Criminologists, psychologists, veteran detectives, tea leaf readers and the occasional cross-eyed clairvoyant on the make have all asked themselves the same question when it comes to serious criminals: "Can a leopard change its spots?"
There are crooks that while they can't or won't reform, learn to fake the right answers to sentencing judges or stern-faced parole boards. There are crooks who leave jail filled with noble intentions only to fall back into bad habits somewhere down the track.
Aaron Jeffery plays Mark Brandon Read in Underbelly Files: Chopper. Credit: Greg Noakes
There are those who see the light with varying degrees of clarity. Take Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, who after wasting most of his adult life in prison worked out that it was more lucrative to write about crimes than commit them.
And so for more than 10 years he became one of Australia's most successful authors and is now the subject of a second biographical film which screens on Channel Nine in a couple of weeks.
Russell "Mad Dog" Cox, second from right, following his capture at Melbourne's Doncaster shopping centre in 1988. Credit: Fairfax Media
(We have had a sneak preview and it goes pretty well, particularly Aaron Jeffery as Chopper - who will need to press his tuxedo come Logies night. Disclaimer: We had an insignificant consultancy role in the project.)
There is Russell "Mad Dog" Cox, perhaps Australia's most interesting (retired) career criminal. Cox spent 11 years on the run after escaping from the maximum-security Katingal facility at Sydney's Long Bay prison.
While on the loose he organised armed robberies, got away with murder and managed to avoid being shot when arrested in a hail of bullets at Doncaster Shoppingtown.
He went back to do his time, married his longtime sweetheart, embraced education and became a model inmate - so much so that prison guards pushed for his release, believing this leopard had changed its spots.
Chris Binse stands outside Goulburn maximum security jail after serving 13 years and being released in 2005.Credit: brendan esposito
And they were right. When he was released from prison in 2004, he was met by his wife and they quietly disappeared to Northern Queensland, refusing all interview offers.
Which brings us to Christopher Dean Binse, an institutionalised prisoner, habitual escapee and master armed robber who well and truly earned the nickname "Badness".
"I would be genuinely frightened if I saw him on the street": Christopher Binse robs a bank.
Back in the early 1990s he was an elite stick-up man and while he left dozens of staff and customers traumatised through his acts, he also showed an underworld sense of humour. Having escaped he put a public notice in the paper to announce to the Armed Robbery Squad that "Badness is Back" and followed up with a Christmas card with the message "May all your wishes come true".
Now 49, he has spent 32 of the last 36 years in prison, has been left in chains and has done more solitary time than any inmate in Australia. Even today he lives in much worse conditions than any animal in the Melbourne Zoo. He is kept in isolation for 22 hours a day, allowed to see only one inmate for the other two. His exercise area is a small patch connected to his cell, he cooks his own meals and has the occasional visit from one relative.
Christopher Binse, armed with a shotgun and wearing a Drizabone, gives instructions to staff while terrified customers lie on the floor during a robbery at the Commonwealth Bank in Glen Waverley, 1991.
Feeling that he was banging his head against a brick wall, he chose to embark on the ill-conceived strategy of doing exactly that in his cell. "I'm literally running up like a bull, you know what I mean … hitting my head up against the brick wall," he would later say. He was taken to hospital, treated for cuts and possible concussion before being taken back to the same cell.
Whether he was born bad or the brutality of the system warped him even further we will never know. Whatever the reason, judges, police and prison officers would say he was a lost cause.
Christopher Binse in police custody after his two-day armed siege at Keilor East in 2012.Credit: Channel Seven
A prison officer told me: "I would think he is one of the five most dangerous men in Australia. I would be genuinely frightened if I saw him on the street."
Certainly his last stint on the outside, in 2012, would seem to indicate he was a hopeless case. Soon he had armed himself to the teeth, hunted down an old prison enemy (only to be thwarted because police got there first), pulled a textbook armed robbery, escaping with $235,000, pulled guns on police and held out for 44 hours in an East Keilor siege. (Indeed, at the time there was a suggestion I was on the list of those he wished to catch up with for a chat - amicable, no doubt.)
