A Prince, a King, and a Brutal Disappearance | Medieval Murder Mysteries | Season 1 Episode 3

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[00:00:02]While most historical murder mysteries were solved not long after the crime was committed, sometimes [music] it's left up to modern science and historians to determine how and why a person died.

[00:00:19]In this series, we look at some of the great unsolved deaths of the past, bringing to life the many theories surrounding them, and piecing together the evidence.

[00:00:31]Hundreds of years may have passed since these events took place. But with the help of forensics, [music] criminologists, and specialist experts, we'll attempt to solve these medieval murder mysteries. According to the official line, he died in a drunken brawl.

[00:00:47]>> A perfectly acceptable story is that they were smothered.

[00:00:51]>> And so died King Edward II murder.

[00:00:57]And legend has it that Prince Arthur died of the shock of castration.

[00:01:03]>> It's a possibility, but on the other hand, it's a most unreliable way of killing somebody.

[00:01:14]April 1203. In the Normandy city of Ruan, Arthur, Duke of Britany, once first in line to the throne of England, is held captive on the orders of his uncle, King John.

[00:01:28]>> King John was a bad man. There's no doubt about it. Um, he [music] had people murdered. He was exccommunicated by the Pope.

[00:01:40]As far as John was concerned, as long as Arthur was alive, he was a threat to his reign.

[00:01:46]>> To this day, his fate remains a mystery.

[00:01:51]Arthur's body was never found. We don't know what happened [music] to Arthur's body. There's some suggestion that it was found by a fisherman floating [music] in the river, recognized, taken away, and buried in secret. But actually, we don't know what happened to Arthur's uh body, and nobody was telling.

[00:02:11]>> Some believe he was assassinated by William De Brioza, the king's notorious right-hand man.

[00:02:21]>> He made his mark by being um less than squeamish when it came to carrying out the will of these kings. One didn't rise to the top in the way that William de Broza did without standing on a lot of people.

[00:02:39]>> While others think he was killed in a horrific act of cruelty.

[00:02:46][music] >> He was kept in File's castle uh under the guardianship custodianship of Hubert Dur. And because of his claim on the throne, King John ordered that Hubert Debur have um Arthur blinded and castrated.

[00:03:04]>> And there are those who say that he was killed by the king himself.

[00:03:10]>> There are later tales told by people who were actually involved in the disappearance of uh of Arthur of Britany. um tales which suggest that John in a fit of madness, a fit of anger, uh actually decided to do away with Arthur in a drunken rage.

[00:03:28]>> Just what did happen to Arthur, Duke of Britany?

[00:03:39]Towards the end of the 12th century, England was under the rule of Richard I.

[00:03:45]Known as the absent king, he spent only a small amount of time in England, visiting the country only twice in his adult life. Richard's famous crusades in the Holy Land and wars in Europe meant that military affairs occupied most of his reign. But in March 1199, while besieging Shalis Castle in France, King Richard was fatally wounded by an arrow fired from a crossbow.

[00:04:14]On his deathbed and with no legitimate son of his own, he pronounced his younger brother John as heir to the throne of England.

[00:04:28]Other than blood ties, John had little in common with his brother Richard. He was a deeply flawed character who was prone to cruelty and violence.

[00:04:38]King John was a bad man. There's no doubt about it. Um, he had people murdered. He was exccommunicated by the Pope. He had 22 Welsh boys hanged from the ramparts of Nottingham Castle.

[00:04:57]But even though Richard had declared John as his successor, his brother was not the only person with a claim to the throne of England.

[00:05:08]If history had gone differently, then there's no doubt that Arthur would have been should have been king of England.

[00:05:18]>> Arthur, Duke of Britany, was the heir to the English throne. He was second in line to the throne. His grandfather was Henry II. His uncle was Richard Lionheart and his other uncle was King John. And therein lay all the problem.

