Cold Case Investigation: Analyzing the Evidence | Full Episode

[Music] prisons finest unit for forensic investigation is embarking on a new and groundbreaking mission as experts of human identification they use the full arsenal of modern technology [Music] but now for the first time they're applying these skills to bodies from the long distant past it's very exciting for us to be able to take the skills that we use on the daily basis and apply them to look at historical scans to see just how far we can go forensic anthropology facial reconstruction and painstaking research will open new windows on history as dramatic personal stories emerge from long-forgotten bones historical research is allowing me to investigate people's experiences at different times throughout history probably a little boy somewhere around four eight and I have to say I've never seen anything like that before so we've got face the face of reconstruction and we've added some textures yeah that's it yeah that that is just super [Music] this time the team hunts for the identity of a mysterious skeleton unearthed at Stirling Castle we certainly had a nasty crack to the top of his head his body reveals new information about one of the bloodiest periods in our history when the Scottish and the English were engaged in total war the forensic trail leads to an extraordinary document can the team give one of history's cold cases a home a face a name is history cold case [Music] Stirling Castle perched on an extinct volcano and strategically placed near the Gateway to the Highlands was for centuries the frontline during the Scottish Wars of Independence [Music] perhaps this offers us our first clue to unlocking a mystery that has remained unsold for six centuries [Music] during 1997 archaeologists excavated a group of skeletons that had lain in a forgotten room underneath the castle for over 600 years a find made more unusual and rare as it wasn't common practice to bury people within the walls of the castle one of these bodies a powerful man in the prime of his life has unusual wounds to his skull now the history cold-case team will collaborate with Historic Scotland the keeper of the skeletons to open an investigation into who the man was and why he was there could his story shed new light into Sterling's turbulent history doctor's anthem a light from the center of anatomy and human identification is coming to collect the skeletons and meet historic Scotland's chief archaeologist Peter yeoman so this is our archeology store where we keep all the all the finds from all the excavations that we've been involved with over the last 40 years and all the stone to looking at is just these it's not in bad condition but there's obviously lots of little bits but also I've got another thing to show you as well a fascinating object that was found with the young man it's a new head not much is known about the arrow or the bones originally dated as 14th or 15th century it's time for the cold-case team to get to work it's fantastic yeah I think the team are going to be really excited to have a look at these and see where we want to go next with it and what we can find out with certainly lots of different forensic techniques we're going to be able to apply so it's gonna be really exciting the investigation will be led by forensic anthropologist professor sue black based at the Center for anatomy and human identification part of the University of Dundee the case starts with an observation of the bones in pieces okay that gives us an eighth clue and she's already spotted something highly unusual don't know that you've seen what's on the top let's go oh oh he's what do you think that is relax if you can see on the frontal bone here which is just coming down the side of the forehead there's a very deep groove and that groove shows that the outer table because the the bones of the skull act like a sandwich so there's an outer layer of bone an inner layer of bone and a bit of filling in the middle and what's happened is that there's been damage to the outer layer but it's not penetrated through to the inner layer so we've not gone in and damaged brain or blood vessels or anything like that but he certainly had a nasty crack to the top of his head it's healed so this happens this happened long before he died the bones reveal that our man was between 25 and 40 years old and there are more signs of trauma this time to his face [Music] those teeth have had a rattle at some point yeah they've set up abscesses in there yes there's some form of an impact not enough to have broken a face for example but you get a smack in the front of your face then both of these teeth are gonna rattle and that's what's happened it's loosened the teeth enough that what happens if the bacteria can get into the space that it can't normally get into and sets up an infection which is what you have in terms of the abscess but although he was clearly a victim of violence he was well equipped to dole it out as well but yeah it's quite well-developed so I think muscle wise he's got good sites of muscle development lower limb but they're exceptional a problem yeah he's a big bruiser in that regard but when you look at the the back of the scapula the shoulder blade you can see that there's a there's a trough runs down there that's because this bone is about surface area that's about muscles attaching and if you need if you've got a bigger muscle you need