True crime show ‘Halifax Homicide’ investigates local cases

Tieren Hawkins is proud to see his true crime show 'Halifax Homicide' streaming for all to see.

The show depicts six stories of homicide investigations that happened in the Halifax area, including a John Doe mystery and an episode on serial killer Michael Wayne McGray.

Each episode employs expert interviews and re-enactment scenes to retell the homicides Halifax has seen from the 1980s up to now. The show is also narrated and hosted by Halifax-based actor Kevin Jollimore.

“The show itself is Unexplained Mysteries meets Forensic Files meets your local evening news report,” said Hawkins.

Hawkins and his colleagues Chad Lindsay and David Mullins just had the six-part series go live late last month on Bell Fibe TV. The trio run a production company Sleepy Bear Productions based in Lower Sackville. The show was the first series production under their belt as a team.

“We’re very proud we made it the whole way through,” said Hawkins.

The production was a large undertaking for the three filmmakers requiring extensive research through documents, news stories and police interview footage related to the crimes.

“The way we write (the episodes) is we sat down with in some cases what worked out to be 400 pages of court documents and broke them down into 12-minute scripts,” said Hawkins. “The biggest part was finding cases that were somewhat recent, that had lots of public interest and lots of information and factual sources publicly available.”

While the team had access to a large amount of source material for episode-building, the COVID-19 pandemic hindered expert interviews to help flesh out the storylines.

Experts who also taught at post-secondary institutions that were scheduled to provide informative interviews for the stories had to back out in order to adapt and provide a virtual curriculum.

Throughout the entire process, Hawkins and his colleagues maintained a very local connection to the process. The entire show was filmed in the Halifax Regional Municipality, mostly in Hawkins’ hometown of Lower Sackville.

Another point of pride, he has about the production is the cast and crew. The show was created by over 50 local actors and a crew of 12.

“We were very fortunate to use a lot of Lower Sackville-based actors and Halifax-based actors of which this is their first national project,” said Hawkins.

Hawkins is not sure at this point if there will be a second season of Halifax Homicide, as Bell FibeTV 1 will be monitoring the show’s popularity.

Not one to rest on their laurels, Hawkins and company have already begun filming for a new show they have been commissioned to make for Bell about entertainment wrestling.

With the cameras rolling and their work already in the public eye, the crew of Sleepy Bear Productions are thankful for the opportunities coming their way.

“I’m very thankful that in my heart of hearts that we did this to the best of our abilities,” said Hawkins. “There’s no better feeling than knowing that someone sat down and watched it and truly enjoyed it and absorbed the information.”