[00:05:36]Arthur's claim to the throne was arguably stronger than John's. By rights, the crown should have gone to John's older brother, Jeffrey, who was Arthur's father. But Jeffrey had died before Arthur was born, meaning the crown should have passed to his son.

[00:05:53]Jeffrey was the third son of Henry II and Elellanena Accutane. Uh he had died in 1186 in a tournament accident uh in Paris. Jeffrey's wife uh was pregnant with uh Arthur and Arthur was born uh the following spring. So the spring of 1187, Richard died 13 years after his younger brother Jeffrey. But Arthur was only 12 years old at the time of Richard's death, and the king probably thought the boy [music] was simply too young to rule. The question was, who had the rightful claim to the Kingdom of England? Was it Arthur as Jeffrey's son, or was it John as Jeffrey's younger brother? Uh, and opinion was divided.

[00:06:40]>> Arthur may have had a stronger claim, but he was still a child, spoke only French, and had never been to England.

[00:06:47]By contrast, John was a grown man who could speak the language and was seen as a better fit by the English baronss.

[00:06:55]>> England chose John, but France didn't.

[00:06:59]Of course, we owned a lot of Northern France in those days, and King Phillip of France uh backed Arthur as king of England.

[00:07:09]>> King Phillip IV of France refused to accept John as king of England. Instead, he gave his support to Arthur. Philillip was keen for the French crown to regain the lands of Normandy and other areas that were under Jon's control. So, with King Phillip's help, Arthur rose up against John in Normandy in 1202. Arthur raised a large army and laid siege to Mirbo Castle where John's mother, an 80-year-old woman, was actually uh in situ.

[00:07:50]She sent a message to John who was in France at the time and he covered 80 miles from Lamar to Mirabbo in 48 hours.

[00:08:00]Took Arthur's army by surprise and Arthur was captured.

[00:08:08]So on the 1st of August 1202, Arthur uh was captured by uh John outside the castle of Mirabu uh and that brought him very much under um John's control.

[00:08:24]He was kept in File's castle uh under the custodianship of um Hubert Dur and because of his claim on the throne, King John ordered that Hubert Debur have Arthur blinded and castrated um so he could be of no use and could beget no children. Of course, legend has it that uh Hubert de Bird did not carry out the orders, much to King John's disgust, and John then had Arthur moved to Ruan Castle under the custodianship of William de Brrowse and he languished there.

[00:09:08]As legend has it, >> there is absolutely no question that John is responsible for Arthur's disappearance, but we don't really know how that disappearance happened.

[00:09:29]It seems unlikely that he just vanished into thin air. But what exactly did happen to Arthur has been the subject of speculation and rumor [music] for hundreds of years. Even by medieval standards, one theory surrounding his disappearance stands alone for its brutality. It's been suggested that on the orders of his uncle, King John, Arthur was cruy blinded and castrated.

[00:10:19]>> [bell] >> Author and historian Richard Felix recounts the gruesome tale that supposedly took place at File's Castle in Normandy.

[00:10:34]The new King John found his nephew Arthur, Duke of Britany, a real threat to his throne. So he had him captured and thrown into Filet's castle in Normandy.

[00:10:53][screaming] Arthur had a much better claim to the throne of England than his uncle, King John.

[00:11:04]And so John realized that while he was still alive [screaming] and while he could produce children that he was a hell of a threat to John's crown. And so John ordered his jailer, Hubert the Burr, not to kill him, not just to leave him in prison, not just to blind him, [screaming] but to have him castrated.

[00:11:49]This was no form of surgical operation in those days. It was nothing but a barbaric form of mutilation which resulted usually in the person dying of shock or dying days later probably of loss of blood.

[00:12:08]And legend has it that Prince Arthur died of the shock of castration.

[00:12:25]Could Arthur have been blinded, castrated, and left to die on the orders of King John? It's a shocking story if true. [music] But what would a modern pathologist, [music] barrista, and forensic psychologist make of this claim? [music] Professor Michael Green is a former home office pathologist with a career spanning over 40 years. He specializes in determining the cause of death at crime scenes.

