On a snowy winter's morning, late 1904,

Zahnick list the second of Russia's ferocious minister of the interior was being driven towards St. Petersburg's magnificent railway station in a two-horse uncovered sleigh.

Snow had been falling all night, making the roadway unclear as yet at this early hour, very heavy for the horses.

It was still falling flickly. As the slay drew over to the left before making a turn, the footman noticed a peasant walking slowly on the edge of the pavement with his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and his shoulders hunched up to his ears under the falling snow.

On being overtaken, the peasant suddenly faced about and swung his arm.

In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation muffled in the multitude of snowflakes.

Both horses laid dead and mangled on the ground.

The coachman had fallen from the box mortally wounded.

The footman, who somehow survived, had no time to see the man in the sheepskin coat. After throwing the bomb, the man slipped into the surge of people all running to the scene of the explosion and vanished.

The crowd assembled around the sledge. The minister, clambering unhurt into deep snow, saw the hostility on their faces and addressed them weakly in his colourless voice.

I beg of you to keep off. For the love of God, I beg of you good people to keep off.

It was then that a second, taller young man, stepped out into the street, walking up rapidly, flung another bomb over the heads of the crowd.

It struck the minister on the shoulder as he stooped over his dying servant, fell between his feet, and then it exploded.

With the terrific, concentrated violence, striking him dead to the ground.

The second bomber made away as swiftly as his accomplice. Through the falling snow, people just stared at this small heap of dead bodies lying upon each other near the carcasses of the two horses.

Nobody dared approach.

How do I know about this? The snow, the man in the sheepskin coat, his tall accomplice. How do I have an almost first-hand account of a murder that usually amounts to a single sentence in the history books?

Well, it's because I do have a first-hand account, or the next best thing.

I'm staring at a manuscript written in the curly, elegant hand of my great grandpa, Joseph, inscribed on a thick woven paper and running to over a hundred pages.

This is the Rizumov files. I'm Jessica Dean, and I'm investigating one of history's great unsolved mysteries in six episodes.

It's the tale of passion and betrayal that led to one of the great upheavals of the last century, the Russian Revolution.

The Rizumov files. Episode one, the man in the sheepskin coat.

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