Court in the Act: How Adam Geoffrey Rybicki inflicted a campaign of terror and punishment on Perth women

There are plenty of fish in the sea, so the saying goes. But looking for love online can sometimes be a terrifying and dangerous experience.

Adam Geoffrey Rybicki looked like any other young man looking for love on online apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.

But behind his everyday exterior lurked a self-confessed woman hater who would go on to inflict “campaigns of terror and punishment” on dozens of Perth women he met online.

Exchanges began innocently enough, but at the first sign of rejection, the 33-year-old would “flip out” and start bombarding his matches with more than 100 threatening texts and calls a day.

Victims of the serial stalker were left shell-shocked and frightened — many unable to trust again.

He was caught but changed his name to Tom Lewandowski. And the cycle of abuse began again.

“This man, who she said was unlike anyone she’d ever met before ... had crept into every facet of her conscious and subconscious mind,” The West Australian’s court reporter Sarah Steger says of one of Rybicki’s victims.

“That fear ruled her for a very long time.”

On the final episode of Court in the Act for 2023, Steger tells host Tim Clarke how she broke the story and even found herself the target of Rybicki’s vitriol.

Listen now.