By STACEY BODGER
On December 1, 1998, a small Bay of Plenty farming community woke to the news that one of its residents had been murdered.
She was Beverly Bouma, a Reporoa farmer, keen gardener and mother of three.
Early in the dewy morning, Bouma's husband, Henk, had run barefoot across the couple's farm paddocks to raise help.
As the Boumas slept in bed the night before, four armed men had broken into their home and confronted them.
After a brutal ordeal that lasted most of the night, Henk Bouma found his wife of nearly 25 years dead on the floor of their daughter's bedroom.
Beverly Bouma's murder was to horrify the country, particularly rural home-owners who feared they could be the next victims of a home invasion.
At the same time as news of the killing reached Rotorua police, a television camera crew was at the station.
They were there, by chance, as part of their regular filming for reality-TV show, Police.
Throughout 1998, the crew's production company, Communicado, had been trying to persuade police to let them film the inner workings of a homicide inquiry.
The negotiations paid off.
As senior police officers raced to Reporoa, their journey was recorded on film.
Operation Bouma - the police investigation and the television documentary - were both under way.
The police hunt for Beverly Bouma's four killers took five days.
During that time, the cameras followed Detective Inspector Graham Bell, of Rotorua police, and his 60-strong team's intense inquiry.
The result is a fascinating insight into the pressures and relentless workloads faced by the officers in their hunt to find the four men.
The documentary, which screens tomorrow night, is no-frills and fast-paced, capturing the initial investigation at the murder scene and the high-profile inquiry which followed.
It is intriguing viewing, showing the Operation Bouma team's satisfaction as information on the suspects floods in from a public desperate to bring Mrs Bouma's killers to justice.
But it is also frank - making no attempt to gloss over the team's conflict over tactics and frustration at dead-ends as the days tick by and public pressure mounts.
Bell is seen reprimanding his staff and manipulating the media.
The debate over when to release information is also intriguing.
Bell has videotape footage from a service station that identifies one of the suspects but withholds the vital images from the media until the time is right for police - against the advice of some of his colleagues.
But the most intense part of the documentary is the end - five days into the inquiry - when the team closes in on its quarry.
Beverly Bouma's four killers are arrested during a dramatic seige on a small, impoverished forestry community.
The team's adrenalin and excitement are palpable as they capture each of the four men. It is evident that this part of the officers' jobs is compensation for the gruelling hours.
The documentary is not the first to take viewers behind the scenes during a police investigation. That was covered earlier this year by a documentary on the hunt for Travis Burns, the man convicted of murdering Whangaparaoa mother Joanne McCarthy.
But its tale is equally compelling - the murder of a mother and the quest to find her killers and make them accountable.
* Operation Bouma Tomorrow, TV2, 8.30 pm
TV: Cameras go behind lines of Bouma murder inquiry
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