Heavily armed police surround the Keilor East home in which Christopher Binse was holed up with $235,000 from an armed robbery in 2012.Credit: Jason South
Typically, Binse dragged out the siege until police hit the house with distraction bombs, blasted it with tear gas and shot him several times with non-lethal beanbag rounds.
In 2014, Justice Terry Forrest in the Supreme Court understandably judged his chances of rehabilitation as poor and sentenced him to a minimum of 14 years.
While Chris Binse should always be treated as a dangerous criminal, there is a duty to try and move him into more humane prison conditions in preparation for his ultimate release.
Then something strange happened. Binse wrote to Ken Ashworth, one of the Armed Robbery Squad detectives who locked him up in the 1990s.
He finally wanted to tell the truth. While he had been convicted of four armed robberies back then, police knew he had done several more but lacked the evidence to lay charges.
Ashworth headed to Barwon Prison with few expectations. Binse was a manipulator who often claimed to have changed, once saying: "I'm a leopard whose spots are fading."
Why would this be any different?
Ashworth already knew which unsolved jobs were likely to be Binse operations. Plus during one interview more than 20 years ago, Binse had confessed in an off-the-record (and inadmissible) conversation that he had committed those raids.
"We had a long chat. He said he had changed and admitted he had wasted his life. He told me things about the robberies that only the crooks would know. He still had a sense of humour and talked about the old days, referring to 'Ashie and I' as if we were old mates."
He put his hand up for seven armed robberies between 1988 and 1991 where he escaped with $390,000. In one case Binse fired a shot, narrowly missing one of his victims.
Ashworth has dealt with some of the worst of the worst and is no pushover, but he thinks Binse has finally shown real remorse: "I think he is sincere and he wanted to set the record straight."
Justice Forrest is another who thinks that if Binse hasn't exactly turned the corner, he has finally found the indicator switch: "I assess your 2017 prospects for rehabilitation as reasonable. This is a substantial and surprising development since 2014."
My own dealings with Binse have been sporadic and variable. Back in 1994 he was quite chatty. Knowing I was planning to write a story on him, he wrote from prison urging me to think again.
Christopher Binse's 1994 letter advising me to refrain from writing about him.Credit: John Silvester
"Thank you for your assistance in kindly refraining from such desires in which you have focused upon my adventures."
He then offered the following proverb: "The trouble with many people who stop to count their blessings is their arithmetic is poor. Regards Chri$ Bin$e."
By the following year I was no longer Mr Silvester but "Slime of the Underworld, The Sewage Dweller … You are a gutter low life rodent, who's awash in rubbish, crap and shit. Yet I have come to learn to expect nothing more of you … It is beyond comprehension how a paper such as The Age of high standing quality, persists in attaining [sic] your poor inferior services." (Several previous editors have expressed similar sentiments, although they rarely carried unlicensed firearms.)
By October of 1995, the tone wasn't nearly so polite ...Credit: John Silvester
He then suggested he would be delighted if I was to fall foul of the law: "Be a wonderfull [sic] thought having you in amongst and in the midst of our company, on this side of the fence. Real nice."
I have no idea what exactly set him off but I had written of his plan to lead a mass escape from Pentridge. I had also said on radio that after his hair transplant failed he should change his nickname from Badness to Baldness (a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black).
... and there was also a straightforward threat.Credit: John Silvester
On another occasion he referred to me as a "parasitic keyboard jockey". Now that is just plain silly. You cannot ride a keyboard and if you did it would just leave nasty indentations on your bottom.
And so with word that he had changed, I reached out to Chris, and to my surprise received the following response, suggesting all has been forgiven.
"To my old nemesis Sly of the Underworld - John Sylvester ... Greetings to you. It's funny how life takes turns and the directions & journeys we make … I am mis-understood by the masses and in recent years undertaken [sic] to amend the sinister recalcitrant figure cast and moulded by those in the media - you included."
Christopher Binse responds to my letter in 2017.Credit: John Silvester
Chris Binse has more than 10 years to serve and while he should always be treated as a dangerous criminal, there is a duty to try and move him into more humane prison conditions in preparation for his ultimate release.
There can be no doubt that years of solitary have damaged an already damaged individual. By confessing, Binse has taken the first step to reform. Now we have to prepare a path for him to walk away from a wasted life. Whether he makes that journey is a matter for him.