more surface area so what you do is you undulate the bone and you make the boat you give the bone more surface area and then look at that trough it's just there's just a huge dip going in there and I don't know that I've actually ever seen it this extensive he's a big bruiser yeah he's a big boy he's got his story we've just started to unravel they all say it's like it's like a knitted jumper there's somewhere you go to start and find a thread you can just keep going you can unravel the whole thing [Music] sue gathers the other experts who will work with her and Xanthi on the investigation we're going to start first of all with what we need to find out about him historically okay so context area all the context of it for his bones to show signs of such big muscle development means whatever this man did for a living he had done from a very young age so explaining his physique will be crucial they also need to narrow down possible dates for our man's death and dr. Caroline Wilkinson will painstakingly reconstruct his face we can scan school try my head back together we could also do a reconstruction of his upper body in relation to his head as well okay before dr. Wolfram Meyer organ Stein we'll try to discover more about where our man lived and died from chemical signatures in his bones I'd like I see no I'd like to have a peek midshipman shaft [Music] now the hard science begins bone analysis to find out what our man ate and where he was from bone scanning to begin the process of facial reconstruction they also need to discover the significance of a tantalising artifact found with the body a single Arrowhead his life was clearly interesting because he's got a number of incidents that have clearly happened to him throughout his life he's got an intriguing period that says how did he die was this Arrowhead that's found in association with them part of the death and then what's happened to him afterwards is also interesting so that why was he buried where he was was that an indication of his status so he's one of those individuals for all three parts of that process are going to tell you something interesting and something different who was he in life how did he die why was he treated the way he was [Music] Zen peas job is to try and add to the profile of our man through historical research first step back to the place where his body was found [Music] archaeologists gold annuit has been fascinated by the sterling man ever since he discovered him here in 1997 the castle itself could provide crucial clues the trail begins in Sterling's Great Hall built for James to forth in around 1503 this is the Great Hall Wow Stirling Castle it's beautiful isn't it it's massive at the frontline of repeated English invasions in the 13th and 14th centuries Stirling Castle changed hands many times during the sieges and battles of the Scottish Wars of Independence many facilities and as well as the the works of government will be enacted here and these tapestries are given indication and you have the kind of lavish quality of the court would they have had tapestries and things hanging you I think so very much so [Music] underneath the rooms of the eighteenth-century kitchens Gordon found the remains of a long-forgotten building the governor's kitchen he thinks this area could be the remains of what was once a medieval Chapel this is the area where the actual mature male was buried when you actually look at the photographs absolutely you can see the injury on the skull right that's right why would he have been buried here a normal circumstances a burial would be completed preferably at the parish church from whence they came they would only been in buried here in exceptional circumstances but our cold case wasn't alone ten other bodies including a female were unearthed at the same site it's hard to imagine your average man-at-arms or okay household servant it would've been just anyone to be buried in here they would had to have been a relative significance to it that's fair to say the family that's right okay to be buried in a chapel inside Stirling Castle our man must have been of high status taken along with his physique could he have been part of an elite fighting force [Music] warfare medieval-style was led by knights on horseback the elite warrior class of Europe knighthood wasn't just conferred by the monarch it had be earned on the battlefield knights lived and died by the shared values of the chivalric code courage piety and loyalty to your king in dundee the team is taking samples of teeth and bone from the skeleton [Music] one goes for carbon dating and another goes to dr. Wolfram Maia organist at the tomb stable isotope experts these are ancient remains so there are no guarantees but sue is confident there is nobody else that I would trust for a forensic investigation he is the best that there is and he has not only a national reputation he has a huge international reputation Wolfram will be hunting for trace minerals in the molar tooth which is formed in the first 15 years of life these could reveal where he spent his early years and samples from the thigh bone which regenerates during the lifetime could tell us about his diet as an adult [Music] next to the local nine Wells hospital for a CT scan to see inside the man's bones [Music] the scan might yield valuable information about his life and death it will also provide the accurate data needed to reconstruct his face and body [Music] Caroline Wilkinson has drafted in her colleague Caroline Needham to produce a full body reconstruction of the mound to begin they examine the skull I'm just assessing the skull to see how much of it is here how much fit we're going to have to reassemble and when we've done that how much we'll be missing still that we can remodel actually it looks like there's quite a lot here there's more than I looked like on the images because we've got a lot of fragments and messy as that looks we can actually manage to put most of them back together we can reassemble the skull in the computer so we can take scan data and from this skull and import each fragment into the computer and then reassemble it I mean the beauty of the computer is there's no gravity so you can put a skull piece there and it'll stay it doesn't fall we can tell by looking at this jaw this is a big strong hefty joy it's got very strong muscle attachments here so he would put a big square jaw heavy-duty face lower fat lower half of the face then we've also got quite strong brow ridges at the top so he's gonna have a heavy brow more deep-set eyes it's very typically male let's go oh I love skulls like this lots of bits it's my favorite thing we're assembling them each of the fragments has to be individually in painstakingly scanned using a small mobile scanner with the hospital CT scan these measurements will make a complete skull the face the Caroline foresees seems to fit perfectly with Sue's assessment of the body heavy brown muscly square-jawed a man perfectly formed to live and die by the sword [Music] the first test results are coming in from the labs radiocarbon dating is the key dating test for bone one type of carbon carbon-14 deteriorates at a constant rate once it is laid down in the bone measuring the amount of decay establishes the age of the skeleton it's a difficult process that isn't always successful but this time the team have a clear result the Sterling cold-case died between 1290 and 1400 that means he lived during the height of the Scottish Wars of Independence when the English were repeatedly trying to conquer the country and the Scots were driving them back from Stirling Castle perched on a steep cliff Scottish armies could survey the fields below 10 miles north of here the powerful River fourth marks the beginning of the highlands so the castle and the open fields around him saw the bloodiest conflict Xanthi is meeting medieval warfare expert Scott McMaster this is a picture of his cranium now you can quite clearly see there that's a heeled sharp force trauma - yeah I mean is that kind of very common in the medieval period this could be an axis or perhaps he's obviously perhaps been a knight or a man of arms anyway judging by the West body especially very robust right okay well there's quite common for a bruiser sort of speaking this period the Scots sometimes supported by the French managed to defeat the invading English army on a number of occasions but the victories of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce weren't enough to keep them permanently at bay Stirling Castle was occupied by English forces at least eight times during our man's lifetime the castle certainly changed hands over this appeared in several several times so whether he was you know this individual in particular was maybe perhaps involved in a siege or if he was actually not he died later on of Wooden's perhaps to June one of these battles as a very strong possibility it's not clear yet which sidearm Amazon English Scottish or even French but he was definitely part of the conflict [Music] but what about the other bodies found with him can they shed any light on to the investigation [Music] soon zanthia about to examine one of them the only woman found among the body she too has mysterious wounds on her head to them they've got one there and you got one yeah you've got that is approximately the same shape is that what nerves are they oh yeah hmm a very square that is incredibly clean to go through there so that whatever it was was a a significant amount of force with a sharp edge yep otherwise it was a shadow wasn't made of shattered yes so I think you need to find someone who knows something about this cuz I know absolutely nothing I know me sueanne's auntie have no idea what the two puncture marks in the skull could me the dr. Joe Buck berry a biological anthropologist from Bradford University is an expert in skull trauma what's really interesting is a rectangular hole penetrating through the skull and the edges that are quite clear there's a little area in here it's just sort of spalling away which could have been caused by a weapon coming out and then on the inside what you might be able to see is that the hole is actually much larger on the inside that's called internal beveling and that's a really strong indication that this happened around the time of death so I immediately thought this is quite interesting and could well be battle trauma I think there was also some more trauma to the side of a head in here but take these pieces of bone they actually fit quite tightly and I think there's been another blow around the time of death in here with a radiating fracture from the force of the blow coming up around here I wonder whether or not she was hit on the side of the head was quite a blunt object fell to the ground and then after that the two-square injuries were sustained on the top