Infamous Assassinations Season 1, Episode 6: The Assassination of Pope John Paul II

1

The Assassination of Ernst Roehm

Munich 1934: The Night of The Long Knives Flying into Munich in the early hours of 20th June 1934, Adolf Hitler, then Chancellor of Germany, drove to a fashionable lakeside hotel, where one of his closest comrades from the earliest days of the Nazi Party was dragged from his bed and assassinated. Ernst Roehm, the feared leader of the Brown Shirts was dead.

30 min

2

The attempt on Princess Anne

London, 1974 As the Queen"s daughter travelled from Buckingham Palace along the Mall, she was attacked by a gunman who fired six shots at her vehicle. Several passers-by, her chaffeur and a policemen were all seriously wounded as the gunman was eventually arrested by police reinforcements.

30 min

3

The Assassination of John Lennon

New York, 1980 On 8th December 1980, outside the Dakota Building, the 40 year-old Beatle was shot dead by Mark David Chapman, a young stalker who alleged that he was Lennon''s ''double''. What were the psychological factors which drove Chapman to murder?

30 min

4

The Assassination of Lord Louis Mountbatten

Ireland, 1979 The former Viceroy of India and cousin of the Queen, Lord Mountbatten was a World War II naval hero, Allied Commander in South East Asia and one of the architects of D-Day. On 27 August 1979, he was assassinated by a bomb planted on his boat by the IRA (Irish Republican Army) whilst he was on holiday with his family in County Sligo, Ireland.

30 min

5

The Assassination of Trotsky

Russia, 1940 On 20 August 1940, the exiled Bolshevik leader was assassinated with an ice-pick by Ramon Mercader, who was undoubtedly working on behalf of Stalin and his secret police. Why was it still necessary for Stalin to assassinate him?

30 min

6

The Assassination of Pope John Paul II

Rome, 1981 On 13 May 1981, in front of a crowd of 20,000 people in St Peter''s Square, a young Turkish gunman shot the Polish Pope, possibly at the behest of the Russians who were concerned at the inspiration he was providing to Poland and the Solidarity Movement.

30 min

7

The Assassination of Sikorski

Gibraltar, 1943 On 4th July, 1943, General Wladyslaw Eugeniusz Sikorski, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, was flying to the Middle East on a Liberator bomber when it crashed into the sea off Gibraltar. He was very anti-Russian at the time and German propaganda claimed that he had fallen victim to the dirty tricks of the ''Allied Secret Service''.

30 min

8

The Assassination of President McKinley

Buffalo, New York, 1901 On 6th September 1901, whilst opening an expedition, President McKinley was shot by Polish anarchist, Leon Czolgosz. McKinley''s successor, 42 year-old Teddy Roosevelt, was sworn in within 12 hours. McKinley was the third US president to be assassinated. How did his killer get so close?

30 min

9

The Assassination of Heydrich

On the morning of 10th June 1942, whilst driving his open-top Mercedes to his office, Hitler"s effective deputy and architect of the Final Solution was blown to pieces by a bomb thrown by two Czechoslovakian agents parachuted in by the British Royal Air Force. Hitler exacted a terrible revenge on the village of Lidice.

30 min

10

The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

On 4th November 1995, as he was about to address a mass rally of his supporters celebrating the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accord, one of Israel''s greatest Prime Ministers was gunned down by a young Israeli opposed to his concept of ''Land for Peace''. The trial revealed shortcomings in the Israeli President''s security arrangements.

30 min

11

The Assassination of Zia Al Huq

On August 17 1988, en route for a military base in Northern Pakistan, Pakistan's pro-military strongman was brought down by a bomb in his Hercules transport plane, possibly in retaliation for helping the rebels fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Was a Russian agent in the aircraft minutes before he took off?

30 min

12

The Assassination of Verwoerd

Cape Town, 1966 On 6 September 1966, seven minutes after taking his seat in the House of Assembly, South African Prime Minister Dr Henrick Verwoerd was assassinated by Demetrio Tsafendas, a Bible-quoting parliamentary messenger. Verwoerd had played a key role in constructing South Africa''s Apartheid laws, but ironically the assassin claimed he was not doing enough for whites. It was the second attempt on Verwoerd''s life.

30 min

13

The Assassinations of Indira & Rajiv Gandhi

India, 1984 & 1989 Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was assassinated on 31st October 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards as she walked in the garden of her New Delhi home. It appeared that her murder was an act of revenge for her orders to storm the Sikh''s holiest shrine at Amritstar in 1983. Six years later, on 21st May 1991 in Sriperumbudur, near Madras, her eldest son Rajiv was also assassinated by Khan separatists in a bomb explosion.

