All language subtitles for Autopsy.4.The.Dead.Speak.1997.720p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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NARRATOR:
For hundreds of years,

victims of murder went
to their graves unavenged.

Their tortured screams
went unanswered.

The dead took their secrets
with them to the grave.

This changed by
the turn of the century

when the forensic scientists
began to understand

the language
of the dead.

Today he has the tools
to interpret their language

with amazing accuracy.

Now we can
enter this world...

a world both fascinating
and forbidden.

It is the world of
forensic pathology...

a world where the dead reveal
their secrets to the living

through the mysteries
of the autopsy.

On March 14th, 1985,

a woman living in this
apartment building

made a frantic phone call

to the police
in Cobb County, Georgia.

WOMAN:
We just heard a girl screaming
on the top of her lungs.

It sounded like somebody tried
to rape her or something.

Operator,
she screamed so loud...

I've never heard anything
like that in my life before.

[Siren]

NARRATOR: As police
rushed to the building,

they received
a second phone call,

only this time they heard
the agonized moans

of the dying victim.

By the time
police arrived,

the victim,
Belinda Wood,

whose groans they had heard on
the radio just moments before,

was dead.

MAN:
We first went
into the kitchen

where the body
of Miss Wood was found.

She was lying
on her back...

found with the phone lying
on the floor next to her,

in a pool of blood.

At that time
no one knew exactly

how many wounds
were to the body

or what kind
of injuries she had.

Detectives began
to gather evidence,

trying to figure out

who had committed
such a brutal murder.

TRESSEL:
We then went
to the bedroom...

following the footprints,
backtracking it.

There was a fair amount of blood
in the area of her bed.

It was obvious that the
initial attack on Miss Wood

occurred in
the back bedroom.

In looking
at this scene

we did find a filet-type
fishing knife

lying on the floor
of the bedroom

just adjacent
to her bed.

It had blood on it about
halfway up the blade.

There appeared to be
a handprint on the doorknob.

As detectives continued
their investigation

an unexpected event suddenly
attracted their attention.

TRESSEL:
I was in the bedroom

when we heard a comment from
a police officer's voice

that I recognized from outside
the apartment saying,

"Is your
apartment on fire?"

My first thought was,
"What do we have now?

Now somebody set fire
to this building?"

Within minutes

the apartment building
was enveloped in flames.

TRESSEL:
As we walked out
onto the balcony

you could see
the flames coming up

from the
apartments below.

By the time we got
to the ground,

the whole back end of
the building was ablaze
and in flames.

By the time the fire
was brought under control,

the building was
virtually destroyed.

The evidence that had been found
at the crime scene

had gone up in smoke.

The fingerprints on the knife
found in the bedroom

were destroyed.

All that was left was the
charred body of Belinda Wood,

now covered with the rubble
of a collapsed ceiling.

Her hands still appeared
to be reaching for the phone

to call for help.

Later that morning,
Belinda Wood's body

was taken to medical examiner
Dr. Joseph Burton.

BURTON:
We had the body placed in
a sterile sheet, a body bag.

It was brought to the autopsy
facility in Marietta

and about 10:30 in
the morning, on March 14th,

I first saw
Belinda Wood.

I did the autopsy
and I discovered

that she had been stabbed
in the back,

right inside the
right shoulder blade

by a knife that was a little
less than an inch wide

and at least
six inches long

because I measured
the depth of her chest

to be about six inches

and this knife had been driven
all the way from her back

to the number two
rib in the front

and broke her rib
in the front of her chest.

NARRATOR:
Dr. Burton also noted

that the nails on
Belinda Wood's right hand

were shorter than the ones
on her left hand,

indicating that
she had been right-handed.

This subtle detail

would later become a vital
piece of evidence in the case.

But for now,
the question remained:

who had murdered
Belinda Wood,

the attractive 30-year-old
mother of two children?

By that afternoon,

fire inspectors had located
the origin of the fire.

