Unravel - ABC Australia

What Became of Jack? — the latest season of Unravel, the ABC's award-winning investigative true crime podcast series.

27-year-old Queenslander Jack McLennan had been relaxing, drinking beers at a picnic spot, when his mate said he looked away, and when he looked back, Jack had vanished. Jack was fit and healthy, and even though he'd just been through a break-up, he seemed positive. But now, Jack was missing, and strange clues began to surface, hinting at his last movements. With online theories about the case spreading like wildfire, ABC journalist Rob Burgin sets out to investigate. Has there been a crime or not? He traces the fragments of that night through a web of small Queensland towns, where everyone knows everyone, everyone knows something, but no one can agree on what became of Jack.

Previous series of Unravel cover various investigations into crimes and crime-related topics, including solved and unsolved murder cases, missing persons, forensic analysis, gangland crimes, love scammers, con-artists, drugs, terrorism, Neo-Nazis, and miscarriages of justice — all investigated by some of Australia's best reporters and people who know the story best.

In Season 7, Blood on the Tracks, award-winning Muruwari and Gomeroi journalist Allan Clarke spends five years investigating the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of 17-year-old Gomeroi teenager, Mark Haines. In 1988, just outside of Tamworth in country New South Wales, a freight train hits Mark's body lying across the tracks. When the rail worker stops the train and gets out, the scene doesn't add up. The tracks divide Tamworth in two. An Aboriginal community on one side, a largely white population on the other. Some will say it was a suicide and others a murder. Despite the strange evidence found at the scene of his death, the family feel like they're being ignored by the police. An inquiry finds no answers, and the mystery is left to fester, causing division and suspicion in the town. Allan's reporting helps to spark a resurgence of interest in the case that sees the file reopened, a review launched, a reward announced. As Allan gets closer to the truth, the story ends with a revelation no one was expecting, and the thirty-year-old mystery finally begins to unravel. Blood on the Tracks won a Walkley award for Coverage of Indigenous Affairs. This series was re-published with a bonus episode due to updates and advances in relation to the case.


In Season 6, Mr Big, journalist Alicia Bridges investigates a disturbing recording of a man admitting to a murder. She finds herself in a world of lies, gangland and subterfuge, where very few things are as they seem. Her reporting leads her deep inside an international controversy, to a world of secrets that powerful institutions don’t want revealed. 

In Season 5, Firebomb, Crispian Chan investigates what really happened after his family’s restaurant went up in flames in 1988. He was just a kid when Chinese restaurants were being firebombed in the dead of night and a campaign of terror was underway in Perth. Thirty-five years on, most of us have never heard about it, even though it’s one of the few sustained and coordinated terrorism campaigns in Australia’s history. Crispian teams up with ABC reporter Alex Mann, and together they traverse the country to find answers and explore the darker forces that still lurk in our suburbs today. Firebomb won the ‘Best True Crime Podcast Award’ at the Australian Podcast Awards in 2024. 

In Season 4, Snowball, Ollie Wards investigates how his brother’s whirlwind romance with a charismatic Californian woman ultimately cost his family more than a million dollars. When Greg Wards met Lezlie Manukian, a beautiful woman whose world is full of glamour, he is immediately drawn to her. They fall in love, get married and start planning the rest of their lives together - the only catch is Lezlie is a con artist. To find out who his brother’s wife really is, Ollie must