the Rendlesham incident.

Their report was eventually declassified, and in 2024,

its conclusions were brought to light.

And they offer a stunning possibility.

The study suggests that what witnesses believed were UFOs

may actually have been plasma.

No, not the stuff coursing through your veins.

This is electromagnetic plasma, a glowing, supercharged

swirl of particles that's visually elusive.

Here on Earth, it's often seen as lightning in auroras

or from meteors entering the atmosphere.

And there were reports of meteors over England

at that time.

Rendlesham Forest might be one of these cases where a strange

atmospheric plasma phenomena might be involved.

If a meteor had come down,

superheated, supercharged the atmosphere,

particularly if there was a bit of mist and fog.

This would cause a very spooky-looking light display.

Electromagnetic plasma can sometimes appear

as a type of so-called ball lightning

that can dart around in wild, unpredictable ways.

Much like what witnesses saw at Rendlesham.

And, get this, plasma might even explain the mysterious spike

in radiation recorded during the Rendlesham incident.

When plasma revs up, its charged particles,

like speedy little electrons, start zipping around

and releasing bursts of electromagnetic radiation.

And to top it off, these plasmas may even be able

to cause visual hallucinations.

There has been some scientific work to show

how the stimulation of the temporal lobes

can produce hallucinations, strange sensations.

So the theory is that these close encounters

that the witnesses experienced at Rendlesham

were actually close encounters, but not with extraterrestrials,

but with these plasmas.

But how can plasma account for the structured craft

Jim Penniston says he touched?

You know, the one with the strange symbols?

And let's not forget the three curious indentations

left in the ground.

Skeptics say that these indentations in the ground were

maybe nothing more than burrowing animals.

Rabbits, perhaps.

Well, my response to that is, "What, radioactive rabbits?"

I think it's one of these rare multifaceted events.

Exotic atmospheric plasmas may have played a part in things,

but there may genuinely be something truly unknown,

over and above all of that,

there are mysteries out there still to be solved.

To this day, Halt, Penniston and the others maintain

what they saw wasn't a prank

a lighthouse or the effects of plasma,

but something not of this Earth.

Skeptics respond that some of their stories have changed

or become embellished over time.

Penniston, for instance, never mentioned touching a craft

in his original report.

But it is hard to dismiss the strange events

of this case out of hand.

At the heart of this mystery are multiple,

credible military personnel who certainly saw something

in Rendlesham Forest.

As for the rest of us, all we can do is look up

at the night sky and keep wondering,

what's really out there?

It's December 29th, 1916,

and I'm crashing a stately dinner party

in St. Petersburg,

and the most infamous man in Russia has just arrived.

Meet Grigori Rasputin, a charismatic mystic

who can purportedly heal the sick and see the future.

But his enemies swear he's the devil incarnate.

And, tonight, Rasputin has unknowingly stepped

into a deadly trap.

Before the evening is through, he will be poisoned,

shot multiple times, and drowned.

But the real twist isn't how he dies,

but who is secretly behind the murder.

Grigori Rasputin is born on January 21, 1869,

in a small village in Siberia.

From a young age, locals whisper that he has supernatural powers,

even the ability to heal animals.

Then, in his 20s,

Rasputin experiences a religious epiphany,

one that calls him to become a self-proclaimed

Orthodox Christian prophet and healer.

I will heed your call.

He embarks on a pilgrimage that's said to take him

across the world, including Greece and the Holy Land,

where he allegedly deepens his mystical powers,

honing the ability to see the future and heal people

with his prayers.

He returns to Russia amid growing rumors

of his supernatural gifts, attracting the attention

of aristocrats eager to leverage his power.

And on November 1st, 1905, he meets Czar Nicholas II

and Czarina Alexandra Romanov,

becoming part of their inner circle.

Then, in 1912, one of the czar's children,

eight-year-old Alexei, suffers a serious injury

in a carriage accident.

As the sole male offspring,

Alexei is the successor to the throne.

