Blood Guilt
Days after Richard Dorrough violently takes his own life at a public gun range in Perth, Western Australia, his fiancée receives a parcel from him in the post - a book filled with the former sailor’s handwriting. She starts to read and, horrified by the chilling confession inside it, quickly hands the book to police....
“As a Perth resident, law student and domestic violence advocate, I found this podcast gripping in the most scarily relevant way. It has prompted me to think more critically about our judicial system and its flaws and it has added to my existing motivation to give female victims of violence more power - even in death.”
— Listener Review
SYNOPSIS
Days after Richard Dorrough violently takes his own life at a public gun range in Perth, Western Australia, his fiancée receives a parcel from him in the post - a book filled with the former sailor’s handwriting. She starts to read and, horrified by the chilling confession inside it, quickly hands the book to police....
Suicides rarely get reported. But journalists Dan Box and Kate Wild believe this unnerving public death is worthy of further explanation. Exploring what made Dorrough take his own life leads the pair to the country’s far corners, to uneasy truths about race and prejudice in the criminal justice system, and to questions about how we tell true crime stories.
In the process they start to understand that Dorrough took much more than just his life.
WHAT WE DID
TV documentary production company In-Films came to us with this idea, pitched by investigative journalist Dan Box, with Audible Australia attached as a commissioning partner.
Originally conceived as a screen documentary, Dan had already collected a few interviews and completed much of the fact finding. Audiocraft came in to reshape the concept for audio and to continue reporting on this important but incomplete story. Dan was living in the UK, so producer Selena Shannon teamed up with local journalist Kate Wild to travel Australia collecting the remaining interviews, including hard hitting interrogations with police and sensitive conversations with victims’ family members. Selena then worked closely with Dan to script and edit the episodes. Once they were recorded and assembled, Sound Engineer Que Nguyen mixed each complex multi-layered episode, including original composition by Helena Czajka.
AWARDS
Silver Award in the True Crime Category of the Australian Podcast Awards
Nominated for The Les Kennedy Award: Outstanding Crime Reporting
Nominated for Best Audio Documentary at the AIDC
CREDITS
Publisher: Audible
Written by: Dan Box
Reported and Presented by: Dan Box and Kate Wild
Producer: Selena Shannon
Sound Designer: Que Nguyen
Composer: Helena Czajka
Executive Producer (In Films): Ivan O'Mahoney
Executive Producer (Audible): Paul Horan