IT HAPPENED HERE
4 x 50’
It Happened Here visits famous places where infamous events occurred. The series hears from eyewitnesses and then recreates the final moments leading up to tragic events that made world headlines. The stars of
these stories were icons, their deaths made them legends. These sites now attract visitors seeking the truth about modern celebrity saints.
Film One
It Happened Here recreates infamous stories that occurred in famous places. South Beach, the Art Deco strip in Miami, was home to designer Gianni Versace. On the steps of his mansion in
1997, he was gunned down by a gay serial killer. Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam attracts a million visitors a year. James Dean crashed his new Porsche Spyder on a lonely stretch of
highway in Northern California. Old London Towne was the scene of the gruesome murders committed by Jack the Ripper. The Alma tunnel in Paris witnessed the high speed crash that ended Princess Diana’s tragically short life.
Film Two
John Lennon was gunned down outside Manhattan’s Dakota building by Mark Chapman in 1980. A corner of Central Park, renamed ‘Strawberry Fields’, has since become a place of
pilgrimage. In 1962, three men escaped from Alcatraz, never to be seen again. The prison is now a major tourist attraction. The infamous Guillotine that decapitated King Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette during the French Revolution stood in Paris’s Place de la Concorde. In 1934, just 20 weeks after a sensational escape, John Dillinger was gunned down outside the Biograph theatre in
Chicago. Loch Ness is home to the most famous Monster of them all.
Film Three
On his way to Martha’s Vineyard in 1999, John Kennedy Jnr crashed his light aircraft into the sea at night, killing himself, his wife and sister-in-law. Rock icon Jim Morrison was found dead
in the bath of his Paris apartment. William Wallace, better known as Braveheart, won his greatest victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in the Scottish Highlands. ‘Big Pauly’ Castellano,
the Gambino crime boss, was cut down by a hail of bullets fired by John Gotti’s hitmen outside Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan. Winston Churchill planned the D-Day invasion from a top
secret suite of offices deep under 10 Downing Street.
Film Four
President John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas was one of the defining moments of the twentieth century. Dealey Plaza, the Book Depository and the grassy knoll can all be visited
today. Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in the Medieval market square of Rouen in northern France. The mysterious night-time drowning of Natalie Wood just off Catalina Island, California,
left questions still unanswered today. Within sight of Mount St Helens, skyjacker D.B.Cooper jumped from a Boeing 727, with a parachute and $200,000. No trace of him has ever been
found. In 1982, Grace Kelly drove her car off the rocky coast road above the Mediterranean principality on Monaco.
Producer: Principal Films/Take Three Partnerships for the Travel Channel US and UK Horizons
Availability: Worldwide, all media, ex US & Uk