Are we over true crime podcasts yet? Lol, never. Literally never! Particularly true crime podcasts that investigate unsolved crimes over the course of a season, Serial-style. Enter Unravel, an upcoming podcast from ABC which sounds absolutely gripping.
Unravel will investigate a different unsolved crime each season, utilising some of Australia’s best journalists to do so. Season 1, titled ‘Blood On The Tracks‘, premieres on May 28th, focuses on the suspicious death of 17-year-old Indigenous teen Mark Haines, whose body was found on the railway lines just outside of Tamworth, NSW.
It’s 1988. Just outside of Tamworth in country New South Wales, a freight train hits someone lying on the tracks. But when a rail worker looks at the body, the scene doesn’t seem to make sense. There is a towel under the head and hardly any blood. Why are the shoes on the body so clean when there is mud all around?
The tracks divide Tamworth in two. An Aboriginal community (nicknamed “Vegemite Village”) on one side, a largely white population on the other. The boy on the tracks is Mark Haines, a 17 year-old Gomeroi teenager. Despite the strange evidence found at the scene of his death, the family feel like they’re being ignored by police. An inquiry finds no answers and the mystery is left to fester, causing division and suspicion in the town.
Indigenous reporter Allan Clarke investigated the case for five years, and the podcast follows him through this half-decade of re-opening the case file, launching a review and offering a reward. “As Allan gets closer to the truth, the story ends with a revelation no-one was expecting,” the site explains.
Unravel: Blood On The Tracks launches on Friday May 28th at 12pm and is available on most podcast listening services, as well as ABC listen app and Apple Podcasts.
