Helen and Riley on crime across Australia and New Zealand.
Helen and Riley cover cases from Australia and New Zealand, ranging from a cult that starved and beat its children to the unsolved disappearance of Leisl Smith. The case detail is sober and specific. The talk around it is loose and personal, and quick with a dry joke.
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Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast covers one patch of ground: crime in Australia and New Zealand. Helen and Riley present it together. The cases come as scripts, full of names, dates and sourced detail, but neither host treats the script as fixed, and their conversation keeps spilling over it. The range is wide. One case is The Family, a cult where children were kept out of ordinary schooling, beaten, and starved for days over things as small as dirtying their clothes, with a survivor's own words quoted along the way. Another is Jim Griffin, a Tasmanian nurse whose reputation as a father figure on a children's ward let behaviour that should have raised alarms slip past his colleagues. A third is the unsolved disappearance of Leisl Smith, told partly through her sister Grace's account of a volatile relationship and an apprehended violence order. A fourth is Joseph Thompson, the first convicted serial rapist in New Zealand, who tried to spoil a police DNA sample by smoking a cigarette just before giving it. What sets the show apart is the sound of two people reacting as they go. That cigarette trick earns a sarcastic 'good one' and a comparison to swilling mouthwash before a breath test. At one point a host stops mid-narration to flag a detail as unconfirmed. A cold open about cults wanders through a Netflix documentary and a joke about Florence Pugh starting one. They are just as quick to show plain disgust, and the nurse case draws it bluntly. The show also takes positions. In the Cleo Smith coverage, a case the pair followed while it was still developing and call their 'most live coverage yet', they say an apology to one man is not enough and hope for reparations. The same coverage sketches the accused man's upbringing and the history of the woman who raised him. The case of Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen begins with the rise of backpacker travel in the late 1980s, then moves to witness descriptions and a detective's conviction about a suspect. The chat also links episodes to each other. The hosts refer back to earlier episodes on William Tyrrell and the Crewe family murders, and the cold opens work like a diary: moving interstate, no longer living together, swapping the boot of a car for two separate recording spots, and real surprise at a Spotify Wrapped result. The Thompson case shows the balance clearly, with police procedure in one breath and a breathalyser joke in the next.
Made for: Suits a listener drawn to Australian and New Zealand cases who likes detailed, sourced narration broken up by two hosts' candid reactions and personal chat.
What sets it apart: Its focus stays on Australia and New Zealand, and scripted, sourced narration runs alongside Helen and Riley's constant commentary, from dry jokes to stopping mid-script to flag an unconfirmed detail.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast hones in on the world of Aus and NZ true-crime, from chilling unsolved disappearances to the most infamous serial killers. Join us as we take a closer look at the bad apples lurking in our own backyards.Leave us a review: https://lnk.bio/HlOI Bad Apple is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to elders past and present.
Snowtown calls for a Monopoly board; you get Helen and Riley's running commentary while keeping track.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grim, concrete account of how Up Top turned schooling, hunger, medication, and LSD initiation into tools of control.
Up Top is presented here less as a sensational cult story than as a close look at how control can become part of childhood routine. Helen and Riley follow the daily mechanics of that world: children kept from traditional schooling, taught inside the group, punished for small…
A careful return to Liesel Smith's disappearance, where every theory leaves something unresolved.
Liesel Smith's disappearance is revisited as a case pulled between several unresolved possibilities: Craig Elkin, alleged links to motorcycle gangs and drug dealing, organized crime, and the possibility that Liesel chose to go into hiding.
A children's ward nurse's trusted image is tested against survivor accounts and repeated boundary concerns.
Episode 45 looks at Jim Griffin, a nurse in a children's ward whose reputation for unusual kindness gave him close access to vulnerable patients and families.
A South Auckland case moves from fear and pattern-matching to DNA, surveillance, and Thompson's saliva test.
Bad Apple follows the South Auckland rapist case from the fear created by a run of home-invasion rapes through to the investigation that led to Thompson's DNA match.
Cleo Smith's rescue anchors a thoughtful look at media attention and missing Indigenous children.
Bad Apple sets the disappearance and rescue of four-year-old Cleo Smith against the larger imbalance exposed by the case's intense media coverage: why some missing children, particularly Indigenous children, receive far less attention.
A New Zealand disappearance case where rugged terrain and courtroom testimony keep the investigation uneasy.
Bad Apple follows an international backpacking trip through New Zealand that turns into a case defined by disappearances, difficult terrain, and trial evidence.
Two unidentified men, two train tracks, and the unanswered question of who they were.
Bad Apple follows two unidentified deaths on Australian train tracks, using the Pakenham Man and Birdswood Man cases to look at identity, isolation, and the assumptions that form when a body cannot be named.
Australian crime, remembered close up.
Sharp true crime around a very dark fire.
True crime with side-eye and velocity.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast focuses on Anne Hamilton Byrne and The Family, a cult based in Melbourne's Dandenong Ranges and Santa Nicotin Lodge.
Bad Apple follows the disappearance of 23-year-old Liesl Smith from Tuggeroo Railway Station on 19 August 2012, after CCTV showed her leaving her car and getting into a white ute.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Jim Griffin, a Launceston nurse whose alleged grooming and abuse of children is tied to Launceston General Hospital, Tasmanian police, and delayed institutional response.
