Someone's Hunting Us

NJ.com's investigative true crime podcast Someone's Hunting Us reached #3 on Apple Podcasts' global Top Series chart in April 2026, with its in-depth investigation into the disappearance of 15-year-old Mawa Doumbia from Newark, New Jersey, in 2016.

A Disappearance That Never Let Go

In 2016, Mawa Doumbia vanished from Newark — a city in New Jersey already struggling with high crime rates and an overstretched police system. The case did not immediately attract national attention, but it stayed with the journalists at NJ.com, New Jersey's largest news platform. The newsroom spent over a year digging into the case: interviewing witnesses, reviewing police reports, and speaking with Mawa's family and the people who knew her.

The result was the podcast series Someone's Hunting Us — a title that suggests Mawa Doumbia's disappearance was not an isolated incident, but perhaps part of a larger and darker pattern. missing persons USA

From Local Journalism to Global Reach

What makes the series' success remarkable is that it grew out of local journalism — not from a major entertainment network or an established true crime production house. NJ.com is primarily known as a regional news source for New Jersey, and it is precisely that local grounding and access to sources that has given the series its credibility and depth.

Apple Podcasts chose to spotlight the series in April 2026, and its placement at #3 in the Top Series category underscores that listeners around the world have a powerful appetite for investigative journalism in podcast form. true crime podcast

The trend reflects a broader shift in the media industry: newspapers and local newsrooms that might once have published a single article about an unsolved case are now investing in long-form audio journalism — a format that allows for nuance, source work, and storytelling that unfolds over time.

What Drives the Global True Crime Hunger?

Someone's Hunting Us is a strong example of the format that investigative journalism podcast has turned into a cultural force since Serial broke through in 2014. The series combines the classic true crime formula — a young victim, unanswered questions, a system that failed — with the documentary weight that distinguishes journalistic podcast production from purely entertainment-driven true crime shows.

For international listeners, the series is also a masterclass in the methods that drive the best investigative podcasts: patient source-building, document review, and the willingness to sit with a story long enough to find what others missed.

More Than Entertainment

Behind the chart positions and streaming numbers lies a reality: Mawa Doumbia was a young person whose disappearance changed a family and a community. The fact that the podcast series now reaches millions of listeners globally gives the case a visibility it never received in 2016. For NJ.com's journalists, the project took more than a year — and the result demonstrates that thorough, patient reporting can still produce stories that outlast the news cycle and enter the global consciousness.