A continent of no laws

A Kiwi investigative journalist has spent 21 years trying to get to the bottom of what many believe is the suspicious death of an Australian scientist in Antarctica.

- RUTH BROWN

Journalist Stephen Davis has gone deep into investigating several modern mysteries. His digging into British Airways flight 149 that landed in Kuwait just hours after the Iraqi invasion in 1990, causing its passengers to be held hostage, has resulted in new court action on behalf of the passengers and is being made into a Sky UK feature film. Under his The Secret History of ... banner, he has also investigated the disaster of the sinking of the Estonia, a ferry crossing the Baltic Sea.

In his latest investigation, Davis, a former Listener columnist, has released a six-part podcast on the death of Australian astrophysicist Rodney Marks in May 2000 at the American-run Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He paints a picture of Antarctica as the Wild West, where a wall of silence prevented a proper police investigation into what is widely considered to be a young scientist's suspicious death. He's still not done on finding out exactly what happened.

Rodney Marks died from methanol poisoning but how it happened has not been formally established. What have you found out about his death?

We've identified prime suspects. There were two people who, in police terminology, had the means, motive and opportunity to murder Marks. But so far, they've refused to speak. Likewise, the police will no longer comment.

Are you hopeful Marks' killers will be brought to justice? 

I'm not giving up. Some days I'm hopeful, some days, not. But if you'd asked me about my investigation into BA149, after many years of pursuing, I thought there was no chance of justice. And now, suddenly, we seem to be getting some justice.

What else have you uncovered about Rodney Marks' death?