In the Dark: Blood Relatives, Episode 1
Critics at Large | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.4 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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 | Hey, it's Vincent. |
| 0:02.9 | Here at Critics at Large headquarters, we are huge fans of the New Yorker's Pulitzer Prize winning podcast in the dark. |
| 0:11.2 | Their latest investigation is about the White House Farm murders when five members of the prosperous Bamber family were found dead at a picturesque country home. |
| 0:21.6 | It quickly became known as one of the most notorious crimes in modern British history. |
| 0:26.6 | But new information uncovered by In the Dark has revealed that there might be a wrongful conviction at the center of the case. |
| 0:35.6 | It's a riveting listen, and we've got episode one of In the Dark's blood relatives for you right now. |
| 0:48.5 | The shoreline in this part of England is marshy and riddled with inlets and creeks. |
| 0:58.0 | It's a pretty desolate place. This is the coast of Essex, just northeast of London, but an entirely different landscape. |
| 1:04.0 | The tides seep in and out with eerie drama, flooding the mudflats. |
| 1:09.0 | On some mornings, mist rushes up suddenly over the marshes and forms |
| 1:14.5 | a briny fog. I'm kind of driving in under smouldering grey cloud and just this expanse of |
| 1:23.0 | bleak salt marshes of the blackwater estuary. And it feels so isolated. |
| 1:30.3 | Heading inland from the Blackwater estuary, |
| 1:33.3 | away from the fog and the sea, |
| 1:35.3 | I turned onto a rough dirt track, |
| 1:38.3 | with tall hedges on one side and open green fields on the other. |
| 1:43.3 | I wound around the lane, turned down a gravel drive, |
| 1:48.5 | and there it was. Here's the farmhouse. Big sign saying trespassers will be prosecuted. |
| 1:57.7 | I had arrived at White House Farm, a place so infamous in Britain that I later learned, |
| 2:05.7 | reporters are specifically banned from visiting it. |
| 2:11.2 | Despite its notoriety, it's a beautiful place. |
| 2:15.4 | An elegant Georgian manor standing in open fields, with a |
... |
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