Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott’s bid for freedom inadvertently backfires after parole date recalculated
The notorious Postcard Bandit’s bid for freedom has hit an unexpected snag that threatens to extend his prison term. Read the book extract before it hits screens.
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“Postcard Bandit” Brenden Abbott’s quest for freedom has inadvertently backfired, potentially extending his time behind bars by an extra 16 months.
The notorious bank robber and prison escapee is challenging the legality of his imprisonment in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.
However, the case has prompted renewed scrutiny, leading authorities to discover that his original parole date was mistakenly set 16 months earlier than warranted.
Initially eligible for parole in October 2026, a Justice Department review has revealed that Abbott is not actually eligible for release until February 2028 at the earliest – and his full term will expire in May 2030.
But if the court rules in his favour, Abbott could be immediately released. His case is due to return to court on August 11.
It comes as filming is underway in Fremantle for Binge’s new six-part drama series based on true-crime book “Australian Outlaw – The True Story of Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott,” by former Advertiser journalist Derek Pedley, who now uses his birth name Abe Maddison.
Adelaide-based Mr Maddison has been following Abbott’s case in WA.
“For Abbott, there has already been one unfortunate and serious consequence in this case,” he said.
“Until recently, he was eligible for parole in October 2026. But after he raised this case, the Justice Department looked at the numbers and has now said ‘no, you’re not eligible for parole, and your earliest release date won’t be until 2028’.
“So his bid to be freed has, ironically, already theoretically cost him 16 months of freedom.”
That said, Mr Maddison believes Abbott should be freed.
“He is 63, he has been a model prisoner for decades and is no longer a threat to anyone,” he said.
“He has well and truly paid his debt to society, and then some. Continuing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping him behind bars benefits no one”.
Abbott, whose nickname derived from the myth that he sent postcards to police while he was on the run, escaped from Fremantle Prison in 1989 and was recaptured in Queensland in 1995. He then absconded from a Brisbane prison in 1997 and was taken back into custody in Darwin six months later.
From then until 2016, he served his time in Queensland jails until he was released on parole in 2016.
Upon release, he was immediately returned to the custody of WA police to serve out the remainder of the time he still owed, including a subsequent concurrent prison sentence for the 1989 escape.
Australian Outlaw – the true story of Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott
By Derek Pedley
Instead of drugs hidden in body cavities, the 135,000 people who now visit Fremantle Prison each year usually bring questions and cameras. They stare in awe at the limestone relics and the graffiti, poetry and art left behind by the thousands of men who wasted large parts of their lives here.
Tour guides retell the events of January 1988 in hushed tones. Some were prison guards, and some were here on those two terrible days. As chilling as the tours are – especially by candlelight – the sights and stories of a tourist treasure cannot recreate the long-gone pungent odours of a crowded prison filled with angry men.
On January 4, 1988, the unmistakeable institutional smell Brenden Abbott knew so well hung heavily in the air. Pine disinfectant used to wash down the floors in the divisions each day mingled with the polish applied to the old jarrah floors. The stale body odour was constant, particularly in the remand yard. Six hundred prisoners – double its approved capacity – sweltered within Fremantle’s walls. The temperature topped 42 degrees that day and was 10 to 12 degrees higher in the limestone kilns known as cells.
The trouble began at the 7am ‘first unlock’. A prisoner in Main Division, Bruce S, was slow to leave his cell and got a hurry-up from a warder. The inmate knew his abusive reply meant trouble, but as one ex-prisoner says: ‘People start whacking people for very little reason. The hotter, the more trivial.’
Bruce and the warder locked horns, resulting in the former being dragged, kicking and yelling, to an observation cell in New Division. He remained upset and hostile; word spread that the warder had bashed him.
Later in the day, the prison’s chief officer spoke to New Division’s senior officer and said he thought the inmate should be moved out of the cell.
The prisoner entered Main Division’s exercise yard, where other prisoners held a meeting. They demanded to see the superintendent, but settled for an examination of the prisoner by medical staff, which confirmed the presence of marks on his face and neck.
