Bank robber and serial escapee Bernie Matthews dead at 71

Bernie Matthews, who famously escaped Sydney’s Long Bay Jail before committing four armed robberies, has died aged 71.

Infamous bank robber and serial escapee turned best-selling author Bernie Matthews has died aged 71.

Matthews famously escaped from Sydney‘s Long Bay Jail in 1970, committing four armed robberies during six weeks on the run.

He was one of the longest-serving prisoners in the notoriously brutal Katingal Maximum Security Unit at Long Bay in the 1970s where he later wrote he did not see daylight for two years eight months.

Bernie Mathews. Picture John Grainger

He last got out of jail in 2019 and recently told former NSW cop Gary Jubelin in a podcast that he had put his criminal days behind him after spending 28 of the past 52 years in nine jails, five in NSW and four in Queensland where he used to live on the Gold Coast.

He has been living in regional NSW where he has been battling cancer.

He became a prison activist, campaigning against prison informers and running a halfway house for ex-prisoners. He turned into a celebrity with the publication of his book Intractable and articles he wrote for various publications.

Matthews died aged 71.

Katingal: Sydney's maximum security prison within a prison.

He became a guest lecturer to police students at the University of Western Sydney where former NSW detective Mick Kennedy, who ran the bachelor of policing program, described him as one of the toughest men he had ever met.

In the podcast, Matthews told Jubelin that he was in Katingal when armed robber Russell “Mad Dog” Cox became the only prisoner to escape from the jail within a jail, using a smuggled hacksaw blade to cut through bars in an exercise yard. Cox remained on the run for 11 years.

Matthew’s last arrest in 2008 was at gunpoint by heavily-armed Tactical Operations Group members and he served 11 years for supplying drugs and guns.