30 min

14

The Assassination of Che Guevara

Bolivia, 1967 Born to a middle-class Argentine family, Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara became an icon for revolution and rebellious youth all over the world. One of Fidel Castro''s most trusted lieutenants in the Cuban revolution, he left to become a guerilla leader fermenting uprisings against other South American dictatorships. Captured in Bolivia on 8 October 1967, he was assassinated by a CIA-inspired killer.

30 min

15

The Assassination of Anwar Sadat

Cairo, 1981 On 6 October 1981, wearing a black ceremonial uniform at a military parade, the Egyptian President was shot down by four uniformed men who machine-gunned him as he was watching an Egyptian Air Force fly-past. The conspirators killed five people, including foreign envoys attending the parade, and the entire assassination was recorded on film.

30 min

16

The Attempt on Ronald Reagan

Washington, 1981 On 30th March 1981, as US President Ronald Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel, 25-year-old John Hinckley III fired six shots from a .22 revolver. One of the bullets missed Reagan''s heart by three inches. His famous quote to his wife was, "Honey, I forgot to duck". One of his top aides was not so fortunate.

30 min

17

The Assassination of Michael Collins

Eire, 1922 One of the most charismatic leaders in the struggle for Irish independence from British rule, Michael Collins came to realise that only compromise could secure southern Ireland''s independence and peace. Many of his former colleagues disagreed and, on 22nd August 1922, a newly-independent Eire lapsed into civil war, Collins was gunned down in an ambush.

30 min

18

The Attempts on De Gaulle

France, 1961: The Day of the Jackal There were three attempts to kill General de Gaulle, all of which were unsuccessful. The first was by German snipers in Paris 1945. The second was on 8 September 1961, when a plastic charge was fired at his car by a gang controlled by Raoul Salan. The third attempt was on 22nd August 1962, when his car was raked by machine-gun fire which shattered the rear window and burst two tyres. The General escaped all three attempts, but was there a fourth which was not reported?

30 min

19

The Attempt on Hitler

Rastenburg, 1944 Although there had been two previous attempts to kill Hitler, including poisoning a bottle of Cointreau on his aircraft, the assassination attempt which nearly worked at his Prussian forest hideaway in Rastenburg resulted in the perpetrators being strangled with piano wire strung from meat hooks.

30 min

20

The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

Los Angeles, 1968 On 6th June 1968, hours after winning the Californian Democratic Primary election, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot and fatally wounded. The assassin was 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan, who fired five shots before he was siezed. However, Robert Kennedy had many enemies and more than one assassin may have been involved.

30 min

21

The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

New Delhi, 1948 India''s greatest founding father was a champion of peaceful protest, yet ironically he was gunned down for no clear reason by Nathuram Godse, a fanatical Hindu, in the gardens of Birla House on 30th January 1948 while Gandhi was on his way to attend a prayer meeting.

30 min

22

The Assassination of Martin Luther King

Memphis, 1968 After leading mass protests in Birmingham Alabama and his "I have a dream" speech, Martin Luther King took on the causes of American withdrawal from South Vietnam and the plight of the poor in America''s South. On 4th April 1968, he was shot dead by a mysterious white assassin, who escaped in a white Mustang car. James Earl Ray was imprisoned for life for the killing, but was he guilty?

30 min

23

The Assassination of Tsar Nicholas II

Yekaterinburg, 1918 After a disastrous war with Germany, the Bolsheviks imprisoned the Romanov family as their supporters approached. Factory worker guards were replaced by Cheka executioners and on 17th July 1918, the family were murdered and buried in a nearby wood. For more than 70 years their whereabouts was unknown but new material released from Russia now conclusively reveals their fate.

30 min

24

The Assassination of King Alexander

Marseille, 1934 On 9th October 1934, just after King Alexander of Yugoslavia had arrived in the cruiser Dubrovnik for a State visit to France, a man later identified as Croatian nationalist Petros Kellerman jumped onto the running board of the King''s car and opened fire with a Mauser pistol at point blank range. In the confusion, the chauffeur was wounded by a Royal escort and the King accidentally bled to death in his car because his aides failed to apply a tourniquet

30 min

25

The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Sarajevo, 1914 A group of Serbian nationalists were determined to kill the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Two of the assassins had bombs and one, a student named Gavril Princep, had a pistol. When the bombs failed, the Archduke''s car took another route and almost stopped outside the cafι where Princep was sitting. Within seconds, the Archduke and his wife were mortally wounded. The events of that day on Sunday 28th June led to the outbreak of World War I.

30 min

26

The Assassination of John F Kennedy

Dallas, 1963 By 22 November 1963, the date of his assassination, President Kennedy had made many enemies. He had declared war on the Mafia, racial prejudice and the industrial/military interest in Vietnam. He had humiliated Kruschev and Castro, who both wanted their revenge over the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even to this day, conjecture surrounds the ballistics evidence and whether two assassins were involved. New film material from Washington has just been released

30 min