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TV | Murder In The Badlands: Inga Maria Hauser



Four decades. Four innocent young women. Four brutal murders. Lisa Dorrian, Inga Maria Hauser, Arlene Arkinson and Marian Beattie are names that dominated the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and whose lives were each brutally cut short.


Murder In The Badlands, a new four part series for BBC Northern Ireland, will forensically rebuild the timeline of the murders of the four women and the investigations that followed.



The series features insights from surviving family members, police officers, journalists and criminologists.


Pictured is Inga Maria Hauser. Permission kindly grated by Hauser family.

The second programme in the series looks at the murder of German schoolgirl, Inga Maria Hauser, and contains powerful testimony from her surviving family – sister Friederike Leibl and her nephew Viktor Leibl.


In 1988, the body of the 18-year-old Inga was found at the end of a dark track within a remote part of Ballypatrick Forest. The murder of the young Munich tourist has never been solved.



The programme uses reconstruction and archive footage to forensically outline the events that are known surrounding her death. It features interviews with friends of Inga and some of the journalists and bloggers who have followed her case over the years. It also includes interviews with Jason Murphy, a Detective Superintendent from the PSNI; Hauser family lawyer, Claire McKeegan; and Councillor Helena Dallat O'Driscoll, the daughter of the late John Dallat MLA, who campaigned for many years to secure justice for Inga.


Hauser family's lawyer - Claire McKeegan.

Episode one in the series focused on Lisa Dorrian, a 25-year-old shop assistant from Bangor, County Down, who was last seen at a party at a caravan park in the village of Ballyhalbert in 2005. It is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer.


The story of 15 year-old Arlene Arkinson who disappeared in 1994 will be told in episode three. Her remains are undiscovered, but are presumed to have been buried in a large area of bogland and forestry along the border.


Inga Maria Hauser's sister, Friederike Leibl.

The final episode in the series will examine the murder of 18-year-old Marian Beattie. In 1973, her body was found at the foot of a cliff in a quarry at the end of narrow country road in Aughnacloy.


Murder In The Badlands was made for BBC Northern Ireland by Fine Point Films, in association with Cyprus Avenue Films, with an introduction voiced by Saoirse-Monica Jackson.



Murder In The Badlands

Monday 21 March

BBC One Northern Ireland, 10.35pm

and afterwards on iPlayer

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