The Lighthouse podcast series on missing Belgium tourist Theo Hayez surpasses million downloads

A podcast series about the mysterious disappearance of tourist Theo Hayez in Byron Bay is proving popular.

A six-part investigative podcast series about the mysterious disappearance of tourist Theo Hayez in beach side town Byron Bay has captured the attention and hearts of people around the country and Belgium.

The Australian's latest series, The Lighthouse, has been downloaded more than one million times since its launch on November 1, and has held the No. 1 spot on Apple's podcasts chart in Australia for six weeks. It also reached No. 1 on the chart in Belgium.

David Murray, the newspaper's national crime correspondent, says the purpose of the podcast series was to find the 18 year-old who disappeared on May 31, or what happened to him. Mr Hayez was less than a fortnight away from returning home to start an engineering degree when he disappeared, after arriving in Australia last year in November.

“It’s been very different than most podcasts of its kind because a lot of those cases covered elsewhere are cold cases or events that happened years ago,” Murray said. "Whereas this is something that has just happened, you're talking about starting this two months after someone went missing, and the whole idea was to do it as quickly as possible to try to reach people while memories were still fresh and that’s why we’ve turned it around in three months.

“We’re trying to reach people who might have been there, who might have seen something, who might not even know that they've got relevant information, and that’s the beauty of the podcast, it’s free and it can go all around the world.”

The podcast series is the latest undertaken by the newspaper, including Nowhere Child: Missing William Tyrrell, Who the Hell is Hamish? and The Teacher's Pet, as part of News Corp’s push to expand its digital offering.

The Lighthouse was researched, written and narrated by Murray, and was edited by musician Chris Bosley, who also scored the original music in the podcast.

The Australian's video editor Eric George was executive producer. Each episode is the equivalent of about 10,000 words.

Since the launch of The Lighthouse, Brisbane-based Murray has been getting calls from people around the country and all over the world.

“I’m getting lots of tips and information and feedback from people that I'm following up; and so I'm doing interviews everyday still through the whole process while writing it and putting it together,” Murray said. He has also been doing “a lot of media interviews with Belgium media”. Murray was approached by Mr Hayez’s family and members of the Byron Bay community at the end of July to do the podcast, in a bid to find out what happened.