Expedition Files (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
Coming up on "expedition
files," a grisly serial killer slashes
his way through the
foggy streets of London.
And after 150 years, we may finally
know his identity.
In one of the most
remote parts of the world,
a savage beast stalks its human prey.
New DNA evidence might finally reveal,
is this monster or myth?
And on a Chicago TV
station in the late 1980s,
criminal hackers terrorize the airwaves.
We dig deep to unmask
the anonymous monsters
who have struck fear in our hearts.
In the corridors of time
Are mysteries that defy explanation.
Now, I'm traveling through history itself,
on a search for the truth.
New evidence,
shocking answers.
I'm Josh gates,
and these
Are my "expedition files."
My kids are young enough
to still be scared of monsters
hiding under the bed,
and like generations of
good parents before
me, I reassure them.
I tell them monsters aren't real,
that there's nothing to be afraid of.
But of course, that isn't quite true.
Although they don't tend
to hide under our beds,
sometimes monsters are real.
Tonight, we examine the files
of three extraordinary cases of
monsters whose terrifying
acts remain shrouded in mystery
to this very day.
From a nightmarish serial
killer whose name is synonymous
with fear, to a frightening
beast said to stalk
the him a lay as, and an agent
of chaos menacing the city of
Chicago, one question
threads the needle
between these three remarkable stories.
Who, or what, is behind
the monstrous mask?
We begin in London's east end.
The year is 1888.
Life is hard for most
in these seedy slums,
and for women especially.
Many, like Mary Kelly
here, are forced into a life
of prostitution police
try to maintain order.
Men like sergeant Harry
Garrett, spend a good part of
their patrol moving
prostitutes off the street.
On your way.
Now, he doesn't know it, but
sergeant Garrett might have
just saved Mary Kelly's life.
That's because tonight,
her profession is not only
the world's oldest, but
also the most dangerous.
Lurking in the shadows is a
customer of a different kind,
one who takes payment in blood.
Although Mary is safe for
now, sadly, another lady of
the night will not be so lucky.
Polly Nichols is, in this moment,
making the acquaintance of a madman.
For 150 years, his horrifying legacy has
only grown, because the
killer was never caught.
But thanks to a surprising
intervention from across
generations, we may now,
at last, be able to put a face
to the elusive Jack the ripper.
Polly Nichols is a
43-year-old mother of five who,
like many women in
whitechapel, relies on her body
and her wits to make ends meet.
But no amount of street smarts
can help Polly, because tonight,
on August 31st, 1888,
she becomes Jack the
ripper's very first victim.
It isn't until 3:40 that morning that Polly's
knife-slashed corpse is
discovered by a cart driver.
Extra, extra!
The news quickly makes
the morning papers,
and police attribute the
murder to "a peculiarly revolting
and barbarous character."
Eight days later, on September
8th, 47-year-old Annie Chapman
is seen spending her
hard-earned street walking money
at an east end pub.
Witnesses last see her
leaving at 5:30 in the morning.
Only a half hour later,
Annie is found dead.
Her injuries are ghastly,
as several internal organs
have been removed.
This leads the coroner to
state that these crimes are being
committed by someone with
knife skills of a surgical nature.
Is this a mad doctor on the loose?
A surgeon? Or a butcher?
Rumors swirl that London
has a psychotic murderer on its hands,
and it's confirmed on
September 27th, when
the slasher sends a letter
to the central news agency.
The killer taunts the police
with a haunting threat.
My knife's so nice and sharp.
I want to get to work
right away if I get a chance.
And signs off with the
name Jack the ripper.
Overnight, the world becomes
obsessed with the ripper.
London is whipped into a frenzy of fear.
Women refuse to leave their homes.
People are terrified.
The police devote a
huge amount of manpower
to catch Jack the ripper.
Making whitechapel's
police station the hub of
the investigation, local cops,
or British bobbies, haul in
suspect after suspect to narrow
down the search for the killer.
Among those investigating
the case is our young
whitechapel sergeant Harry
Garrett, part of the desperate
boots-on-the-ground
effort to find the madman.
