Real Crime with Adam Shand

Podshape True Crime
  • 4.6 (25)
  • TRUE CRIME
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Join investigative journalist Adam Shand each week as he takes you into his world of real crime, honed from forty years of covering Australia's biggest law and order stories. These are the firsthand stories of the cops, robbers, and victims who lived them.

  1. 7 HRS AGO

    The Tobacco War: Australia's Billion-Dollar Black Market | Chris Vedelago

    Australia's illicit tobacco war has a new front — and it's more dangerous than ever. When tobacco kingpin Kaz Hamad was captured in Iraq earlier this year, many hoped it would signal the beginning of the end for the country's booming black market cigarette trade. Instead, his disappearance has thrown the market into chaos, and the firebombings, shootings and targeted attacks are back. Adam Shand sits down with Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Chris Vedelago of The Age, who has been at the forefront of covering this story since the violence first erupted in March 2023. Together they trace how a government excise policy — designed to discourage smoking — inadvertently handed organised crime a multi-billion dollar opportunity,and how one man, operating from a prison cell, built a cartel that came to control 40% of the illicit drug trade in Australia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    36 min

  2. 5 DAYS AGO

    The Prince of the Painters and Dockers Union | Ron Isherwood

    Ron Isherwood was born into Melbourne's underworld — son of Big Ron, a feared enforcer in the notorious Painters and Dockers Union. By 16, he'd fired his first shot. By 17, he was facing attempted murder charges. By 19, his mother was dead and heroin had taken over everything. In this episode, Adam speaks with Little Ron — now 71 — about growing up in the shadow of a violent, domineering father, his front-row seat to Melbourne's painters and dockers wars and his close brush with Roger Rogerson, the corrupt detective who silenced anyone who got too close to the truth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    53 min

  3. 3 MAY

    The Unbreakable Road Back | Sam Jones

    Sam Jones did hard time, faced drug and weapons charges, and by his own admission had a very twisted idea of what it meant to be a man. At 37, he's something else entirely — a trauma counsellor using breathwork and lived experience to help others find their way out. In this episode, Adam speaks with Sam about the childhood wounds that set him on a path of crime and addiction, the fake brotherhood he found and the six months in a Sunshine Coast rehab that changed the course of his life.  Find more about Sam Jones and Unbreakable here: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.unbreakablespirit.co_&d=DwMFAw&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=QRM3oaA988YHZWJl3EPR_CLNVsMUzP7PSqo8KYpcnWo&m=zMMZS6xvI0806EzWLZwxCuRWKQysMF4mCmcB0lSS6dhXaiFclSDNUyXGUI0tAE8G&s=HiI2Bf5muUqcWcYfPy9yiqQqMBK-_Ok_b2af1EVqfGA&e= See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    45 min

  4. 28 APR

    Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Ben Roberts-Smith Case | Philip Dunn KC

    He is Australia's most decorated living soldier — a Victoria Cross recipient charged with the alleged murder of five unarmed Afghan detainees. But does losing a civil defamation case make Ben Roberts-Smith a convicted war criminal? Adam Shand thinks not, and he's found one of the country's most experienced criminal defence barristers to explain why. Philip Dunn KC has spent a career in the criminal courts defending the highest-profile cases in Australian legal history. In this episode, he unpacks the critical difference between a finding on the balance of probabilities and the far higher bar of proof beyond reasonable doubt — and why confusing the two is dangerous. He also examines the dramatic and arguably prejudicial arrest of Roberts-Smith, the extraordinary use of four indemnified witnesses, the absence of forensic evidence and the very real threat that relentless media coverage poses to a fair trial. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    39 min

  5. 26 APR

    The After Dark Bandits: The Morgan Twins [Part Two] | Peter Morgan

    Peter Morgan was one half of Australia's most audacious crime duo — identical twins who pulled off a string of armed robberies and became the country's most wanted. In Part Two of Adam's conversation with Peter, the story picks up in the aftermath of the 1979 Heathcote bank robbery, in which Senior Constable Ray Koch was shot. Peter recounts the desperate hours after the shooting — hiding from roadblocks, hitching into Bendigo, and coming within seconds of a second violent confrontation with an off-duty officer. He reflects on the psychological weight of Pentridge Prison, how he broke out of not one but two so-called escape-proof jails and what it really took to walk away from crime for good. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1hr 7min

  6. 21 APR

    The After Dark Bandits: The Morgan Twins [Part One] | Peter Morgan

    He spent two years terrorising country banks and TABs across Victoria. He shot a police officer. He robbed the same bank three times. And he did it all as one half of Australia's most audacious criminal duo — the After Dark Bandits. Peter Morgan is the lesser-heard voice of the infamous Morgan twins. While his brother Doug has told his side of the story, Peter has stayed largely silent — until now. In this first of a two-part conversation, Adam Shand sits down with Peter for an afternoon-long interview months in the making. They go back to the beginning: a hard-working, hard-living builder father who moonlighted as a bank robber; a childhood steeped in tough love and frontier masculinity; and the twin upbringing that would eventually see two identical brothers take turns behind the balaclava across 27 armed hold-ups — without police realising there were two of them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1hr 12min

  7. 19 APR

    Front Row Seat: The Job That Never Leaves You | Jason Doyle

    When two Victoria Police officers were murdered by sex offender Dezi Freeman, it shone a harsh light on what frontline policing really costs. Adam Shand sits down with recently retired Victorian officer Jason Doyle — whose raw column in The Age sparked national conversation, to talk about a career lived entirely on the road. From welfare checks that turned deadly, to serving in the aftermath of Black Saturday and losing a close friend in the fires, Jason opens up about the split-second decisions that never leave you, the PTSD diagnosis he pushed through for years and the moment the nightmares finally broke him. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    42 min

  8. 14 APR

    Where Is Rigby Fielding? | Stephenie Fielding

    In 2016, Adam Shand covered the disappearance of Rigby Fielding in a single radio segment — and then moved on. Ten years later, Rigby's family is still waiting. Rigby Fielding was 53 years old when he vanished on August 15, 2015, after calling his mother to say he was on his way home from Perth to Rockingham. He never arrived. Now his sister Stephenie joins Adam to walk through a decade of unanswered questions, police indifference, and a trail of leads that were never properly followed. His bag was recovered in bushland near the Spectacles Wetlands — a known meeting place for gay men. A person of interest was quickly cleared without explanation. CCTV footage from Perth train station, the last confirmed sighting, went missing. Dating app chat logs were never investigated. And all the while, the family knocked on doors, called hospitals, and were told he was 53 — he was allowed to go missing. Stephenie believes foul play was involved. Adam agrees — and draws a direct line to the Bondi hate crimes of the eighties and nineties, where a pattern of dismissal allowed killers to go free. With only six officers in Western Australia's entire missing persons unit across 2.5 million square kilometres, the system was failing Rigby before the search had even begun. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    31 min
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4.6
out of 5
25 Ratings

About

Join investigative journalist Adam Shand each week as he takes you into his world of real crime, honed from forty years of covering Australia's biggest law and order stories. These are the firsthand stories of the cops, robbers, and victims who lived them.

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