Unfortunately, he also suffers from a rare genetic disorder

called hemophilia that impairs blood clotting,

increasing his risk of death and putting the future

of the Romanov dynasty in question.

Gripped by fear and desperation,

Czar Nicholas turns to Rasputin,

pleading for him to save his gravely ill son.

Rasputin retreats into a trance-like ritual,

invoking his mysterious powers.

When he emerges, he delivers a startling command--

no doctors, no medicine.

He insists that a vision has shown him

that the boy will recover on his own

if left completely untouched.

Miraculously, Rasputin's vision proves correct.

Alexei's bleeding soon stops.

And from that moment on, the czar entrusts Rasputin

with some of the empire's most sensitive political secrets.

Rasputin flaunts his influence with reckless abandon,

boasting that he steers Russia's destiny,

taking bribes and shocking polite society

with nights of drunken debauchery,

even sexual scandal.

There are whispers that he's sleeping

with the Czarina herself.

Many in Russia now see Rasputin as a nefarious puppet master.

Some even claim he's a satanic force

corrupting the monarchy from within.

In 1914, one woman tries to assassinate the monk

by stabbing him in the street.

She fails, but the die is cast.

Rasputin has enemies everywhere,

and more than a few want to see him dead.

For nine years, Rasputin's influence

over the Romanovs deepens.

But as his power reaches its height,

many start to believe his unchecked influence

could spell the downfall of the Russian dynasty.

On July 30th, 1914, Russia joins World War I.

Rasputin opposes Russia's involvement in the war,

he urges Czar Nicholas to stay in Petrograd and govern.

But Nicholas ignores the monk's advice

and marches off to war.

The result is catastrophic.

While exact figures will be debated,

estimates suggest that under Nicholas II's command,

as many as one to two million Russian soldiers

lose their lives.

The Czar's focus on the front leaves a power vacuum

in the capital.

Rasputin steps in, filling posts with his allies

and deepening the Czarina's dependence on him,

amid rumors of their affair.

Many nobles see the mad monk steering the empire

and blame him, not just the war, for Russia's unraveling.

Which brings us back to December 29th, 1916,

when Rasputin has been invited to a gathering

hosted by Russian aristocrat Prince Felix Yusupov.

Convinced the monk is a parasite

feeding off the royal family with his supernatural,

almost demonic powers of persuasion,

Yusupov, along with several associates,

has been plotting Rasputin's death.

And tonight, they strike.

Yusupov's account of the assassination

in his 1927 memoir has become the best-known version

of the events.

According to the dramatic tale, the so-called Mad Monk

miraculously dodges multiple attempts on his life.

As the night unfolds, Yusupov and his co-conspirators

make Rasputin feel welcome, feeding him cakes and wine,

secretly laced with cyanide.

Hours pass, and incredibly, the poison has no effect.

So, Yusupov accelerates the plan.

One shot to the chest takes Rasputin down.

But not out.

Unable to comprehend how Rasputin could still be alive,

Yusupov claims he, quote,

"Must have been raised from the dead

by the powers of evil."

They try shooting him again,

but still, he doesn't die.

Then, in a frenzy of panic, rage, and fear,

they go the extra mile to ensure the Mad Monk

meets his maker.

In perhaps one of history's greatest examples of overkill,

Yusupov writes that the conspirators wrap

the now poisoned and shot Rasputin in a curtain

and then dump him in the frigid waters of the Neva River.

Rasputin is finally dead,

but the mystery is only beginning.

That's because this account of his demise

is missing something critical, another gunshot,

one that may change everything history remembers

about the death of Rasputin.

The Salem Witch Trials remains one of the most infamous cases

of collective madness, but it wasn't the last.

In 1944, the town of Mattoon, Illinois,

is gripped by terror.

Residents claim a shadowy intruder is spraying

gas through windows,

victims report nausea and even paralysis.

There are dozens of incidents,

and the town unravels with panic.