In an apartment
on the first floor,

a large, deep,
circular burn

was found in the middle
of the bed.

Nearby, on the floor,
was an empty rum bottle,

indicating that alcohol
was probably used

to ignite the fire.

Police arrested
the renter of the apartment,

a 26-year-old
hospital technician
named Donald Catchings.

He was brought down
to the Cobb County jail

and charged with arson.

Once that
fire started,

and the fire started
in the middle of his bed,

is when everybody,
myself included,

the homicide investigators
on the scene all said,

"Why start a fire unless
you have something to hide?"

Trying to
destroy evidence.

NARRATOR: Donald
Catchings now became
the prime suspect

in the murder
of Belinda Wood.

BURTON:
The detectives and the
district attorney asked me

if I would look at a suspect
named Donald Catchings.

They said he had
some injuries on him

and they wanted me
to look at these injuries

and see what
I thought about 'em

and to draw some blood for
an alcohol determination.

On his left wrist he had
several bruises,

some of them
sort of round,

one of 'em with a very small
abrasion next to it,

consistent with someone trying
to hold off his wrist.

It was
his left wrist.

So if he is
facing the victim

and her right hand
has short fingernails,

and she grabs his wrist
with her right hand,

she leaves little
circular bruises

with not many
fingernail marks

'cause they're short
on her right hand.

Interestingly though,

he had what we call
"friction burns"

on the insides of both of his
right and left forearms

below the elbow,

like if you scuffed your arm
across a rough surface

and you got a rug burn
or scuffed it on the concrete

when you fell and hurt your knee
or something like that.

NARRATOR: Dr. Burton
returned to the crime scene

to see if Donald Catchings
could have climbed

from his
first floor apartment

to Belinda Wood's
third floor apartment,

as the police theorized.

BURTON: I told
Lt. Morris that I can climb
up the building myself.

I jumped up, caught
and grabbed the board

above the first floor

and pulled myself up
to the balcony rail,

stood on it and showed
that I could very easily

have gone on up to
the third balcony rail,

where the door had been
jimmied by something

like a screwdriver
or a knife

and surmised that Mr. Catchings
entered the apartment.

During that climbing over the
cedar boards that were there,

when I got down, I noticed
my forearm was burning

and before
we left the scene

I could see an abrasion
on my forearm.

The minute I saw it
a light went off and I said,

this is the same abrasion
in the picture

that was taken of Mr. Catchings
on March the 14th, 1985,

the day that
Belinda Wood was killed.

NARRATOR: Donald Catchings
came to court

believing that authorities
had little,

if any evidence,
to convict him.

But when Dr. Burton
took the stand,

he had a little surprise
waiting for the defendant.

BURTON: I got a board
that was part of
the apartment complex siding.

In front of the jury,
I abraded my arm,

waited a few minutes,
and in front of the jury

there appeared on my arm
the same mark

that they could see
in the photographs

we had made
of Mr. Catchings.

You're always looking
for a smoking gun...

and this was pretty close
to a smoking gun in this case.

NARRATOR: In October of 1985,

Donald Catchings
was convicted of arson

and the murder
of Belinda Wood

and sentenced
to life in prison.

New Orleans is a city
that celebrates death
as well as life.

It is a city with many
strange stories to tell...

but none quite so bizarre
as the true story

of Lucy Mae
and Alan Robichaux.

The Robichauxs married
when they were in their 40's,

and for the next 30 years
lived a simple life

in this small house
on Franklin Street.

But in 1973,

Lucy Mae returned home
from visiting her in-laws

and discovered that her husband,
then 72 years old,

was missing.

Days later his abandoned car
was found

several blocks
away from the house.

His family
was convinced

that he had been
kidnapped or murdered.

No sign of Alan Robichaux
was ever found.

Ten years later,
after having lost hope

of ever seeing
her husband again...

Lucy Mae sadly put up
her house for sale

and moved away.

Through the years the house
on Franklin Street

passed through the hands
of several owners.