Sergeant Garrett and his
fellow police officers flood
the streets in London's east end,
and their methods aren't exactly friendly.
I swear I don't know nothing.
But they fail to pinpoint any true suspect.
And the terror continues to
loom over London, with citizens
wondering what act of
savagery might come next.
And the ripper does not disappoint.
Just three days later, he strikes again.
On September 30th, the ripper attacks
Elizabeth stride, a 45-year-old
destitute mother of nine,
slashing her throat
and leaving her for dead.
Minutes later, he strikes again,
attacking 43-year-old
Catherine eddowes,
a poor whitechapel factory worker.
After mutilating her,
he slices out her kidney,
leaving behind his most
gruesome execution yet.
As the ripper flees the scene,
the police officer spots him
and calls the attention
of sergeant Harry Garrett,
who gives chase,
but the killer escapes.
However, not all hope is lost,
as the police notice an odd thing.
The killer has a stiff arm and stiff knees,
which don't bend as he walks or runs.
They might have lost him,
but they now have a description
of Jack the ripper.
Witnesses describe the
killer as being between 5-foot-5
and 5-foot-8 inches tall,
stout and broad-shouldered,
aged between 30 and 40.
He has a full face, dark hair, a mustache
and possibly a beard.
He's wearing a dark
jacket and a bowler hat.
The police feel like they're
closing in on the ripper.
The details about his stiff
arm and legs has policemen like
Garrett on the lookout
for this unusual disability.
Meanwhile, the ripper
sends his most unusual
correspondence yet.
On October 16th, 1888,
George lusk of the whitechapel
vigilance committee receives
a crudely wrapped box.
A letter from the killer,
known as the from hell letter,
explains the macabre contents.
From hell, dear sir, I send you
half a kidney I took from one woman.
With the teasing salutation
Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.
The ripper has been
rampaging for two months,
what the papers have coined
the "Autumn of terror,"
but despite the city
being in the grip of fear,
it's business as usual for
the street walking
women of whitechapel.
Except tonight, the killer
does something different.
He makes a house call.
You remember Mary Kelly,
whose life was spared by
sergeant Garrett?
Unfortunately, on this night,
she won't be so fortunate.
When her body is discovered,
authorities find another
horrific act of mutilation.
But this time, there is one
touch of ripper brutality that
canonizes the killer
as the most diabolical
of all time.
He has taken a trophy,
Mary's very own heart.
The public outcry over
the horrifying nature of.
Mary's murder is deafening.
Detectives investigate multiple
suspects who may possess
the surgical skills needed to
commit such ghastly murders.
They scrutinize Francis
tumblety, an American doctor
arrested on an unrelated charge
of indecency, but he flees back
to america when police
begin to look at him.
Also on the police's
radar is Aaron kosminski,
a barber who is apparently
well-known among
whitechapel residents to be insane.
Then there's montague John
druitt, the son of a surgeon
who is found dead soon
after Mary Kelly's murder.
Some theorize that his suicide
could be madness brought on by
being the ripper.
The police believe that any of
these men could have the skills
to pull off the ripper's
gruesome mutilations,
but there's not enough
evidence to pin the crimes
on any of them.
Still, the police wait for a chance to catch
Jack the ripper in action.
Surely he would strike again.
But he never does.
The ripper's murder spree
ends with the ghastly slaughter of
Mary Kelly, leaving the police clueless.
Who was this demented
butcher, and where did he go?
Years, then decades pass,
and almost a century and a half
later, there is still no definitive answer.
But now, a shocking
revelation may finally unveil
the true identity of Jack the ripper.
And remarkably, it comes from
the direct descendant of one of
the investigators in the
case from 150 years ago.
150 years ago, sergeant
Harry Garrett failed in his efforts
to stop the serial killer, Jack the ripper.
Now someone has reopened the case,
and it's a family affair.
Harry's great-great-granddaughter,
author Sarah bax horton, has picked up
where sergeant Garrett left off.
