Punt PI

One afternoon in July 1953 Father Henryk Borynski, a Polish priest living in Bradford, took a telephone call. His housekeeper heard him say "OK, I'll go". He put on his hat, and his coat and left. He was never seen again.

Many Poles fled to the United Kingdom during World War II and settled in Bradford. With the onset of the Cold War they became exiles, unable to return to Poland. In his sermons, Father Borynski was an outspoken cr...

Steve Punt returns as Radio 4's very own private detective.

In this tenth anniversary edition, Steve's called in to investigate the unlikely disappearance of American and Russian nuclear weapons - with assistance from best-selling thriller writer Frederick Forsyth.

At first, Steve's sceptical - surely no nuclear power could actually lose possession of weapons capable of causing Armageddon. But as his investigation gathers pace, the ...

What is it?

The sounds generated by mating fish? The US government? Or even the evolution of humans to hear electromagnetic waves... Steve Punt, BBC Radio 4's Mulder and Scully combined, turns his analytical ears to The Hum - heard by people, all over the world, tonight.

For some of those who hear it, it's unpleasant, even distressing, for others simply mysterious.

The Hum has been reported as far back as the 1960's, when people in ...

Steve Punt continues his investigations as Radio 4's very own private detective.

In 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, the reclusive actress Ada Constance Kent disappeared from the village of Fingringhoe in rural Essex. Despite her cottage being searched on several occasions in the intervening years, her skeleton was only discovered in the bedroom in 1949. Was it her... where had she been in the intervening years... and...

Steve Punt returns as Radio 4's very own private detective.

Punt travels to Paris to investigate the suspicious death of celebrated writer Émile Zola. Zola died in 1902 from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney. At the time, the authorities reached a verdict of accidental death. Subsequently, evidence has emerged that Zola's death may have been murder.

Certainly Zola's role in France's notorious Dreyfus Affair made ...

On Christmas Eve 1975, former Spitfire pilot Peter Gibbs took off from the unlit airfield on the Isle of Mull and never returned.

It was a moonless night and having just finished dinner with his girlfriend at the Glenforsa Hotel, it seemed a bizarre and impetuous act.

Then Gibbs’ body was discovered on a hillside, but the plane was nowhere to be seen and the story began to get stranger.

Punt heads to the Mull to investigate, but ...

Steve Punt turns Private Investigator and tries to crack the case of the missing Cézanne masterpiece 'Auvers sur Oise'.

The painting was stolen from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford whilst the city celebrated the millennium, and has not been seen since.

His search takes him from the crime scene to the Mayfair art world, via leads at Scotland Yard and sightings on a pub wall in Coventry.

With a watchful eye for any Mr Big who may be be...

Steve Punt returns with a brand new series of investigations - starting with the unsolved murder of major Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor in 1922.

Taylor was one of Tinseltown's biggest names - until he was shot dead in his bungalow in February 1922. Despite a multitude of suspects, Taylor's killer was never caught. It's a bizarre case with a multitude of suspects. Was the murderer former child star Mary Miles Minter or...

Steve Punt turns detective to investigate a mystery from the Midlands.

In 1943, in a small wood in the village of Hagley, the body a woman was found inside a Wych elm tree. She had been put in feet first, alive or just recently dead. The police issued a good photo fit but, despite extensive enquiries, a match could not be found and no one reported her missing.

Punt hunts first for the files and then for the body. But things are not w...

Steve Punt turns private investigator and examines the curious case of the socialist MP Victor Grayson who vanished into thin air!

Firebrand politician, champion of the mill workers, scion of the establishment, fancy dresser, hard drinker, man about town. Victor Grayson was many things when he erupted onto the public stage in 1907 as the first and last independent socialist MP, aged 26. However this shooting star disappeared from si...

Steve Punt turns gumshoe, investigating curious rumours surrounding the Baker Street bank robbery of 1971.

Quite possibly the most audacious heist in British history, the robbers tunnelled into the bank's vault from the basement of a shop two doors down. They escaped with a haul worth an estimated £30 million today.

Though four robbers were convicted, intriguing claims persist - most notably that the security services mounted the he...

Steve Punt returns as Radio 4's very own gumshoe, examining the mysterious case of millionaire financier Alfred Loewenstein who fell out of his own aeroplane in 1928.

The suspicious death of this fabulously wealthy Belgian tycoon - then reportedly the world's third richest man - may well be Punt's most baffling investigation yet.

During that fateful flight across the English Channel, Loewenstein got up to go the loo - but somehow end...