Abbott recalls:
It was through negotiations between a few inmates and the screws that resulted in Bruce S being brought back. Everyone was on edge and a decision was made to keep most of the inmates who worked in the prison industries in the exercise yards that afternoon. After hearing what he’d endured, it was decided a riot was on. I couldn’t help myself and voted myself in, as did Glenn and about 20 other blokes to begin with.”
When the inmates huddled together in conversation in Main Division and Two Division, worried warders requested the presence of the feared Metropolitan Security Unit. The request was refused.
Two Division inmates stuffed a note inside a tennis ball and threw it across to the exercise yard in Three Division: ‘We’re out at the moment. Don’t leave us posted. Reply straight away.’ Soon after, the ball sailed back. Handwriting experts later identified the author as one of the ringleaders, notorious rapist Paul Stephen Keating: ‘Two Division, hang on. Stay cool.
We are in the process of deciding. Give us 3.30pm. We won’t weaken. Just give us time.’
A decision was made to put all prisoners back in their cells, but confusion gripped prison officers. Three Division inmates were allowed into their cells about 3.40pm to unload their gear. They counted the number of officers in the division and when they returned to the exercise yard, their plan was clear. But when they were called in for dinner, landing by landing, there was a terrible ‘mistake’:
Abbott: “Our defence was that we were only carrying out as we were ordered. Some screws would say over the loudspeaker, ‘right, G and H inside.’ And on this day we did. It was just a misunderstanding. We all thought he said: ‘riot’.”
The call for G and H was also Abbott’s cue. He saw a despised prison officer nearby on the phone and thought to himself that the man would soon be in trouble. It was his job to disable any officers at the gate to allow other inmates to storm the narrow, barred barrier.
Abbott: “In front of me were about six inmates who were none the wiser as to what was about to unfold. But the cleaners, who were dishing out the meals, were clearly wound up and ready to rock and roll. As I came through the gate, I made out I was about to reach for a plate, but I quickly spun around and with the base of my palm, landed a forceful blow in an upward strike on the jaw of the screw on the gate. The impact dropped him to his knees and then I held the gate open, yelling: ‘Go, go, go’. The rush through the gate caused a bottleneck at first, but soon the numbers were coming through and what followed can only be described as utter mayhem.
The despised officer Abbott had seen then tried to flee to the doors of the division, near the phone he was on. Abbott swears he saw a senior prison officer push this officer back through the division doors and then lock them.
Next thing [the despised officer] was surrounded by a sea of green and everyone was trying to land a fist or boot into him. The wooden tables were turned up and the legs disappeared in a flash. A screw who was standing directly behind the tables just put his hands up and casually walked to the end doors that led to New Division. Not a finger was laid on him because he was respected by most inmates.
Some inmates grabbed the stainless steel buckets of boiling tea and water that were sitting in readiness for the evening meal and threw them over some prison officers. It made the concrete floor slippery and one inmate tried to throw the contents of his bucket, only to slip and land heavily on his back – a moment of comedy noted by many in the pandemonium.
Abbott: “Prison officers on the upper landings retreated through the doors to Two Division, while others came down the stairs, only to be overpowered. Screws from Two Division had come through the A and B landing’s large wooden doors and started to head in our direction. Some of us headed to take them on and, in doing so, put ourselves in the line of fire from those behind us who decided to use the steel plates as projectiles. The screws retreated back through the doors. We soon overran the division and the screws were out, or so we thought.
“No sooner had the division been taken and other inmates not involved in the initial plan made plans of their own and started to torch some cells. My understanding was that Main Division was to be taken first and then when One Division and Two Division were taken, we would burn the whole place to the ground. Some of us actually went upstairs and tried to put the fires out. Some were screaming out to those lighting fires for them to stop, but it was all in vain. Before long, the place was well ablaze and we had to withdraw to the yard, once every cell was checked to make sure no-one was left locked up. Taking hostages wasn’t talked about in the planning either, but like the cells being torched, others had their own plans.”
Of the 12 warders in Three Division, five were caught on the ground floor. The fire added to the confusion, allowing the inmates to take control. Fifteen prison officers were injured in the ensuing clashes. A ringleader, armed robber Gary Roser, would later tell a court:
“My immediate concern was that the MSU were in the division, flogging prisoners over the meetings we had had that day … it was just mayhem. There were prisoners everywhere, plates getting thrown, people screaming.
