Greatest escapes: Australia’s audacious band of jail breakers and fugitives
AUSTRALIA’S criminal fraternity have been trying to bust out of prisons and evade police since the wild colonial days of the fledgling nation. Here’s some of our most audacious jail breakers and fugitives.
NSW
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AUSTRALIA’S criminal fraternity have been trying to bust out of prisons since the wild colonial days of the fledgling nation.
One of the first and greatest escapes involved English convict William Buckley, his name now linked to Australian folklore through the saying ‘Buckley’s chance’.
Transported to NSW in 1803, he later escaped and was given up for dead.
But Buckley was befriended by a group of Aborigines and for the next thirty-two years continued to live among the Wathaurung people.
He was eventually granted a pardon by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land.
Here are some more contemporary tales of the state’s most audacious jailbreaks, escape plots and fugitives.
‘Catch me If Ya Can’
ONE-TIME drug dealer David Brooks, who taunted police in a series of videos on his online blog after going on the run, has been arrested in South Australia.
The 48-year-old self proclaimed former member of the finks bikie gang had been on the run since February 21 after he failed to report for parole in Newcastle.
He then began posting a series of videos where he made fun of the police.
“Get yer f**kin shit together, you still haven’t found me, you f***s,” Brooks said in one of the video posts.
Brooks’ boasting annoyed police enough that officers from the state’s anti-bikie squad tracked him down, just days after The Sunday Telegraph revealed details of his cheeky blog.
Malcolm Naden
THE story of Malcolm Naden captivated Australia and made international headlines when, in 2012 and after eight years on the run, NSW Police made breakthrough in the hunt for the nation’s most wanted man.
Naden, wanted at the time on murder and indecent assault charges, was sensationally brought down by police dog Chuck and his handler senior constable Luke Warburton after midnight on March 22, 2012.
His arrest brought closure to a sustained four-month effort to track him down following the shooting of an officer hunting him through Nowendoc, 60km north of Gloucester on the mid-north coast.
Before 2012 though, the search for Naden had drawn on for eight years and leads on his whereabouts were rare.
Naden vanished from Dubbo in 2005 after being linked to the 2004 indecent assault of a young girl and later murder of 24-year-old Kristy Scholes. He was also wanted in relation to the disappearance of his cousin Lateesha Nolan.
After eight years on the run from police, Naden was captured in 2012 and pleaded guilty to 18 offences including the murders of Nolan and Kristy Scholes in 2005.
He was sentenced to life in prison.
John Killick, The Helicopter Escape
Killick, who is now in his 70s, gained international notoriety after his Russian lover hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint to fly him out of prison in 1999.
In 1983, when Killick met his Russian lover Lucy Dudko, nicknamed “Red Lucy”, he was already on run after escaping Brisbane’s Boggo Road Gaol — with the help of another lover — while he was being escorted to hospital for an eye injury.
Dudko, a beautiful librarian, fell for Killick and during the 1990s the pair were constantly on the move to keep ahead of the law. Killick also robbed a number of banks to keep them in money and finance his gambling habit.
But the law finally caught up with him in NSW during a failed bank robbery in January 1999 when he was 57 years old.
Facing the prospect of an extended time apart, the couple hatched a daring escape plan.
In a scene reminiscent of the Charles Bronson film Breakout, which Dudko actually rented a week before the jail break, the 48-year-old organised a helicopter joy flight then pulled a shotgun on the pilot Tim Joyce.
The helicopter had been hired to fly over the construction site of Sydney Olympic Park, which was conveniently close to Silverwater jail where Killick was being held in Sydney’s west.
With a sawn-off shotgun pointed to his head, Joyce was directed to land the helicopter in the jail’s exercise yard where Killick was waiting.
As the helicopter took off, other prisoners tried to grab on to the aircraft and hitch a ride as guards opened fire on the bizarre scene. The escape made international headlines.
The pair hijacked a car and had the authorities chasing them through Victoria and NSW for 45 days. The law eventually caught up with them at Bass Hill Tourist Park, where they had booked a cabin under the names Mr and Mrs MG Brown. Police surrounded the couple while they slept after someone recognised them.
George Savvas, The Falsie Escape
George Savvas was doing 30 years for planning to import 80kg of drugs into Sydney when he walked out of the jail’s visitor’s area in July 1996, wearing a false beard, moustache and wig.
Savvas had been moved to Goulburn after he was caught hatching an escape plan while in Maitland. Eight months after his escape, a mysterious caller, codenamed Black Fox, telephoned police to tell them the notorious drug boss was at a city restaurant. He was found eating steak and drinking red wine, with a gram of cocaine in his pocket.
Back in Maitland, he immediately started plotting another escape. He and serial killer Ivan Milat planned to scale an eight-metre fence covered in razor wire, but were caught out by guards. Savvas took his own life a day later.
Brenden Abbott, The Postcard Bandit
In 1989, Fremantle inmates Brendon Abbott and Aaron Reynolds disguised themselves as officers in outfits they had tailored in a prison workshop and climbed over the jail’s wall.
Abbott went on the run, allegedly sending police photos of himself at tourist landmarks, including Uluru, during a wild tour of Australia (although this has been dismissed as rumour).
The armed robber staged a second escape from a Queensland jail in 1997, when a girlfriend smuggled in “angel wire”, which he and four others used to cut their way out.
His associate Brendan Berichon fired a rifle at guards driving a van while the inmates fled, helping Abbott lie low in Melbourne. But after a shootout with police, the Postcard Bandit skipped town and was arrested in Darwin the following month.
Russell “Mad Dog” Cox
RUSSELL “Mad Dog” Cox broke out of Long Bay prison in Sydney with two others in 1975, taking a guard hostage and threatening to shoot him unless the gates were opened. But their vehicle was rammed by a truck and the gang were caught.
Mad Dog was slapped with a life sentence at the escape-proof Katingal special security unit, where he tried a more subtle approach.
He found a spot in the exercise yard that wasn’t under surveillance and began gradually cutting through a steel bar with a hacksaw a little each day. In November 1977, he told a guard he had left a sneaker behind, returning to the yard, bending the bar back and jumping the barbed wire fence.
He was not found for 11 years, when he was caught in a dramatic police shootout in Melbourne. Cox was charged with eight armed robberies and implicated in the 1982 pub murder of Brian Kane, but didn’t do any extra time for his escape after convincing a court that Katingal was not legally a jail. He now lives in Queensland.
Armed robber Robert Cole escaped Long Bay in 2006 by shedding 14kg and squeezing out of his window through a gap he had chipped between the bars and bricks.
The Great Parramatta Jail Break attempt
A 15c phone call by Michael Murphy, one of five men who would go on to rape and murder Anita Cobby, blew the lid on a plot by rapists, murderers and robbers to dig their way out of Parramatta jail in what would have been Australia’s greatest ever prison escape.
The call from the infamous killer prompted the search that would stop a “Shawshank Redemption’’ style jail break 18 months in the making.
Their tunnel was concealed by a wardrobe in the cell initially occupied by Anthony Lanigan, then by the mastermind Murphy.
Through 1978 and 79, the seven men took turns in digging a tunnel to the linen company next door to the prison. Finally the hole was completed and the time for escape was set.
But Murphy couldn’t resist telling someone, so he called his grandmother, letting her know that he would be home by Sunday.
Unfortunately, she rang the prison back and asked what time he would be released, not realising he was planning on escaping. The prison guards became suspicious and searched his cell, discovering the tunnel just hours before the scheduled escape.