Campside Media, the podcast company behind the hit Chameleon franchise, is launching its first wholly owned original series.
The Sister-backed firm is launching White Devil, the story of the shooting of Henry Jemmott, which made headlines in 2021.
It comes after Campside had previously partnered with a range of podcast distributors and networks on previous shows. It has worked with the likes of Sony, Wondery, iHeart, Audible, Apple and SmartLess on shows and has recently worked with Ballen Studios and At Will Media on its first scripted show, Run, Fool, has a multi-show deal with Tenderfoot TV, which it has also partnered on for Cop City as well as Beckham producer Ventureland as well as worked with Jessica Rhoades’ Pacesetter on Kelly and the Satanic Panic.
“For over 30 shows to date, we have been fortunate to work with great distribution partners across the industry, but we are excited to connect with audiences directly through Campside Originals and hope this is the first of many projects to fall under that banner,” said Adam Hoff, co-founder of Campside Media.
Hoff’s other cofounder, Josh Dean, the host of Witnessed: Fade To Black, which explored the disappearance of missing screenwriter Gary DeVore, is hosting White Devil. The series premieres on May 6.
White Devil tells a story that begins late at night on May 28, 2021, when a single gunshot shattered the silence along the beach at Belize’s luxurious Alaia resort. When authorities rushed to the scene, they found veteran Belizean police superintendent Henry Jemmott — a Black man — floating in the water, dead from a gunshot to his head. And the 32-year-old Canadian partner of the son of the country’s most powerful man —a white woman named Jasmine Hartin — alone on the pier, covered in blood.
Hartin swore that the shooting was a terrible accident and was taken away in handcuffs. She was charged with manslaughter by negligence, and everyone assumed, given her father-in-law’s influence in Belize, that she would simply pay a fine and walk free back into her privileged life.
Instead, Jasmine was locked away in the country’s most notorious prison, iced out by her adopted family, cut off from its fortune, consumed by a heated battle for custody of her children, and accused of a number of outrageous acts, including plotting to have Belize’s top cop, and the judge presiding over her custody case, killed. But in White Devil — and in Belize — nothing is ever as it seems.
For the past 18 months, Dean has been investigating this case, following its twists and turns while talking often to Hartin and the ever-shrinking circle of confidantes around her, as well as Belizean locals, journalists, and expats, to tell the story.
“This project started with an email from a friend, and I never expected to get much past the tabloid story I originally read about this case,” said Dean. “But after pulling on one thread, the whole thing unraveled into a story not at all like what I was expecting. The crime story here is just a trojan horse into a sprawling yarn about power, corruption, and the dying embers of colonialism.”
White Devil will be season one of an as-yet-unnamed franchise that will investigate global crime stories. The franchise is likely to mix occasional limited series with seasons built around specific countries — Brazil, Mexico, Japan.
