Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: Lone gunmen that shape the future

with one pull of the trigger.

Mysterious assassins brainwashed to commit shocking murders.

And legendary killers who have taken

their deadly secrets to the grave.

What do historical figures like Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun,

and President Abraham Lincoln have in common?

Well, for one thing, they were all formidable leaders

who faced death not on a bloody battlefield

but instead at the hands of an assassin.

Since the dawn of civilization, hitmen of all types

have shaped our world by eliminating political leaders,

silencing whistleblowers,

and killing the competition.

But what's the true motivation

to assassinate someone in cold blood?

Is it money, ideology,

or how about a simple thirst for vengeance?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

Some individuals have made their mark on history

not because of great scientific achievements

or works of art but for cold-blooded murder.

People like James Earl Ray,

who gunned down civil rights activist

Martin Luther King Jr.

Nathuram Godse killed the leader

of the Indian independence movement,

Mohandas Gandhi, at point-blank range.

Mark David Chapman shot legendary musician John Lennon

shortly after receiving his autograph.

They're not just killers.

They are assassins.

An assassination is distinguished

from an ordinary murder

when somebody wants to kill a major figure,

usually a political figure, could also be a cultural figure.

The reasons that people assassinate

high-profile individuals are many.

They can vary all the way from somebody being disturbed,

to someone who has a distinct agenda,

a purpose to actually change history.

And they may have to do with seeking to attain

personal fame or recognition to make a statement.

There is no question that an assassination

of a major public figure

generally has tremendous consequences,

and they can change a country and they can change the world.

SHATNER: While history is filled with stories of rulers, leaders,

and religious figures falling at the hand of an assassin...

...there is a time, not so long ago,

where the deadly practice was so prevalent,

it is sometimes referred to

as the golden age of assassinations.

The period between 1878, roughly, and 1914

has been termed the golden age of assassinations.

And that's a golden age driven by

a political ideology, anarchism.

Anarchism was a system of political belief

from a revolutionary manifesto that basically argued

that things like states, governments,

hierarchies, now kings, presidents,

all symbols of authority

were the fundamental evil of the world.

MICHAEL NEWTON: Anarchists agreed they would follow

a new way of kind of pursuing revolution.

You wouldn't try to influence people to vote.

You would plant a bomb.

You would shoot a politician.

And that would make ordinary people feel

that the world was unstable.

And the more unstable they felt the world was,

the closer you were to revolution and change.

ANNIKA MOMBAUER: A large number of monarchs and politicians

were assassinated, largely by anarchists.

This starts in 1878

with a failed assassination attempt

on the German Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Then it is the Russian Tsar Alexander II,

in 1881, who was assassinated by a Russian anarchist.

You then have the French president.

All falling victim to-to anarchist, um, assassins.

Even the United States did not escape this wave of anarchy,

and President McKinley

was assassinated in Buffalo, New York

in 1901 by an anarchist.

If you don't agree with someone,

you-you-you just try and assassinate them.

SHATNER: Across the globe, anarchists, revolutionaries, and terrorists

were using assassination to destabilize governments

and overthrown existing political structures.

Yet no one could've predicted

that the murder of one aristocrat

would lead to the death of millions around the world.

The occupation of this capital city

by the Austro-Hungarian Empire

has created heated tension with young Bosnian Serbs.

In anticipation of a formal visit

from Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary,

a secret military society

prepares to execute a deadly plan.

An organization called the Black Hand,

also known as Unification or Death,

it was several prominent members of the Serbian army,

including the head

of the Serbian military intelligence service.

So, on the day,

a group of six main would-be assassins positioned themselves

around the city of Sarajevo in strategic places.

The itinerary of the visit had been publicized beforehand,

so it was clear which route the cars would take

that the royal couple were traveling in,

and they positioned themselves along the route.

And the first would-be assassin threw a grenade at the car,

which bounced off and exploded

behind the car that the royal couple were traveling in.

But the archduke and his wife were unscathed

and drove to the city hall where they took stock

and decided what they would do.

NEWTON: One of the assassins, a guy called Gavrilo Princip,

basically thought, "Well, we blew it,"

and he went to have coffee in a café.

And he was sitting outside the café drinking his coffee,

and Franz Ferdinand's car

stopped in front of him on accident.