[00:13:00]An awful lot of people were castrated and until quite recently have been castrated. There are societies uh who value unuk [music] castration shouldn't be all that much bleeding. Um but of course always the risk of infection.

[00:13:23]The eye they used to literally poke the eyes out. They used to use a dagger. If you are digging a knife into the orbit, you are possibly going to go in too far through a thin bit of skull and damage the blood vessels on the base of the brain.

[00:13:48]Also, before they invented penicellin, [music] this part of your face was the so-called triangle of danger. [music] any infection that got into your eyelids or [music] a pimple on your nose, if it became infected uh with [music] any of the common germs like the stafy caucus, the MRSA type [music] thing which gives you the yellow puss in a pimple. Once this got into the so-called sppheninoid sinus at the back of the eye and supplying the front part of the brain, you could get menitis [music] and die within two or three days. So the immediate effects of castration and of blinding, an awful [music] lot of people survived them. But in those days with a dirty knife, uh infection following blinding I [music] would think was well on the cards. Infection following castration, even if you struck off the genitals completely, [music] uh less likely but a possibility.

[00:14:54]>> [music] >> It must be remembered that a living Arthur was a permanent threat to John's reign. And as far as John was concerned, basically Arthur had to go. And because Jon was John and probably almost literally a psychopath, preferably go in the most hideous, barbaric way possible.

[00:15:24]Dr. Kieran O'Keefe specializes in forensic and criminal psychology. He tries to understand and explain the reasons behind criminal behavior such as murder by putting himself in the mind of the suspect. If King John ordered the murder or committed the murder of his nephew and in and in that it involved blinding him and castrating him, he would be sending a [music] message out to people saying, "Look, you know, the eyes of my nephew, I'm going to remove those. I'm going to damage those in such a way that should he survive, there'll be no way that he can use these anymore."

[00:16:03]A slow, painful death that it's not an instant uh death. Then you add to that the castration and he's basically saying, "Look, again, even if he survives this, I'm showing you that I don't want his bloodline kept in any way."

[00:16:22]Andrew Rose is a former barrista [music] and judge who's worked on numerous criminal trials.

[00:16:29]As both a defending advocate and prosecutor, Andrew specializes in piecing together historic evidence. Why somebody should choose to kill somebody they didn't like in a particularly unpleasant way um can be for a variety of reasons. Uh you would think that it' be enough to get rid of somebody who didn't want but no they seem sometimes to want to take a perverse pleasure in being as cruel as possible blinding castrating torturing in some way. Uh it's an aspect of very disagreeable aspect of the human condition.

[00:17:07]There are many cases where people have used extreme violence uh on [music] victims for a variety of reasons. Some connected with what might be regarded as insanity, some connected with just sheer blood lust, something of that sort. Something wishing to make a mark, wishing to make somebody suffer. These kind of things certainly isn't unknown.

[00:17:37]King John certainly had motive to want Arthur out of the picture. And it seems possible that if Arthur was blinded and castrated, he could have died from his injuries. But with no corpse ever found and no eyewitness accounts, should we really accept this version of events?

[00:17:55]There were many occasions when King John had killed the people that stood in his way. And on those occasions, there was one man who John could rely on to carry out his bidding. That man was William De Brioza.

[00:18:33]Steven Church is a biographer of King John and a professor in medieval history. He believes that William [music] Debrioza, John's right-hand man, was almost certainly involved in Arthur's murder.

[00:18:50]There's no doubt at all that William Deoza was one of the hard men of the regime.

[00:18:55]He was an adearerant of Richard the Lionheart. Um, very much trusted by Richard the Lionheart. He was a friend of John's whilst Richard was still alive. [music] We're told that he had a role to play in making sure that John succeeded to England and to Normandy.

