Speaker 1: A project production.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Secrets of the Underworld. I am Neil the
Speaker 2: Muscle comments and in this episode I speak with John Killick,
Speaker 2: former bank robber and escapee.
Speaker 3: I know I've trauma joined at some point a lot
Speaker 3: of recovering. Twenty fifty months. She posed in a jobber.
Speaker 3: So in those days, jar was tough. Acoustics are great now.
Speaker 3: So as I started singing, girls got say I'd call
Speaker 3: him and I said, listen, I something we can't take.
Speaker 3: You know, we had a wrong guide to follow it.
Speaker 3: And the message is here that you can't change. You
Speaker 3: can't change.
Speaker 2: Before we get into the nitty grie, I want to
Speaker 2: say thanks for John for coming on.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate this.
Speaker 2: But let's before we get into everything that is exciting
Speaker 2: in your life, Let's talk about you growing up first
Speaker 2: and what led you down the path of what you
Speaker 2: did here.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm not a great subscriber to an environment. It's
Speaker 3: responsible for people finished in jail. I think I can
Speaker 3: contribute to it. But I think I know a lot
Speaker 3: of people have had tough lives of mood that they
Speaker 3: have gone on and gone to night school, they've gone
Speaker 3: to unions, and they haven't they haven't finished in jail
Speaker 3: or anything like that, but I will say this that
Speaker 3: I think the thing that lacked in my life, and
Speaker 3: I think it's like in the lives of a lot
Speaker 3: of young people, particularly ones are get in trouble, is
Speaker 3: a mentor. I really think that if you've got a
Speaker 3: mentor when you're younger, and this is what we should
Speaker 3: be looking at more and trying to rehabilitate kids. We
Speaker 3: haven't got the answers to it, particularly now with drugs net.
Speaker 3: But I didn't have a mentor. I was adopted. I
Speaker 3: was born in the middle of a Second World War.
Speaker 3: It was a dysfunctional family. Father he was a pretty
Speaker 3: good fighter. He's bout my main champion, well away champion
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty two travies. That doesn't seem much been
Speaker 3: in Bealman was a tough steary in Sydney. To somebody
Speaker 3: said to me, I've spoke the old box. He said,
Speaker 3: if he was cheating at Balmona in nine and thirty two.
Speaker 3: He's pretty tough. And he used to when he got
Speaker 3: drunk kids throw his weight around, pick on people, pick fights.
Speaker 3: He had us terrorized. I remember sometimes my brother, me
Speaker 3: and my mother were hiding under the house at house
Speaker 3: at two am in the morning, we're walking the street.
Speaker 3: It's too scared to go in. My mother even gave
Speaker 3: me sleep and tallers to slip into his beer. And
Speaker 3: you know, if you had caught me doing that, well,
Speaker 3: and so I was taking ris sleeping, then when do
Speaker 3: you think of it? I mean, imagine what he had
Speaker 3: have done if you had caught me. But he had
Speaker 3: my mother a nervous wreck, you know, just beused her
Speaker 3: all the time, terrible names, and sometimes the neighbors run.
Speaker 1: Out mentally, not physically, yeah.
Speaker 3: More mentally. Yeah, she wouldn't sleep with me. That had
Speaker 3: a lot to do it. But in those days there
Speaker 3: was nowhere for women to go turn to. She had
Speaker 3: to put up. But you know, I'd get embarrassed, particularly
Speaker 3: when I started took up tennis. I was pretty good
Speaker 3: at tennis as when in trophies doing for it, and
Speaker 3: makes had come there and they'd see that four beds
Speaker 3: was slept in. So John and you shouldn't be embarrassed
Speaker 3: aout that ship, but I was, you know, and say, yeah,
Speaker 3: we had somebody lie about it. Anyway, my mother took
Speaker 3: her own life when I was seven. I blamed Dad
Speaker 3: for it, but it was partly the responsibility the banks
Speaker 3: and what happened the bank four clothes. We had a
Speaker 3: pretty good house on that. He tried to borrow more
Speaker 3: money he would have went okay to get and what happened.
Speaker 3: They forced him to do it through their own little
Speaker 3: firm called Custom Credit, which was a credit company and
Speaker 3: charged about three times the interest with the banks did,
Speaker 3: and that that forced to lose at home. We finished
Speaker 3: with the crappiest house in fair for Mom was embarrassed,
Speaker 3: shamed on it and anyways took her own life. And
Speaker 3: I blamed the banks too. I was really doing it
Speaker 3: on banks about what happened then the first night, I
Speaker 3: just said I'm leaving. When she died that same day,
Speaker 3: he couldn't believe I was leaving, my father and I
Speaker 3: said she will fall. What happened? I told him she
Speaker 3: over those slip tells and.
Speaker 1: You found out that was it you?