I was totally inspired
by my police ancestor.
I think that my emotional
connection has driven
my research and my
approach to the case.
Incredibly, Sarah is able to
access files and track down
leads, which at the
time, weren't available
to her great-great-grandfather.
These records were previously
held under the 100-year closure
rule, which is standard
for institutional records.
I discovered two files that
had recently been opened to
the public from colney
hatch lunatic asylum.
Located just a few miles north
of whitechapel, colney hatch
was the asylum that catered
to locking up the mentally ill
from the east end.
I discovered a man, a
35-year-old east ender who was
5-foot-7 inches tall,
stout, broad-shouldered,
a stiff left arm, having
broken his left elbow.
He also had a peculiar
gait or way of walking,
with bent knees and
asymmetric foot dragging,
and he had a violent
antipathy to his wife,
whom he attacked on several occasions,
and he was known to assault
people with bladed weapons.
That man was hyam hyams.
I also discovered from the
files that hyam hyams was
a cigar maker, who used a
knife for his trade, and it may be
those skills which transferred
onto the women he accosted.
In my opinion, hyam hyams
managed to evade suspicion
owing to the fact that he
was just a man on the streets,
and he presented a very
quiet, inoffensive demeanor.
But when the fits of
violence were upon him,
he became extremely violent
and dangerous towards women.
Even though he was never
a suspect during the active
case, when one looks at
hyam hyams, a dark picture
quickly emerges.
Found suffering from bouts
of delirium in whitechapel,
hyams attempts to stab
his wife and is eventually
institutionalized in December of 1888.
Around the same time,
the murders ceased.
So, it seems more than a
coincidence that the ripper
murders stop at the same
time hyams is locked up at
the colney hatch lunatic
asylum for the rest of his life.
At the end of my exploration
of the Jack the ripper case,
I then realized not only that
it might be possible to solve
the case, but that in fact, I had solved it.
And it's been the joy of my life.
It's been the joy of my life
to reinvestigate the case in
honor of my police ancestor
and in tribute to the men
and women who collaborated
in an attempt to bring
Jack the ripper to justice.
And so, incredibly, a family
of detectives joined forces over
the span of 150 years to
shine new light on one of
the world's most infamous cases.
We'll never know the psychology
that might have driven hyams to
commit these heinous crimes,
but we do know that the ripper
was an arrogant killer,
taunting the police,
boasting that he would never be caught,
except that maybe he has.
If Sarah bax horton is right,
Jack the ripper has finally
been pulled from the
shadows, and Sarah's
great-great-grandfather Harry
can rest easy, knowing the streets
of east London are safe at last.
Our next file takes us from
a monster in the city streets
to a terrifying beast rumored to lurk in
the remote wilderness.
It's July 1986, on the roof of the world,
here in the Tibetan plateau,
surrounded by the towering
him a lay an mountains.
The man behind me is in
the middle of an amazing
1,200-mile trek across
Tibet, retracing the route of
an ancient sherpa road.
He's traveled solo, through
valleys and across rivers with
only a sleeping bag
and a modest rucksack.
Unfortunately, he's also horribly lost.
And that is surprising because
this is reinhold messner, one of
the world's greatest adventurers.
Good news, he won't be alone for long.
Bad news, he's about to
come face-to-face with perhaps
the most famous monster
of them all, the yeti.
It is a ferocious beast that
has long been cloaked in
mystery, but now we may
finally be able to reveal
the yeti's true identity.
Messner's reputation as a
great climber really begins
eight years earlier, in 1978.
He became the first person
to summit mount Everest
without supplemental oxygen.
Messner becomes a
mountaineering rock star, and less than
a decade after his Everest
ascent, becomes the first to try
to climb all 14 mountains in
the world that are taller than
26,000 feet.
But it's on his expedition
hiking across Tibet in 1986
that messner finds himself
in the current predicament of
being lost.
And even worse, as he's
trying to find the trail again,
it's starting to get dark.
