True Crime Scene details the escapes from Pentridge Prison in its 140-year history

PENTRIDGE Prison housed Victoria's most notorious criminals but they didn't always stay behind the bluestone walls. 

Pentridge prison escapes

For more than 140 years Pentridge Prison housed Victoria's most notorious criminals. But the bad guys didn't always stay behind the bluestone walls.

Pentridge Prison in Melbourne's north housed Victoria's most notorious criminals, including 1920s gangster Squizzy Taylor, Hoddle St gunman Julian Knight, Russell St bomber Craig Minogue and Mark "Chopper" Read.

Most escapees were recaptured within minutes or days, some were found overseas years later, but a few were never heard of again.

Corrections Victoria could not supply the Herald Sun with the names or full number of escapees since the prison was established, but various records show at least 120 inmates - and probably many more - managed to escape the authorities during the prison's history, including 48 in 1851 alone and 53 between 1974 and 1993.

Among the escapes were four high-security prisoners from the Jika Jika maximum security wing.

According to a government spokesman: "The Department of Justice does not have comprehensive records of prisoner escapes from Pentridge Prison prior to 1974, and those on record in the 1970's may not be reliable."

Australian bushranger Frank Gardiner, incarcerated for stealing 24 horses from a settler in the Loddon Valley, was one of the first to successfully break out of Pentridge.

On March 20, 1851 a group of about 17 inmates rushed the guards and fled. Nine of the convicts were rounded up but Gardiner was one of the lucky ones.

He managed to reach New South Wales and was on the run for another three years before eventually being caught and sentenced to 14 years.

In August that same year 31 prisoners successfully escaped. One was shot dead, seven were recaptured and 23 got away.

Security was stepped up in 1853 in attempt to keep more criminals behind bars but a spree of successful breakouts and more attempts followed.

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According to From Pentonville to Pentridge: A History of Prisons in Victoria the daring and clever escape by master criminal Pierre Douar in 1890 lead to an inquiry.

Douar had stolen a bunch of skeleton keys and a small T-shaped tool with a screw-tip which he used to remove the lock on three gates, before relocking them and walking to freedom.

His escape was not discovered for some time.

In 1901, two convicts, John Henry Sparks, "the Rutherglen highway robber", and John O'Connor, a "desperate" burglar, escaped.

O’Connor was re-captured in Sydney two weeks later, but Sparks was never seen again.

And in July, 1926 John Keith Monson, 22, made a daring escape from Pentridge with fellow prisoner Richard Morrenci.

The career criminal, also known as John Keith Stokesbury and Jack Keith Monson, was recaptured several weeks later in Western Australia.

It wasn’t his first escape. Two years earlier, Monson and two others were caught breaking into a Fremantle laundry by police, but according to newspaper reports, Monson broke free and ran handcuffed through the street.

But like his escape from Pentridge, Monson was recaptured shortly after.

Pentridge prison escapes

In 1952, Kevin Joiner died in a dramatic escape attempt. He was shot by a prison warder, staggered a few meters and then collapsed into a bed of lilies in a church garden along Sydney Rd.

Moments earlier he had threatened the warders with a hand-made pistol, painted black to resemble an automatic.

His accomplice in the escape also failed to get away. Maxwell Skinner was pushed from the jail wall in a scuffle with a warder and broke his leg.

Career criminal Ronald Joseph Ryan - and the last man to be hanged in Australia - was serving time in Pentridge for armed robbery when he escaped with a fellow inmate Peter Walker on December 19, 1965.

Using two wooden benches, a hook and blankets Walker and Ryan scaled a 5m wall as prison officers attended a staff Christmas party.

Pentridge prison escapes

Pentridge prison escapes

On the run they robbed a bank in Ormond, in Melbourne's south east, and then went to Sydney in search for a safe house.They were caught in Sydney 19 days later.

Ryan was found guilty of shooting and killing prison officer George Hodson during the escape and was given the death sentence.

Serial armed robber Gregory David “Doc” Smith, dubbed the “Building Society Bandit”, and another prisoner, Trevor Jolly, pulled off a brazen daylight escape from Pentridge Prison in 1980.

He left a painted message on his cell wall to one of the prison warders saying “Merry Christmas, Mr Williams”.

Jolly was soon caught but Smith took refuge among students and friends in the union movement. He escaped to New Zealand from Perth, then went on to India.

Smith vanished until he was arrested in Germany a decade later.

Convicted rapist and double murderer, “Mr Stinky” Raymond Edmunds was serving life in Pentridge when he attempted to break out in 1992. He hid in the back of a delivery van but was detected by sniffer dogs at the last security point.

Fourteen years later MicroSearch Human Presence Detection Systems - also known as heartbeat scanners - were introduced to Victoria's prisons to help prevent this kind of escape.

The scanners, which are attached to vehicles leaving a prison, use seismic sensors to test for the presence of a heartbeat, quickly exposing any person who might be hiding inside.

Dennis Mark Quinn was the last person to escape from Pentridge. The 27-year-old sawed through two bars in his cell and used a rope to get out of the window and over a wall, on November 16 1987.

He left a painted message on his cell wall to one of the prison warders saying “Merry Christmas, Mr Williams”.

Quinn travelled by ship to New Zealand, where his family lived, but was recaptured 19 days later.

Pentridge escapes, Jika Jika

In 1980 a $7 million new maximum security section called Jika Jika opened at Pentridge.

The “jail within a jail”, devised to house the roughest and longest serving criminals and prevent break outs, was later renamed K Division.

But despite being designed as escape-proof, four prisoners escaped from Jika Jika in 1983. They included Robert Lindsay Wright, David McGauley, Timothy Neville and David Youlton.

Over a long period, the prisoners groomed and convinced staff to leave the doors of the unit open to the exercise yard due to fumes from some hobby glue that was used when doing leatherwork.

After planning their escape for up to three months, the prisoners exited through these doors, cut the metal cage - which was situated above the exercise yard - and escaped over the perimeter wall.

Four years later both Wright and McGauley were among five inmates who died in a blaze started by prisoners in the Jika Jika section.

The fire was believed started after prisoners lit a pile of clothes and mattresses stacked against a door.

The prison closed in 1997, after a long campaign by local authorities to shut the facility, and has since been redeveloped.