["Bad Apple Episode 44 covers Joseph Thompson, identified in the episode as New Zealand's first convicted serial rapist, and the South Auckland attacks that led to Operation Park.", "Riley and Helen describe the 1993 Clendon Park DNA breakthrough, the 1994 blood sample from a 14-year-old victim, and the way investigators narrowed Thompson from a long suspect list.", "The episode traces Thompson's background in Fakatane, his childhood abuse, his Storm Troopers gang association, and earlier convictions for car theft and rape.", "It closes with his 1995 arrest, 129 charges including 46 counts of rape, a 30-year sentence with a 25-year minimum, and later parole hearings centered on rehabilitation and survivor safety."]
Bad Apple's "Episode 43 - 'My Name is Cleo'" traces four-year-old Cleo Smith's disappearance from the Blowholes campground near Carnarvon, Western Australia, on 15 October 2021.
Bad Apple hosts Riley and Helen examine the 1989 disappearance of Swedish backpackers Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen in New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula.
Helen and Riley examine the Pakenham Man and Burswood Man, two unidentified men killed on Australian railway lines ten years apart.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the 2006 deaths of premature twin boys Chris and Kru Kahui after extensive bruising led to their hospitalization in Auckland.
Bad Apple hosts Helen and Riley examine the 1982 Perth Mint Swindle, in which forged checks obtained 49 gold bars weighing 68 kilograms and worth more than $3.7 million today.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Peter Ellis, a Christchurch Civic Crèche worker accused of abusing children during New Zealand's early-1990s satanic panic.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the alleged poisoning of racehorse Farlap and the suspected poisoning of New Zealand's All Blacks before the 1995 Rugby World Cup final.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the September 1998 murder of 29-year-old Japanese traveller Kaio Matsuzawa in Auckland, after her body was found inside a Centre Court utility cupboard.
Helen and Riley investigate the 1942 Melbourne murders known as the Brownout Strangler case, involving three women killed within 15 days.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Air New Zealand Flight 901, which crashed into Mount Erebus on November 28, 1979, killing all 257 passengers and crew.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the disappearance of 11-year-old Joanne Ratcliffe and four-year-old Kirstie Gordon from Adelaide Oval on 25 August 1973.
Bad Apple hosts Riley and Helen recount how Pauline Parker and Juliet Hume murdered Pauline's mother, Honora, in Christchurch on 22 June 1954.
Bad Apple hosts Riley and Helen examine the Moe incest case, in which Em’s father R abused her for 28 years across multiple Victorian locations.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the 2018 Dunedin murder of 16-year-old Amber Rose Rush, whose throat was cut and whose phone was recovered from Blackhead Quarry.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the Tromp family's 2016 road trip from Sylvan, Melbourne, through Bathurst, Janolan Caves, Goulburn, Wangaratta, and Yass.
Bad Apple hosts Helen and Riley examine the 1986 theft of Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman from Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria.
Riley and Helen examine the 1970 murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe, whose 18-month-old daughter Rochelle was found alive after days without adequate food or water.
Bad Apple hosts Helen and Riley examine the Port Arthur Massacre, in which 35 people were killed in modern Australia's largest mass shooting committed by one perpetrator.
Bad Apple hosts Riley and Helen examine the 12 September 2014 disappearance of three-year-old William Tyrrell from Kendall, New South Wales, after he was last heard playing near his foster grandmother’s house in a Spider-Man costume.
Workmen found Agnes Ali'iva'a's body in a drainage canal in Keith Hay Park, Mount Roskill, on 14 February 1992, and police first estimated her age at about twenty.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the 1935 Sydney case in which a 4.4-metre tiger shark at Coogee Aquarium Baths regurgitated a human arm with rope around its wrist.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines five Adelaide murders linked by similar injuries, hypnotic drugs, and rumours of a group called The Family.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Antony Dixon's 2003 New Zealand crime spree, beginning with a samurai-sword attack on Simone Butler and Renee Gunby.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast revisits the Donville Rapist, later labeled Mr.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the 1934 discovery of a badly burned woman in yellow silk pyjamas near Albury, New South Wales.
Riley and Helen of Bad Apple examine the Claremont serial killer investigation after Justice Hall handed down a 619-page decision.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Minnie Dean, the only woman in New Zealand sentenced to death, through her foster-care work, disputed identity, and 1895 murder conviction.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the 17 December 1967 disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt at Cheviot Beach.
Bad Apple hosts Helen and Riley provide an abridged account of the Snowtown Murders, also called the Bodies in the Barrels, centered largely in Adelaide rather than Snowtown.
Bad Apple hosts Riley and Helen examine the 1994 Bain family murders in Dunedin, where David Bain returned from a newspaper route to find five relatives dead.
Helen and Riley examine Graham Potter, an Australian fugitive convicted of murdering 19-year-old Kim Barry in 1981 and missing since a 2010 sighting.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Grace Millane’s disappearance after her parents could not reach the 22-year-old British backpacker for three days following her birthday.
Bad Apple examines the 1986 disappearance of nine-year-old Samantha Knight from Bondi, after she was seen on Bondi Road with an unidentified man.
Riley and Helen investigate the 2006 Auckland kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Chinese language student Wan Biao, whose body was found in a suitcase in Waitemata Harbour.
Bad Apple hosts Helen and Riley examine Mr.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines the disappearances of Irena Asher, Cherie Vouston, and Kim Bambus around Mercer Bay and Piha Beach in Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges.
Bad Apple: A True Crime Podcast examines Catherine Knight's relationship with John Price before his death in Aberdeen on March 1, 2000.
Bad Apple hosts Riley and Helen examine the abandonment of three-year-old Xue Qian Xun, nicknamed Pumpkin, at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station after she arrived from Auckland with her father, Xue Na Ying.