Casefile logo Photo: Supplied
Casefile's a popular collection of true crime stories from around the world told with a keen appreciation of narrative and suspense.
It's not like some true crime podcasts where the production team might try to jazz things up a bit by digging up some old interview tapes, or by creating a montage of news reports set to music. In Casefile all you have is this rather flat, unemotional Australian voice, backed by minimal (often menacing) music, telling you what happened.
It sounds different, the crimes can be grisly and bizarre, and to add to the mystery nobody knows who the host and creator of this podcast actually is.
All we do know is that he's an Australian who describes himself as 'just a random Aussie guy, in my spare bedroom, running a podcast'. By email he told me that he started the podcast when he was recovering from knee surgery, was off work and had a lot of time on his hands. He was a big podcast fan enjoying shows like Serial, Hardcore History and The Joe Rogan Experience. And it was listening to Joe Rogan that inspired him to give it a crack and start up Casefile.
Now 99 episodes in, this low key project started in 2016 has well and truly gone global. It can sometimes attract millions of listeners to a single episode, it appears in the podcast charts in 107 different countries, it's won several awards, and now has a production team spread out across the UK, the US, Australia and Argentina.
We play some of Case 88, about an English skydiver called Stephen Hilder who plummeted to his death during a jump in 2003 after someone tampered with his gear.