Speaker 3: Or was it? Hell? No? What happened now? It was
Speaker 3: a Sunday night, June fifty nine, and woke up with
Speaker 3: a bump and I heard it, and then I heard
Speaker 3: my father because I slept in seven rooms going and
Speaker 3: then he's called out to me and I ran out
Speaker 3: and Mum was on the floor and she'd fallen off
Speaker 3: the bed, and he said, quick, go and get a doctor.
Speaker 3: Your mother's very sick. So I jumped on my pushbike
Speaker 3: and grabbed in those days used to put two penny
Speaker 3: pieces in her bloody phone. It's going way back those phones,
Speaker 3: and jumped on the bike and went down in and
Speaker 3: you wouldn't believe it. The phone have been vandalized. So
Speaker 3: we didn't have a phone. We didn't have a car.
Speaker 3: So this is why I grew up workship at the
Speaker 3: shol I think, and if we'd have been rich and
Speaker 3: had these things would have said a life. So I
Speaker 3: had to go to the next phone about half a
Speaker 3: mile the way. I rang our doctor I the dockdown
Speaker 3: and he wouldn't come to phone. The wife come to
Speaker 3: the phone by bye hours, half two in the morning
Speaker 3: and and she said he's asleep, he's not coming, and
Speaker 3: I said, look, she's really sick, and she just hung up.
Speaker 3: And I knew it was because we owed the money.
Speaker 3: We owed the doctor money because my mom was always
Speaker 3: and he's the one who gave us a sleep and
Speaker 3: tell us. So I was dirty about that. So what
Speaker 3: I got to know what I did. I didn't have
Speaker 3: any coins left. I rang again through through the information
Speaker 3: sort of thing or whatever. It wasn't those days through line,
Speaker 3: Oh yes, Rember, I think it was that one I
Speaker 3: won through or something, and they helped. They put me
Speaker 3: through it to a docktown. It took a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: He came straight away, but then he called an ambulance.
Speaker 3: All by the time ambulance got there, she was nearly dead.
Speaker 3: That they got to the hospital on it, they couldn't
Speaker 3: save her. And I always felt, you know, if we'd
Speaker 3: have been on them get us straight away to hospital.
Speaker 3: We didn't have a car, yeah, and you know the
Speaker 3: stuff around with the phones and all that. We didn't
Speaker 3: even have a phone, so that the banks and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I just had a chip on my should. And then
Speaker 3: so I left, didn't have a lot of money, booked
Speaker 3: into a bird into a rooming house and didn't have
Speaker 3: a lot of money. So I shared it with a guy.
Speaker 3: And it's a big guy, a wrestlant, a big, strong
Speaker 3: mustley guy. And next thing he's trying to rape me.
Speaker 3: And I didn't knowing about it about that I was
Speaker 3: a book. He's sort of kidn never done any and
Speaker 3: so buddy, it was pretty fit. You know. I just
Speaker 3: played tennis, running and ride bike, so it was pretty fit.
Speaker 3: But he was a lot more powerful me. But anyway,
Speaker 3: he got the message and dropped off, and I was
Speaker 3: pretty outraged and said I'm getting out of it. I'm
Speaker 3: going to another room. And he apologized, and I thought
Speaker 3: he was okay. He apologized, said it never happened again.
Speaker 3: He get suited. I was struggling mentally, and so what
Speaker 3: he did he sort of came along with me. A
Speaker 3: few nights, played played tennis. I stayed there in a
Speaker 3: different room. I did go in a different room. But
Speaker 3: he was a crook and he told me he had
Speaker 3: five different bank books, all the different names. And even
Speaker 3: in those days, people were ripping of security. He was.
Speaker 3: He was ripping off security, getting dull, and he shamed me.
Speaker 3: He's based about it. He was going to the Wrestaurant
Speaker 3: Championships and Queens and I said, look, can you sign
Speaker 3: a thing for me? And I want to buy a
Speaker 3: new tennis rack. And I was split and I got
Speaker 3: to get on terms. He said yeah. Then he just
Speaker 3: gave me his signature, and when he was leaving, I
Speaker 3: saw him. He packed all his bank books and I
Speaker 3: stole him somehow and I got the case. I grabbed
Speaker 3: one of the bank books and he didn't know and
Speaker 3: he said off. I waved him off in the can
Speaker 3: give you a try of fuck man. I went up
Speaker 3: and forwards seniors and practice and practice parent got really
Speaker 3: good at it, but through all the withdrawal forms in
Speaker 3: the wastepaper, and I'd moved on a different spot too,
Speaker 3: and I went and moved from Berwi to Stratfield.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I thought I was pretty cunning, you know, and not
Speaker 3: a crim you know. And went into the bank Ford Senior,
Speaker 3: first bank rory and past the bank thing and thinking
Speaker 3: I'm going to get caught. Just simple one give me.
Speaker 3: I think it was might have been fifty pounds a
Speaker 3: fair bit of money is probably about three weeks wages.
Speaker 1: You just you just gave them a note.