So, he just wandered over with his gun

and shot the archduke and his wife on the spur of the moment.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand

is one of the strangest assassinations ever,

because it's the one which really brings out

how much history is about accident.

If the car had gone somewhere else,

maybe 20 million people wouldn't have been killed

in the First World War.

SHATNER: In retaliation for Franz Ferdinand's assassination,

on July 28, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire

declares war on Serbia

and marks the beginning of World War I.

The four-year war would be fought on a global scale

never seen before in human history.

Some 20 million soldiers died,

and some 21 million civilians

perished as well in this conflict.

I don't think Gavrilo Princip,

when he fired those two fateful shots,

could have imagined that some 40 million deaths

would result from the deaths of these two people.

If, in fact, the assassination hadn't taken place,

would there have been a First World War?

Would history have developed along the same lines?

We don't know the answer.

So, I think this really shows you how

relatively unimportant people

who otherwise would never have been known to us

could have such devastating consequences.

Robert F. Kennedy announces his victory in the California

presidential primary to a crowd of supporters.

But hope will soon turn to tragedy.

As Kennedy makes his way through the hotel kitchen

on his way to a press conference...

...he's ambushed by an assassin.

SPENCE: A gunman appeared,

later identified as Sirhan Sirhan,

wielding a .22 caliber pistol,

and, by all accounts, began firing at Kennedy,

and rather wildly, in this case.

You seem to have a mad gunman, a lone nut,

with unclear motivations who had gotten into this situation.

Kennedy was hit, fell to the floor.

He had been shot three times.

TATE: Sirhan fired all eight shots

in the chamber of his revolver.

There was screaming. There was panic. There was fear.

There were bodies on the floor, and one of them

was Senator Robert Kennedy.

24 hours later, Kennedy died from those wounds.

SHATNER: Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant,

was quickly apprehended

for the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Yet, remarkably, after his arrest,

the gunman claimed to have no memory

of his murderous rampage.

BAKER: Sirhan was glassy-eyed

and essentially unresponsive

after he was arrested. He was completely placid.

He didn't seem to have any idea what had happened,

had no idea why he was arrested.

It was definitely strange.

The last thing he can remember,

earlier that evening,

Sirhan was having a cup of coffee

with an attractive girl who was wearing a polka dot dress

in another part of the Ambassador Hotel.

After that, it's a blank until he woke up

with people jumping on his head

and trying to wrestle the gun from his hands.

A succession of psychiatrists and psychologists,

both for the defense

and for the prosecution, examined Sirhan.

They all accepted that his amnesia

was absolutely genuine.

And many of them said, at the time of the shooting,

Sirhan was acting under post-hypnotic suggestion.

In other words, he had been hypnotized

and was shooting as a result.

SHATNER: Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder

and is currently serving a life sentence.

But is it really possible to hypnotize someone

into becoming an unknowing assassin?

Well, from 1953 to 1973,

there was a shocking top-secret CIA program

that seemed to have explored that very question.

Its codename was MKUltra.

The MKUltra program is a very weird

moment in American history.

And the aim of MKUltra was to find out

how far you can manipulate the psychology of individuals

and get them to do what you want them to do.

How deep it went is very uncertain.

But that there were people in the CIA who had this aim

is a matter of historical record.

BAKER: In the early 1950s, the CIA was deeply interested

in combating what they perceived as mind control research

by the Chinese and the Russians, in particular,

and they embarked on their own program to explore the mind.

But in the course of this research,

the U.S. government made efforts to experiment

with so-called brainwashing of individuals

through a variety of means.

One was hypnosis and the other was the use

of psychoactive drugs.

LSD, in particular, was proven to be highly effective

at putting people in a state of mind

where they could be post-hypnotically

or otherwise suggested to take violent action.

Somebody who, without fully knowing what they're doing,

or even knowing at all what they're doing,

can go out and kill.

They did experimentation on unwitting individuals

who had not provided consent.

It was later agreed that this was unethical,

immoral, and illegal.

SHATNER: In 1973, CIA director Richard Helms ordered

all MKUltra documents to be destroyed.

But just four years later,

a Freedom of Information Act request

led to the discovery of around 20,000 secret files

that managed to survive the purge.

And while the true extent of the CIA's mind control program

will never be known, is it possible

they actually created a brainwashed assassin?

