History and sometimes the law have a way of catching up with people.  Just take the cases of three geriatric European television personalities whose alleged skeletons came spilling out of their closets this week.

83-year old BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall has admitted he molested 13 young girls, the assaults occurring between 1967 and 1985.  One of the victims was only 9 years old when she was attacked.  Hall is the former host of the BBC’s “It’s A Knockout” game show and was a football reporter for BBC Radio 5 and the radio Times magazine.  He’s due in court on 17 June for sentencing.

81-year old William Roache is fighting his charges.  He was the long-serving soap actor according to the Guinness Book of World records, playing “Ken Barlow” on the internationally known “Coronation Street”.  And now he’s “strenuously” denying charges he raped a 15-year old girl in Haslingden, Lancashire, between April and July 1967.

“I am astounded and deeply horrified by the extraordinary events of the last 24 hours,” Roache said in a statement issued through his attorneys.

Historic sex charges are bad enough.  But what if a favorite TV star allegedly lied about his involvement in the worst regime of the 20th Century?

Bundesrepublik Deutschland will sort that out.  Germany’s ZDF TV Network is canceling all reruns of the cop drama “Derrick” after newly revealed documents showed the star Horst Tappert was a Waffen SS member in the Totenkopf panzer division.

Tappert died in 2008 without ever revealing his true his war record, claiming he was a medic.  But it turns out that he was at the very least wounded while serving as a panzer grenadier on the Eastern Front in 1943.

There’s shock and disappointment among broadcasters that aired "Derrick".  German media says Bavaria is considering stripping the Tappert of an honorary chief police inspector title awarded in 1980.