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Guest Character Profiles > Liv Bellen Cece Peters

The voice behind true crime podcast Crimesborough, which looked at crimes in Erinsborough, Liv Bellen was unapologetic when her latest episode, The Poisoned Plonk, looked like it might cost Leo Tanaka his livelihood. Someone had poisoned a bottle of wine from Leo's vineyard, leaving Dex Varga-Murphy in hospital, then a unknown person calling themselves Illegally_Blonde_07 had posted on Crimesborough's fan forum that Leo had taken the poisoned bottle and had it tested privately before giving it to the police. Liv used this information to make a second podcast episode on the subject, doubling her listeners in the process, but when Holly Hoyland realised that Leo's business was being badly damaged by these stories, she admitted to her friend Sadie Rodwell that she was the one who'd made the post on the forum. She explained that, whilst working at Lassiters hotel, she'd overheard Leo talking to his girlfriend Krista Sinclair about the bottle, but hadn't realised the implications when she'd posted the information.

Hopeful that she could fix the problem, Holly arranged to meet with Liv, explaining that Leo had only had the bottle tested as he thought it might be a manufacturing problem, and he wanted to see if he could help. She insisted that Leo had done nothing wrong and that drug dealer Shannon Rutherford, who Leo had reported to the police, was a far more likely culprit. Liv pointed out that the police had already spoken to Shannon and had only charged her with trespass, but couldn't link her to the poisoning. Holly then tried a different angle, suggesting that she could get her a staff discount on rooms and massages at Lassiters, so Liv agreed to look into Shannon as a suspect. Hopeful that she'd fixed the whole mess, Holly was worried when Leo approached her later and said that Liv had released a new episode of Crimesborough, which stated that a member of Lassiters hotel staff had tried to bribe her into covering up Leo's guilt.

As Liv continued to hassle Leo for an interview, with her podcasts doing more and more damage to his business, a guilty Holly decided that she was going to find the poisoner herself. A second person had been poisoned at a Chinese restaurant in Eden Hills and, although the poison had been worked out by Dr Gavin Bowman at the hospital, the whole scandal was still causing a lot of drama and bringing in listeners to Crimesborough. Holly decided to visit the Chinese restaurant, Erin's Bao, where she spoke to manager Erin Chong and, pretending to be from the council, asked to see the CCTV footage. Holly spotted food influencer, and Liv's best friend, Tatiana Tang, on the footage and came up with the idea that Liv and Tatiana had been behind the poisonings, as Liv's increasingly successful podcast could bring in a lot of money. Having found a picture on social media of Tatiana at a cafe near Leo's vineyard on the day the wine was poisoned, she was more convinced than ever and arranged a meeting with Liv.

As Holly started to accuse Liv and tell her that she had evidence, her friend Mackenzie had realised that Holly had made a mistake - the photo of Tatiana was a year old, and Liv had a solid alibi which had been checked by the police. As an argument broke out between Holly and Liv, Mackenzie arrived just in time to see Holly spray the podcaster in the face with hairspray. Learning of her mistake, Holly apologised but it appeared that Liv was determined to have her charged. Fortunately for Holly, Leo's girlfriend Krista, of the wealthy Sinclair family, was determined that Liv wasn't going to get away with the trouble her podcast was causing. She met with her and warned that, if Liv didn't drop the charges against Holly, then she and her family would launch a defamation case against Liv, which would cause her listeners to lose confidence and prevent her from selling the podcast until the legal action was over. Liv reluctantly agreed, dropping the charges against a delighted Holly, but it looked like the damage had already been done where Leo's business was concerned.

However, Holly was unable to let the matter drop and, when she heard Dr Gavin Bowman, the man who'd diagnosed which poison had been used on Dex, talking on the podcast, he became her latest suspect. Holly tracked down Liv and asked for a preview of the second part of her two-part interview with Gavin, but Liv refused and was incredulous when Holly suggested that he might know more about the poisonings than he was letting on. Holly decided to do some more detective work of her own and, after learning from her dad and Dex that there'd been some kind of complaint against Gavin at the hospital, she used Karl's ID to get into the hospital's records room, where she found a letter to Gavin saying that he was on his final warning and would lose his job if he didn't improve his behaviour. Though she was caught by Dr Remi Varga-Murphy, Holly continued her own investigation, visiting Gavin at the hospital and claiming to be Liv's assistant, wanting a short pre-interview. When Gavin started ranting about how he wasn't allowed to say anything without offending people anymore, Holly realised how bitter he sounded, only adding to her theory that he'd been doing the poisonings, then saving people's lives, to save his job and get some positive attention.

Episodes Featured
9057, 9062, 9063, 9066

Biography by Steve

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