As he's forced to trudge
along by instinct, about
30 feet ahead, something
large emerges from the bushes
towering seven feet tall
and covered in dark fur.
As the shape disappears into
the darkness, messner notices
that this mysterious
figure is standing upright.
Up ahead, he finds a shockingly
huge footprint in the mud.
As he documents it, it hits messner.
It's possible that what
he just saw is a yeti.
Shaken, messner has no choice
but to push on, hoping to find
a village at 14,000 feet above
sea level, where villages are
as scarce as the oxygen.
But it's not long before
the mysterious beast
appears again.
Messner wonders, is he being stalked?
But for some unknown reason,
the beast rushes off into the night.
In a panic, messner has fled
deeper into the wilderness.
At this point, he has to
wonder, did he really just see
a yeti, or is that lack of extra oxygen
finally getting to him?
Struggling to find a village,
he finally gets a lucky break.
Messner gives his account
to some of the villagers,
and they know instantly
it's not a hallucination.
It's what the locals call
chemo, an enormous bear,
man, monkey-like creature,
known to throw rocks
and slaughter yaks.
The villagers welcome messner
to stay the night, but give him
an ominous warning
one can never find a chemo.
The chemo finds you.
Not exactly a goodnight lullaby.
Later, when he checks
the photos he took
of the footprint, he realizes the film from
his camera is damaged,
so no visual record exists of
what he encountered.
After his harrowing experience,
messner becomes obsessed with
finding answers.
He spends the next 12
years trying to find out
what stalked him that night.
He pursues the yeti all around
the him a lay as, making 20 trips
in total, searching in mountains,
scouring monasteries and villages,
accumulating samples
and biological evidence.
During this time, he collects hair,
bones, a supposed
hand, and even yeti scat.
But still, he finds nothing
conclusive, and the question
still remains what exactly
was the terrifying beast that
reinhold messner encountered?
In 1986, mountaineering legend
reinhold messner
comes face-to-face with
a terrifying beast that
he believes is a yeti.
As amazing as messner's
encounter is, he's far from
the first person to run
into the mysterious yeti.
The legend, it seems, is as old
as the mountains themselves.
The obsession of finding
and identifying this creature
has overtaken many of
the world's most intelligent
and accomplished adventurers.
During the 1921 British
mount Everest reconnaissance
expedition, explorer Charles
Howard-Bury reports sightings
of a dark creature and enormous
footprints on mount Everest.
His sherpas say it's met oh-kangmi,
or manlike snow creature.
A journalist mistranslates
this as "abominable snowman,"
giving birth to a modern legend.
In 1953, the great explorer sir
Edmund Hillary became obsessed
with the yeti when
he found a footprint on
his groundbreaking expedition
to the summit of mount Everest.
Hillary's interest piqued when
he later came across a proposed
scalp of the creature in a remote village
in the him a lay as.
She's saying the scalp is 240 years old.
He persuaded one of the
elders to let him take the scalp
to the west to have it analyzed.
Unfortunately, in an era before
DNA testing, the response from
experts was mixed.
But the creature's status
as having an unknown origin
could not be ruled out.
When it comes to quests
for the yeti, it's hard to follow
in the footsteps of such
greats as messner and Hillary.
But hey, fortune favors the bold.
In 2016, I embarked on my
own extensive journey across
the him a lay as for
evidence of the elusive yeti.
And what we found
was truly extraordinary.
I discovered hair,
bones, scat.
Mystery poop, check.
All of them turned out to be
goats, human, or some other
non-yeti animal.
Eventually, I hit pay dirt
with an incredible find.
- See this?
- Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
Exploring an extremely
remote area of Bhutan
Long way down.
That has had yeti sightings.
I traveled over land and
river with world-class kayaker
and outdoors man Jerry moffatt.
- Hey, I got a den over here.
- On my way.
We found what looked
like a den for some creature.
Later, something triggered
our motion detectors,
leaving a set of three footprints.
And here, look. That's a print.
That is a print, and
that's a print right there.
Three of them.
Look at that, toe marks.
This has made a significant
indentation in that soil there.