[00:19:13]William Deioza was greatly favored and trusted by King John. He'd fought many battles on the king's behalf, and his ruthlessness [music] and appetite for violence gained him a fearsome reputation. William Deoza was very handsomely rewarded by uh John. Uh William Deoza was in John's company throughout 1201, 1202, 1203. Wherever we see John, we see William Deosoza. So he's a really good [music] um source for uh what is likely to have happened to Arthur.

[00:19:49]>> It is said that King John imprisoned Arthur at Ruan Castle in Normandy, an area that at the time was controlled by the English crown. He kept him under the watchful eye of Drosa. But Arthur was never heard from again.

[00:20:06]We've got the senior people in John's administration who are actually there at Ruon at the point that the decision is made to get rid of Arthur.

[00:20:18]One didn't rise to the top in the way that William de Broza did without standing on a lot of people. And William de Broza stood on an awful lot of people. He made a lot of enemies.

[00:20:36]William De Brioza was no stranger to killing royalty. He was given the name the ogre of Abigavveni for his part in the murder of three Welsh princes in 1175.

[00:20:50]This has led many to believe that Arthur suffered the same fate.

[00:21:01]He made his mark by being um less than squeamish when it came to carrying out the will of these on kings.

[00:21:33]>> [music] >> Driosa had been known to use hanging and strangulation as means of dispatching his prisoners. Could he have used this method to kill Arthur?

[00:21:51]Death by strangulation is one of the biggest problems I think that a forensic pathologist has to face.

[00:21:59]Classically you if it's manual strangulation with the hands you'll get fingertip bruises. You'll almost certainly get fingernail marks even if the strangler has got short well-trimmed fingernails. And [music] you will get the little hemorrhages around the eyes so-called petiki uh a generally congested face and so on. That's if it takes about [music] 2 to three hours to die. But in a significant minority of compressions of the neck, there is a uh some very important nerves run down inside the neck called the vagus nerves.

[00:22:34]And if you tickle those up, the heart can stop at any minute. And this is called vagal inhibition. And there have been numerous cases described over the years where there's been a a struggle outside a pub and the bloke's neck has been grabbed to restrain him more or less and to the surprise of the chap grabbing the neck. The uh the grabby goes limp and buckles at the knees and is very dead. So you can get very rapid death from strangulation [music] with no external signs at all.

[00:23:10]When you come to do a post-mortem examination in these [music] cases of vagal inhibition, you find almost certainly little hemorrhages on the sheath covering the vagus nerve, which is enough to give you a clue as to what's happened. So there are a range of means of dying after you've had your [music] neck compressed.

[00:23:34]Some of them will be obvious externally.

[00:23:37]Some of them will be obvious only after a very careful detailed dissection of the neck by a very skilled dissector of necks.

[00:23:51][music] Would William Deiosa fit the profile of a man capable of murder?

[00:24:00]King John's right-hand man who killed, you know, was ordered to kill and and killed many many uh people as I understand it without question and without thought. That sort of person, they could be a psychopath, but ultimately he's not really achieving anything. He's not getting into a position of power necessarily. I would describe him as a hedonistic killer. And by that I mean we we we look at different types of killers and he's a hedonistically driven killer. So he's cold calculating. He b potentially sees it as a job but as a job that he loves.

[00:24:38]So he's killing purely for the pleasure of killing.

[00:24:45]With such a dark and violent past, it seems reasonable to assume that Driosa murdered Arthur at Ruan Castle.

[00:24:55]But can we really blame him based purely on his previous actions?

[00:25:02]If somebody's suspected of crime, of course, uh the police authorities will want to look at their background. And if they've got form for assaults, battery, all sorts of things of that sort, that will be something which would add to a feeling that they may be guilty of the particular offense.

[00:25:22]But as a general principle, merely because you've committed offenses [music] of a broadly similar type before, it doesn't mean that you are ipso facto, as they say, for that very fact, guilty of the crime you're charged with. Uh, and the whole idea behind our trial system is that jury shouldn't be prejudic biased by something of that sort.