Speaker 3: They just gave in a withdrawal form, the band the
Speaker 3: bank book, because I had his bank book. In those days,
Speaker 3: I had these little bank books. I just had the
Speaker 3: amounts of money. Some of us still got it. I
Speaker 3: still got it, the old people and I've still got them.
Speaker 3: But comf and you just what he did was signed
Speaker 3: the withdrawal form. You fifty pounds sign it. They checked
Speaker 3: the senior Swedes plans and I thought it was me
Speaker 3: and gave me the money. I walked out there, but
Speaker 3: when I got home, the cops wereiting, and the landlord
Speaker 3: lady came in and cleaned the room saw withdrawal for us,
Speaker 3: and she realized something was wrong, so they grabbed me
Speaker 3: and took me to I wouldn't tell them where I lived, right,
Speaker 3: and I told him nothing, So they put me in
Speaker 3: Albion Street Boys. I was there at night, but somehow
Speaker 3: they found out who Dad was and got me. He
Speaker 3: came and came and buy me out. So that was
Speaker 3: the first time I went the job, but went home
Speaker 3: for a night with Dad. An left again and they
Speaker 3: was hooked up with some kids a bit older me.
Speaker 3: You know. They taught me to shop lift stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and we were going to have it. We're going in
Speaker 3: some of those big department stores, just grabbing stuff and
Speaker 3: walking out and not even running out, just woken out
Speaker 3: if a story teach had come. One blake was chasing
Speaker 3: me and I thought it was going to be a
Speaker 3: heart attack. I mean, they couldn't catch you. It was
Speaker 3: so easy in those days. I mean now you've got
Speaker 3: cameras everywhere. Ye, But yeah, we got away a lot.
Speaker 3: We'd go into we'd go into cafes and just to
Speaker 3: all the big merles and run out. This big Greek guy.
Speaker 3: I caught my mate once, give him a thump and
Speaker 3: took his jumper off. It was my jumper, you know.
Speaker 3: And I went back later and paid the merl about
Speaker 3: a week later and said, give me the jumper back. Good,
Speaker 3: give me ban He said, your friend, your friend, bad man.
Speaker 3: But I'd run away too, and thought he thought I
Speaker 3: was a good guy because I'd come back. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 3: look it's just what happened. It was in Eviti all
Speaker 3: that time. I was going to we'll get caught. We
Speaker 3: did a break and on a place this city had
Speaker 3: come from Blainey Country. My mate introduced her. Look he's
Speaker 3: he works s fort of pm. That that was like
Speaker 3: straight of person those days. He said. He delivered the
Speaker 3: mile to halfle Molly's place. Now half a Molly was
Speaker 3: champion jog at the time. He rade a horse call
Speaker 3: burmer At won fifteen straight and it just this gout everybody.
Speaker 3: The rumor was at Alfle money backed all these horses,
Speaker 3: and you went. They weren't allowed a bit. So he
Speaker 3: had bags boxes the money under his bed.
Speaker 1: So that was the room.
Speaker 3: A lot of jockeys did do that. Someone the train
Speaker 3: to tell those days, and so we thought, oh geez,
Speaker 3: you know we're going to score here. We got in. Well,
Speaker 3: this idiot give us the wrong house, because we got
Speaker 3: in and there were suits and a jockey could have
Speaker 3: fit in the leg of them. I mean, the guy
Speaker 3: was a big guy, And I said, what the hell
Speaker 3: half of money you kidding? Anyway, we cleaned it out.
Speaker 3: Three idiots filled up the suitcase and walked out all
Speaker 3: his clothes and a bit of jewelry, and and just
Speaker 3: walked along. Berwin caught a train. But the idiot went
Speaker 3: to a hot shop the next day and this firing
Speaker 3: you wouldn't leave it happened. He went to a hog shop,
Speaker 3: tried to honk the stuff, said he'd lost a lot
Speaker 3: of weight and that they were his clothes. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: the pawn brokers like they called the cops, especially in
Speaker 3: those days like that one. So they got him and
Speaker 3: he said we made he's give us something and said
Speaker 3: we made him. Really, So they got us here and
Speaker 3: they just said, look, we're letting him go. He is
Speaker 3: about influence. He's on a country board from Blainey, you know.
Speaker 3: And that was it. So we got frowing and they
Speaker 3: went out the Long Bay. It was pretty tough. I
Speaker 3: mean Long Bay. I was only seven eight and shouldn't
Speaker 3: have been there. I got in a fight the first
Speaker 3: week I was there, German guy playing. I was a
Speaker 3: really good chess player even then I'd been toured by
Speaker 3: Russians and that's pretty good. And its German guy played
Speaker 3: in playing for just for a jar, honey. But that
Speaker 3: that's that's important. It's hard to get, especially in those days.
Speaker 3: You can only get on a buyout three a year.
Speaker 3: And he's young, got the chessboard and whacked me over
Speaker 3: to here with a chess board. Yeah, and so we're
Speaker 3: into it. And my old man had taught me to fight.
Speaker 3: I could handle this off. Yeah, I was fast and fit.