That one is a beauty. Look at that.
- That one is clear as day.
- What do you think that is?
- It's a big animal.
- I don't know.
I mean, this looks like a bipedal animal.
That looks like a human print, almost.
With casting powder and
with the handy use of my belt,
we made an incredibly
detailed cast of one print.
Now we wait.
At a glance, the print seemed
oddly like a very large human.
- Feeling pretty good?
- Yeah, feeling great.
- There we go.
- Awesome.
We wanted to know,
could this be from a yeti?
Awesome work, Jerry. Great job.
To get a more complete
answer, we consulted
Dr. Jeffrey meldrum, one
of the foremost experts on
zoological footprints.
He used a 3D scan to reveal
more detail of our prints than
human eyes can see.
Foremost in my mind is the question of,
did you get a footprint of a yeti?
The combination of characteristics
that sort of speak to
me, all those features
would indicate in my
mind the likelihood of
this being a bear.
But in Bhutan, we should
only expect either an asiatic
black bear or a sloth bear.
And does this fit either of those?
No, it doesn't.
That leaves us with a brown bear.
And all reports are that
it's now extinct in Bhutan.
So either I found a footprint
of a brown bear that is not
extinct in this area, as
scientists have believed,
or it's a footprint of
something else entirely.
The mystery continues.
Is what people call the yeti
an undiscovered primate,
a giant bear, or something else entirely?
Now, a new breakthrough
with DNA evidence may finally
provide an answer.
Thanks to a team of geneticists
at the university at buffalo,
we may have finally
pinpointed the true identity of
this menacing monster.
Since the beginning of the 20th century,
explorers and scientists have
been trying to find proof that
the infamous beast
known as the yeti exists.
Now, a team of geneticists
at the university of buffalo may
have finally identified
this frightening creature.
Evolutionary biologist
Charlotte lindqvist is
an expert on studying ancient
DNA and was a key member
on the team.
So this study represented
the most samples and the most
data that had ever been
analyzed of yeti origin.
We had a total of 24 samples,
which included a tooth.
There was a dried
hand from a monastery,
so we got the skin.
There was also a femur bone,
and then there was hair sample
and also a scat sample
that actually I believe
reinhold messner himself had collected.
The university's study clearly
showed that all of the samples
they analyzed that had been
suggested to be yeti weren't
from an abominable snowman after all.
So we had a tooth that turned
out to actually be from a dog,
but the ones that had been collected in
the western him a lay an mountains,
they were him a lay an brown bear.
The ones that were collected
close to the Tibetan plateau,
they were Tibetan brown bear,
and we also had an example of
a him a lay an black bear.
Unfortunately, there hasn't
been any hard evidence to prove
the existence of the yeti.
However, the good news
is that we've proven that
the brown bear is not extinct in Bhutan.
But still, the encounters of so
many experienced adventurers
can't be completely dismissed.
I suppose there are aspects of
bears that, if you see them up
on their hind legs, they stand large.
Certainly, I can imagine it
can really generate a deep fear
that perhaps
can start these stories.
But if the DNA we get from
the sample show us it's a bear,
I mean, then It's a bear.
There's no way to get around it.
I mean, it just doesn't lie.
This DNA evidence is what we've
been waiting for, yet questions
remain, such as that gnarly
scalp that Hillary acquired
that looked distinctly primate.
So, for those of you planning
to venture into the him a lay as
someday, stay frosty.
While many ice cold cases of
this mysterious monster appear
solved, folklore runs
deep, and there's always
a possibility that the mysterious yeti
could still be out there.
I'm still up high, but I'm no
longer in the him a lay as.
I'm on one of the
tallest rooftops in the city
of Chicago it's November 22nd, 1987.
I'm here because a daring
group of hackers is about to break
into a live television
broadcast, inciting pure chaos
and sparking the biggest
media mystery of all time.
How big is this hack?
Nearly 40 years later,
the FBI still considers
the perpetrators the
most wanted video pirates
in the country.