In 1991,

the family living there
developed a termite problem,

so they called in
an exterminating company.

The men started their work
in the basement,

looking for
termite nests.

During the search

one of the men noticed a metal
plate on one of the walls

and thought there might be
termites behind it.

When he removed that plate,
to his surprise,

he saw the entrance
to a small room.

As his beam of light traveled
around this small space,

he saw
something strange...

something that looked like
a human skull.

Terrified,
he scrambled to his feet

and ran upstairs
and called the police.

Detectives, with the help
of the fire department,

cut a hole in
the back wall of the porch

to create
a larger opening.

When they looked inside
they saw,

propped up
against the wall,

the skeletal remains
of a human being.

Incredibly, he was still
wearing his socks.

His other clothes
had turned to dust.

BADEN: When
forensic anthropologist
Mary Manhein

examined the skeleton,

she found
a hole in the skull,

probably caused
by a large caliber bullet.

The issue now became,

did he commit suicide
or was he murdered?

Police returned
to the crime scene

and they sprayed
the small space with Luminol,

looking for traces
of dried blood.

They didn't
find any blood,

until they sprayed
a small piece of broken mirror

that had fallen
to the ground.

The Luminol revealed
a blood spray pattern

typical for
a gunshot wound.

This told police that
the shooting had occurred

while he was
in this small, dark place.

The size of the space was only
big enough for one person,

and this indicated that
he had taken his own life.

Several days later
detectives found,

under six inches
of dust and dirt,

the gun that
had killed him...

a rusted
.38 caliber revolver.

In order to
identity the body,

Mary Manhein took the skull
to her laboratory

and slowly began
to reconstruct the head.

After five weeks,

the face of
Alan Robichaux emerged...

the man who had mysteriously
disappeared 20 years before.

From the objects found
in this tiny space,

a spray can, a candle,
and small ceramic statues,

it appeared that Alan Robichaux
had led a secret life.

This small, cold room
had been his second home,

unknown even
to his wife.

Alan Robichaux had created
his own crypt,

one in which he watched himself
take his own life.

In the summer of 1974

a young woman
from Chicago

drove into a remote part
of the Colorado Rockies

to take photographs.

It was beautiful
but desolate country,

with heavily wooded
rough terrain.

But 25-year-old
Michele Wallace

had taken many trips
like these.

She told her parents
not to worry,

that she would call them
in a few days.

Michele knew how to
take care of herself.

She was strong.

She could size people up
pretty well.

I had no worries.

I expected her
to call any minute.

But Michele
never called.

A police search
turned up nothing.

She just seemed
to have disappeared

somewhere in the vast forests
of the Colorado Rockies.

But one week later

her abandoned car was found
a thousand miles away

in Amarillo, Texas.

Several days after that,
police in Pueblo, Colorado,

arrested a man by the name
of Roy Melanson

who was suspected
of dealing drugs.

In his possession

they found Michele's wallet
and driver's license.

Police also found receipts
leading to a pawn shop

where they
located her camera,

with a roll of film
still in it.

On the roll of film were several
pictures of her dog, Oakie,

who had gone with her
on her trip.

When the last negative
was processed,

slowly and to the
amazement of the police,

the face of
Roy Melanson emerged.

He had brazenly
stolen her camera

and had taken
his own picture with it...

directly
implicating himself

in the disappearance
of Michele Wallace.

Police believed
that he had murdered her,

but without a body,

they felt they
could not press charges.

By December, the severe
Rocky Mountain winter
had arrived

and continuing
the search became impossible.

Margaret Wallace
was now sure

that her daughter would
never be found

and she became
more and more despondent.

My wife was
non-functional.

She was just sort of
robot-like...

spaced away
from the world and me.

Margaret became obsessed
with the loss of her daughter,

the little girl she had watched
mature into a young woman.

As the years passed
they had grown even closer.

But now that
Michele was gone,

life for Margaret
had become unbearable.

