Australian crime, remembered close up.
Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule is a plain-spoken Australian crime series built around cases that still leave marks. It moves from child murders and police shootings to prison stories, cold cases, wills, witnesses, and the small details that make old files feel present.
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Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule is Australian true crime told with the instincts of a crime reporter. It does not float above the material. It gets down into roads, courtrooms, prison corridors, police habits, family histories, newspaper offices, and the remembered geography of Melbourne and regional Victoria. One week may trace the horror of Arthur Freeman and Farquharson through custody, resentment, and the aftermath for families and emergency workers. Another may follow the life and death of Desi Freeman through name changes, conspiracy thinking, police confrontation, and older examples of violence against police. The show can be harsh. It is also careful with the sort of detail that gives a case weight: a car in a deep former quarry, a witness spared by a traffic light, old school friends remembering the two Sues, or a former prison officer explaining how bribery starts with something that looks almost practical. Conversations matter as much as narration. Bill Ayres brings the Russell Street bombing back through newsroom memory. Brian Coghlan turns prison life into a string of close-up stories about charm, danger, corruption, and strange routine. Olivia Jenkins appears in a bonus episode tied to Hunting Justice - The Easey Street murders. The show is not only about murder. It also makes room for inheritance disputes, hidden parentage, crimes of carelessness and cruelty, and the long reach of family lies. When it looks overseas, as in the tracker dog episode, it still comes back to practical police work and what closes a case for families. The register is conversational, but not casual about harm. It has an Australian directness, with legal and police terms used because the stories require them. The result is a grim, detailed, sometimes dryly amused crime show for listeners who want the file, the street, the witness, and the aftershock in the same frame.
Made for: For listeners who prefer detailed Australian true crime over polished suspense machinery. It suits people interested in Victorian cases, police work, prisons, reporting culture, and the human wreckage behind legal facts.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its combination of reporter memory, concrete local geography, and interview-driven reconstruction. It feels less like a scripted documentary and more like experienced crime journalists and witnesses sorting through hard material while the details are still warm.
Subscribe to Crime X+ today.Andrew Rule is one of Australia's most prolific journalists and authors. In Life and Crimes, the True Crime Australia and Sunday Herald Sun columnist shines a light on the dark corners of Australian life, from the story behind the biggest mysteries, to the characters of yesterday and the crims of today. Produced by Jonty Burton.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Andrew Rule turns firsthand memories and precise questioning into grounded accounts of Australian cases, policing and the people shaped by both.
Andrew Rule works through crime by letting firsthand memory and procedural detail carry the story. A witness reconstructs the Russell Street bombing from inside a nearby newsroom, while conversations about tracker dogs and remote policing explain how investigations work through…
A moved office may have saved a reporter's life; Andrew Rule lets that detail stay with you.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grim, tightly grounded account of parental violence and its lasting aftermath.
Andrew Rule shapes the episode around two brutal acts of family violence, keeping the focus on what happened and where it happened: the Westgate Bridge in 2009, and the 2005 deaths after the white VN Commodore left the Princes Highway and fell into a seven-and-a-half-metre…
A newsroom-level memory of the Russell Street bombing, told by people who were there.
Life and Crimes treats the Russell Street bombing as a newsroom memory, with Bill Ayres at the center as the chief police reporter at the Herald in the mid-1980s and on duty the morning the blast hit.
A newsroom-honed lead-in to a long case that has finally moved again.
Andrew Rule uses this bonus episode to build a hard-edged lead-in to Hunting Justice, with the Easy Street Murders, years of reporting, and the recent arrest in Rome giving the story its charge.
A grounded conversation about tracking dogs, police work, and the real value of a good nose.
Andrew Rule talks with Dr Kobe Webb about breeding and deploying bloodhounds and tracking dogs, with New York State Police, Maryland State Police and the LAPD all in the picture.
A relaxed summer guide where crime fiction, audiobooks and English entertainment meet dry holiday banter.
Life and Crimes treats the silly season as Andrew Rule frames it: time away from the big bad city, with sunburn, beer, books and screens all part of the same holiday drift.
A bush-policing yarn that ends with a car, a pole and a deadpan shrug.
Backup is three hours away, and Part 1 opens with an arresting image: an occupied grave, a headstone and a man shoveling from inside, before settling into Andrew Rule's conversation with former Malakuta policeman Mark Tregellis.
Sharp true crime around a very dark fire.
True crime with side-eye and velocity.
True crime with real-time reactions.
Andrew Rule and producer Jonty Burton share their summer reading and viewing recommendations, focusing on true crime and related media.
Andrew Rule interviews former policeman Mark Tregellis about his book 'Backup is Three Hours Away'.
Marty Fields recounts how he was nearly scammed by a sophisticated podcast impersonation scheme.
Peter Norris recounts his childhood as the son of a bank robber, including a tense incident at a TAB and his father's appearance on Australia's Most Wanted.
Andrew Rule marks the death of Fergus Cameron at Phillip Island by retracing the night of 22 September 1986, when his lover Beth Barnard, 23, was killed and his wife Vivian vanished.
Andrew Rule uses the Arthur Freeman case to revisit parents killing their children, starting with Freeman’s 2009 death of Darcy on the Westgate Bridge and the prison assault that followed.
Andrew Rule examines the life and death of Dezi Freeman, a man who killed two police officers, questioning whether he was born evil or made that way.
Andrew Rule marks 40 years since the Russell Street bombing and Bill Ayres, then chief police reporter for the Herald, revisits the day his newsroom was hit by the blast.
Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule presents Brian Coghlan's account of 26 years as a prison officer, including a racing pigeon linked to contraband deliveries at the Pennine young offenders unit.
Andrew Rule interviews former prison officer Brian Coghlan about his transition from racing photographer to working in a tough prison.
Andrew Rule and Olivia Jenkins open with the September 2024 Rome arrest of Perry Karoumbas, a dual Greek-Australian citizen who was 17 when Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett were killed on Easy Street in Collingwood.
Andrew Rule says Victoria has overtaken New South Wales in car theft, with more than 30,000 cars stolen a year and roughly 6,000 to 7,000 of them never recovered.
Andrew Rule introduces a story about an old man who died without a will, uncovering a family secret involving a crime of the heart.
Andrew Rule speaks with Dr Kobe Webb, also called Captain Webb, a former Riverside County Sheriff's Department officer who spent more than 25 years training scent dogs.
Andrew Rule and producer John Burton discuss holiday reading and documentary recommendations, including a timely documentary on Sean 'Puff Daddy' Coombs.
A truck driver faces losing his licence due to a mechanical glitch, which would also prevent him from driving his quadriplegic son to medical appointments.