[00:25:45]Did William Derioza kill the young juke?

[00:25:49]He certainly seemed to have no problem committing acts of violence, but with no solid proof of Deoza's involvement in Arthur's disappearance, we're unable to come to a conclusive decision.

[00:26:05]But there is one more theory about what happened to Arthur, as there's evidence to suggest that he may have been killed by King John himself.

[00:26:34]The annals of Margam were written accounts kept by the monks of Margam Abbey in Wales during the 13th century.

[00:26:41]In the annals, the monks recorded the important events of the time. In one entry, they wrote about [music] the disappearance of Arthur and they claim that Arthur was murdered by King John.

[00:26:57]John's mother, Elellanena of Aquitine, the 80-year-old, told John that it was time that he actually settled the score with with Arthur. and they met in Ruan.

[00:27:13]John being John being his usual nasty self was was drunk and the meeting did not go well with that to you.

[00:27:22]>> And the story is that King John murdered Arthur with his own hands and threw his body into the river.

[00:27:30]>> You traitor think you can raise [music] an army against me, do you? I don't think so, boy. Never again.

[00:27:45]>> The body was later found and is buried apparently somewhere in France. And there is evidence uh to prove that that happened because [music] William de Brrowser's wife Moraud a few years later actually accused [music] King John of the murder of Arthur.

[00:28:07]And the only way she would have known that was because she was obviously at Ruan Castle with her [music] husband at the time.

[00:28:16]After Mor Driosa made public accusations against the king, she along with her son were quickly arrested and imprisoned in the dungeons of Corv Castle in Dorset.

[00:28:29]The murder of Matilda De Broza is a very interesting case because she is clearly starved to death. Uh starved to death in one of Jon's prisons. Starved to death as a result of of [music] John's uh order. Uh, and it obviously cause a great deal of shock throughout England.

[00:28:48]Not only do chronicers notice it, but the king himself is forced to write an open [music] letter in which he explains why he's moved against the Breoza clan.

[00:28:59][music] People are clearly shocked by this um by the way that Matilda Deosoa is uh treated.

[00:29:08]and they found the body of Maud and her son.

[00:29:14]She was actually lying part on top of her son and she'd eaten part of his face. He obviously died first and she tried to stay alive by by eating her own son. And this was all [music] due to the wicked King John.

[00:29:37]A cruel and terrible end for a mother and her child. But while Jon was clearly comfortable with ordering the deaths of men, women, and children, was he really capable of committing a murder himself, especially when the victim was his own nephew.

[00:29:57]Arthur Duke of Britany is allegedly beaten to death by Hing [music] Jong.

[00:30:01]Arthur is a 16-year-old teenager. We assume that he's a reasonably healthy teenager. We don't think he had consumption or anything like that. King John is middle-aged.

[00:30:14]It's fairly hard to beat somebody to death. You know, if you've got a group of people in a brawl, that's another thing. But you've [music] got to kick them hard enough to rupture a blood vessel inside the skull or whatever. or you've got to kick them in the tummy and rupture their spleen or their liver or even the gut at the bottom of the stomach, the diodenum and these intraabdominal injuries. It takes time to die. On the whole, I would suggest that [music] this is a story to uh damage the bar the good name of King John. Not that he ever had one, but um a beating of a 16year-old. He's going to die in hospital two days later rather than die on the spot.

[00:31:01]>> But was John so threatened by Arthur's claim to the English crown that he would have taken matters into his own hands?

[00:31:09]>> People in positions of power of course have temptations to do all sorts of things because of the effect of their power. And there's no question, I would think, that people who have great power can often misuse it and seek to cow and to terrify subordinates. And of course, in extreme cases sometimes kill people that they don't want to have around.