of her head Joe think she knows the kind of weapon that killed the sterling woman and well the weapon I'm holding now is a 16th century flanged base that a member of staff at the Royal Armouries has given me because it's got quite a rectangular cross-section which might possibly match the injury we're seeing on this skull Joe demonstrates that the marks on a florists sponge made by the mace are identical to those on the woman's skull [Music] but the Wars of Scottish independence so overwhelming that women were caught up in the conflict as well [Music] [Music] shanthi has come to Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland near the remains of the town's medieval castle [Music] she's meeting historian Chris Brown he's not surprised by the wounds in the woman's skull this is the the woman I've come to talk to you about today and these are the injuries to her skull what we're looking at here is the back of her crania so the back of her head and you've got two distinct injuries here so these are kind of injuries you'd expect to see in battlin if so on a woman absolutely totally typically means that you'd expect to get and no reason to assume that then they're in any way completely isolated from war Middle Ages here at Dunbar in the 14th century the Countess of Moray defeated a violent English attack black Agnes as she's known was a fearless defender of her castle this is probably the clearest famous example of a woman engaged in war in Scotland in the Middle Ages the women in question is called Agnes of Dunbar her blackness and she commanded a siege here for five months oh really nineteen beefs so like where we are she was in her mid-twenties about 25 26 years old her husband wasn't present the Earl at Dunbar he's busy fighting the English in other parts of Scotland and the castle comes under siege she's on site of course she's in charge black Agnes his battle was just one in the long and bloody war it seems that Scottish men and women took up arms and died to defend the cause of their independence but was our sterling cold case Friend or Foe did he defend the castle or did he attack it Kenny's bones yield any more clues sewins empathy take a closer look at the skeleton what else have we got oh we definitely got properties on his left ankle if you look on the tailless heel sits like that Taylor sits on top if you look at the Taylor's there's a weren't very well-defined area of damage so that would have been filled with possibly pus yep but certainly enough enough space occupying tissue to cause bone damage it will have not been pleasant to walk on because the entirety of your bodyweight passes down through that ankle joint that's painful but the injuries don't stop there there are some vertebrae that are a little bit unusual but I don't think those are normal aging changes I think there's a trauma and past changes and if you open that one and look at it can you see that Ridge that runs around there hmm that's not normal no so he's had some sort of trauma something's happened to yeah episodes of damage have occurred whether that's as a result of activity it's not a systemic disease because that's not something that's being evident throughout this yeah but there's localized and little focal areas where Bonas damaged broken down showing it's trying to repair itself not fracture necessarily so back trauma and an abscess on his ankle when you put these injuries together with his physique what are they telling us when you've got somebody who is obviously very well-developed like he is but not symmetrically so in the top and the bottom half of his body so he's doing something different with the bottom half of his body compared to what he's doing with the top half of his of his body said for example the obvious thing would be if we think he was a knight for example is he sitting on a horse and I think quite justifiably that would be something that we could look at as the historical research in the science start to converge a clear profile is emerging of a strong man somewhere between 25 and 40 a survivor of heavy blows to the head of sufficient rank to be buried within the walls of Stirling Castle but sue needs more historical research to tire the evidence she wants to prove he was a knight a member of the military elite of medieval Europe the rituals of medieval knighthood weren't buried with them just in tournaments lavish displays of might wealth and skill were almost as dangerous as the battlefield [Music] Zonk he is meeting David Mitchell and Jeremy Richardson of the Knights of Royal England who are keeping these rituals alive this is a top okay right oh bloody hell this is really heavy yeah now of course at that time there would have been very little armor around so all your protection really would have been there from the chainmail all right let me give you a helmet right a metal helmet this is a this is actually a tilting helmet it's it's it's metal it's really going to take a it'll take a blow to the face yeah this is gonna build up all the muscles down your neck across your shoulders that he would have been training with armor and chainmail since he was sort of 15 misses muscles and bones were developing he would have been carrying this absolutely will try to helmet on to see what your visions like in the helmet I've got a guess that it's not gonna be very good it's it's not the best but it will protect you okay I can't see anything right weapons justing