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NARRATOR: There is a hidden side of America,
secret, mysterious, forbidden, where nothing is what it seems.
Could the death of screen legend John Wayne
actually have been caused by this?
We visit a top-secret atomic test range...
The equivalent of 15 Hiroshima bombs
were detonated at the Nevada Test Site.
...perform a breakthrough soil analysis
at a nearby location where "The Duke" filmed a movie...
We know there's elevated radioactivity out there.
NARRATOR: ...and show its troubling ties to this town
with skyrocketing cancer rates.
Our whole family was decimated.
NARRATOR: Why is an ex-CIA agent
building the nation's largest private home
like a fortress?
Will the Illuminati elite
use it as a command center to rule America?
We're talking about building massive underground bunkers,
tunneling systems in the event of a nuclear war.
Are they stockpiling survival supplies
in this massive underground bunker?
We have about 300 tractor-trailer loads
coming in and out every day.
What are you guys doing?
Now a rare uncensored look
inside this gigantic hub of controversy.
Mind if I go look around on my own?
Were America's first settlers killers and cannibals?
Is this where you found the human remains in this site?
This newly-unearthed skull reveals the troubling answer.
What struck us immediately
were these marks on the forehead.
We've gained rare access
to the actual lab that put a face on these remains.
ROUSE: That's as close as we can come
to bringing someone back to life.
Will American history be rewritten
based on what she has to tell us?
It's time to look behind the secrets,
mysteries, and conspiracies.
This is "America Declassified."
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Las Vegas, Nevada --
40 million people come here each year.
Little do they know that just 100 miles northwest
is the most nuked place on Earth.
It's known as the Nevada Test Site.
Here, the U.S. government detonated
almost 1,000 nuclear bombs between 1951 and 1992.
In 1953 alone,
the military exploded 11 atomic bombs above ground...
...exposing hundreds of unprotected soldiers
to radiation.
In 1954,
Hollywood legend John Wayne began filming a new movie
just 100 miles from the Nevada Test Site.
It was called "The Conqueror."
WANAMAKER: "The Conqueror" is notable in Hollywood history
for the radiation poisoning of the actors --
the lead actors, particularly.
NARRATOR: Out of Wayne's 220 cast and crew members,
91 eventually contracted some form of cancer.
That's a suspiciously high cancer rate,
more than three times normal.
For decades, some have believed the film crew's cancer epidemic
can be blamed on fallout from nearby atomic-weapons testing.
Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operative.
He wants to find out
if the ultimate American action hero
was killed by friendly fire
from atomic explosions at the Nevada Test Site.
We're driving through the middle of the Nevada desert
heading towards the site
of two seemingly unrelated events
during the course of the early 1950s --
repeated nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site,
and, in 1954,
the site of probably the most unusual film
ever done by the legendary actor John Wayne --
"The Conqueror."
NARRATOR: In the film,
John Wayne plays Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan.
Your treacherous head is not safe on your shoulders!
NARRATOR: The Nevada Test Site occupies over 1,300 square miles.
Its surface is pockmarked with massive craters
from a half-century of nuclear testing
both above and below ground.
Atomic tests were suspended in 1992.
The Department of Energy now uses the site
for nuclear waste disposal...
alternate energy testing...
and other related activities.
But, it's still strictly off-limits to the public.
BAKER: We can get to this point, and no further.
This is it.
See, this is the line in the road.
We're not going any further than that.
You understand why the government chose
this part of the country
to conduct all those nuclear explosions.
It makes perfect sense once you're here,
once you see the vast emptiness of it all.
NARRATOR: Out of nowhere, the local sheriff turns up.
Trespassing here means immediate arrest.
The sheriff prevents Mike from getting closer to the site,
but Mike has asked geoscientist Ben McGee
to meet him nearby to conduct a critical wind test --
a test that will help determine the likelihood
that radiation fallout could have blown
from the Nevada Test Site to where John Wayne was filming.
Now here we are -- ground zero --
right on the edge of the test site.
What do we got?