Now, among the MKUltra documents that survive,

we have a report-- an internal report--

in which a woman under hypnotic control,

who had previously expressed a morbid fear of firearms,

took a gun, held it to the head of another woman,

and pulled the trigger,

and then, subsequently, had no memory

of what it was that she had done.

Now, this was all just a test and clinical circumstances.

But it was, by their accounts, done.

Which sounds, just for the sake of argument,

eerily like what Sirhan Sirhan claimed,

that he had no memory of what had been done.

BAKER: We don't know whether Sirhan was involved

with the MKUltra program,

but the possibility certainly exists.

We do know that many individuals

were put through very extreme experimentation.

And it does appear to be scientifically possible

to utilize various techniques,

including hypnosis and applying psychoactive drugs,

to create somebody who kills

without being knowledgeable about doing that.

SPENCE: Imagine the possibilities if only a half of this,

a third of it, if 10% of it worked.

And most of the records have been wiped.

And that itself should tell you something.

And I don't think it was just because

there were things that were done illegally.

It was because there was stuff in that

that was never supposed to be known.

You're left with haunting possibilities.

It's frightening to think that mind control

can activate a person to commit a murder.

Yet, for centuries, specialized training of another kind

has created what many believe are the perfect assassins.

It's a group of killers

rumored to possess supernatural powers

that allow them to stealthily and silently

eliminate their targets.

SHATNER: This town is home to the Iga-ryu Museum

that houses over 400 artifacts and deadly weapons

once used by the most iconic assassins in all of history...

the ninja.

STEAVU: The ninja were master assassins.

Their name translates to "hidden ones,"

or "the concealed ones."

Um, traditionally, in Japan,

they were referred to as shinobi.

They emerged in Japan probably around the 14th or 15th century

during a period of prolonged civil war

between various daimyos or local regional lords

vying for supremacy.

The skill set of ninjas was mainly assassination

as well as espionage, infiltration, subterfuge.

The ninja arts, or ninjutsu,

was seen by the samurai as completely dishonorable,

but the ninja had no qualms about this,

and their main focus was achieving their objective,

uh, no matter what.

SHATNER: The ninja, or shinobi,

made their mark on history

from the 12th to the 17th century.

Today, the ninja are long gone.

But, remarkably, there's still one shinobi left in Japan.

His name is Jinichi Kawakami.

(speaking Japanese)

(translated): I come from a family that has passed down

what is known as the "shinobi's techniques" of the Koga region.

In the old family tradition...

...parents, grandfather, and even grandmother

passed down these teachings to their children

and grandchildren,

and I learned it the same way.

Teaching starts around age six.

As muscles and bones develop,

we gradually progress to more intense training

and endurance exercises that require great patience.

Shinobis are often associated with assassins.

A shinobi is someone who does things

that are not visible to the public.

It involves techniques related to military espionage,

strategy, and surprise attacks.

SHATNER: While ninjas are often thought of as assassins,

they functioned primarily as spies

trained in the arts of stealth and deception.

Their mastery of weapons made them the most feared

special operatives in feudal Japan.

STEAVU: Ninjas were famous for

disguising themselves as priests,

sometimes even as maidens,

as laborers, and as merchants

blending in with the general population,

and then they could strike at the opportune moment

to hit their target.

Their weapons, too, were unsuspicious.

The traditional ninja sword

is considerably shorter than the samurai sword,

which they could carry with them very easily,

hide them, if necessary.

They could take a household item

or tools used in agriculture

so they would not attract attention

if they were walking down the streets with them.

And then turn it into a deadly weapon.

As for methods, the most common approach

was to injure someone using conventional weapons.

Then there are techniques

such as administering poison through the bloodstream.

They were extremely skilled at using gunpowder.

There are various techniques,

such as mixing flammable substances with water,

creating explosions...

...and even mixing substances to produce poisonous gases.

Ninjutsu is a military art.

For that reason, I have stated

that I will no longer teach the aspects of ninjutsu.

SHATNER: While the ninja were very real,

to this day, there's still very little we know about them

because their deadly techniques were passed down in secret.

There were different families that that supported ninjutsu,

and these families trained in these arts.

But nobody knew what went on inside their training.

These secrets were passed down from father to son,

from uncle to nephew, and inside of secret schools.

And they had to write blood oaths

to say they wouldn't pass them on.

It was only later that these documents

started to be written.

So, we don't have many documents for the ninja.

But what we do know is that, once a ninja had targeted you,

there was very little chance of survival.

