‘They car-bombed my house – there’s not much more they can do’: the astonishing podcast taking on illegal bloodsports
After 20 mutilated animal corpses were left outside a rural primary school, the creators of award-winning podcast Buried began investigating – with a little help
After 20 mutilated animal corpses were left outside a rural primary school, the creators of award-winning podcast Buried began investigating – with a little help from Chris Packham. It plunged them into organised crime, the dark web and Line of Duty-esque rumours of police corruption In 2024, a village in Hampshire woke up to something truly disturbing.
A mound of dead animals had been dumped outside a school, and blood oozed out on to the streets before children’s classes started for the day. There were about 20 carcasses, including rabbits, hares, pheasants, a fox and a muntjac deer with its head severed. The village was dumbfounded, and the biggest question was: why?
The husband-and-wife investigative journalist team of Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor – the pair behind the award-winning BBC podcast series, and now forthcoming documentary, Buried – found themselves wondering the same thing. Their new 10-part podcast, Buried: Dead Rabbit, delves into this and finds them plunged into the shady world of illegal bloodsports.
Specifically, hare coursing – where dogs hunt hares to kill them, an activity that has been banned in the UK since 2005 and its links to organised crime and the dangerous, violent characters who are terrorising villages across the country. Buried: Dead Rabbit is on BBC Sounds now. Continue reading...
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