Wild theories emerge, including a disgruntled

chemistry teacher, an escaped Nazi,

or a deranged serial killer.

But in the end, there is zero evidence.

No footprints, no fingerprints, no gas canisters.

So what was it?

Well, this was the height of World War II.

Tensions were running high,

triggering a psychological chain reaction of mass hysteria.

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon wasn't real,

but the madness was.

And it spread like poison, carried not by air,

but by fear.

According to Prince Felix Yusupov,

Rasputin, the evil hypnotist draining Russia's soul,

has been poisoned...

shot twice,

and dumped in a river

in an assassination plan to remove his influence

over the powerful Romanov family.

When his body is retrieved days later,

Yusupov alleges that Rasputin's lungs are filled with water,

indicating he died of drowning,

which would mean the Mad Monk was, astoundingly,

still alive when he hit the water.

When news of Rasputin's assassination breaks,

the Romanovs are shocked and devastated.

Czarina Alexandra is convinced his death

has doomed Russia's future.

As for the assassins, there's enough widespread ill will

toward Rasputin that Felix Yusupov and company

face no prison time, only exile.

But in the years since 1916, rumors have swirled

that the aristocrats were not acting alone.

Was there someone else pulling the strings on the murder

of the Mad Monk?

Can Prince Yusupov's account of the assassination

even be trusted?

The official autopsy revealed no trace of poison

in Rasputin's system.

So were those cyanide-laced cakes

just a detail added by the Prince for dramatic effect?

Historian Andrew Cook has examined the evidence

and discovered something extraordinary.

I think as often is the case in historical mysteries,

the answer is actually staring at us in the face.

We're just not seeing it.

Things are pretty bad now. It's 1916.

There's no way that Russia's going to win this war.

If Russia had pulled out of the war

and then the German army united

and concentrated 100% of its effort on Britain and France,

Britain and France would have been utterly defeated

within as little as two weeks.

Rasputin was apparently lobbying the Czarina

to arrive at a negotiated peace with the Germans.

So British intelligence, or MI6 as we call them today,

had a very crystal clear motivation

for wanting to dispose of Rasputin,

because if Rasputin lives,

Britain, France loses World War I.

And there's more to this compelling theory.

Prince Yusupov, who led the Russian assassins,

was an old friend of this man, Oswald Rayner,

from the British Secret Intelligence Service,

who was stationed in Russia.

Oswald Rayner and Prince Yusupov they had been students together

at Oxford University,

got to know each other very well.

So, we know that both Yusupov and British intelligence

wanted Rasputin dead.

They were convinced that it had to be done,

and they went ahead and did it.

Forensic evidence also suggests Rayner didn't just help

plot Rasputin's assassination--

he may have actually been present

to deliver the killing blow.

Yusupov's memoir supposedly offers a play by play account

of Rasputin's death, but while it says he was shot

once in the chest and once in the abdomen,

he neglects to mention the most crucial detail,

what the autopsy records as the kill shot--

a single bullet to the forehead.

I think we can surmise from medical evidence

that the first two shots were fired by Russian noblemen.

Someone who wants to make damn sure the person is dead

right that minute-- shoot him in the head.

The kill shot is clearly fired by someone else

other than the Russian nobleman.

Number one, because it's a different firearm

from the first two bullets, and secondly, because

it's a professional shot in the middle of the head.

Did a British spy actually go "licensed to kill" on Rasputin?

If so, it rewrites history.

Rasputin wasn't just killed by a group of Russian noblemen.

He was assassinated

on the orders of the British government.

There's also a haunting coda to this tale.

Just before Rasputin's murder,

he's said to have made a frightening prophecy.

If he dies, the entire Romanov dynasty

will soon follow him to the grave.

And sure enough, two years after his assassination,

Bolshevik forces execute Czar Nicholas II

and his entire family in cold blood.

A coincidence? Perhaps.

But to some, it remains the final proof

that Rasputin's mystical powers were no illusion after all.

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