KAWAKAMI: It was extremely rare to keep records,

as they were confidential, and the techniques themselves

could not be disclosed to others.

There was a risk involved, and keeping them secret

was essential for survival,

as revealing them to enemies would increase the danger.

Therefore, a culture of secrecy naturally developed.

SHATNER: While the ninja may have hidden

their history, training, and techniques,

there may be an even greater secret

yet to be revealed

because, according to Japanese folklore,

it is said that the ninjas were imbued

with supernatural powers.

CUMMINS: The ninja really, really engaged

with the dark arts of magic.

What they would do is build up their spells,

get their ingredients, and then, before their mission,

create something that would allow them to see in the dark.

They would be wearing talismans,

magical hairpins that they would put in their hair

to help them with the art of invisibility.

They believed they could bring the power

of the moon down to enclose them in black clouds.

And in this way, they believed they could get in

and kill their target.

-(blade slices) -(man grunts)

They believed this, and the people

around them believed this.

STEAVU: This image of the ninja as being endowed with supernatural skills

was historically not seen to be a kind of legend or lore,

it was actually believed, uh, by the populace,

and as a result, uh, they were terrified of them.

So, because of the lack of records surrounding the ninja,

it's a great mystery

to what extent we even understand the ninjas

and the full extent of their abilities

and to what extent their abilities might have been

somehow divine or supernatural.

This massive part that is unknown about them

could be a lot more than what we ever imagined.

The lore of the ninjas and their silent,

supernatural powers has certainly earned them

their iconic reputation.

But when it comes to the deadliest slayers in history,

there is one group whose skills were so feared,

their name became the origin

of the word "assassin."

SHATNER: The feared warrior-sultan Saladin

and his mighty armies surround this imposing mountain fortress

as they continue their conquest of the Middle East.

But these forces would be no match

to the powerful guardians of this castle,

a mysterious and deadly Muslim sect

known as the hashshashin,

or, quite simply, the assassins.

STEAVU: During the 12th century, Saladin set up a camp

to encircle their fortress in Masyaf,

which was a base of operations

for the order of the assassins, and he set up a siege.

You know, people inside the castle

would be starved to death.

One night, he went to bed, as he usually did,

in his tent in the camp,

and he always took extreme precautions

to defend against an eventual assassination attempt.

He had a system with, uh, little bells that

would be triggered if someone passed a certain perimeter,

and the tent itself was heavily guarded.

That night, however, he awoke, feeling a presence.

When he opened his eyes, he didn't see anyone next to him,

but he did see a dagger next to his bed,

stabbed through a note.

And in the note, it said, "If you do not lift the siege,

next time, you will be dead."

As a result, Saladin lifted the siege.

The message that had been sent to him was clear.

"If we wanted you dead, you would no longer be breathing."

SHATNER: The hashshashin operated in Syria, Persia, Turkey,

and throughout the Middle East

from the 11th to the 13th century.

The word "assassin" is literally derived from their name,

based on their mission and menacing presence.

KEVIN RUSHBY: The assassins, their story begins in 1090,

when a character called Hasan-i Sabbah

goes to a Castle Alamut,

which is in the mountains now in modern Iran.

He hides himself away in this castle

and trains young men to be killers.

His idea is to build a force

of young men

who can assassinate political leaders amongst their enemies.

Almost immediately, they have a fantastic success

where two assassins managed to kill

a character called Nizam al-Mulk,

who is the de facto leader of the Islamic world at the time.

That sends shock waves through the Islamic world.

After Hasan-i Sabbah died in 1123,

there were a number of leaders

who took over and carried on the traditions.

So, they had an enormous impact.

LIU: The assassins were bringers of death.

They begin trying to expand their influence

by seizing more fortresses,

so they can form a coherent network.

They also start sending out people

who essentially went on suicide missions to assassinate

political enemies, ranging from local judges

to the rulers and leaders of entire cities.

And they're using daggers to hit their targets.

You had no idea where they might come, when they might come.

All your life's work might come to an end

with a single blow of a dagger,

and that's always a very scary thing,

especially when put together with

just how fanatical they were.

SHATNER: How did the leaders of the hashshashin

inspire such devotion?

Perhaps clues can be found with intriguing claims

made by the famed Venetian merchant and explorer

Marco Polo, whose journey through the Middle East

in the 13th century was chronicled

in The Travels of Marco Polo.

