ASSOCIATE PRODUCER ON 5 EPISODES OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INTERNATIONAL CHANNEL'S RIDDLES OF THE DEAD SERIES PRODUCED BY HOGGARD FILMS
Riddles of the Dead: Hitler's Skull
In Hitler’s Skull, forensic scientist Mark Benecke investigates the death of Adolf Hitler and takes viewers from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, to Lausanne Switzerland and into a Russian archive where fascinating evidence has been kept secret for almost half a century.
Deep in a cavernous research facility in Moscow, Benecke analyzes Hitler’s alleged skull, his teeth and even the remains of his beautiful mistress, Eva Braun.
These strange artifacts will reveal many things for the first time – including how Hitler killed himself.
Was it poison? A bullet to the head? Or both?
In Hitler’s Skull, viewers learn why these shards of bones and teeth may belong to Hitler and – most intriguingly – why they were hidden away by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the first place…
Riddles of the Dead: Immortal Comrade
In truth, Lenin himself was adamant that he didn’t want to be embalmed. Had he known his body would be preserved as a pseudo-religious artifact – it would’ve left him turning in his grave.
If he had one…
Learn of the odd and ongoing fate of the founder of a superpower: a man whose bodily remains have outlasted the empire he created.
Today, Lenin’s embalmers still tend to his corpse as they’ve done for nearly a century now.
But with times a-changing and those with living memories of the Soviet Union slowly disappearing from the scene, the scientists of Lenin’s tomb – once a lauded and pampered bunch – are scrambling to reinvent themselves and their lab as a ‘mummy renovation’ facility to stay in business.
Today, just across Red Square from Lenin’s Mausoleum, sits one of Russia’s shiniest and most extravagant malls. Forces here are building to remove the venerable leader from Red Square altogether.
Which, at least in part, is what Lenin would’ve probably wanted all along…
Riddles of the Dead: Plague Hunters
See how doctors are using forensic science to track a silent killer.
Called the Spanish Flu, it was the single deadliest viral outbreak of all time.
It began at the end of the First World War, when soldiers from around the world were returning home after five years of bloodshed.
They unknowingly brought with them a virus that would soon kill 40 million people – more than had died in the entire war.
Unlike most flus, ‘the Spanish Lady’ preyed not on the old and infirm but on the young and healthy.
In Plague Hunters, we join two teams of scientists as they race to find, identify, and reconstruct the DNA of history’s most lethal plague. Only by reconstructing the virus can scientists hope to create a vaccine to combat if and when it returns…
Riddles of the Dead: Savage Evidence
This story follows the work of the United Nations forensics investigation team that, often under armed guard, searches for mass graves hidden in the hills around Srebrenica.
Led by a fiercely determined Australian detective, the team seeks to uncover the dead, identify the bodies for relatives seeking closure, reconstruct the crime and bring those responsible for the largest European massacre since World War Two to justice.
In telling their story and those of the survivors, we revisit the war and tell the tale of when a small, Dutch peacekeeping unit at a crossroads just outside Srebrenica handed over nearly 10,000 Bosnian men, boys, women and children to the Serb paramilitaries who became their executioners.
Riddles of the Dead: Clearing the Killing Fields
In Clearing the Killing Fields viewers hold their breath with the professional minesweeping teams who, each day, search Sarajevo’s battle-scarred cityscape for hidden killers and risk all to rid the land of a deadly menace.
Will they succeed-or will more innocent lives be taken? Mines never rest, they’re relentlessly deadly and cannot discriminate between civilian and soldier… And here in Bosnia years after the guns have fallen silent – they still take massive life.
In this story, viewers first meet 13-year-old Damir Vatres who lost part of his arm and one of his eyes to the hidden threat. We then join Bosnian dog handler, Neda Brkovic, and her minesweeping dog, Bonza, at the Canadian Canine Countermine School, as they learn to work together to detect and eliminate the mines that threaten their countrymen.
Throughout the program, we follow a team of demining professionals as they risk life and limb to rid Sarajevo’s neighborhoods and parks of their silent foe. Along the way, we learn about the tools, technology and dog training methods these heroes bring to bear.
And, unfortunately, the job is far from done.