David Gaudie, a prison officer for only two weeks, was beaten senseless, dragged into a cell and locked in with another officer. When he came to and saw the smoke, he thought the worst. But because of a bad gash to his head, the inmates released Gaudie shortly after they seized control. After the fire spread, five other warders were taken from the cells and led to a corner of the Three Division exercise yard. Roser later told a court:
“I heard some prisoners say: ‘Let’s belt the screws’. I then turned around and yelled out to all the prisoners: ‘Nobody is to touch these officers’.”
Roser, with about seven other inmates including Brenden and Glenn Abbott, warned the guards not to move or their safety could not be guaranteed. One of the warders later told The West Australian: “All we could do was sit and talk to them [the prisoners] and be as friendly as possible. We assured them nothing would happen to them and hoped to Christ we were right.”
Abbott: “The scariest thing about the riot was the sight of men who had totally lost all self-control. The manner in which they carried out some of their attacks on the screws was sickening to watch. It was like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy. It’s a wonder that any of the screws weren’t killed or more seriously injured. Most didn’t deserve what was dished out to them. In fact, some were quite reasonable in their dealings with inmates.”
By 5pm, thick smoke poured across the port city. The rioters barricaded themselves in the exercise yard, pushing a fridge and benches against the grille gate. Inmates threw rocks, lumps of asbestos roofing and iron bars at firemen and yelled: ‘Let it burn, it deserves to burn’.
Firefighters managed to save more than three-quarters of the prison, despite the difficulties in reaching the fires. The flames licked at the polished jarrah floors and beams but they were slow to catch alight. Shadows lengthened around the prison, now surrounded by police, who quickly took over the situation.
As night fell, 135 inmates remained on the loose inside Fremantle’s walls. Only the five hostages prevented the Metropolitan Security Unit and half the city’s police force from storming the yard. The prisoners’ lawyers later told a court there was no plan to riot and take hostages. The rush to the Three Division gate was spontaneous; the fires lit by unknown prisoners acting alone; and everyone in the prison — including the guards — had no choice but to go into the yard. There, they were held by armed police who never asked or told the warders to leave. The prisoners were hostages as much as the warders.
The tensions simmered after darkness fell. Another group of prisoners, not involved with the hostages, stockpiled rocks and bricks below the prison’s north wall. Warders split the group in two and at 9.45pm, mounted a baton charge. They shouted: ‘Stay against the wall or you will be shot.’ The inmates wisely complied and were led away by the warders. In another part of the prison, the remaining 360 prisoners not involved in the situation were locked down. Police negotiators, headed by Bob Kucera (later a state Labor minister), began the task of saving the lives of the five prison warders.
Inmates held aloft sheets with messages written in charcoal. They demanded face-to-face communication with the Attorney-General, Joe Berinson, access to Corrective Services executives and a promise of no physical retribution against rioters. Most were convinced it was only a matter of time before the Special Air Service regiment, based at nearby Swanbourne Barracks, stormed the prison. But no-one was going in yet. The exercise yard seemed likely to turn into a bloodbath if the crisis wasn’t handled properly. At 1.30am, warders in riot gear entered the prison and soon all areas were secure, except for the Three Division exercise yard. No-one slept. The long, hot night dragged on. The yards had water, but no food. A hostage recalls:
First thing in the morning was the danger period, when they wanted food. Their spokesman warned the negotiators that if food was refused, they would leave us, walk away and let us suffer for it.
The police weren’t sending out an order for a mountain of hamburgers without something in return. The breakfast cost one hostage, followed by two cartons of cigarettes for the second. The three remaining officers ate breakfast while negotiations continued.
Late in the morning, nearly 19 hours after Brenden Abbott delivered his upper cut at the Three Division gate, Police Minister Gordon Hill broadcast a message to the prisoners over the radio, assuring them of fair treatment. The last three hostages were released and the prison retaken.
The West Australian’s legendary crime reporter, Cyril Ayris, toured the prison on January 5. He described the exercise yard as like a bearpit in a third-rate zoo, with inmates lying on concrete or pacing like caged lions. The pungent odours of the previous day were gone, masked by the stink of fiery destruction.
Extract from Australian Outlaw – the true story of Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott (available on Amazon Kindle, $7.99).
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