Marco Polo mentions the assassins

and talks about the legend of the Old Man of the Mountains,

this character Hasan-i Sabbah, and how he would command

his young men to go and kill for political reasons.

Marco Polo mentions how they would

leap off towers at the command of Hasan-i Sabbah.

He would just tell them, you know, "jump,"

and they would jump off the top of a castle and kill themselves.

LIU: Marco Polo comes to the Middle East in a world

where there's already a lot of lurid tales circulating

about the assassins and what they represent and who they are.

And he claims in his book that

the Old Man in the Mountain-- he recruits young men,

drugs them with hashish,

takes them to a pleasure garden in Alamut,

accosted with all sorts of beautiful woman,

given all sorts of luxurious food and drink.

And then, once they've sobered up a little,

the Old Man in the Mountain would say, "Look,

"what you've experienced was paradise,

"and if you assassinate the people who I don't like,

then you can experience this paradise for eternity."

And so that has played a large role in creating this image of

how the assassins, or hashshashin,

would be in drug-induced hazes

as they went around killing their enemies.

SHATNER: Were the hashshashin really transformed into fanatics

from drug-fueled experiences with hashish,

a concentrated form of cannabis,

in some kind of pleasure garden?

While it was a story told by both their enemies

and Europeans alike, no one knows the whole truth.

But one of the greatest mysteries surrounding the group

that helped coin the term "assassin..."

...is how they managed to survive for nearly 200 years.

(man grunts)

The assassins were without armies and without wealth

and yet mysteriously survived for centuries.

The assassins were hunted and hated by rival Islamic factions.

Historians believe the assassins were among the first

to wield assassination as a long-term strategy.

It's entirely possible that fear

was the assassins' most powerful weapon.

They didn't need an army, just a reputation.

While the hashshashin may be gone, the fact that their name

continues to invoke fear centuries after their demise

is a testament to their deadly legacy.

But some ancient assassins were so shadowy,

we're still not certain if they actually existed.

Like in the case of a religious cult based in India

during the 13th century, who many claim were responsible

for the murder of more than two million people.

SHATNER: India. The 1830s.

The British East India Company,

an organization that began as a private trade corporation,

is now the greatest political and military power

in all of India.

Commanding a private army of 250,000 soldiers,

they now occupy, control, and govern

much of the Indian subcontinent.

But during their colonial conquest,

the British are faced with a mysterious group of killers

they call the Thuggee, or simply the thugs.

The thugs were a criminal fraternity,

or a Mafia, who operated in India.

The thugs' way of working was to travel the roads of India,

the byways, and when they came across

groups of travelers who had wealth,

they would befriend them and start traveling with them.

They would sometimes spend weeks

worming their way into the confidence of groups.

And then, at a prearranged signal,

they would get into position and pounce.

(horse neighs)

One man would grab the hands of the victim.

Another might kick the feet away.

And then, finally, a long scarf--

the rumal, they called it--

would be thrown around the neck,

and they'd strangle the victim.

They were so practiced at it, they could take out

whole groups of people simultaneously.

Once they'd killed everybody,

they'd strip them and search their baggage.

And then they would bury the bodies, sometimes alive.

Before first light, they would be gone.

They were assassins in the way they worked.

They used stealth. They used disguise.

They would befriend you. Their weapons were concealed.

But there was no political aspect to what they were doing.

They were in it for the money.

SHATNER: It's been estimated that the Thuggee,

who cemented the word "thug" in the English language,

robbed and strangled millions of victims.

But the British authorities in India believed

this shadowy group of assassins

killed their victims for much more than financial gain.

It was believed they were performing ritual sacrifices.

STEAVU: The Thuggees were rumored to be devotees

of the Hindu goddess Kali,

who is, uh, commonly associated

with, uh, time, with death, and destruction as well.

And they viewed their actions as a way of offering

these sacrifices to the goddess

in order to stave off a larger- scale destruction of humanity.

So Kali would need to be propitiated

with these sacrifices,

with the sacrifices of human lives,

and the Thuggees saw themselves

as fulfilling this for the goddess.

RUSHBY: The image of Kali that is commonly seen

is of a woman with wild black hair, four arms,

one of them carrying a severed head, another a bloody knife,

wearing a garland of human skulls

and a skirt of human arms.