shield so you would wear that on your left arm and then we've got a lance on the head yeah and that lance would cross over the other side of the horse so you try and attack your opponent you try and have your opponent coming try and have your opponent coming on this side on this side of you to put the chill on that side so that will be the protection I don't think I'd have been very good at this and the shield thank you the sheer weight of armor and weapons designed to be used on horseback explains the muscle imbalance between the upper and lower torso but can adjusters explain the mouth ankle and back injuries he would have had trouble walking that in a bit in some discomfort how he developed that I don't know but it was showing in both the ankle bones and the lower leg bone well presumably having done it presumably that will be a fall a horse going down if you put stays in the stirrup yeah - stirrup itself damages your ankle okay the other injuries that he had he done had an OP to his the front of his mouth here so his teeth were loose yeah you're nodding yeah okay laughs in the face and the back injury is an interest sort of an interesting one I guess it could have been a fall they could have been something that happened with the fall but also excessive riding so you closed your vacuum yeah all of these injuries are consistent with him being a horse rider and also a knight ingesting or taking part in these times of events he is more robust in the right hand side so that maybe I was out of the jousting and the swordplay everything active and kind of over to the right hand side defensively he's well built on the left-hand side because he's got the the shield so it all fits with the profile that we've got and I'm I'm happy now to think that he is a knight on horseback [Music] [Music] back in Dundee sue summons the team Wolfram you've got some new dietary information the first results of Wolfram's isotopic testing have come through with surprising results it looks like our cold case wasn't the meat-eating carnival that we might expect from any evil warrior [Music] we looked at the born we found 30% marine derived protein intake of food intake and 70% of Sto he's eating a lot of saltwater fish a much higher proportion than we eat today and yet Stirling Castle is miles from the sea the man's in Stirling it's not on a coast nothing to do with Coast has nothing to do because darling no I mean sir I mean Stirling is not so far away from the fourth not something you necessarily expect fish to be a major yeah but I mean if you find fish you find fish influence in English diet and and and in on in here coastal region okay I think we need to look at okay it's kind of ridiculous to my mind in that we're getting an isotope signature that's saying there's a high proportion of marine fish Stirling isn't on the coast you know I might expect freshwater fish because you know there aren't rivers around there and some very pretty ones too but it's not exactly a coastal community it's not Aberdeen the forensic evidence and the historical research indicate the sterling cold case was a warrior on horseback and night but Wolfram's isotope data says that he ate a lot of saltwater fish xanpe is now following a lead that could just explain the link between these two seemingly unrelated facts in Southampton one of Britain's most important ports in the Middle Ages xanthi is meeting food historian professor Chris Waldo he's treating xanthi to a tasting menu of authentic medieval fish dishes were they preserving these dishes this fish for eating all year round yes it's very important to them to have food that preserves Wow and in fact much of the the staple fish is is preserved and it comes particularly as wind dried cod or salted cod and we have records of boats coming in to Hull in in the 13 eighties 13 90s with as many as ninety six thousand preserved fish on board it seems that dried or salted fish was a huge industry that fed a fast-growing coastal and inland population this is dried cod that we saw earlier this is the dry card with medieval sweet and sour sauce that's one nice that she isn't it I don't expect him not to be nice but you know but fish wasn't just food for the body there's another reason why a medieval knight might favor fish over meat so 30% fish sounds like an awful lot to me is that a kind of common component of a medieval diet interestingly it often links to their conception of religious virtue fish is most like the food that men will eat in paradise and the reason is that it is a way of avoiding carnality and meat and the corruption that comes from it it leads people into lust and gluttony and into sin and there's one final clue preserved fish like this was a very good way of provisioning armies and when we see the calculations that the English Xterra made for provisioning his armies going to Scotland we can see that fish forms I guess probably well over a third of the diet that's yes so a high fish diet tells us that our man was eating the standard food of the army and it was also the diet expected of a pious Christian Knight this fits perfectly into the growing profile of our sterling warrior back in Dundee Caroline Needham is showing her colleague Caroline Wilkinson how the face of the Stirling Knight is developing [Music] so I've added the pegs the pegs indicate the depth of the tissue they are about to position on the face now that they have reassembled the skull