Inmate Darko Desic worked bottle shops and lived in Cessnock and Avalon in 30-year run from law

NSW police drew blanks for years looking for Darko ‘Dougie’ Desic, who escaped Grafton three decades ago before lying low in rural Argents Hill, Avalon and Cessnock.

At family gatherings 30-year fugitive Darko Desic would often narrow his darting eyes and joke with anyone who could decipher his thick Croatian accent that “No one knows the real Darko”.

“It was a silly joke, he’d trot it out at family functions but it was true,” his cousin Jason Desic, from Arncliffe, said.

“He married an Australian wife to stay in the country when he fled Yugoslavia to escape military service — but none of us knew she even existed. And he skipped jail here, we only found out because he was on television’s Australia’s Most Wanted.

“Cops would come looking for him, saying there was money owed to Darko and to tell him to get in contact. He never did.

The most recent image of Darko Desic, who handed himself in to police after 30 years on the run. Picture: GoFundMe

A much younger Darko Desic.

“There was always something going on behind his eyes, you never knew what he was thinking — he‘s very quiet but a big character.”

Darko was a similar enigma for NSW police, who drew blanks for years looking for him after he escaped Grafton prison just 13 months into a three and half year sentence for growing marijuana 30 years ago.

Desic, then 35, had allegedly used a hacksaw blade and bolt cutters to break free from the century-old jail in August 1992, masterminding an escape that afforded him decades of carefully orchestrated freedom living under the radar.

It was an easy existence compared to the poverty in Yugoslavia he left as an 18-year old in 1975.

Until last Sunday, when he turned himself in to Dee Why police station saying life back inside was better than being homeless and living on the sand dunes of Avalon.

Desic pictured writing home to Croatia in 1985.

A picture of Darko Desic confirmed by a family relative

He told officers he had lost his home, on Barrenjoey Rd, Avalon Beach, after his cash-in-hand work dried up due to Covid.

The self-taught classically trained guitarist lived a solitary existence surviving on cash jobs manning the bottle shop at the Newport Arms in Avalon in the ‘90s and enlisting his services at local estate agencies as a handyman fixing rentals.

His aunt Diana Desic, 87, recalled his visits to her remote rural property in Argents Hill for two years from 1998 before he went on to Avalon Beach to rent a unit.

“He just vanished, he would visit for family affairs but no one knew when he would come and where he’d go.

“He was secretive, he said he lived nearby. He worked a few months at the Newport Arms. A pleasant fellow, good at classical guitar, but he never gave anything away,” she said.

In the late 1990s, Desic rented a single-storey home on Therry Street in Avalon and no one noticed him for two years. That was until his barking Doberman chained in the yard at night caused neighbours to complain to the RSPCA in December 1999.

“He always paid the rent on time and was working as a handyman for estate agents,” said his landlady at the time, Gerals Williamson.

“When the RSPCA came I had to evict him and he left the next morning. Never had a clue he was on the run, and he used his real name too.”

Desic had found love fleetingly with a woman named Doris in Croatia and a Sydneysider known only as Gwen.

“We used to laugh at him saying he has a Doris in every town,” his cousin Jason said.

Desic was sentenced to a maximum of three years and eight months in prison in 1991 after being convicted on two counts of cultivating cannabis.

Private investigator Luke Athens: “Anyone can go undetected”.

Desic is now the focus of a northern beaches fundraising campaign.

He will pick up where he left off with his jail sentence.

He was also charged by police with escape by prisoner from lawful custody – a sentence that carries a maximum seven-year sentence.

“Anyone can go undetected if you put your mind to it,” said private investigator Luke Athens.

“You would have to remove yourself from social elements, and not really get too well-known or connected to individuals – so his would have been a pretty lonely existence.”

A fundraising campaign by Northern Beaches residents aimed at getting Desic a lawyer and securing his release from jail has raised more than $23,000.