Speaker 3: But so I got best of him. So this old
Speaker 3: guy came out of me. I was sharing to sell
Speaker 3: of him and my mate. He said, listen, he said,
Speaker 3: you've done well, and the screws let it go with me.
Speaker 3: In those days, if you weren't bloody killing somebody, he said,
Speaker 3: Look he said, I don't get carried away. He said,
Speaker 3: he's guys, and he said, it's good you've done that,
Speaker 3: because young guys were getting raped in there. At the
Speaker 3: young guy got raped in the shower, he said, some
Speaker 3: of these guys. But you want to hear me on
Speaker 3: her back, he said, I'm telling you. He said, so,
Speaker 3: don't get carried away. And he was right. There were
Speaker 3: some tough guys here, and he said, don't go on
Speaker 3: to sell alone woman, don't go stay free out with ars, etcetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And he just gave me the grand rules.
Speaker 3: But what I did learn I learned the code, you know,
Speaker 3: the criminal code. It was there three months, and I learned.
Speaker 3: You know that you don't give anybody up. It's the
Speaker 3: wrong thing to give anyone up. And if somebody's kicking
Speaker 3: somebody in their head and bashing them, you walk away.
Speaker 3: The criminal code it turns our normal ethics upside down.
Speaker 3: And when you subscribe to it, it's hard to unsubscribe
Speaker 3: to it when you step back in a normal world,
Speaker 3: when you've got to step back in and live a
Speaker 3: normal life. And so many either today, so many young
Speaker 3: ones hooking enterities, and it's even worse now with drugs.
Speaker 3: There were no drugs when I was there those days,
Speaker 3: there were no drugs, and so anyone will really give
Speaker 3: someone up. They go on protection. I remember I went
Speaker 3: to Golden and there was only one going protection. You
Speaker 3: go to Golden now half and that's the fact. So
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a logistic night, you know, administrative nightmare.
Speaker 3: I think to try and run golb and I wouldn't
Speaker 3: like to be trying to route it because you've got
Speaker 3: the protection. You've got what they've done now they split
Speaker 3: it up. You've got you've got the Indigenous yard, then
Speaker 3: you've got the you got the Muslim yard. Then you've
Speaker 3: got the Ousi Asians, Osio Islands protections, protection from protections.
Speaker 3: Then over there got this big wing protection from protection
Speaker 3: from protection. And you've got thirds and pedophiles here. And
Speaker 3: the murders said, then you've got super max. I mean,
Speaker 3: and if you're going to a visit, you're not allowd
Speaker 3: if a protection is coming, you're not allowing going out
Speaker 3: at the same time, So you might be waiting an
Speaker 3: hour if you visit. I mean, it's just just a
Speaker 3: shocking set up and the floor and that is they
Speaker 3: had about seven or eight killings in Garblin in the nineties.
Speaker 3: They called it the Killing film. So it was that
Speaker 3: bad go it's just they're coming and do the mustard.
Speaker 3: Somebody be covered up with a blanket. And there was
Speaker 3: one case these Asians turn on his guy and one
Speaker 3: little Asian just run up. There's a big tough going
Speaker 3: run up behind him, pinned his arms and then the
Speaker 3: other was running. He fell on the ground about fifty
Speaker 3: six flty stad was in before you think he's dead
Speaker 3: before hit the ground, and I mean, I don't care.
Speaker 3: You're not going to cape with it, you know. And
Speaker 3: so a lot of tough guys got killed standing over him,
Speaker 3: in on you, a few of them. But that was
Speaker 3: before I hit with with a helicopter which goes through it.
Speaker 3: But in those days, jar was tough.
Speaker 2: But it changed you, like the change when you know,
Speaker 2: like when you've gone inside and then when you got
Speaker 2: released from like from a long way event.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did it make you.
Speaker 2: Worse in a way where you know, like with crime
Speaker 2: or did or did you.
Speaker 3: Know it should have? I should have looked. Look three
Speaker 3: guys in a cell lights off at nine. No no
Speaker 3: radio in those days, no, no, too lucky if you
Speaker 3: get a paperback books if you like it, you're around
Speaker 3: the yard all day, a little shad if it's raining
Speaker 3: and you're on showers. I think three times a week
Speaker 3: you got in you'll show together and this buddy nightmare.
Speaker 3: To be lucky, you got to watch you don't get
Speaker 3: buddy stabbed or something. I mean, it was. It was tough.
Speaker 3: The meals were terrible, absolutely terrible. No phone calls, so
Speaker 3: you lost contact everybody. If you got to visit, you're
Speaker 3: like enough to get a visit. It was you had
Speaker 3: the white grading between the screw stand right next year
Speaker 3: there's a twenty minute visit once a fortnite. I mean,
Speaker 3: relationships can't exist under that. You can't if you write
Speaker 3: a letter, if you're one page letter, you have to
Speaker 3: write a pen and ink and you take that page down.