in the computer areas where we've had to rebuild the different fragment to put them together there's always a bit more room for error there but I think because we've had most of the skull it shouldn't be too far out I can show you the muscles that I've started to add [Music] I've got a neck for him if you want to take a look at them so this is from a laser scan of somebody and I've adapted it to fit this skull well that's quite a beefy neck but it looks yeah it's in the correct position from these mastoid processes yeah yeah he's getting to look more beefy by the minutes of years he's got a big square face yeah and very especially the lower face in there the jaw isn't it yeah okay so we've got the nose to add to the measurements and then and then it's just skin and yeah so if I just get rid of the plane and put the skin back to normal you can have a good look at what he looks like oh that's great [Music] looks like a rugby player I think it's got quite a nice face though he doesn't look the rest I think he looks perfectly Pleasant yeah and I think because he's a field leader he's got this interesting gap between his teeth as well which is quite endearing I think Chinese here stick out of them that's true the next step is to work on the full-body reconstruction to show how beefy he really was then the reconstruction will be almost complete [Music] but there is one more critical line of inquiry what caused our night's death [Music] his grave provided the biggest clue an arrowhead was found mixed with his bones but would a single Arrowhead of being lethal enough to kill such a powerfully built man xanthi has come to the Royal Armouries and Leeds she's meeting Graham rhymer medieval weapons expert he recognizes the type of error had found in our man it was designed to cause maximum damage to flesh this is the nature of Arrowhead that will be used in both hunting and warfare it's a fairly grim process but archery is done usually through hemorrhage the era had the blades as it were these long Barb's extending backwards from the main head were shot all the way down so as the era had penetrated it would do a lot of cutting as it went associate well that's that's how it works and the barbs are there to prevent the arrow had come out he wants to show somethi a similar a better preserved arrowhead it becomes clear how this lethal weapon could have fought our man down oh well here's the draw of some of the house medieval arrowheads yeah this is this is the most similar that we have easily available with the the long Barb's this is how it would have fitted on it's quite big to me is that quite this is this is a pretty accurate reconstruction of a typical medieval military have an x-ray confirms that the arrowhead found with our man had a very similar barbed head there are medical treatises in the Middle Ages which explain how you may remove our heads of different designs and the barbed head really can only come out by keeping going with the direction in which it went into the body so essentially you had to push it right the way through there was no easy way of extracting it and simply the process of trying to extract it could cause fatal injury anyway so it's a very effective weapon in that sense and a very nasty thing to be shocked by if it wasn't more or less instantly fatal it would certainly prove so in a relatively short period of time the type of error had found with our man was designed to cause maximum damage and to be difficult to remove up until the 13th century the knight on horseback and ruled on the battlefield but the rise of the archer cheap but effective was one of the turning points in the history of warfare [Music] back in Dundee wolfram has some more surprises the results of his isotope tests on the Knights back tooth reveal where he grew up are we about to find out if he was English or Scottish can you take us through what you've found about our gentlemen from stirling castle but me i found so far from the two molars we have in our lab that you're in that period let's say generally eight years to fifteen years of age that this person has definitely not believed in scotland between the ages of eight and fifteen the night was growing up in either southern england or western france geographically close but politically very different adding to what you've just the rather big bombshell he just dropped if you were to geographically come down the UK so we're happy it's not in scotland how far down you would have to go down far sours to the home country home counties okay so Sussex in the real reason do you have to be close to the to the to the channel okay and and that's that's a very sort of specific geographical area can when when we then say France do we mean the entirety of France no llores there are plants in France that equates basically no it's eight unfortunately that the France as far as our maps and our understanding as a moment goes we can sort of split into two parts and you would say this acacia is closer to the west coast he's not Scottish but is he a French Ally or an English enemy I think our natural inclination was that this is going to be a Scottish night so a very important turning point in this entire investigation has been Wolfram stable isotope information that has really changed the pattern of who we think this person may have been so we've got to know sort of come away from the Scottish concept that you know is it embedded in the Scottish