Real Crime with Adam Shand

A new show from Adam Shand. Welcome to The Adam Shand Collection

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Series 1 - Creating Mr Cruel.

For more than 30 years, the name Mr Cruel has haunted Melbourne. 

He was meticulous, terrifying and seemingly vanished without a trace  leaving behind one of Australia’s most disturbing unsolved crime mysteries. But in this gripping six-part investi...

When Sergeant Benedict Bryant pulled into Henderson Road on the morning of February 19, 2022, he had travelled 800 metres from Redfern Police Station to respond to a serious crime in progress. What followed took 3.9 seconds, and cost him his career, his finances and his freedom.

Adam Shand is joined by Retired Chief Inspector Paul Fownes, who has been supporting Bryant's legal fight and fundraising appeal. Together they examine the...

She didn't stumble into cold case forensics: she invented it.

Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick is a nuclear physicist, former rocket scientist, and the founder of California-based Identifinders International, and she's the woman who pioneered the technique now known as forensic investigative genetic genealogy. Adam sits down with Colleen to trace her remarkable journey from laser science and space shuttle research to building family trees t...

What began as a conversation about Ned Kelly, Dezi Freeman and the myth-making around Australia's most notorious outlaws, suddenly took an unexpected turn, and became something far more powerful.

Adam Shand was a guest on his mate Luke Bona's Bonafide podcast to explore the parallels between Kelly's rebellion and Freeman's modern-day sympathisers, and the romanticised legacy of Australian bushranging. But when Luke's Indigenous ide...

DNA evidence has been called the gold standard of forensic science — but is the justice system placing too much faith in it?

Adam Shand speaks with Jae Gerhard, one of Australia's leading independent forensic scientists, about the hidden limitations of DNA evidence and what they mean for criminal prosecutions. A former scientist with the Australian Federal Police and NSW Police Force, Jae now works as an expert witness advisi...

Graeme Alford had it all mapped out: a criminal law practice in Melbourne, the trust of the underworld, and a fast-track to the top. Then the drinking and gambling caught up with him. He raided his client trust fund, did time in Pentridge and on release somehow managed to pull off one of the most inept armed robberies in Australian history - earning himself a second lagging.

Inside, something shifted. Graeme bulldozed the wreckage ...

Four Australian women, known as the ISIS Brides, returned home from Syria in May this year. Two were charged with crimes against humanity and slavery offences allegedly committed overseas. A third faced terrorism-related charges. And yet another 20 or more remain stranded in Syrian refugee camps, unable to get home.

The question isn't whether we like them. The question is whether the law applies equally to everyone.

Adam Shand is j...

When Doug Morgan first sat down with Adam Shand, the plan was simple: get both twins on the record, tell the full story of Victoria's After Dark Bandits, and move on. Nearly a year later, Adam is back with Doug for one final conversation — and this time, it's personal.

More than fifty years on from the bank and betting shop robberies that defined their notoriety, Doug Morgan is done looking back. He's running youth workshops,...

More than a century separates them, but the cases of Harry "Breaker" Morant and Ben Roberts-Smith share a troubling echo — Australian soldiers prosecuted for killings carried out in the fog of war, on foreign soil, in conflicts already morally compromised by the powers that sent them there.

Adam Shand sits down with Sydney lawyer Tony Taouk of Magna Carta Lawyers, whose essay in Lawyers Weekly drew a compelling parallel betwe...

Victorian police officer Stuart Grimley has seen it all — three years as a Kalgoorlie copper rubbing shoulders with the Gypsy Jokers, stints in Major Drugs and Crime Command and two years working sexual offences cases that left images he'll never unsee. Then, in 2018, he did something most cops never do: he got elected to State Parliament under Derryn Hinch's Justice Party banner.

He lost his seat in 2022 and went back to Vic...

Melbourne is burning. A mystery cartel is laying siege to the city's hospitality industry — firebombings, drive-by shootings, bashings at family homes — and nobody knows exactly who's behind it, or why.

Herald Sun crime reporter Seb Costello has been on the frontline of the story, breaking exclusive after exclusive using old-fashioned shoe leather. Adam and Seb unpack what's known, what's rumoured, and what keeps not ad...

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-w...

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...

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 i...

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 highes...

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 ...

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 tw...

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 ...

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 indiffe...