Speaker 3: You only do one a week. Shot that the screw
Speaker 3: he'd go up now going right. If you didn't like it,
Speaker 3: say how the hell you wouldn't say to yourself? I
Speaker 3: just never going back there. But I didn't know. I
Speaker 3: was the opposite. I don't know why, but I was
Speaker 3: the opposite. I was dirty, I had chip on my shot.
Speaker 3: I sort of blaming everyone but myself, this shouldn't have
Speaker 3: happened to me. Fuck them, I'll start robbing banks. I
Speaker 3: decided it was going to become a bank robber just
Speaker 3: the well, not that time. People told me, you know
Speaker 3: that there weren't many bank robbers at the time. There weren't.
Speaker 3: But what I did. I came back in. I tried
Speaker 3: to escape, you know, I just turn it on and
Speaker 3: try to escape from bapist. There were four was going
Speaker 3: to go and and two cops showed a time sign
Speaker 3: of the times because we're going in a court. They
Speaker 3: didn't handcuffs, And I said, three young ones and the
Speaker 3: other one and women caught for Robin the Western stores.
Speaker 3: They come up got me. I only wasn't in Bold
Speaker 3: that they come and got me. I was going with
Speaker 3: this guy's sister in Orange had gone up there. I
Speaker 3: was digging potatoes. Dad was proud of me from diggingmation.
Speaker 3: You know. You finally they said, finally was somebody I
Speaker 3: was digging potatoes. You know, that was the attitude of
Speaker 3: my father. He always said, you know, you're the son
Speaker 3: of a working man. He's got a cart. Shit do it.
Speaker 3: But you know, so I was going with the guy.
Speaker 3: I sist they went to town. They came back and
Speaker 3: Sydney about this Western stores. And so they had a guy, Taffy,
Speaker 3: he's about thirty five. Two young guys about my age
Speaker 3: that I was friends. I was with barbering and they said,
Speaker 3: come on, let's go, and we're doing the West stores.
Speaker 3: She said, don't go. I said, look, everything's final soon tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I never never saw it again. Jump jump in the car.
Speaker 3: We went. They lowered me down from the top of
Speaker 3: the thing. We got about I think it was twenty
Speaker 3: pounds with a gear jeweling stuff. It was pretty good.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of money in those days, nine to
Speaker 3: sixty pounds. He took them bloody, maybe three four hundred
Speaker 3: fairs and dollars. But we had the car loaded. But
Speaker 3: guess what, it ran out of petrol coming to lift
Speaker 3: cat and I couldn't believe it. And then he tied
Speaker 3: it was stylen car. That's why he couldn't fill up.
Speaker 3: And in those days was a different setup. They used
Speaker 3: to come and do it themselves in the station and
Speaker 3: they were siphon and petrol, and the cops came. They
Speaker 3: got us buddies. So we went to the lift batist.
Speaker 3: It was pretty tough, and so I used to look,
Speaker 3: we can escape, and that was the plan. The four
Speaker 3: should run with only two cops. But when it happened,
Speaker 3: the old the old sides in his front. I just
Speaker 3: shoved him and he stumbled forward, and one of my mates,
Speaker 3: when I helped him up, you're right. And I tooked off,
Speaker 3: and the other I said, good luck, Johnny. All the
Speaker 3: other cops come after me, and he's fired shots at me,
Speaker 3: and I heard him, and I just knew I'd read
Speaker 3: somewhere that if you hear it, you know I haven't
Speaker 3: been hit because the speed is ound. So I ripped
Speaker 3: off my pullover. I was really dirt and the others
Speaker 3: not coming, and ripped off the pillover. I ran about
Speaker 3: about a half a mile away and sirens of me.
Speaker 3: I thought, if I lay load until dark and still
Speaker 3: a pushbike and go, that's what I was going to do.
Speaker 3: So I hid in a chuck pen, which I thought
Speaker 3: was a win an idea, but the old lady wouldn't believe.
Speaker 3: Chatting lady, I must thought I was trying to pincerchuck.
Speaker 3: She heard it and she saw me in there, and
Speaker 3: then were being quiet and down and when the cops
Speaker 3: they were walking past. She's gone there. They got me.
Speaker 3: They give me a bit of a hide and two
Speaker 3: and then they put me in this black cell. And
Speaker 3: this caused a big stink later at the Royal Commission
Speaker 3: because I testisfied about it and what they did. They
Speaker 3: stripped me off, put me in a cell and blank.
Speaker 3: You can't scend inside it. And you go in into
Speaker 3: you went into a boot division, which is the men's division,
Speaker 3: opened up one cell, coming a little carroll down and
Speaker 3: open up others on this talley pitch blake can't see it.
Speaker 3: Left me there in the middle of winter, no clothes,
Speaker 3: bread and water for two days. That was it. And
Speaker 3: I mean I was doing that. That really tough me out.
