Buried Evidence

For more than a century, the Arctic was assumed to be keeping Franklin's secret; but it wasn't. The native Inuit people who lived there had been telling the story all along.

And yet for decades, another idea dominated the investigation; lead poisoning, bad tins.

But what if the evidence tells a different story? What if Franklin's men weren't brought down by a single fatal mistake—but by a catastrophe far more complicated th...

London, 1848. Three years have passed since Sir John Franklin and 128 officers and men sailed into the Arctic, in search of the Northwest Passage. No letters, no survivors, no ships.

What nobody yet realises is that Franklin's men may already be dead, buried across a frozen landscape thousands of miles away.

In the first of this two-part episode, we uncover the 180-year-old mystery of Franklin's ill-fated expedition. A myster...

It’s the 19th of July 1692 and thirty-nine year old Sarah Good, is the youngest of five women being trundled through Salem Village to a hill on the outskirts of the settlement. They are to be hanged as witches.

The events in Salem would see over 200 individuals accused, dozens of confessions, 30 convictions, 19 executions, a number of deaths in prison, and a seventy-year-old man tortured to death by pressing.

The trial...

As the legend of Lizzie Borden comes to Netflix, we visit one of the most notorious murder mysteries in American history. A brutal double murder that inspired one of the darkest nursery rhymes of all time.

But what do we really know about this case? How much of it is a ghoulish sensation dreamed up by a press hungry to sell a good story?

In this episode we go beyond criminal legend to explore the real case of Lizzie Borden th...

It's September 1991, two hikers in the Alps believe they’ve stumbled across the body of a climber who’d lost his way. He lies face-down in the ice. His arm caught awkwardly beneath him. A shoulder protruding from melting snow.

Police are alerted. Recovery teams arrive. And then someone notices the axe. Not iron. But Copper. At least five thousand years old. This man didn’t die in the mountains by accident. Some...

11.39pm, 14 April 1912: A grand new Ocean liner, the RMS Titanic, cruises across the North Atlantic. It’s 4 days into a weeklong voyage from Southampton to New York. Most of the passengers have returned to their cabins after the evening’s dinner, music and socialising. Experienced merchant sailors Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee man the crows nest, 29 metres above deck level. Frederick is the first to spot the dark and...

We tend to think about serial killers as being a modern phenomenon, but in France during the Hundred Years War, we find the story of a monster straight out of a horror film. A sadist, who kidnaps and murders young children to sacrifice them to the devil. 

In perhaps our darkest case yet, we investigate Gilles de Rais. Military hero, comrade to Joan of Arc, wealthy aristocrat and… the most depraved of serial killers?

This story begins not on a battlefield, but beneath one of the most prestigious colleges in the world. In 2008, excavations at St John’s College, Oxford uncovered a mass grave of thirty-five men, buried without ceremony. Nothing about the burial looked normal. These weren’t individuals laid to rest. They were dumped. Bodies overlapping, limbs twisted, no sign of burial rites. And then the injuries become clear. Dee...

The Crime Desk presents Buried Evidence, a new weekly podcast where history meets true crime, unearthing the murders, mysteries and scandals of the past.

Hosted by historian and bestselling author Rebecca Rideal, and Time Team archaeologist and broadcaster Professor Raksha Dave, each episode uncovers a different case from history's darkest chapters, from victims and investigators to perpetrators and punishment.

Episodes 1 and...