Real Crime with Adam Shand

In this powerful episode, Adam reunites with Tom De Souza, a young man he first met a decade ago while documenting Tom’s descent into methamphetamine addiction in the podcast Meth Destruction. Tom was just 13 when he spiralled from scholarship student to juvenile detention, drug use and violent crime.

Now 30, Tom has found sobriety, purpose, and a sense of home within himself. He’s travelled the world, become a journalist, and is directing a feature documentary — The Long Road Home — exploring identity, redemption and his journey across Indonesia by motorbike. In a raw and deeply moving conversation, Adam and Tom reflect on the moments that saved him, the ones that nearly destroyed him, and the friendships that shaped both paths.

When Australia’s most volatile moments unfold — a siege, a suicide attempt, a hostage situation, or a person in deep crisis — there’s one specialist quietly working to bring everyone home alive: the police negotiator.

In this gripping episode, Adam sits down with Leading Senior Constable Lee Wolahan, one of Victoria Police’s most experienced and respected negotiators. Across more than 800 critical incidents, Lee has faced people at the edge — physically, emotionally and psychologically — and helped guide them back to safety.

In this episode, Adam sits down with Australia’s most recognisable criminal psychologist, Tim Watson-Munro — a man who has spent nearly 50 years staring into the darkest corners of the human mind. From Parramatta Jail in the 1970s to some of the most notorious cases in Australian criminal history, Tim has assessed thousands of offenders, earning the trust of hardened criminals and the respect of courts and the public. But Tim’s story isn’t just about what he witnessed, it’s about what it cost him. At the height of his career, the weight of extreme violence, trauma and expectation began to take its toll. 

Illegal tobacco is no longer a back-alley trade — it’s a billion-dollar criminal economy fuelling arson, extortion, murders and a full-blown underworld war across Australia. In this explosive episode of Real Crime, Adam Shand uncovers how half of all tobacco consumed in Australia has slipped into the shadows, and why the government’s own excise regime is driving the demand.

Adam speaks first with freight-forwarding director Kelly Crossley, who is on the frontline of the smuggling pipeline. She reveals how syndicates exploit the container trade, steal legitimate ABNs, forge identities and slip tonnes of illicit cigarettes through overstretched border systems — sometimes within sight of police stations.

Then Adam sits down with former AFP officer Rowan Pike, who established Australia’s first illegal tobacco strike team. For a decade, Pike warned that sky-high excise, lax policy, and a lack of coordinated enforcement would create exactly the chaos we’re seeing now. Pike breaks down how the black market exploded, why seizures barely make a dent and why Australia is now facing a criminal landscape more profitable than the drug trade.