Speaker 3: It really tough me up because I remember walking up
Speaker 3: and down. But I've always been an optimist, you know,
Speaker 3: and I thought, well, you know, but this is the
Speaker 3: best they can do. I was walking up down here
Speaker 3: acoustic great and ourselves. I started singing. I thought, singing
Speaker 3: all these songs that sounded good. Girls could see me now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it didn't. It didn't break you what they
Speaker 1: were trying to do.
Speaker 3: That made me more determined. Yeah, it made me more determined.
Speaker 3: And so that's I eventually become a bank run. And
Speaker 3: the thing is for banks, you got to look. I
Speaker 3: was singing about bank in sixty five and I got
Speaker 3: out from Bafast and what happened. People were always talking
Speaker 3: about Robin Bens. Nobody ever did it. And the reason
Speaker 3: was that the bank tellers and the manager they were
Speaker 3: training with pistol. Label had pistols. People didn't rules they
Speaker 3: had pistols, and and they used to go to training
Speaker 3: so that they were pretty good shots, probably better shots
Speaker 3: than the crops. So guys knew if they ran in there,
Speaker 3: they're taking a risk getting shot. And the only bank
Speaker 3: rollers I knew about apart from America, like the famous
Speaker 3: one was stilling to you, was dead. Willie Sutton was dead,
Speaker 3: the famous ones. And then we had Simmons and new
Speaker 3: Comb that robbed the bank, and Simms robbed the bank
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty nine. Then they escaped in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 3: It's about October and just the biggest manhn't Astralian history.
Speaker 3: Sim and Newman they're still writing books about this book.
Speaker 3: Can just come out about it now. And they actually
Speaker 3: went when I told I went into John in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty they were is Simmers and Newham just been caught.
Speaker 3: They had him in in they had him there in
Speaker 3: the observation and the guys near here said they were
Speaker 3: flogging him every night. They could hear me on out there.
Speaker 3: They used to run in every night and there because
Speaker 3: the screw got killed. What happened they when they escaped,
Speaker 3: They got over to the Long Bay and they watching
Speaker 3: John Wain Weston and they cut the bars and the
Speaker 3: screws were watching the movie too, and they got out,
Speaker 3: got over the wall and went to Amy Planes which
Speaker 3: the minimal security one of the burning before broke in
Speaker 3: where they knew the food was and the weapons and
Speaker 3: screws sprung and there was a struggle and sued and
Speaker 3: the screw got killed. They killed him there, so so
Speaker 3: you imagine the impetus of the man hunt. They got
Speaker 3: Newgom Early Simmons skimming my head around his bare feet
Speaker 3: in the National Park out near Wyle, and they even
Speaker 3: brought track and dog special track of dogs from South
Speaker 3: Australia to catch him. And he's a real good looking
Speaker 3: guy and he become a bit of a folk hero,
Speaker 3: which is ridiculous, but that's the media. If the media
Speaker 3: play something up and I was down in Melbourne. I
Speaker 3: was seven and I was down in Melbourne. I was
Speaker 3: going with an Austrian girl and they're all talking, all
Speaker 3: of her and the friends talking about Simmons even down there.
Speaker 3: And then my girlfriend said he could put his shoes
Speaker 3: under my bed. Shaddy, you know, you know he said,
Speaker 3: bank Robberie's a killer fan. I'm a good guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you just kids standing on it. When you're young. You
Speaker 3: don't understand this stuff. But that they can't glorify that stuff.
Speaker 3: And anyway, Simmons was found hanged in nine and sixty
Speaker 3: six with his hands tight on his back. A lot
Speaker 3: of people say that he was murdered by the screws,
Speaker 3: and well they think that they just run in and
Speaker 3: killed him. And he was a draft and he got
Speaker 3: flogged every night up there for a few years. It
Speaker 3: was a bad place. They had a Royal commission in
Speaker 3: the graft and you've probably heard about it. But he
Speaker 3: made friends with guy called Darcy Dugan up there. He
Speaker 3: was very Australian, very famous bank robber escape and Darcy
Speaker 3: there's books out about him too. He's probably the most
Speaker 3: famous escape of all the bankweyer. Simmons introduced Darcy to
Speaker 3: his sister. His sister was a journalist. She finished up
Speaker 3: marrying Darce, didn't didn't last very long. What happened is
Speaker 3: she forced an inquiry in the Simmons death in sixty six.
Speaker 3: But they said, no natural, I don't know how to Well,
Speaker 3: you can get your hands on yourself, but those sort
Speaker 3: of things you're never going to win. Those sort of
Speaker 3: sort of things nobody cares rightly. Anyway, he was a
Speaker 3: murderer and he was escaping in a bank robbin and
Speaker 3: so that that story on Simmon and new But the
Speaker 3: thing is the one of the ones I knew about
Speaker 3: Darcy Durgan doing life, Siman's doing life. Why would I
Speaker 3: want to rob banks? But I didn't because and they
Speaker 3: got guns because I thought I looked around, no cameras
Speaker 3: in those days. They were a push out. He just
Speaker 3: walked in, pointed a gun, said want the money and
Speaker 3: run out. And then if you're unlucky and they're going
Speaker 3: to come after your guns.
