A body discovered in a small Welsh town unravels a mystery steeped in New Zealand history that contains so many gradually-unfolding twists and turns you simply cannot look away. By Emma Hildesley
Watch The Body Next Door on TVNZ+.
The gripping – and at times grisly – three-episode documentary series The Body Next Door begins in the small Welsh mining town of Beddau when an almost perfectly preserved body is discovered in almost 40 layers of wrapping outside a block of flats in 2015.
The discovery sends the tightly-knitted town into a tizzy, as locals and detectives proceed to share their accounts of the ensuing murder investigation and their struggle to identify the corpse, despite the fact it had not yet begun to decompose and only appeared to have been dead a number of weeks.
After a number of somewhat-confusing revelations as to how the body even came to be found in that particular location and why, an eccentric neighbour identified as Leigh Ann Sabine emerges as a prime suspect after previously sharing a story about an old “medical skeleton” she apparently kept in her home.
The only problem — Leigh can’t be questioned about her involvement with the body as she died of brain cancer a month before the corpse was even discovered.
Investigators are left to ask themselves the question: who is this Leigh Ann Sabine?
Neighbours share anecdotes about Sabine’s personality and appearance over the years, colourfully painting her as an “over the top”, “hippie” sort of character who exaggerated her life while seeming generally well intentioned. Gossip spreads like wildfire through the small town as everyone has their own theories about whether this woman could truly be capable of murder.
By this point we’re only 30 minutes into the first episode and I’m hooked. A captivating storyline indeed with all the traditional codes and conventions expected of true-crime dialled all the way up.
Depending on who was asked, Leigh was from New Zealand or Australia or Reading, England. She had seemingly worked as a nurse, a drugs counsellor, or maybe a famous cabaret singer.
Either way, police began to uncover a plethora of confusion and family secrets that are eventually traced back to the Sabine’s early life in New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s, where she lived in Auckland with her husband John and their five young children, two boys and three girls.
Leigh and John Sabine first made headlines in New Zealand in 1969 after abandoning their children aged between two and 11 years old in an Auckland daycare and fleeing to Perth, Western Australia where Leigh hoped to pursue fame as a singer.
From this point, the first episode finishes on a punchy cliffhanger by introducing three of the remaining children, now aged in their 50s, who are given the opportunity to share their harrowing tales in their own words.
Without giving too much away, the second episode takes viewers on a psychologically dark journey as the Sabine siblings share some details of the physical, mental and sexual abuse they experienced as children in foster care after their parents first abandoned them.
It is a grim, if necessary, element of the story that builds on the picture of Leigh as a mother, “nasty, horrible, heartless bitch” (Jane’s words) and potential murderer.
Because the case was so high-profile, Australian media flew to New Zealand and tracked the Sabine family down. This encounter is captured through archive footage that truly appeared to capture the essence of New Zealand in the 80s and situates the story well with a definite time stamp that keeps the narrative on track.
More details are dredged from the shadowy darkness out into the light and onto the small screen, commanding attention right up until the end with revelations about half-siblings, murder weapons and small-town life in Bleddau that eventually lead to a jaw-dropping conclusion.
Even if you are not the kind of person to occasionally indulge in the true crime genre, this is the kind of fast-paced, well-told story that is as captivating as it is baffling. It pulls at multiple threads for its entirety before being neatly woven together in a satisfying conclusion.
Only then are you able to release the breath you didn’t know you were holding and proceed straight to Google to research all the extra fascinating ins-and-outs of this wild case.
The psychology behind the act of murder committed by Leigh Sabine – which admittedly is a relatively far-fetched concept in my own mundane life – and the unanswered questions that died with her will leave the story playing on your mind long after switching off the TV.
Watch The Body Next Door on TVNZ+ .
