Fixation with murder boosts Kiwi podcast

The story of a 1994 Dunedin mass murder that claimed all but one of the Bain family’s lives has become a point of obsession for people across the globe.

Stuff podcast Black Hands, which launched on Sunday, made its way to the top of the iTunes charts in Australia and New Zealand. It also reached seventh position on Britain’s podcast chart, and was rising in Singapore, sitting at 67 yesterday.

The podcast followed veteran journalist Martin van Beynen as he reinvestigated the horrific slaughter of five people at 65 Every St, Dunedin, on June 20, 1994.

Black Hands had been downloaded more than 500,000 times. Executive producer Kamala Hayman expected it to have had only a few thousand listeners by now.

‘‘It has been done on a shoestring budget, which has meant people have had to fit it in around all their other jobs,’’ Hayman said.

Black Hands came about as a sort of accident, Van Beynen said.

He started writing a book about the Bain case in 2014. When he finished it in 2016, Van Beynen said, his publisher pulled out.

‘‘I felt as though maybe if I looked at all the evidence again I would see that one thing, that one smoking gun,’’ he said.

The material was there, but no one would print it. Then, Van Beynen said his bosses suggested making a podcast. He and other colleagues at Stuff and The Press worked for about a year converting the story to audio.

‘‘In the meantime, we had floods, we had Port Hill fires, I had a couple of other big stories.

‘‘We never predicted just how much time and resource was needed for something like this, so now we know that you don’t make decisions to do a 10-part podcast lightly,’’ Van Beynen said.