How the Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott managed to become Australia’s favourite fugitive

BRENDEN Abbott landed in Australia’s criminal hall of fame with one bold leap from the walls of Fremantle Prison. Why are we so fascinated by the Postcard Bandit?

Bank robber fugitive prison escapee Brendon (Brendan) James Abbott (aka the postcard bandit). p/

DONNING fake prison officer uniforms they’d handmade in jail, Brenden Abbott and an accomplice leapt from the high limestone walls of Fremantle Prison and secured their bid for freedom.

The 1989 jailbreak would make Abbott, an expert bank robber, Australia’s most wanted man. For the next few years Abbott reportedly taunted police while on the run — he was rumoured to be sending them postcards from wherever he was managing to elude the steely clutches of the law.

The cheeky postcards were later dismissed as myth, but it was enough for Abbott to earn his nickname, the Postcard Bandit, and a place in Australia’s hall of criminal infamy.

Right now, Abbott is trying to get out of jail the legal way. The 53-year-old has just lodged his fifth bid for freedom, challenging the Queensland’s Parole Board’s decision last year to deny his release from Woodford Correctional Centre, north of Brisbane, where he is serving a 25-year sentence for a string of armed robberies for which he was, eventually, caught again.

Abbott says he’s been a “squeaky clean” inmate — a claim that’s actually been backed up by prison bosses.

And if he has been a model prisoner, that would be a big turnaround for the Postcard Bandit, whose daring jailbreaks, legendary stick-ups and all-round maverick attitude inspired a film and made him one of Australia’s most entertaining — though terrifying — crooks.

Security camera video still of Brenden Abbott during armed holdup at a bank in South Australia in 1990.

LIFE ON THE RUN

The Postcard Bandit’s gutsy escape from Fremantle jail wasn’t the first time he’d artfully dodged police — and it wouldn’t be his last time.

Abbott, who hailed from a working class upbringing in Western Australia, was an expert bank robber, and reportedly helped carry out the country’s first ‘drop in’-style bank robbery.

He was arrested in 1987 after a major armed bank heist in Perth, and sentenced to 12 years at the then-high security Fremantle Prison.

“Even when he was arrested and he went to court, you could see him in the court, looking at areas he could escape,” police officer Senior Sgt Jeff Beaman told the ABC.

“And you always thought that Brenden was never gonna be contained. Like a caged animal. He was always gonna keep going.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Abbott and a fellow escapee, Fremantle inmate Aaron Reynolds, was able to escape using fake prison outfits they’d handmade in a tailor’s workshop at that very jail.

They made it to the roof of the prison complex and jumped for freedom.

Abbott in 2005. Picture: Steve Pohlner

“After my escape I was solely committed to avoiding capture, and eventually flee the country,” Abbott recalled in one of his many letters.

“I gave no thought to the fact it would require me totally cutting off ties with my family and friends — an impossible feat.”

Once he was free, Abbott’s crime spree continued. By 1990 he was on Australia’s Most Wanted list, but that didn’t deter him — he robbed banks all over the country, reaping millions of dollars.

And he wasn’t a shrinking violet, either. Abbott happily posed for photographs during his time on the run, leaving behind a trail of evidence as he darted between cities and country towns, still managing to avoid detection.

The nickname Postcard Bandit came from rumours he would audaciously send those photographs to police — rumours that started with the police themselves. They reportedly found the snaps during a search of one of the houses Abbott had managed to flee from first, and fed the story to the media, hoping for wider coverage of the fugitive.

Abbott and his pup Rock in 1986.

From there, Abbott became Australia’s biggest celebrity crook.

Abbott’s biographer Derek Pedley, a journalist who wrote No Fixed Address, the book that would be made into the film The Postcard Bandit, said he was intrigued by Abbott’s life on the run.

“What drew me to Abbott’s story is the mystery — this arch villain who had Houdini-like talents, who could escape from prison, and claimed that he had this huge IQ,” he told the ABC.

“This myth really became set in stone when he’s been the Australia’s most wanted and this criminal celebrity.”

Abbott was eventually captured in Queensland in 1995 and sent to Sir David Longland Correctional Centre at Wacol, near Brisbane.

But he wasn’t there for long.

ANOTHER GREAT ESCAPE

“There wouldn’t be a day that goes by in maximum-security prisons where escape is not talked about,” Abbott said in Pedley’s book: Australian Outlaw - The True Story of Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott.

“On this day, in the 4B exercise yard, someone raised the possibility of an escape being pulled off by getting outside assistance. It was an idea that had been raised by many — and on one occasion, even tried, with those involved coming undone at the fence.

“I spoke up with an idea, saying something like: ‘It’d be easy to do, but the biggest hurdle is finding someone who’d be prepared to help from the outside and be prepared to shoot at the perimeter vehicle’.”

Abbott spent only two years at Sir David Longland jail before hatching his escape plot.

He used diamond wire and other tools smuggled into the prison complex to carefully saw through his cell bars before eventually making his escape, which ended with gunfire but Abbott’s longed-for freedom.

From there, mastermind jailbreaker hightailed it to the Gold Coast.

“I eventually made my way to Coolangatta and found that the 24-hour motel was no longer open 24 hours,” Abbott later said.

Actor Tom Long in Nine’s 2003 telemovie The Postcard Bandit in 2003.

“By then, all I was interested in was getting some sleep. There was an upturned lifesavers’ boat on Coolangatta beach. It had drizzled most of the night and was still at it.

“I crawled under the boat and lay there, dwelling on the hectic past 24 hours or more; I’d had a lot of luck on my side. I went out like a light.”

Luck wasn’t on Abbott’s side for long, however. He was eventually recaptured in Darwin and began his current, 23-year sentence in solitary confinement in Queensland. He’s still wanted for crimes in other states.

But even during his time behind bars, the Postcard Bandit has maintained his folk status.

And as is often the case with celebrity crooks — Al Capone, Ned Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Mark Read — he inspired a film, 2003’s The Postcard Bandit, starring Tom Long and Offspring’s Matt Le Nevez.

In prison, Abbott is a prolific letter writer and painter. He has spent most of his time in solitary confinement, and has been described as a model prisoner.

“The best way to describe Brenden is he was like a businessman dressed in browns,” former maximum security prison officer Hans Andersen told the Courier Mail in 2014.

“He was quite pleasant ... as a prisoner, he was always polite. He was basically a model inmate.”

Abbott is not scheduled for release until 2020, but became eligible for parole four years ago. He has been knocked back for early release four times.

He made his fifth bid for freedom late last month with a decision pending. It is expected, however, that he will be extradited to Western Australia upon his release.

“If I could turn back the clock,” Abbott said in a letter released to the ABC in 2003, “I’d love to have been a doctor or a lawyer, or anything other than a criminal who now spends his days in a prison cell.”