and I don't think of him as being Sean Connery don't we but he's not Scottish know by what we've seen today and he could be English but no we don't want to be English we're in Scotland here would quite like a new French [Music] Southie has come to Edinburgh Castle to meet dr. Katie Stevenson a medieval historian she might be able to shed some light on whether our Knight was part of the French troops and to support the Scottish against the English [Music] so was the presence French presence in Sterling in the 14th century in Scotland most definitely there's obviously quite a lot of diplomacy surrounding the old Alliance which is taking place the old Alliance very simply is a an ongoing and renewable treaty between the Scots and the French that if it's basically to do with England if England invades Scotland the French will come to the Scots aid if England invades France the Scots will go to the French aid so it's about providing military support to each other on the borders or getting the English yeah there is also evidence that there were French forces in Scotland in the 14th century in 1385 a large French force arrived at the port of Leith outside Edinburgh to support the Scots the army mustered here at the castle could our man have been part of this expedition here we have an example of muster rolls for the 1385 campaign where we get a sense of the type of men who were coming so there's lists here of Squires there's some 3000 names one of the men who came over not only is every soldier listed but the route they took is well documented so here they are coming into leaf which is the port of Leith in Edinburgh basically as you can see they head south into the anglo-scottish borders it's quite far from Stirling this is then they're not heading north into Central Scotland they're coming into the borders area it's pretty clear they don't go to Stirling the old Alliance meant a French military presence in Scotland in the 14th century but there's no evidence for a French fighting man's burial at Stirling it's a dead end it leaves one remaining possibility for xanthus research our night was English meanwhile the two Caroline's are making good progress based on the bone scans Caroline Needham is starting to reconstruct the night's body I've got the measurements that we took of the bones so from those I've made a life-size model on here so okay I'll just open him for you [Music] and then if you'd like to see the skin I'll just turn that on I'll make it see-through to begin with so this is doing nothing to suggest that he isn't a rugby player with it not really now so let's just see the finished skin because he's looking very big upper body very short and squat yeah absolutely [Music] it's great what's the finish man yeah [Music] yeah it looks great it's fantastic I really like him who certainly got the body for fighting yes absolutely [Music] Southie has come to the National Archives to find out whether there's any surviving records of the English at Stirling Castle in the 14th century the Holy Grail is to find a name for the night but it seems unlikely given he died over six hundred years ago she's meeting archivist Jessica Larkin who has uncovered some surprising documents okay we have some petitions petitions petitions that date around the time of the wars in Scotland and so Bannockburn etc so so this is a direct petition to the king and his council and Parliament yes yes this is an old French so it's okay okay the request refers to an Englishman William de Musha who was captured at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and held for ransom hostage-taking a common tool in medieval power play often involved keeping VIPs and a house arrest until deals were struck so I was hoping that this would be somebody yes it could be oh man the unfortunate thing is his son and heir was swapped as a hostage for his and so William did not die at Stirling Castle so the first document is a red herring William de Michonne didn't die hostage at Stirling Castle so if our night was English maybe he died during one of the many English occupations of the castle jessica has unearthed another even more extraordinary top shalls' okay okay so this is an account of Stirling Castle when it was held by the English and so everything was accounted for so all the expenses of the castle and who was at the castle we have names of everyone at the car we have names of everybody at the kind of document with all these details on it this is a real treat now this account is dated 1314 1341 right okay okay so you have all the list of the names they have Knights at the top and these are all men of towns right so there's all the people at the castle yes and what I want to show you is this name here Oh Sir John district Lee whoa okay does that word really Bell I can't read what is his obit oh he's dead he's dead and he died at Stirling Castle on the 10th of October and the year is 1341 but that is fantastic it's an extraordinary discovery which supports the carbon-14 dating of our man's bones the following year 13 42 the Scottish reclaimed the castle so could this English knight who died there be our man you can see at the end his name at malaise which is night so you're losing a member all right so he's a really important person so he could have been important enough to be buried within the castle itself quite possibly yes and at this time would the castle have been under sea their Scottish English