Long Bay Jail escape: How Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox broke out of the maximum security Katingal block
OF all the daring prisoner plots in Long Bay Jail’s long history, none was quite so successful as that of Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox.
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Of all the daring prisoner plots in Long Bay Jail’s long history, none was quite so successful as that of Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox.
The career criminal was jailed in 1974 for armed robbery. But he found the confines of Long Bay, which has been earmarked for sale by the NSW Government, less than cosy.
The following year, in a spectacular escape attempt, Mad Dog recruited two fellow inmates to effect his bolt for freedom.
The trio got their hands on a Beretta pistol. They took two jail guards hostage, forcing one to open a weapons cache and the other onto the front of a prison van, which they drove into Anzac Parade.
Sustaining heavy fire from the rear, they collided with a bread truck outside the prison and, after a bloody gunbattle, were recaptured. Cox was handed a life sentence and transferred to Long Bay’s ultra-secure Katingal block, known as Australia’s answer to Alcatraz.
No artificial light was inside. Prisoners complained of constant headaches and nausea due to the uncirculated air.
The convict remained at large for two years after slipping the surly bonds of the prison in a laundry bag and making his way to the United States.
On the inside of that hellhole, 16km from the Sydney CBD, Mad Dog noticed a chink in the facility’s armour.
Using a hacksaw smuggled into the jail, he gradually cut away at a metal bar over the exercise yard.
On November 4, 1977, the cunning crook asked a guard if he could return to the yard to retrieve his shoes. The guard obliged.
Mad Dog climbed through the gap made by the hacked metal bar, scaled two barbed-wire fences and waved goodbye to Long Bay.
Remarkably, he made his way to England and Germany, finding work as a seaman and labourer, before returning to Australia in 1982.
He was finally caught in 1988 after old fellow inmate Ray Denning tracked him down within eight days of his own escape from Goulburn jail. The two were involved in a standoff with police at the
Doncaster Shopping Centre in Victoria that same year. Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox walked out of Grafton jail in 2004 a free man.
Mystery still surrounds an equally famous escape made in 1993 by a once-legend of Australian rock Ian Saxon. The convict remained at large for two years after slipping the surly bonds of the prison in a laundry bag and making his way to the United States.
The official cause of death was listed as an accidental overdose but many, including some prison guards, suspected something more sinister at play.
“Long Bay was just bloody horrible,” Saxon told The Daily Telegraph’s James Phelps — during his research for a best-selling book about the jail.
“I saw people killed; I saw the worst of everything. If anyone had to be in there for two years, let alone 17, it is just ludicrous. A f ... ing nightmare.”
Many shady characters to have passed through the doors of Long Bay jail never saw the outside world again. Among the lifers relegated to Long Bay are murderer and gangster Arthur ‘Neddy’ Smith. He was transferred to Lithgow prison after developing severe Parkinson’s disease in 1989.
He has spent many recent years under guard in hospital battling health problems.
Armed robber and killer Ray Denning — Mad Dog’s escape mate — died within six weeks of his release from Long Bay.
The official cause of death was listed as an accidental overdose but many, including some prison guards, suspected something more sinister at play.
The closest jail to the city of Sydney has operated for 101 years since the male penitentiary was opened in 1914. It was the scene of the last legal execution on NSW soil when, on August 24, 1939, John Trevor Kelly was hanged from the neck over the murder of Marjorie Constance Sommerlad.
Multi-millionaire business crooks Rodney Adler and Rene Rivkin — who attempted suicide while on weekend detention — were once confined to the prison walls of Long Bay, as were Anita Cobby killers Gary and Michael Murphy for a time and, at one stage, serial gang rapist Bilal Skaf.
Skaf was transferred to Goulburn prison, in the state’s southern tablelands, following repeated bashings at the hands of fellow inmates and the discovery of a plot to inject him with HIV-positive blood.
Geoffrey Pearce wasn’t as lucky.
The young probationary officer was escorting Graham Farlow through the exercise yard in 1990 when the convict lunged at his backside with a syringe.
Farlow injected Pearce with a dose of his own HIV-infected blood and the warden would die from AIDS seven years later.
No artificial light was inside. Prisoners complained of constant headaches and nausea due to the uncirculated air.
It was a tragic and vicious lash out at the iron-fist of Long Bay’s authority by a prisoner suffering from mental illness. Farlow died in 1991.
Infamous femmes of Sydney’s past Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine spent time in the jail’s female section.
Serial killers Archie McCafferty and Eric Turner also called the “Malabar Hilton” home.
If the state government progresses with plans to close Long Bay’s bolted doors for the last time, a very dark, dingy and peculiar slice of the city’s history will be locked up for good, the key thrown away.
Originally published as Long Bay Jail escape: How Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox broke out of the maximum security Katingal block
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