On a cool
fall evening

George Wallace and his wife
had dinner together,

then went to bed.

The next morning
George Wallace awoke early.

I woke up
and I said...

good morning.

She was sort of upright
on the pillow.

Just one white speck
was on her lip...

and I felt her
and she was cold.

Margaret Wallace had taken
an overdose of barbiturates

and died in her sleep.

She had left a note
by her bedside which read

"If you ever find our daughter,
please bury her next to me."

Within a period
of six weeks,

George Wallace
had lost his daughter

and his wife
of 34 years.

As the years passed,

the disappearance
of Michele Wallace

was considered a mystery
that would remain unsolved.

But 15 years later,

one person in the Gunnison
Police Department,

a curious young detective
by the name of Kathy Young,

decided to
re-investigate the case.

I moved to Gunnison,
Colorado, in 1975,

and in living
in the Gunnison community

I had heard about
the Michele Wallace case.

Whether it was
playing a softball game

or one of my friends
was gonna go hiking,

the issue would come up
of Michele Wallace

and the unsolved
disappearance.

So when I was promoted to
the position of investigator,

I was interested
in reviewing that file

and finding out
what it was all about

and why it still
remained unsolved.

Kathy Young went down
to the evidence room

of the Gunnison
Sheriff's Department

to find the old files
on the Wallace case.

There, Kathy noticed
an unmarked box.

When she opened it,
she made a startling discovery.

I discovered a mass
of human hair...

that included
two twelve-inch braids

with hair that
attached the braids

and some
human tissue.

The hair had
never been identified,

but Kathy Young made
an immediate connection

to the photograph
of Michele

with those long,
distinctive black braids.

The scalp had been found
on an old logging trail

five years earlier...

but there were other questions
to be answered:

had it come
from somewhere else?

And where
was the body?

Hoping the plant material
collected with the hair

would offer a clue,

Kathy sent the hair
to forensic botanist
Vickey Trammell.

When I looked
at the braids,

because I was expecting
a dark hair color,

I was
surprised to see

that some parts of it
were lighter...

like it was
sun bleached.

To me it looked
sun bleached.

And the fact that
they were very clean

indicated to me that they
had remained on the surface

and had never
been buried.

NARRATOR: Dr. Trammell
then separated out
all of the dirt,

rocks and plant material

that had been found
in the braids.

TRAMMELL: I mainly concentrated
on the needles,

and I identified only one
Engelmann Spruce needle.

It told me, number one,

that we're in a forest
above 9,000 feet.

But since
I only found one,

it told me that the hair
had spent its time

on a more moist
north-facing slope.

Because had it been more
southern facing slope and drier,

I would've found more
Engelmann Spruce needles.

NARRATOR: Dr. Trammell's
research confirmed

that Michele Wallace's body
was probably not buried,

but still lying somewhere
on the surface

of the northern slope
of Kebler Pass.

Six months later,

when the snows of the Rockies
had begun to melt,

Kathy Young and a team of
scientists called NecroSearch

went into the mountains
and began the arduous task

of locating the body
of Michele Wallace.

YOUNG: I felt that finding any
remains of Michele Wallace

in the mountainous slopes
of the Colorado mountains

was almost impossible.

It was like looking
for a needle in a haystack.

NARRATOR: The search
in the mountains had
gone on for a day and a half

without much luck

until the afternoon
of the second day,

when one of the
searchers noticed

an object
glittering in the sun.

YOUNG:
The sun was hitting
on a gold tooth

within a cranium,
and it was twinkling,

and I looked at it
and for several seconds.

I was kind of dazzled
and amazed that it was real.

Dental records confirmed
that after 15 long years,

Michele Wallace
had finally been found.

YOUNG: It's elation
because you've found

what you're looking for,

but it also brought
the reality home

that Michele Wallace
was dead.

As the team of forensic
scientists excavated the area

they began to find more and more
of Michele's body.

