Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott’s legal bid for freedom to hit West Australian Supreme Court next week
A high-stakes legal bid to walk out of jail by Brenden Abbott, the nation’s most notorious armed robber and prison escapee best known as the Postcard Bandit, is about to hit the court.
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Australia’s most notorious armed robber and prison escapee will make a high-stakes court bid for freedom next week.
Brenden Abbott has been behind bars since the 1980s, only seeing the streets for a few years spent as Australia’s most wanted man after making audacious prison breaks.
A two-day hearing in the West Australian Supreme Court will decide whether the man known as the Postcard Bandit should now walk free.
Lawyers for the prolific bandit, who is being held at maximum-security Casuarina Prison in Perth, will argue that WA sentencing laws enacted in 1996 did not apply to Abbott and that time he “owed” the state expired while he was in jail in Queensland.
His legal firm, Forbes Kirby Lawyers, has prepared a challenge arguing against the constitutional validity of his 14-year incarceration over a bank robbery and a riot and escape from Fremantle Prison in 1989.
No witnesses will be called to next week’s proceedings, which will centre on legal argument about whether Abbott has been wrongly held for the past nine years.
If Justice Amanda Forrester rules against him, Abbott is at risk of staying inside until his maximum term expires in 2033.
Abbott, who will be represented by top WA barrister Matthew Crowley, is also seeking transfer to a minimum-security facility.
The Melbourne born 63-year-old is believed to remain resilient despite his decades in jail.
He has been able to build a relationship with the 34-year-old son he fathered while on the run after the Fremantle breakout.
Streaming service Binge recently commissioned a six-part series on Abbott, who has also been the subject of a movie, a book and documentaries covering a life of crime which began when he robbed a Perth bank in 1987.
He was a year later sentenced to 10 years in jail but, while doing that stretch, Abbott and mate Aaron Reynolds made themselves prison officer uniforms and used them to carry out the Fremantle escape.
Abbott remained a fugitive until 1995, travelling Australia and pulling armed robberies in three states.
He earned his nickname from claims that he taunted police by sending them postcards from his adventures, though supporters have dismissed that as a myth.
Abbott was eventually arrested on the Gold Coast and jailed for nine years over armed robberies in which he stole a total of $5 million from banks in WA, South Australia and Queensland.
Two years later, he made national headlines with an outrageous escape from Queensland’s Sir David Longland Correctional Centre.
A girlfriend of Abbott smuggled in “angel wire” which could cut through prison bars, enabling him, Jason Nixon, Andrew Jeffrey, Oliver Alincic and Peter Stirling to get free.
Young Abbott acolyte Brendan Berichon was waiting on the outside and used a high-powered rifle to open fire on a vehicle driven by guards, disabling it and providing crucial cover for the criminals.
There were reports Abbott cheekily left behind a letter requesting a transfer in his vacant cell.
The others, less resourceful and disciplined, were quickly rounded up but Abbott was never going to make the job easy for authorities, slipping unnoticed into Melbourne with Berichon.
Both lived quietly in Carlton but their flight under the radar ended in 1998 when Berichon wounded two police in a shootout at Box Hill.
The crime generated a massive police response and flushed Abbott out of hiding.
He fled to Darwin where he was a month later arrested after being followed by detectives as he left a laundromat and walked to a pizza shop.
The ever-prepared Abbott was found to have police scanners, forged driving licences and loaded guns at his accommodation.
He was charged and sent back to prison in Queensland where he did time until paroled into the custody of West Australian authorities in 2016.
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