But new evidence may now
reveal who these hackers are
and the motive behind
their attacks, which changed
TV broadcasting forever.
At 9:14 P.M., wgn channel 9
anchor Dan Rowan is giving
his Sunday sports report about
the Chicago bears' 30 to 10 win
over the Detroit lions when
something interrupts the video
feed on the screen.
What's going on? What's happening?
Who's this guy?
Someone wearing a Max
headroom mask has hacked into
wgn's live newscast.
It's 1987, and Max headroom is one of
the most popular programs on TV.
Set in the future, Max is a
computer-enhanced media icon,
fighting corrupt television
executives who are trying to
control the masses through their tvs.
Wgn technicians race
through the studio, searching for
the rogue engineer who
flipped the switch, allowing
a Max headroom wannabe
to crash their sports report.
But they find no one.
Thousands of angry fans
call wgn, complaining about
the weird Max headroom
messing with their TV screens.
Officials tell viewers
the problem's been fixed.
But what Chicago doesn't
know is Max is just getting started.
Well, if you're wondering
what happened, so am I.
Just like wgn channel 9, rival TV station
wttw channel 11 broadcasts their signal
from one of the tallest
buildings in Chicago.
At 11:15pm, the network
is airing reruns of the 1977
"doctor who" series,
"horror of fang rock,"
when headroom strikes again.
And this time, viewers
hear Max's twisted voice.
Catch the wave.
Max speaks in a voice
that sounds like gibberish,
then goes on to do some things,
well, we can't show you on TV.
Chicago viewers are
outraged, the FBI is called in
to investigate.
They want to know, is this just
a stunt or a dangerous threat
to national security?
Remember, it's the late
'80s, and the cold war
continues to rage on.
The U.S. and Soviet union
are locked in a deadly game
of disinformation.
Intelligence agencies fear
the Soviets are trying to hack
into U.S. broadcasts.
So they launch a manhunt
to figure out who did it,
why did they do it, and how?
Even though this crime
has thousands of witnesses,
the FBI can't find any suspects.
So investigators circle back
to the most important piece of
evidence they have, the video itself.
And when agents focus on
what Max says, they unlock critical
clues about who's behind the hack.
When Jack the ripper stalked
the streets of victorian London,
investigators were left
chasing shadows and hunches.
At that time, solving crimes
was more about gut instinct
than hard evidence.
But just a few years later,
in 1892, an Argentine police
officer would revolutionize
detective work and help give
birth to forensic science.
Juan vucetich was able to lock
up the perpetrator of a double
murder thanks to a single
bloody fingerprint left behind.
This groundbreaking moment
paved the way for modern
fingerprinting techniques
we rely on today.
From crime scenes to
unlocking our phones,
the swirls and whirls on
our fingers have become
the gold standard of identification.
So while Jack the ripper
may have slipped through
the cracks, he wouldn't stand
a chance in today's world,
thanks to the tiny
unique patterns we carry
on our fingertips.
Months after the most notorious
television hack in U.S. history
takes over the Chicago
airwaves in 1987, the FBI still
doesn't know who's behind
the Max headroom mask.
But when agents analyze
the audio of the unauthorized
broadcast, they make a new discovery.
Investigative journalist,
Michael whelan, has spent years
analyzing the FBI's
investigation into the case.
You know, the FBI, when
they're doing their investigation,
they're going through
every bit of footage with
a fine-tooth comb.
And during the hack,
this figure says, "I think I'm
better than Chuck swirsky."
Chuck swirsky is a
current employee of wgn.
He was a broadcaster
for the Chicago Bulls.
You know, he was a well-known figure.
And in the late 1980s, he
was a Chicago area legend.
So it seems like this Max
headroom figure is almost
breaking the fourth wall.
He's saying, "I, a fictional broadcaster,
am better than this real life broadcaster."
Analyzing other comments
from Max, they decipher more of
his cryptic phrases.
So, in the footage, the
character makes reference
to the greatest world's newspaper nerds.
