Punt PI

Steve Punt turns detective to investigate a mystery from the Midlands.

In 1943, in a small wood in the village of Hagley, the body a woman was found inside a Wych elm tree. She had been put in feet first, alive or just recently dead. The police issued a good photo fit but, despite extensive enquiries, a match could not be found and no one reported her missing.

Punt hunts first for the files and then for the body. But things are not where they should be. He heads into those unsettling woods, rustles up tangled leads, and ends up barking up the occasional wrong tree.

He tracks down the 101-year-old forensic biologist on the case and investigates witchcraft and spying in his attempt to separate conspiracy from the truth.

And Professor Norman Fenton, expert witness in major criminal trails, subjects Punt's findings to analysis, building a unique model especially for the programme.

Producer: Sarah Bowen.

Steve Punt turns private investigator and examines the curious case of the socialist MP Victor Grayson who vanished into thin air!

Firebrand politician, champion of the mill workers, scion of the establishment, fancy dresser, hard drinker, man about town. Victor Grayson was many things when he erupted onto the public stage in 1907 as the first and last independent socialist MP, aged 26. However this shooting star disappeared from sight in 1920, under mysterious circumstances, with no confirmed sightings after that.

Punt P.I. sets out on a trail through Yorkshire valleys, dusty archives and seedy Soho to pick up clues to Victor's disappearance.

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Steve Punt turns gumshoe, investigating curious rumours surrounding the Baker Street bank robbery of 1971.

Quite possibly the most audacious heist in British history, the robbers tunnelled into the bank's vault from the basement of a shop two doors down. They escaped with a haul worth an estimated £30 million today.

Though four robbers were convicted, intriguing claims persist - most notably that the security services mounted the heist to secure compromising photographs of a senior public figure.

Punt sifts the evidence, calls in the experts and attempts to establish fact from fiction.

Producer: Laurence Grissell.

Steve Punt returns as Radio 4's very own gumshoe, examining the mysterious case of millionaire financier Alfred Loewenstein who fell out of his own aeroplane in 1928.

The suspicious death of this fabulously wealthy Belgian tycoon - then reportedly the world's third richest man - may well be Punt's most baffling investigation yet.

During that fateful flight across the English Channel, Loewenstein got up to go the loo - but somehow ended up falling out of the plane. What exactly happened to him remains a mystery to this day.

Was it just an accident, did Loewenstein jump - or was it murder? Punt reopens the case.

Producer: Laurence Grissell.