The wind is blowing straight to the northeast.
Right in that direction, and right where this,
essentially, is pointing to?
The wind, right now,
according to your instruments,
blowing right in the direction, 100 miles that way,
of where the film site is?
Yep, and I don't think that's necessarily an accident.
Being the physical conditions of this valley and the west
haven't changed all that much in the last 60 years,
I think they will tend to channel wind
in the same direction.
NARRATOR: That direction is northeast,
towards Snow Canyon, Utah --
exactly where John Wayne was filming "The Conqueror"
with 220 cast and crew members.
Back then, the movie's producer, Howard Hughes,
wasn't thinking about radiation.
He was thinking about location.
These rarely seen home movies were filmed by a local resident
who managed to get close to the set.
They showed the scale of the production
transported to this remote site.
The reason that Snow Canyon, near St. George, Utah,
was picked for this location --
It had beautiful, red rocks.
It was a wonderful desert, semi-arid area there --
very dusty and dirty, of course.
But that's what Mongolia is supposed to look like.
NARRATOR: But Snow Canyon might have had something
13th-century Mongolia didn't -- radioactive dust.
WANAMAKER: When you have 100, 200 horses riding in one direction,
immediately it is literally a dust cloud
that surrounds them.
There's dust, dust, dust everywhere.
NARRATOR: If nuclear fallout had rained over the film set
months before production began,
it would've been in the dust and dirt
that covered the cast and crew.
This is Snow Canyon, Utah, today --
the exact location
where "The Conqueror" was filmed in 1954.
Mike Baker and Ben McGee
are walking in John Wayne's footsteps
nearly 60 years later.
They'll be testing to see if there's any radioactivity
still here after more than half a century.
Ben, I know from my research that
in the year before they filmed "The Conqueror,"
the equivalent of 15 Hiroshima bombs
were detonated at the Nevada Test Site.
Tell me what that means
with the fallout and the radiation process.
When a nuclear bomb goes off,
you produce a lot of very energetic radioactive material,
and that's sucked up in the fireball
along with a bunch of dirt.
And if it gets high enough,
it gets carried downrange by the wind
and literally sprinkles out of the air, falls out.
If the wind blew radioactive fallout here
even 60 years ago,
the sand and soil should still hold evidence of it.
[ Device pinging ]
Ben sweeps the movie site for traces of radioactive fallout
using a sensitive device known as a sodium iodide detector.
He's searching for cesium 137,
a cancer-causing byproduct of all atomic explosions.
This is where they did the majority of the stunts.
Just imagine this place back then,
dust blowing everywhere
as hundreds of horses are charging around.
Just look at this -- Imagine that everywhere,
covering the actors, the production crew,
being breathed in, getting over the food and water.
Just imagine what that might have done
if the particles from the fallout
settled right in here.
[ Device pinging ]
Hey, Mike, I think we found our sweet spot.
NARRATOR: Ben's equipment detects a rise, or bump,
in radiation right where the crew was filming in 1954.
But any fallout from the 1950s
would be covered by soil blown here
by wind over the decades.
How far down do you have to dig to take that sample?
Well, most studies show that radioactive material
only migrates down a centimeter or so
on decade time scales.
Yeah.
Okay. Perfect.
All right. Let's do it.
Ben heads back to his Las Vegas lab
to analyze the samples.
He'll use an alpha spectrometer
to check for traces of radiation.
Mike stays at Snow Canyon to meet with
environmental exposure specialist Richard Miller.
He's convinced the cast and crew had no idea
they were subjected to radioactive fallout.
Knowing what you know now,
if you had been back then, if you had been an actor,
and I was Howard Hughes, and I came up to you and said,
"Yeah, I got this great opportunity for you.
"You're gonna play right opposite of John Wayne.
Big movie -- You're gonna be out there,"
would you have accepted that?
Without a respirator,
without personal protective equipment,
full suit -- Tyvek suit if they had them then,
the answer's no.
For no amount of money.
Today, Mike and Richard have the benefit
of 60 years of nuclear hindsight.