Speaker 1: But I was, have you ever used to going before
Speaker 1: but to do any of the robberies?
Speaker 3: No, I don't, never don't. We did. We did one robbery,
Speaker 3: one robbery. My mate got a replica in George Street.
Speaker 3: In those days, you can just buy those reports. And
Speaker 3: he said, I have a look at that. And I said,
Speaker 3: you know where'd you get that? He said, listen, he said,
Speaker 3: what we'll do? He said, we'll go in a Fairfield
Speaker 3: part will Robert drunk. That's that's the scope of the thinking,
Speaker 3: you know. I said, no, why don't we go to
Speaker 3: the runway size? I said, no, I know where there's
Speaker 3: a bloody whole heap of money. Every Sunday night they cleaned,
Speaker 3: they put train comes past night, they pick up the manor.
Speaker 3: I said, to be at least one thousand pounds that's
Speaker 3: the money, maybe more. He said, no, that's been hard,
Speaker 3: he said. He said, look trust me, he said, drunkle
Speaker 3: be easy. He said, Friday nights, he said, they all
Speaker 3: but paid. So it actually happened. We're waiting there and
Speaker 3: in Fairfield Park near Villa. Were there near Caramera and
Speaker 3: sure you just wanted to leave. A drunk comes along.
Speaker 3: I never he was whistling, singing the blues. I'll never
Speaker 3: forget it. And we run out and my mate said,
Speaker 3: come on, give us your money, Pop, give us your money,
Speaker 3: and he said, he said, what what what's this? He said,
Speaker 3: a hold up, give us your money and he said okay.
Speaker 3: He said, if he's wanted, and he said, but he said,
Speaker 3: you know what's going to happen, And I said, it's
Speaker 3: going to happen. He said, my land lady is tough
Speaker 3: and if I don't pay the rent, she'll touch me out.
Speaker 3: And she said, and I've got nowhere to go. I
Speaker 3: said you sure? You said yees, so I'd call him
Speaker 3: and I said, listen. I said, we can't take you.
Speaker 3: He said, well, look we'll just take harm this man.
Speaker 3: I said, now we can't take his money many so
Speaker 3: we come over, gave him his walk back, said it's
Speaker 3: all right, you go. He said no, no, no, I
Speaker 3: can't leave. You said, you boys, you risk jail for this.
Speaker 3: He said, you take the money. We said no, no,
Speaker 3: we're arguing. Take some money. And in the end him said, look,
Speaker 3: I take the fan and go. You know. He said,
Speaker 3: all right, boys, or he said, but you two of
Speaker 3: the nicest boys I ever met. And he said you know,
Speaker 3: he said you got a heart, you got a heart,
Speaker 3: and he just left. And that was that was the
Speaker 3: only time I've ever got in bold and that's fairing.
Speaker 3: And because I thought this could be my father coming
Speaker 3: from you. I mean, he's a drunk iron give me
Speaker 3: a break. But he wasn't scared scared. He's just give
Speaker 3: us some money if you want it. But I'm going
Speaker 3: to get tossed out. And that's the true story. You
Speaker 3: wouldn't make something like that. And so what happened. I
Speaker 3: talked Jim and I said, look, let's rob the railway
Speaker 3: that I'm talking about. We'll get affairs at least. So
Speaker 3: he said, all right. Well, the idea was when the
Speaker 3: train came on Sunday nights. They came and they had
Speaker 3: a big safe on a train because I'd watched it
Speaker 3: in the in the in the stations would make up
Speaker 3: the money, put in a leaver, little lever patch that
Speaker 3: it'd come out of it as the train come through.
Speaker 3: It was always between eight and nine o'clock at night.
Speaker 3: They'd hand it to him. And I think that was
Speaker 3: all the weekend taken. And I thought, what we'll do
Speaker 3: before the train comes. We'll run in there and we'll
Speaker 3: stick him up and get the lever thing. But you
Speaker 3: wouldn't believe it across on the other side of a station.
Speaker 3: And Jim saw it is gone biggest score about six
Speaker 3: foot four huge, and Jim said, I know. He said.
Speaker 3: I said, look, we got a gun. He said, doesn't work.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work, which is right, it was didn't work.
Speaker 3: And he said if he wakes up, it's not a
Speaker 3: real gun. He said, he will kill us. I said, no,
Speaker 3: come on, John, I said. He said, no, I'm not
Speaker 3: doing it. I'm not doing it. I said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to do it. I said, we come to this front,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do it. So he waited, Jim waited,
Speaker 3: and I went in. I went into a toilet and
Speaker 3: the train. I thought, what I'll do is wait the
Speaker 3: train before I was going to do it. So when
Speaker 3: the train comes, people get off, and then he comes out,
Speaker 3: gets your tickets and then goes back. And I was
Speaker 3: going to grab him as he went back. So I
Speaker 3: went into the toilet and the train train was coming.