WOMAN: In this particular case
we were very surprised

to find as much of
the skeleton as we did find.

We found a tremendous amount
after 18 years,

especially in this
kind of terrain

and especially with these kinds
of scavengers in the area.

The evidence pointed
to her being just driven
up to the site

and her body
tossed out of the car.

Seven months later
Roy Melanson

was brought back to
Gunnison, Colorado,
to stand trial.

There, he was
confronted by someone

he thought he would
never see again...

the prosecution's
most important witness,

Michele Wallace.

YOUNG: Mr. Melanson,
who normally sat stone-faced

and failed to respond
to anything,

his hands started to shake
in front of him

and he turned directly
at me and kind of smirked,
if you will,

which told me
that he was shocked.

Roy Melanson,
now 56 years old,

was convicted of murder.

Labeled by the judge
as a "waste of humanity,"

he was sentenced
to life in prison.

In 1994, 20 years
after her disappearance,

the remains of
Michele Wallace

were finally brought back to
Woodlawn Cemetery in Chicago

and buried next to
her mother, Margaret.

The small, picturesque town
of Summerside

on Prince Edward Island

has always been known
as a vacationer's paradise,

but in October of 1994

a local resident,
32-year-old Shirley Duguay,

mysteriously disappeared.

Volunteers from the town
helped police search for her

in the woods and fields
surrounding her home.

But it wasn't until
several months later

that they found
her skeletal remains

buried in a shallow grave
in the woods.

The police
continued their search,

hoping to find
some evidence

that would lead them
to the killer.

Finally, they found, several
miles away from the crime scene,

a plastic bag containing
a man's leather jacket,

spotted with
the victim's blood.

BADEN: When the leather
jacket was brought
back to the crime lab,

the forensic investigators
there found,

in addition to
the blood stains,

white hairs adhering to
the inner lining of the jacket.

At first the police thought
they were human hairs

that could lead them to tell
who the owner of the jacket was.

But on microscopic
examination,

they turned out
to be cat hairs.

The detectives were
initially disappointed

until one of them
remembered

having seen a white cat
named "Snowball"

at the home of
Shirley Duguay's ex-boyfriend,

a man named
Doug Beamish.

The police realized

that if the cat hairs
belonged to Snowball,

then Doug Beamish
was the owner of the jacket

and that Doug Beamish
was their killer.

But to prove it
wasn't going to be easy

because the only way
to prove

that the hairs
came from Snowball

was by DNA matching.

And no one had
ever done DNA testing

for forensic purposes
on cats.

The police couldn't find
anybody to do this testing,

or who had been
familiar with it,

until they contacted
Steven O'Brien in Maryland,

who was an expert
in cat genetics.

Dr. O'Brien
found enough DNA

in the root of
one of the cat hairs

to compare it to the DNA
isolated from a blood sample

taken from Snowball.

The test proved
that the DNA was identical.

It was a perfect
genetic match,

proving conclusively
that the hairs had come from
Doug Beamish's cat.

But then
Dr. O'Brien wondered,

what if all the cats on
the island were so inbred

that they had
the same DNA?

He had the police
collect many cats
from all over the island

and he analyzed the DNA
in each of these cats

and found that they were all
separate and distinct.

On July 19th, 1996,

the DNA evidence
was used by the prosecution

to convict Doug Beamish
of second degree murder,

and Snowball went down
in forensic history

as the first cat
responsible

for bringing
a criminal to justice.

Possum Kingdom Lake
is a large body of water

forty miles outside
of Dallas, Texas.

With a large
deer population,

it is a favorite spot
for hunters.

It was in January of 1996

that a man walking in the woods
adjacent to the lake

thought he spotted what looked
like a dead deer.

But as he got closer,

he realized that it wasn't
a deer at all,

but the mutilated torso
of a human being.

MAN: The head had been
removed at the shoulders,

and the legs removed
along with the buttocks.

We saw tracks
left by a vehicle

possibly that could've been
pulling a trailer.