But things were different in 1954.
WANAMAKER: On the set, there was no real worry
about radiation poisoning.
John Wayne and *** Powell, for example --
They brought their families along and their kids.
As you can imagine, if either of them thought
there was any kind of risk,
they would never have brought them there.
NARRATOR: Movie director *** Powell
even gave his 18-year-old son Norman
a job on the set -- a dirty job.
I got a job on the labor crew.
I was digging slit trenches for outhouses
and holes for oasis and stuff like that.
I didn't perceive anybody showing any real concern
about the fact that they were in a zone
that might be contaminated.
NARRATOR: This notorious photo shows John Wayne and his sons
toying with a Geiger counter at "The Conqueror" location.
It seems he knew about the nearby nuclear testing,
but perhaps no one told him it could be deadly.
The cast and crew of "The Conqueror"
spent three months filming downwind
of the atomic test site.
Just 10 miles from the film set
sits the small town of St. George, Utah.
More than 70,000 residents live here permanently.
MAN: St. George, Utah.
NARRATOR: If radioactive fallout from the Nevada Test Site
fed a cancer epidemic in John Wayne's film crew,
could residents of St. George have fared even worse?
Mike Baker is about to find out.
BAKER: Well, this is it.
NARRATOR: Mike Baker is investigating
what could be a nuclear nightmare.
In 1953,
the U.S. government detonated 11 above-ground atom bombs
at the Nevada Test Site.
One of them was nearly three times as powerful
as the device dropped on Hiroshima.
The blast became known as "Dirty Harry,"
after its fallout drifted more than 100 miles.
John Wayne and his "Conqueror" film crew
may have been exposed to deadly radiation
from this and other nuclear tests,
but they were only on location for three months.
The residents of St. George, Utah,
about 10 miles from the film set,
had nowhere to go.
According to reports shortly after Dirty Harry,
many of them began feeling sick.
They noticed an odd metallic taste in the air.
Government media offered nothing but reassurance.
MAN: It is suggested that everyone remain indoors
for one hour or until further notice.
There is no danger.
NARRATOR: St. George resident Claudia Peterson
grew up here in the 1950s
and believes the government was lying.
They were testing bombs over us
and telling us we were fine when they knew we weren't.
MAN: The amount of radioactivity
that fell on St. George
was not dangerous.
They were coming in and checking us
and not telling us anything.
We were perfect guinea pigs.
NARRATOR: Claudia's father, sister, and daughter
all died from cancer.
PETERSON: You can't tell me that's not from fallout.
Our whole family was decimated.
NARRATOR: Early on, St. George was dubbed "Fallout City"
due to its extraordinarily high rate of cancer.
The people who live here became known as "downwinders."
In 1984, a leading medical journal
made headlines by publishing a controversial study.
It found that St. George residents
suffered higher than normal rates of...
You'd be hard-pressed to find a family here in these areas
that doesn't know somebody or doesn't have a family member
that hasn't been ill.
MAN: It is the Atomic Energy Commission's policy
to keep to a minimum
any exposure of persons to radiation.
NARRATOR: Despite government assurances,
the downwinders in St. George
seemed to suffer abnormally high cancer rates
linked to atomic-weapons testing.
Radioactive fallout may have also rained down
on the set of "The Conqueror" only 10 miles away.
Ben McGee is in his Las Vegas lab
looking for forensic evidence to support that claim.
He's testing for radioactive cesium 137
in the soil from Snow Canyon,
where the movie was filmed.
McGEE: So, now that the equipment's calibrated,
we can actually run our samples, which means --
We know there's elevated radioactivity out there.
We're finally gonna get to figure out
what's causing the readings.
And hopefully by figuring that out,
we'll see whether or not those filming "The Conqueror"
were exposed to some manmade fallout in the past.
NARRATOR: The results are in,
and Ben is eager to share them with
environmental exposure specialist Richard Miller.
McGEE: Here are the results I got
from running our soil samples in the lab.
