From In the Dark: “Blood Relatives,” an investigative series

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On August 7, 1985, five family members were shot dead in their English country manor, Whitehouse Farm. It looked like an open-and-shut case. But the New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake finds that almost nothing about this story is as it seems.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Evan Ossnos. The three of us, Susan, Jane, and I are off this week. But here at the political scene, we're huge fans of the New Yorker's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative podcast, which is called In the Dark. So today, in place of our regular episode, we thought to bring you the first episode of their new series, Blood Relatives, hosted by our colleague Heidi Blake.
0:23.6	The series takes you to 1985. It examines the White House Farm Murders, when five members of a
0:30.0	prominent family, the Bambers, were found dead in their picturesque country home. It became one of the most
0:36.5	notorious crimes in modern British history.
0:39.5	And now nearly four decades later, new information puts the official story of the case
0:44.4	into question, and it challenges some of the very foundations of the UK legal system.
0:49.9	Please enjoy episode one of In the Dark's blood relatives. And if you're interested in continuing to listen, follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.
1:03.3	The shoreline in this part of England is marshy and riddled with inlets and creeks.
1:09.3	It's a pretty desolate place.
1:12.6	This is the coast of Essex, just northeast of London, but an entirely different landscape.
1:18.6	The tides seep in and out with eerie drama, flooding the mudflats.
1:23.6	On some mornings, mist rushes up suddenly, the marshes and forms a briny fog.
1:30.3	I'm kind of driving in under smouldering grey cloud and just this expanse of bleak salt marshes of the Blackwater estuary.
1:42.3	And it feels so isolated. Heading inland from the Blackwater Estuary. And it feels so isolated.
1:45.9	Heading inland from the Blackwater Estuary,
1:48.5	away from the fog and the sea,
1:50.9	I turned onto a rough dirt track,
1:53.5	with tall hedges on one side
1:55.2	and open green fields on the other.
1:58.7	I wound around the lane,
2:04.3	turned down a gravel drive, and there it was.
2:07.5	Yeah, he's the farmhouse.
	...

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