It's a pretty terrifying image.

SHATNER: Did the thugs really assassinate millions of travelers

in order to satiate a bloodthirsty goddess?

Perhaps the answer can be found with the man who was

largely responsible for the eradication of the Thuggee.

A British officer with the East India Company

named Captain William Sleeman.

Banditry wasn't unusual, but this seemed to be

something more than that.

And William Sleeman applied what you might call

more modern criminological methods

to try to deal with this.

And the way that Sleeman actually broke up Thuggee

was through pretty much the same method that the FBI

uses to break up the Mafia.

You get informers, you catch people,

and you give them a lighter sentence

to rat out their comrades.

It works.

There was a thug which was arrested by the name of Behram.

He claimed that he had been a witness

to more than 900 stranglings

and that he personally had strangled thousands of people.

The activities only became visible

when you began to collect and collate information.

RUSHBY: When Sleeman started to capture the thugs, he became convinced

that they were a religious cult sacrificing victims to Kali.

And I think those British in the 19th century

took this as a sort of demonic cult.

The public hysteria in Europe grew to such an extent

that it was totally accepted as truth

that the thugs were a cult of religious sacrificers

who were strangling people by the million in India.

The question is, was that true and to what extent?

I mean, some historians believe that thug gangs didn't exist.

And we'll never know, of course,

how many of the men Sleeman arrested

were actually stranglers and how many were innocent people.

We will never know for sure.

(crowd cheering, applauding)

SHATNER: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump

is giving a speech to a crowd on an outdoor stage

when suddenly...

(gunfire)

MAN: Get down, get down, get down, get down.

SHATNER: ...multiple gunshots ring out.

(crowd screaming)

BAKER: On July 13, 2024,

Donald Trump, then a candidate for president

of the United States, was speaking in an open field.

As he was speaking, a young man who had climbed

onto a roof fired at Trump.

(gunfire)

MAN: Get down! Get down!

BAKER: And miraculously, Trump turned his head at the last second,

and the bullet merely grazed his ear.

That man then was shot by a Secret Service sharpshooter.

The recent attempt at assassinating Donald Trump,

had that succeeded, America

and probably the world would be very different places.

SHATNER: While Donald Trump would escape with his life

and become the 47th president of the United States,

his attempted assassin,

20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead.

To this day his motives remain unknown.

But he's far from the only assassin in American history

that still raises unanswered questions.

What do we really know about the assassination

of President John F. Kennedy?

The man officially credited with killing JFK

was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? Well, it depends upon who you ask.

Loner, misfit, communist,

marine, all-American boy.

That's still a matter of ongoing debate.

NEWTON: Of all the assassins I know, James Earl Ray,

who assassinated Martin Luther King,

he is the most enigmatic.

It's really unclear what was going on with him,

why he did it, did he act alone?

It's a secret that's-that's gone to the grave,

and I think we'll never know.

-(crowd screaming) -(gunfire)

TATE: Do we know why there were two assassins

who tried to kill President Gerald Ford in 1975?

We spend and have spent huge amounts of time and money

exploring how assassins are able to shoot at

and/or kill their victims.

We spend relatively little time examining why.

SHATNER: While the true motives of many assassins remain enigmatic,

the most unsettling truth

is that they strike without warning.

When will another deadly assassin

unleash their vengeance on a person of power and influence

and, through unspeakable tragedy, shape the future?

It's difficult to know what would happen today

if a high-profile person were assassinated.

We would hope that an event like this

would not have a disastrous effect on American democracy.

But the idea that the assassination of leaders

is a thing of the past, I think, is clearly wrong.

NEWTON: Stories of assassination-- they remain puzzling.

They remain uncertain.

-(gunshot) -And I think people are always going to delve

into them more deeply...

(gunfire)

...to really unpack the nuances,

the hiddenness, the strangeness

of these kind of history-changing events.

They really do matter.

(gunshot)

The idea that an assassin

can change the course of history is both profound

and deeply chilling.

What would our world be like if the bullets

aimed at JFK had missed on that fateful day in Dallas

or if Archduke Ferdinand had escaped his hit man?

Unfortunately, we'll never know.

But one thing is certain.

As long as humans posture for power and political gain,

or simply need their secrets kept quiet,

there will come a day when an assassin

makes another deadly mark on history.

And their motives and methods

may forever remain unexplained.

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