[00:31:30]It's not impossible that John could have physically attacked his his nephew. It very much depends, of course, on [music] what we know about his psychological background and how he behaved in respect of other matters. But these are violent times. It's perfectly possible. Uh although a clever king would presumably ensure that somebody else did the data work for him rather than um getting hands involved in the in the crime himself.

[00:31:59][screaming] >> But does John fit the profile of someone capable of committing murder?

[00:32:13]He has been exposed to violence. Also, there is this paranoia going on. And I'm reminded of a particular model that we have called the trauma control model.

[00:32:22]And this particular model says to understand the point at which somebody can actually kill, they need to have three things. So there needs to be a genetic predisposition. So they need to have inherited it some way or some issue with the brain. There needs to be a psychological aspect to it, a psychological predisposition in a way.

[00:32:41]And there needs to be a kind of a an environmental one. Now with King John, we might be dealing with a genetic predisposition. Certainly, he came from a line within his family where there were others who were being violent. The psychological element would be the paranoia. Um, also he may have been exposed to violence as a as a youngster.

[00:33:05]And certainly if he'd had any training at all as a youngster in terms of killing techniques and that sort of thing that would have fueled fueled the psychological element.

[00:33:17]The last one in terms of environment I would guess the primary thing when we think about environment is family dysfunction. So what was going on at a family level at a very very early age?

[00:33:29][music] And I wouldn't be surprised with King John if we saw some very early separation.

[00:33:37]John's childhood was not a happy one. He was the youngest son of King Henry II, who gave John the nickname Lackland because he joked there was no land left to give him.

[00:33:50]He grew up in the shadows of his older brothers. The evidence suggests that he was often bullied and beaten. His father never thought he possessed the qualities of a leader and as a young boy sent him away to train for a life in the church.

[00:34:06]Because of the way royalty dealt with their children at the time, there would have been a separation and all of these things would have fed into him becoming a killer or becoming uh violent.

[00:34:21]Then you had alcohol.

[00:34:23]Then it's no surprise that in a fit of rage he committed murder. Absolutely no surprise at all.

[00:34:35]Could John himself have killed Arthur?

[00:34:38]He certainly seemed to possess the character traits of a man capable of murder. But is this story a true account or just a rumor circulated by his enemies?

[00:35:00]>> [music] >> All experts agree that Arthur did not simply vanish into thin air and was almost certainly a victim of foul play.

[00:35:15]But how he died and under what circumstances has been debated for hundreds of years. Did he die from his injuries after being blinded and castrated as some people think?

[00:35:31]Could he have been killed by John's right-hand man, William De Briiosa, as punishment for trying to claim the English crown?

[00:35:42]>> Mom, you traitor. Or did the king in a drunken rage kill his nephew in cold blood and throw the body into the river sain?

[00:35:55]When all the evidence is weighed up, is there any conclusive proof of what happened to Arthur, Duke of Britany?

[00:36:05]These were brutal times, and it seems that John was more than willing to turn to murder as a means of solving his problems.

[00:36:14]King John had been under constant threat and there had been rumors of his assassination and he could have been building up a paranoia um and the paranoia could have fueled revenge fantasies and certainly if King John was feeling as though people around him wanted to kill him he may have felt humiliated by that idea. Now, King John would have been exposed to violence on a regular basis and was involved in many, many battles and wars. So, it wouldn't have been a surprise that he would say, "Well, the only way I can see to resolve this is to show people that I cannot be killed is to is to show people that I can be equally violent, you know, and they need to be scared of me." And so it it it makes sense to me that he would have reacted that way and been extremely violent just on the basis [music] of hearing these rumors about his assassination.

[00:37:08]>> You can get away with that, do you?

[00:37:14]>> William Driosa was a man with a dark past and a hunger for violence. There seems to be little doubt that he was involved in Arthur's disappearance.

[00:37:24]But did he carry out the killing himself?