It appeared to
all the officers

that this probably was
some dope-related killing.

The fact that the head
and hands were missing

indicated to us that
certainly whoever did it

did not want
the body identified.

NARRATOR: Only two months
before, another body
with the same M.O.

had been found
outside Dallas.

It too had its head
and hands missing.

The killing at
Possum Kingdom Lake

seemed to fit
the same pattern.

In order to help
identify the victim,

police sent the body
to forensic pathologist

Dr. Joseph Prahlow.

PRAHLOW: The body
was decomposed.

There was
skin discoloration,

skin slippage.

I also found on the body
several cactus spines,

which were embedded
in the skin of the abdomen.

I also found,
while examining the back,

a furrow mark or
an indentation of the skin,

which was caused
by a rope,

which to me says

that a rope was used
to transport the torso.

Whoever had
done this

probably had done a similar
thing in the past,

not necessarily to a human,
but probably to an animal.

The only thing I was sure of
was that it was a homicide.

NARRATOR:
Several hundred people
had been reported missing

in the state of Texas.

Only one person was missing
from the local area,

a man by the name
of Casey Elliot.

But the description
on his driver's license

indicated he was much thinner
than the large torso

found by the police.

WOMAN: They said,
"We don't believe
that this is your son

"because this person
is probably

between 250
and 300 pounds."

And they were looking
at his driver's license,

which he'd gotten when
he was 16 and never changed.

And I said,
"Oh, no,

Casey was 6'6" and
pretty close to 300."

And I saw the Texas Ranger
look at Carey Pettus

and when I saw that look
pass between 'em

is when I knew
it was Casey.

It was
the first time.

NARRATOR: But
police found that
27-year-old Casey Elliott

had no history
of drugs.

His only passion
had been the rodeo

where he had been
roping and riding

since he was
a teen-ager.

At the time of
his disappearance,

Casey Elliott had been living
with a widow named Helen Moore

and her three children,
who looked up to Casey

like the father
they had lost.

He was teaching them
to be cowboys

and what it was like to compete
on the rodeo circuit.

MAN: He loved kids.

He took a lot of those boys
under his wing.

Tried to keep 'em
out of trouble

and tried to
teach 'em to rope,

first one thing
and then another

to try to keep 'em
out of meanness.

He was the
only father, really,
that they've ever known.

NARRATOR: One week later,
the toxicology
report came back.

Police were
surprised to learn

that the torso contained
lethal levels of morphine.

Not only had Casey Elliott
been dismembered,

but someone had also
poisoned him to death.

Police using cadaver dogs
now expanded their search

in hopes of finding
other parts or his body.

PETTUS:
Something led both
of us to believe

that we should
go to this bridge.

I don't know what,

but we went to this
bridge and looked

and saw a trash bag some
200 feet east of the bridge

and discovered that
it contained a head.

PRAHLOW:
Because we had the teeth
in the head still

and Mr. Elliott had
had previous dental treatments,

we were able to call in our
forensic odontologist

and we were able to make
a positive identification

by dental comparison.

When we tested
the brain from the head

we also found lethal
levels of morphine.

NARRATOR: Detectives began
to question anyone

who had been close enough
to Casey Elliott

to poison and
dismember him.

Among the people questioned
was Helen Moore,

his girlfriend
of five years.

But this church-going
mother of three

seemed like
an unlikely suspect

to be capable of
slaughtering a man

almost three times
her size.

There was a good deal
of concern over whether

Mrs. Moore could
do something like this.

On further investigation
into her background

we found that Mrs.
Moore's third husband

had died of cancer

and had received
large doses

of both oral
and injectable morphine.

After his death, Mrs.
Moore retained custody

and control of a certain
amount of morphine.

NARRATOR: Suspicious
of the fact

that Helen Moore
had access to morphine,

Sheriff Pettus obtained
a warrant to search her ranch.