The FBI looks into that,
and they realize that there's
another connection to
wgn, because in the 1940s,
the Chicago tribune
launched their own TV station,
and, you know, calling
themselves the world's
greatest newspaper, they called it wgn.
So the FBI, during their investigation,
they begin looking for anyone
who might have had a motive to
lash out against wgn in particular.
What they find is that throughout 1987,
wgn had been laying off employees.
Clearly, some of them might
have had an axe to grind.
But this doesn't add up.
Max hacked into two channels
that night, wgn and wttw.
Why would Max talk all that
trash about wgn channel 9 while
broadcasting on their rival
network, wttw channel 11?
They tried to hack into it. It
lasted about 10, 15 seconds.
Basically, the engineers
figure out what's going on,
switch to a different signal, cut them off.
When that failed, these hackers
figure, "we spent all that time"
"putting together this
irreverent video targeting wgn,
"let's just do it again." So two hours later,
they pivoted and went after wttw.
But whoever this was,
they had a bone to pick
with wgn.
Realizing Max's beef is with
wgn, FBI agents interviewed
dozens of current and former
employees of the network,
but the bureau can't find
any suspects from wgn.
By 1988, the case of the
most audacious hack in U.S.
Television history hits a wall
of static, and it remains that
way for decades.
But now, after combining
the FBI's evidence with
research from dozens of amateur
sleuths obsessed with the case,
Michael believes he
knows just what happened
that fateful night.
Today, when we think about
hacking, we think of someone in
a dark room trying to
like steal your money,
hack into your bank account.
Back in the 1980s,
the Internet was still in
its relative infancy.
So hacking like this would
have required physical hacking,
not in the sense of like
splicing into a mainframe
and feeding something into
a wire or something like that.
This would have required
someone to get in between
the broadcast signal and the transmitter.
That requires some technical expertise.
Even more alarming, back
in 1987, television signals are
broadcast on radio
frequencies closely guarded
by the U.S. government.
To pull this off, these hackers
had to have inside knowledge of
how the broadcast system worked.
When you're thinking of hacking,
you're looking for exploits.
You're looking for something to
poke a hole in and kind of ram through.
This would have been a TV
station broadcasting a signal
up to a giant transmitter
on top of a really tall building.
And this person basically
got in between them.
They found probably a rooftop.
They had a transmitter of
their own and basically just
overpowered the feed.
This could have been done
with secondhand equipment,
you know, stuff they
found on the black market.
So if you think about it, it's signal,
transmitter, hacker, right here, right
in the middle.
They got in the middle
of it and took it over.
That was the ballgame.
Okay, I get it.
The hacker has to be sending
up a signal that's more powerful
than the intended broadcasting signal.
Then the hackers' content
will be what's transmitted.
So, with this expertise
and gear in hand, this is
probably how the actual hack went down.
Using a portable
camcorder, the team shoots
their Max headroom
video at their diy studio.
Then, the hackers find a rooftop
location, giving them a line of
sight to the skyscraper's
massive antennas.
Using a portable microwave
transmitter with enough energy
to overpower the TV station's
signal, the pirates beam
their video to the antennas,
which broadcasts Max across
the entire city of Chicago.
So we have finally solved
the riddle that eluded
investigators for almost 40 years.
We know how Max headroom
invaded the Chicago airwaves,
but of course, a much
bigger riddle remains.
Who was behind the mask,
and why did they do it?
I think they were trying to make a point.
It was a point that modern
society was becoming beholden
to kind of corporate, ad-driven interests.
In the 1980s, laws were
changed to make intrusions like this
a felony, due to
concerns about terrorism.
And since 2009, American TV
stations switched from analog
to digital signals, making it
virtually impossible to commit
a hack of this type again.
So, not all monsters get to be unmasked.
It seems the greatest
hackers in TV history remain
a million-dollar mystery, at least for now.
But before we disappear off
air ourselves, I do have one last
idea to try to solve this case.
If you masterminds
want to reveal yourselves,
well, you know where to find my show.
Just hack me.
I'm Josh gates.
Until next time, travel adventurously.