There are lots of natural radioactive elements
here in the environment,
but I think you can see just a little bit...
...right here --
the presence of cesium fallout.
Yes. Yes.
Cesium 137 does not come from other sources.
This is very important.
MILLER: What Ben has done is actually a first.
I don't believe it's been done before,
and it's something that is a great first step.
NARRATOR: Ben broke new ground by identifying
both naturally-occurring
and manmade radiation in Snow Canyon.
Cesium 137 is radioactive, cancer-causing,
and not present in nature.
It could very well have drifted here
from the Nevada Test Site.
Although there's no way to prove the cesium was already here
when "The Conqueror" was filmed,
Ben's findings conclusively show that radioactive fallout
is present in Snow Canyon even today.
The suspiciously high cancer rate
among the cast and crew of "The Conqueror"
has been talked about for years.
Could it be evidence of radioactive contamination?
The outcome is a grim Hollywood credit roll.
Director *** Powell contracted lymphoma.
It spread to his lungs
and eventually killed him in 1963.
Leading lady Susan Hayward
and supporting actress Agnes Moorehead
both died of cancer.
Costar Pedro Armendariz killed himself in 1963
rather than die a slow death
from terminal cancer in his lymphatic system.
As for John Wayne, he developed lung cancer
and had part of his left lung removed in 1964.
They found a spot on the x-rays. It was lung cancer.
If I'd waited a few more weeks, I wouldn't be here now.
It's great to be alive.
NARRATOR: Ultimately, it was stomach cancer
that killed Wayne in 1979.
MILLER: The type of cancer that John Wayne had
can be the result of ingestion of radioisotopes
from fallout such as what came from the Nevada Test Site.
NARRATOR: Still, some point
to The Duke's chain-smoking and heavy drinking as the cause.
Others are convinced his time filming "The Conqueror"
may be the real reason,
but we're unlikely to ever know for sure.
There's no question that
the cast and crew of "The Conqueror"
was exposed to dust,
and we know that the dust, more likely than not,
was associated with fallout.
There's too much evidence to suggest
that it at least might have exacerbated the problem
in people who were susceptible to getting cancer.
I can't deny that.
The rate of the cancer they got
had to have been an effect from what happened to them
and what they were exposed to.
I don't believe that we have enough hard evidence,
at this point,
to say definitively that John Wayne
died from exposure to the radiation,
to the fallout that was present here in Snow Canyon.
But you can't help but think that all that exposure,
all that dust from all those test shots --
You can't help but think that it played a role.
NARRATOR: "The Conqueror" was one of John Wayne's
least successful films.
It might have been completely forgotten
if not for the suspicious deaths of Wayne, his costars,
many of the film's crew,
and the cancer controversy that rages on even to this day.
The Ozarks is a mountain region
spanning nearly 47,000 square miles.
It covers most all of southern Missouri
and much of Arkansas.
But some are convinced this lush landscape
provides cover for a sinister conspiracy.
Thousands of caves are hidden beneath the terrain.
A labyrinth of excavated tunnels adds to the underground network.
The passageways allegedly end here,
at a mysterious, fortress-like mansion
in the final stages of construction.
Some say it will be the control center
for a shadowy group known as the Illuminati,
as they rule America after an apocalyptic event.
The Illuminati is essentially the ruling elite,
the super class, the invisible empire,
the 0.0001%
of the wealthiest elite of the planet.
Their primary goal
is to maintain and gain wealth and power.
KAY: A lot of conspiracy theories
hypothesize the existence of secret enclaves or fortresses
where the elites are going to protect themselves
against some coming apocalypse
that will wipe out the rest of us.
Every conspiracy theory has some small grain of truth to it.
And when it comes to the idea
that the elites don't care about the rest of us,
all they care about is enriching themselves,
there is some truth to that.
NARRATOR: This huge structure is designed to withstand
earthquakes, explosions, and tornado-force winds.
It will be fireproof and bulletproof.
It should survive anything short of a direct hit.
The estate is called Pensmore.