There they found
prickly pear spines

in the tires
of her truck...

identical to the ones
Dr. Prahlow had found

on the torso
of Casey Elliott.

They also found that
paint chips from her trailer

matched paint found
on a log at the crime scene.

More importantly,
police found that the blood

on the floorboards
and axle of her trailer

matched
Casey Elliott's blood.

Police also found
that Helen Moore

had taken out a
$130,000 life insurance policy

on Casey Elliott
just four months
before his murder.

PETTUS:
All of this taken together
led us to believe

that we had enough
probable cause

for a search
and arrest warrant.

We obtained
the arrest warrant

and executed it
on the evening of March 19th.

NARRATOR: Soon after
her arrest and faced
with the death penalty,

Helen Moore confessed to
the murder of Casey Elliott.

MAN: She told me everything
that happened

but she wouldn't
tell me why she did it.

She said that
Casey had been sick,

he had been taking 30 milligrams
of morphine for headaches

and she said they
ran out of those

so she substituted
30 with 60 milligrams.

And I asked her if she knew
that would kill him,

and she said "yes."

Although she was small,

Helen Moore always bragged
she was the equal to any cowboy,

capable of butchering
2,000-pound steers on her ranch.

It was something
she had always been proud of.

Apparently she had used
those same skills

to murder and dismember
her boyfriend,

Casey Elliott.

OAKERSON:
I don't know what caused her
to do what she did.

She was not mad
about anything.

Every time you talked to her
she was joking and laughing.

She had no problem
being in jail here.

She did tell me

she's gonna write me and tell me
why she did what she did.

FATHER OF CASEY ELLIOTT:
She is a person that

you don't know whether
she's devil-possessed or what.

She is just a very
different person.

You'll never see nothing
or anybody like her

again in your life.

She's just
vicious and mean...

to put
the bottom line on it.

NARRATOR: There are
swamp-like lands,
treacherous and dark,

called "peat bogs."

They are made up of
dense vegetation

which has decayed
for thousands of years.

It is in these
treacherous marshes

that strange petrified bodies
have been turning up

in Europe
for hundreds of years.

Called "The Bog People,"

they are the most perfectly
preserved bodies in the world.

In Denmark, a man was found
in such pristine condition

that he seems to be
frozen in time...

still wearing
his leather cap.

His mustache looks
perfectly groomed.

But despite the amazing
conditions of their bodies,

forensic scientists estimated
the age of these Bog People

to be more than
two thousand years old.

The tannic acid
found in the peat

has preserved the Bog People
down to the last detail.

The bodies share a common
but horrible fate--

they had all been
violently put to death.

The rope around
this man's neck

indicates he was
strangled to death.

This man had his throat cut
from ear to ear.

Who were these men and why
were they put to death

in such a horrible way?

The answer to this mystery
came when forensic scientists

closely examined the body
of a man found in England

called "Lindow Man."

Although his face
has been crushed

by the pressure
from the bog,

the rest of his body reveals
much about his identity.

An examination of his skull
tells us he was a young man,

about 30 years old,
when he died.

His polished fingernails
have remained unblemished.

Like the others,

he appears to have the hands
of an aristocrat.

More importantly, when forensic
scientists opened his body,

they found in his intestines
grains of mistletoe pollen,

sacred plants of
a Celtic religious cult

called the Druids.

Offerings like this carved bowl
that were found in the bogs

indicate that the bogs were
considered sacred places
to the Druids.

They believed that
these dark, watery places

were gateways to
the supernatural world.

The Bog People had given up
their lives willingly.

To them, sacrificial death
was an honor

reserved only
for the aristocracy...

for those chosen few
who were worthy

of representing
their people to the gods.

And now after 20 centuries
they have returned

to speak to us
from their watery graves.

Whether death occurred yesterday
or 2,000 years ago,

the dead's long-silent
voices return

to answer the questions
put to them

by the forensic
pathologist.

For him death is not
the end of the story,

but just
the beginning.