DAWSON CREEK -- Following much anticipation and behind-the-scenes work, the episode is now out. Dawson Creek: We Want Our Town Back can be viewed here.

The CBC's The Fifth Estate will be kicking off its 50th season with an in-depth look at the violent crime in Dawson Creek. The highly anticipated episode, titled Dawson Creek: We Want Our Town Back airs this Friday.

It was a tip from a viewer that brought the premier investigative journalism team from Toronto to the Peace Region. The team spent weeks in the Peace Region reporting on the unsolved murders and the drug turf war.

The Fifth Estate spent two days with CJDC's News Director Michael Popove and met with several family members and police.

Timothy Sawa, a producer for The Fifth Estate shared that they have gathered new information on some of the cases. 

"It’s hard to appreciate the amount of pain and trauma that people are going through, that have been impacted by the drug trade, by the violence around the drug trade. I think we all read headlines and we know about it but when you meet the people who are living it … it hits you," Sawa shared when asked about his experience working on the project.  

The Fifth Estate reached out to CJDC TV News this spring. Sawa says it was an easy decision to work with us on these cases.

"It didn’t take much ... to realize that your station has been covering this very closely and doing an incredible job of covering the crime almost daily ... you would search and there would be CJDC with a story, breaking news or new information or an investigation, new details tonight over and over again," said Sawa.

 An in-depth article on the episode and their findings will be up Friday morning on The Fifth Estate website. The episode airs this Friday at 9 p.m. Viewers can catch it on The CBC, or their streaming service CBC Gem. It will also be available on The Fifth Estates YouTube channel the day it airs.

You can also read the accompanying digital story, called ‘We want our kids back,’ on cbc.ca/news as of 4 a.m.on Friday Oct. 10th.