DICE: The Pensmore mansion
is a fully off-the-grid, self-sustaining compound
that has its own rainwater collection systems,
its own heating and cooling systems.
So if the surrounding areas were to be shut down,
it would still be a fully functioning,
self-sustaining compound.
NARRATOR: Pensmore totals 72,000 square feet,
nearly 20,000 more than the White House.
It will be the largest private home in America,
if you believe that's its real purpose.
It is highly doubtful that it is a single-family residence.
NARRATOR: So, who designed and built Pensmore?
Billionaire Steven Huff,
who currently owns a company called TF Concrete Systems.
But before that,
he worked for an intelligence agency.
Some say he's just a front for the Illuminati.
This guys isn't just an eccentric millionaire.
He's a former CIA agent
connected with the defense department,
the military-industrial complex.
So he's sort of like the Frank Lloyd Wright
of the super class.
NARRATOR: Is this mysterious structure
really the post-apocalyptic White House for the Illuminati?
Investigator Jeanette Pavini spent 10 years reporting
for CBS affiliate KPIX in San Francisco.
She's here to look behind Pensmore's imposing facade.
NARRATOR: Access to Pensmore is tightly controlled.
Wow.
Few have ever gotten close to it.
It's a very secure location. There's one way in, one way out.
And this castle sits on over 500 acres.
PAVINI: Look at those turrets.
They almost have, like, a military look.
Interesting.
NARRATOR: Why would an ex-CIA agent
build a nearly indestructible castle
in this remote location?
Jeanette is determined to get inside and find out.
NARRATOR: Bulletproof, bomb-resistant,
bigger than any private home in the nation,
Pensmore mansion in Missouri's Ozark mountains
has become the eye of a conspiracy hurricane.
Some believe the Illuminati
will rule America from here after a doomsday event.
Caves and tunnels in the area
add to the cloud of suspicion surrounding Pensmore.
Investigative journalist Jeanette Pavini
is meeting author Mark Dice
who wrote a book about the Illuminati.
He sees the tunnels as central to the conspiracy.
DICE: Wait till you get a load of this.
Springfield Underground -- a 2.5-million-square-foot,
underground storage facility.
This is exhibit A in the tunnel conspiracy theory,
a massive subterranean facility
known as the Springfield Underground,
27 miles due north of Pensmore.
Most people have never seen or heard of
this 2-million-square-foot series of tunnels.
It began as a limestone quarry in the 1940s.
Why is it so active more than a half-century later?
Jeanette and Mark learn that this facility
has multiple functions --
among them, data storage, test labs,
and a national food distribution center.
But who benefits from these services?
Good morning. Jeanette.
Though entry here is highly restricted,
CEO Louis Griesemer made an exception for us.
His father started the company in 1946,
and it's still family-owned today.
PAVINI: So, how much food is stored here?
Well, there's 450,000 pounds of food
[ Gasps ]
But we've got 14 buildings,
and this is one of the smaller of those.
Yes.
That could feed a lot of people for a long time.
NARRATOR: Today, this facility is used
by many of America's largest conglomerates
to store packaged food.
Chances are some of the items in your local supermarket
were stored here at one time.
How many shipments of food come here every day?
We have about 300 tractor-trailer loads
coming in and out of the facility every day.
Yeah.
NARRATOR: Conspiracy theorists such as Mark Dice
believe this is the ultimate survival supply depot,
easily within reach of an Illuminati regime
dug in at Pensmore.
They have executive orders where,
in the case of an emergency,
they would just basically come and declare,
"This is our product. We're gonna use it."
The Springfield Underground is massive,
but now, it's getting even bigger.
Jeanette is getting a rare look at the expansion process.
According to conspiracy buffs,
the expansion is just a cover story.
The real purpose is to link this food-storage site
to a tunnel network leading to Pensmore.
These are more tunnels, like, down here?
It keeps going. Yes.
NARRATOR: After leaving the underground,
Jeanette tracks down a local geologist
named Matt Forir.
Perhaps he can help locate the tunnels leading to Pensmore.
