From In the Dark: “Blood Relatives”

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and this is a special episode of our podcast devoted to new reporting by the New Yorkers Heidi Blake. Not so long ago, Heidi got a tip that led her to investigate one of the most notorious crimes in modern British history. Five members of a family had been brutally murdered at a rural estate. Heidi's reporting put the official account of that case into question, and it challenges the foundations of the UK legal system. That story is told in Blood Relatives, a new series from our investigative podcast In the Dark, which won the Pulitzer Prize for audio this year.

Here's how it begins. The shoreline in this part of England is marshy and riddled with inlets and creeks. It's a pretty desolate place. This is the coast of Essex, just northeast of London, but an entirely different landscape. The tides seep in and out with eerie drama, flooding the mud flats.

On some mornings, mist rushes up suddenly over the marshes and forms a briny fog. Kind of driving in under smoldering grey cloud and just this expanse of bleak salt marshes of the the Blackwater estuary. And it feels so isolated. Heading inland from the Blackwater to estuary, away from the fog and the sea, I turned onto a rough dirt track, with tall hedges on one side and open green fields on the other.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (46 minutes, 6,170 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.