Review: 'Bloodguilt' The Many Deaths of Richard Dorrough

Bray Boland, Radio Today, 14 June, 2022

Walkley Award-winning journalists Dan Box and Kate Wild are releasing their new Audible original InFilms podcast, Bloodguilt: The Many Deaths of Richard Dorrough on June 28th.

Bloodguilt tells the story of ex-navy sailor Richard Dorrough and seeks to answer a series of questions following his suicide at a public gun range in Perth, WA in 2014.

Days after his death, his fiancée received a parcel from him in the post. It contained a note from Dorrough that said, “I did kill three times,” but there are no names, no dates, nothing to identify his victims, despite Dorrough previously being investigated regarding the 1997 disappearance of 21-year-old Kimberley woman, Sara-Lee Davey, who went missing after going to the Broome Wharf with Dorrough.

He was also later charged with the 1998 murder of a 29-year-old Sydney woman, Rachael Campbell, but was acquitted at trial in 2010.

Although suicides are rarely reported, Box and Wild believed this unnerving public death was worthy of further explanation. They are troubled by the way no one seems to be trying to find these people, and sensing the really important questions are not necessarily why Dorrough took his own life, but rather, how he got away with killing three people, and why police did not stop him.

Exploring what made Dorrough take his life takes the pair across the country, from Perth to Broome, Darwin, Bundaberg and Sydney.

It leads to uncomfortable truths about race, sex and prejudice in the criminal justice system and how they can all affect your chances of getting justice – who gets the attention of police and the media, and how they get that attention.

As doors slammed and others open unexpectedly, the pair started to question what they were doing – what are their motives for telling this story?

Can a true crime story be told in a way that repects the living and the dead? Will it do more harm than good? They both start to look differently at the crimes they are investigating, putting the podcast itself under interrogation.

Bloodguilt breaks new ground in the true crime genre with its unusual premise and revelatory twist and turns through its 8 half-hour episodes.

The series will be released on June 28th, exclusively on Audible.