Matt and his team prepare to conduct a seismic test.
They hook up their gear close to Pensmore,
directly over one of the alleged tunnels.
They'll generate sound waves by slamming a metal plate
with a sledgehammer.
A hollow void underneath
will send back distinctive echoes.
Bottom line -- no tunnel can hide from such a test.
Matt's crew is almost set
when an unexpected visitor shows up.
Oh, hi.
What are you guys doing?
Can't wait to get the results.
NARRATOR: Jeanette Pavini and her crew
are all set to test for tunnels
between Pensmore and the Springfield Underground.
That's when the local sheriff shows up.
We're just doing a seismic test.
We're gonna be able to tell if there's any cave or tunnel.
Are you using explosives?
No explosives.
[ Chuckling ] Okay.
Thank you.
With the sheriff gone, the test can begin.
MAN: I think we're ready.
PAVINI: All right. Good.
We're ready, Matt?
Let's go.
NARRATOR: Geophones inserted into the soil
listen for hollow spaces underground --
spaces that just might be caves or tunnels.
So, do you think that we can
get these results instantaneously?
And...?
Well, here are the shock waves right through here.
You can see this is where the wave
actually went through the rock,
and what it's showing us here is that...
there are no voids -- It's solid rock below us.
So, no tunnels, no caves?
No tunnels, no caves.
So, the tunnel rumors are false, at least at this spot.
Jeanette finds herself back where she started,
knowing that there is one place
nobody has been allowed to search for a hidden tunnel,
and that's inside of Pensmore itself.
PAVINI: I really want to get in there.
I got to get a closer look.
NARRATOR: Pensmore is a private residence
with high security.
Short of having the skills of a Navy Seal or a cat burglar,
what's the best way to get inside?
There's nothing wrong with simply asking permission.
Yeah, I would really like to take a look around Pensmore.
Is that possible?
Okay. Great.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Great. I'm in.
NARRATOR: The identity of Jeanette's tour guide?
Pensmore's owner and architect,
Steven Huff himself.
Jeanette is among the select few
to ever be allowed into this controversial site.
Jeanette?
Hi. Yeah, Jeanette.
Nice to meet you.
This is Pensmore.
Single-family dwelling, huh?
It is.
But it's much more than that.
The size of this place
is even more staggering from the inside.
Steven Huff says Pensmore's main purpose
is to showcase energy efficient
and disaster-resistant technologies.
Among them, advanced high-strength concrete,
invented by his own company.
In order to make the concrete
very strong and very resistant
to things like tornadoes and earthquakes,
we add a steel fiber that's called Helix.
When the concrete starts to deform,
it grips this, and it reinforces the concrete
in all different directions, all three dimensions.
Steven's vision?
His innovative concrete will be used
in the construction of hospitals, schools,
and other government buildings.
We should check out the rest of the place.
Sure.
Okay. So, now, this is the...
But does the mansion truly need 13 bedrooms and 14 baths
to demonstrate the new technology?
HUFF: This is the library.
This is the second story of the library.
Steven says the extra rooms
will be used by scientists he'll invite
to examine Pensmore's innovative energy technology.
But why build all of this in the middle of the Ozarks?
HUFF: I was looking for a place
where we had four distinct seasons
and to watch the energy flow as you switch seasons.
This is the elevator shaft.
NARRATOR: Steven appears to have no hesitation
in showing Jeanette every square inch of the site.
She's still looking for a hidden passageway
to the alleged secret tunnels.
This floor here, this is concrete,
but what's below it?
Below this is the basement.
So, there's another room very similar to this one
down at the basement level.
Can we go down and check it out?
Because, you know, the whole theory that there's
Sure. Would you like to see it?
Absolutely.
All right. So, this is ground level.
This is the basement, nothing below?
There's nothing below the basement.
This is at ground level.
So, if you had x-ray eyes and you looked at this,
you would see dirt under here.
What we call the great room...
Some might argue that Jeanette's only seeing
what Steven Huff wants her to see.