[00:37:29]There is no doubt that [music] William de Broza played his part in Arthur's death. Whether he actually wielded the knife himself or threw Arthur [music] into the Sen himself, I doubt these sorts of things tend to be done by lesser individuals. But he was certainly one of the group [music] of men who made the decision, made the political decision to get rid of Arthur of Britany.

[00:37:54]If King John was involved in Arthur's disappearance, could he have been brought to justice?

[00:38:01]>> At the time of King John, of course, I mean, the king was there by a divine right. Wasn't until poor old Charles the first his head chopped off that some people thought they could actually try a king and so he wouldn't be liable for trial. On the other hand, of course, he would have to accept that there might be consequences with the church, which was a very powerful force in those days.

[00:38:22]But ultimately, who was responsible for Arthur's disappearance?

[00:38:29]>> The person who's responsible is John.

[00:38:32]It's very clear. And that's certainly the view that the French court took once they knew for certain that Arthur was dead. And they must have known in 1210 that Arthur was dead. Uh because William de Broza was in exile at the French king's court. Once they had that piece of information, then it was only a matter of time before they could use that against John. And the thing about the murder of Arthur of Britany is it really does dog John throughout the remainder of his reign. In 1216 when Philip's son Louie has invaded England, uh, one of his claims is that um, John has been condemned at the French court for the murder of Arthur of Britany. Now whether John actually performed the act or not himself is irrelevant. He was the person who ordered it. He was the person at the top of the regime and like any modern war criminal, he has to take responsibility for any act that's done uh under his name. So there's no doubt at all that John is the guilty person.

[00:39:44]Most experts agree that Arthur, Duke of Britany, was murdered. These were turbulent and dangerous times. Kingdoms could rise or fall depending on their ruler. Arthur was a young boy who became involved in a deadly game, perhaps unaware of the consequences of losing.

[00:40:10]It's a gruesome tale, but experts tend to agree that while Arthur could have died from being blinded and castrated, it seems to be an unnecessarily complicated form of punishment, especially when there were simpler ways of making people disappear. It seems as though this rumor was put about sometime after his disappearance. I've never really seen a convincing death from shock apart from electric shock. Um, I could imagine him collapsing uh with the pain and the general unpleasantness, but he would almost certainly have revived.

[00:40:49]>> There's no doubting that William Driosa would have been more than capable of committing Arthur's murder. He had been involved in many killings in the past, but there's no real evidence to support the theory that Driosa committed the act himself. The consensus is that he probably did at least know what happened to Arthur and may have somehow been involved in organizing his disappearance.

[00:41:15]>> Did William Deoza actually do the act?

[00:41:19]We can't say.

[00:41:24]King John was certainly reported to have had a violent temper, and it's not inconceivable that he may have killed Arthur in a drunken rage. But Jon was still a king, and kings knew better than to involve themselves in the murder of family members. It's more probable that Jon would have had people to carry out his dirty work for him.

[00:41:46]So, it seems we may never know the real identity of Arthur's killer or the exact method that was used to kill him. But experts agree that one thing is for certain and that there is one person who remains solely responsible for Arthur's disappearance.

[00:42:03]That person is King John.

[00:42:08]But what became of those supposedly involved in Arthur's death? Soon afterwards, William Driosa fell from the king's favor. No one knows the exact reason, but John had cited that he was owed money by Drioza and ordered that he be hunted down and his estate seized.

[00:42:26]Drioza fled to France, where he died in exile a year later. This was a turning point of Jon's reign. After seeing his cruel treatment of not only his nephew but his closest adviser, the English baronss realized Jon's capacity for tyranny and plagued him with uprisings for the next decade. King John would see no peace for the remainder of his life and he died in 1216.

[00:42:52]To this day, Arthur's resting place is unknown. Possibly an unmarked shallow grave in Normandy or maybe somewhere at the bottom of the river sane. A tragic end for the boy who was nearly the king of England.

[00:43:07]>> [music]