Who Killed Julius Caesar?

Modern forensic science. Ancient Rome’s most famous unsolved murder.

On the Ides of March, 44BC, Julius Caesar was murdered in the Roman Senate by more than sixty conspirators. For over two thousand years, no one thought to question the facts. Then a senior commander in Italy’s Carabinieri decided to reopen the case.

Premiering on Channel Five and Discovery, this documentary follows Colonel Luciano Garofano — head of the Northern Forensic Investigation Unit of the Carabinieri, the man who uses the latest investigative techniques to nail Italy’s most high-profile criminals including mafia bosses — as he brings the full weight of 21st century forensic science to bear on ancient history’s most famous crime.

Working from the earliest ancient accounts of the assassination, Garofano visits key locations across Rome, reconstructs the crime scene using pioneering CGI technology, recreates history’s first recorded autopsy, and draws on the expertise of world-leading specialists — including a forensic psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School brought in to profile both victim and conspirators. The result overturns two thousand years of accepted understanding — raising questions about Caesar’s epilepsy, his behaviour in the weeks before his death, and the possibility of a suspect nobody has ever considered.

The first ever criminal investigation into the ancient world’s most famous murder, Who Killed Julius Caesar? applied the rigour of modern forensic science to a cold case two millennia in the making — and arrived at a conclusion that changes everything.