[ Cellphone rings ]
But when Steven gets a phone call,
Jeanette sees it as a chance
to look for anything he's hiding.
You mind if I go look around on my own?
Thanks.
Okay. Nice to meet you.
There's a lot of house to search through.
In the end, Jeanette finds no evidence of secret tunnels.
Conspiracy believers would say ex-CIA officer Steven Huff
was just very clever in the way he hid them.
I did have a background in Army intelligence and CIA,
but that was a long time ago.
And connecting dots from back then to today
and reaching some giant conspiracy theory
is a bit much.
PAVINI: I've been all over the Ozarks --
tunnels, caves, Pensmore --
and I did not find any evidence
that would support any type of underground or tunnels.
But, for the people that believe in the conspiracy theory,
I'm sure that that digging will keep fueling this mystery.
NARRATOR: This is the birthplace of the United States.
Jamestown, Virginia, is the site
of the first permanent English settlement in America.
It was also the scene of a grim new archeological discovery,
one that may prove a controversial theory --
These early colonists resorted to cannibalism.
NARRATOR: Jamestown, Virginia, is celebrated
as the first permanent British settlement in America,
the seed from which the United States
would ultimately grow.
But Jamestown may have another, less-illustrious claim to fame.
English settlers arrived here in 1607
when survival in the New World was a bad-odds gamble.
We're traveling along the beautiful shores
of the James River in Virginia.
Parts of this river look exactly like it did it 1607.
I'm here to investigate just how difficult it was.
What did these first settlers go through?
NARRATOR: The settlers built James Fort to protect themselves
from Indians and the elements.
The striking thing about being inside James Fort
is that it's so small.
I mean, it's maybe an acre,
and you realize that at one point,
they had upwards of 300-plus settlers
crammed into this one place,
all starving, all hoping to survive the winter.
NARRATOR: The winter of 1609 is known as the "starving time."
Colonists faced a brutal famine.
First, they ate their horses and dogs,
then their leather belts and shoes.
Diaries and letters say they ultimately violated
humanity's greatest taboo in order to survive.
Why did they settle here?
In the summer of 2012,
archeologist Dr. William Kelso uncovered evidence
supporting this disturbing allegation.
Until now, only news crews have been allowed to visit the site.
Doctor, is this where you found
the human remains in this site?
Yes -- It was in a layer of soil
that was about this high off the ground right in here,
and it was in a strata that contained
butchered horses, butchered dogs, rats,
and this mutilated skull.
We found the teeth up here,
and then the rest of the skull on its side next to it.
And it was clear that that skull had been chopped.
Human remains thrown away in a basement trash heap,
not buried in a grave like other settlers.
A skull with chop marks.
What does it mean?
My first thought,
"Well, maybe this is evidence of a ***."
Taking these 20 bone fragments into the lab for cleaning
may reveal more detail and more clues.
STRAUBE: First of all, we clean off 400 years of dirt
to get to the bone.
And then we had to lay out the pieces
very carefully on the table and figure out
from what part of the skull they came.
It was difficult,
because they don't fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Bly and her team,
along with forensic experts from the Smithsonian,
carefully piece together the skull,
which allowed them to piece together
the human story behind it.
So, tell me what this tells you.
In this case, it's pretty amazing.
I mean, we could tell that it's a female.
The forehead is straight up and down,
rather than slanted, as you would have with a male.
And then the basic shape of the back of the skull
is very rounded and smooth.
And that's another sign of being a female.
By examining the development of her molars and her leg bone,
researchers determine the female was in fact
a young girl of about 14.
But the unidentified Jamestown teenager
had far more to tell us than just her age.
What struck us immediately
were these marks on the forehead.
You see the parallel marks. Yes.
And we thought, "Wow. What does that mean?
Is that the cause of death?"
Experts believe the marks are cuts,
maybe from a cleaver,
but the blows came down with little force,
as thought whoever used the tool was tentative.
The person starts by looking the girl in the face
and cutting, but not really wanting to, it seems.