were holding it it wasn't undeceived at this point the siege of Stirling when the Scots won the castle back was started in 1342 however there still would have been a few skirmishes it was a very unsettled time which is why you had such an extensive garrison there so this could really be a guy that is a potential name yes say yes so we have done to strictly who died at the castle we don't know how he died we don't know what age he was when he died and of course it doesn't confirm that he was buried in the castle but I think this is one of the best possible examples of the kind of scenario you're looking yeah absolutely it I just never expected it I never expected to find a potential name I can't believe it actually I have to admit it was a big surprise to me as well I mean for me this is the ultimate isn't it finding a name is the kind of ultimate aim of what we're doing but I didn't expect it no no no you were surprised it shows just how exciting that really is it is quite extraordinary Sir John Drewe strictly that maybe our boy [Music] honestly I think what I just learned is absolutely thrilling it's so exciting that we've found a potential name and it could genuinely be all night and I just never expected that in a million years that we'd actually get a name from you know 1,300 is just amazing fantastic I think the team they're going to be thrilled well let's help jessica's further research on the district Lee family seems to suggest that the family line has died out sadly the woman who was buried with Sir John will probably never be known in the 14th century women weren't usually deemed important enough to be documented [Music] it's the final team meeting using forensic investigation and historical research the team has established that our sterling man was a powerful battle-scarred Knight and despite the fact that he was buried in a Scottish castle he was probably English and may have died from narrow room whilst fighting the Scot [Music] now over 650 years after his death the team is about to give him back his face and a possible name yes I've got some rather interesting news right okay we don't have any evidence to say there were any French burials at Stirling so we have to return to the question whether he was in fact English now there's one particular scenario and one particular individual in that scenario which fits everything so during the 1330s 213 40s it's documented the English actually held Stirling Castle for 10 years but we have actually got a list of all of the people who were there as fighting men and it's quite exciting because this actually indicates that the person third-down died Jing's time at the castle his name is Sir John Durr strictly it's really quite an incredible results-- big because we heard was a bit of a scar now and we had a bit of a bit of well developed a bit of beefcake quite quickly was what we had so now we know circumstances and you know why is there everything and it's it's the capability of having those historical documents that suddenly give you a window that the science doesn't give you which is getting to the name and I think the history is really sure at this hour just to be thought of science but you wouldn't even have apartment a start important it's the alliance between the two and that's fantastic to have from so far back in time a document that gives you name yeah that's great so do we want to see what he looks like obviously we don't know details of skin color and eye color and we've estimated is the best guess based on the period of time and yet where we think he came from oh boy looks like a footballer he's good more like a rugby player nice look out so John under strictly John this is John so John just said John [Music] all right no it's that looks very good yeah [Music] the next thing we've got is that we've taken this and with the information that we have from the skeleton Carolina's beautiful body very beautifully done beautiful job Carolina for su the story of the Starling cold case was always in his bones his muscles carved out their own signature they told the team he wasn't just a soldier he was an English knight and now for the first time since his death over 600 years ago the team have given him back his identity when you start with something that in some respects was less than optimal and we really didn't know where we were going to go with this he's very interesting skeleton but the chances of any historical case to at least get it back to a possible name is not something we ever anticipated we would be able to do so this has gone much further than we could ever have predicted absolutely unexpected and probably as far as we can go on this the case is closed with the Knights forensic journey now over he has returned to historic Scotland's store in Edinburgh he left an enigma he's coming back with a possible name [Music] [Music]

Channel: Banijay History

Views: 543,969

Keywords: cold case, cold case detective, cold case files, cold case files episodes, cold case files new episodes, crime investigation, crime scene investigation, documentary film, documentary full, documentary history, facts, forensic science, full documentary, full length documentaries, history, history channel, history documentary, investigation, top documentaries, true crime, true crime show, watch cold case files, world history

Id: pJIwG6VVSuY

Length: 58min 18sec (3498 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2018