You know, these aren't real effective.
So, then the girl gets turned over onto her stomach.
With the girl's face hidden,
the person swings the cleaver with far more conviction.
And the marks that you see here --
You can see how deep they are, you know.
They're really deep there.
It's not a sign of ***, as it turns out.
It's actually a sign of cannibalism.
This revelation made headlines around the world.
The girl apparently died from disease or starvation.
Then, settlers pried open her skull to eat her brain.
What forensic evidence supports
this stunning allegation of cannibalism?
In part, telltale cut marks on the girl's jaw bone --
They're strikingly similar to butchering marks
on the bones of horses eaten by the colonists.
In their desperation,
they apparently took the girl's corpse as food.
Is this the first real physical evidence
It is.
And that is what makes it so historically significant.
The brain -- It's just another source of protein?
Yes -- Very high in protein, and the thing is,
the brain is the first sort of thing to go bad.
So if you're going to consume it,
you have to do it quickly.
Scientists say the cut marks on the girl's leg bone
reveal that she was also dismembered after death
and her flesh probably consumed by starving colonists.
Only 60 of the 300 Jamestown settlers
lived through the winter of 1609.
Perhaps some of them owe their survival
to the 14-year-old girl.
We wanted her to have a name.
We picked Jane as a name
that would have been used in 17th-century England.
It's giving her her personality back,
even though we don't really know who she is.
But the team at the Jamestown Rediscovery Project
wanted to give Jane even more of an identity.
They commissioned a sculpture of her face
as it might have looked when she was alive.
Mike heads 400 miles north to Brooklyn, New York.
He's got a rare invite to visit StudioEis,
a world-renowned modeling company.
Once they're brought up out of the ground...
The creative team wanted to reconstruct Jane's face
by building a life-size sculpture.
But Jane's skull is incomplete,
so how will the team give
this likely victim of cannibalism a face?
NARRATOR: They call her Jane,
a 14-year-old girl who died during the "starving time"
in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1609.
Her skull shows unmistakable signs of cannibalism.
Experts believe that after Jane died,
her fellow colonists ate her flesh to survive.
The Jamestown Rediscovery Project
commissioned a modeling studio
to reconstruct what Jane might have looked like
during her brief life.
But even before work could begin,
the creative team hit a snag.
Not enough of Jane's skull had been found to build a model.
ROUSE: Fortunately, in Jane's case,
we had two bones that were of critical importance.
We had the large skull fragment,
and we had a complete mandible.
Once you put in the actual fragments,
then you have to start filling in the missing pieces?
Okay.
So we're almost there.
When we look at this skull now,
we're starting to see the girl.
The next step --
a 3D printer built a replica skull
out of epoxy resin.
Here she is.
StudioEis director Ivan Schwartz...
This is Jane.
...along with forensic experts from the Smithsonian
work together to determine
what Jane would have looked like 400 years ago.
This skill has a huge amount of information
that tells us what is going to happen
as a human being develops --
tissue depth, muscle, skin, hairline, et cetera.
So, the skull literally is the starting point for us.
Forensic scientists have determined
the proper depth of flesh in each area of the human head.
The sculptor used wooden pins called "tissue depth markers"
as tiny rulers for accurate flesh reconstruction.
After several days of work, the skull has a face.
Yeah.
To fully bring Jane to life,
the studio team made a plaster cast of the clay sculpture,
which they then painted.
Finally, she's ready.
Could this be the face Jamestown colonists looked into
before they crossed the line into cannibalism?
It's incredible -- Here she is,
after all this work,
literally from a small number of bone fragments
found in a trash pit in Jamestown
discarded with animal bones.
And through painstaking work of dedicated individuals,
they've brought her back to life.
They've given her a face. They've given her an identity.
And she's here to tell a story.
NARRATOR: More than 400 years after she died,
Jane has come forward to testify to the desperation
faced by the Jamestown settlers.
In a sense, her sacrifice allowed the colony to continue.
And if it hadn't,
it could've turned the entire course
of this nation's history.