Speaker 3: I went into a toilet and I had a bag
Speaker 3: with the gun in it. And I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3: I was going to put the mask on it. And
Speaker 3: there were three toilets there. They had a little cure
Speaker 3: because you put a penny in them and it opened
Speaker 3: the thing. And I noticed one was a jar, and
Speaker 3: I thought that someone's in there, you know. So I
Speaker 3: just just about to put the mask on and opened
Speaker 3: this little boat with a suit come out and he said, Gray,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't believe us out and I said, he said,
Speaker 3: and he came up real close and he was dressed
Speaker 3: in a suit. He said, guess what just happened? I said, no,
Speaker 3: what what what happened? I cursed on it. He's going
Speaker 3: to I can't do this now. I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3: And he said, A bloake just sucked the boy off
Speaker 3: for a pound note. I hated this guy. I said,
Speaker 3: you know, well that that's it is. I was, you know,
Speaker 3: and he said, and his eyes were glistened, and he said,
Speaker 3: would you have done it for a pound note? I
Speaker 3: said no, no, I wouldn't have and went to go
Speaker 3: and he said for two pounds? I said, I whipped
Speaker 3: out pistol and how did you want to suck this
Speaker 3: for nothing? I put it in his mouth, you know.
Speaker 3: I pushed him in into I was getting there, and
Speaker 3: so I robbed him and he was trembling all that,
Speaker 3: and it turned out he had a lot of money
Speaker 3: under his collar. Money had it all wrapped around there.
Speaker 3: So I got about fifty quid off him, and they
Speaker 3: they engaged in those days, used to have to take
Speaker 3: risking tours. They hadn't nowhere to go, and so I
Speaker 3: used to hide their money. And so around now, I
Speaker 3: didn't tell Jim, I've got the money. So he's telling him.
Speaker 3: But while I had the guy on the toilet, the
Speaker 3: bloody runway guy come in. They have a piss. So
Speaker 3: I had the guy in the toilet, so he feels
Speaker 3: and I'm going to shoot him. Was a toy gun
Speaker 3: and he's tremblin and the guy this big guys and
Speaker 3: a piss. Well, god knows what would have happened if
Speaker 3: you had got one. What's happening. We got away with that,
Speaker 3: But it made me realize that if I'm going to
Speaker 3: do any I'm going to go and I'm going to run,
Speaker 3: I'm going to rob a bank. I'm going to take
Speaker 3: a risk and rob a bank. All that petty stuff.
Speaker 1: And so what was your first bank that you're up?
Speaker 3: The first bank was late January nineteen sixty six, County Heights.
Speaker 3: The reason I did that I knew the area and
Speaker 3: pretty well then. I always looked for good getaway. There
Speaker 3: was a school around a bit back behind the bank,
Speaker 3: and there was school holidays coming to do in the
Speaker 3: school in January, and I just come out in a
Speaker 3: little pass away, run in to the bank, run out across.
Speaker 1: The You did the bank robberies by yourself?
Speaker 3: First one? I didn't. First one, I didn't. I approached
Speaker 3: the guy was in a place called play Land in Pittstreet.
Speaker 3: It's not there anymore, but they had all these bloody
Speaker 3: pinball machines and all that. You know. I went up
Speaker 3: trying to find a guy and picked the guy looked
Speaker 3: down and he's like that, and he had bad too, tire.
Speaker 3: I knew he was down. He's like, I see if
Speaker 3: he'd never been in any trouble. He said yeah, and
Speaker 3: he had. He'd been a long bay and got talking nice. Look,
Speaker 3: I want to do a robbery. You're interested, he said.
Speaker 3: I said a bank, and he turned white. You know
Speaker 3: you just didn't lob bank, He said, Oh, I always
Speaker 3: wanted to wrong the bank. He said, this is your chance.
Speaker 3: But on the way there, we're not to eye knocked
Speaker 3: the car at Stratfield f J Holing. You pretty easy.
Speaker 3: Used to do them with silver paper on your edition
Speaker 3: and got taught this by kids. And we're going and
Speaker 3: he needed a scotch, then said to stop and getting
Speaker 3: a scotch. Yeah, And by the time we got to
Speaker 3: County Heights, I could see he just didn't want to
Speaker 3: do it. So I said, look what we'll do. I said,
Speaker 3: you going to pretend you're a customer. I said, I'll
Speaker 3: come in behind you. Stick the bank up, I said,
Speaker 3: and I'll order you to jump the county you cleaned
Speaker 3: the teller's rules out, and then we'll run off. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you to come with me and they'll think you're
Speaker 3: a customer. And said, if you ever catch here, I said,
Speaker 3: just tell them, and everybody were backing up, so he said,
Speaker 3: so he went in ahead. He did, and he called
Speaker 3: the manager. I wanted to manage her out anyway, and
Speaker 3: I put them by a clowns mask. I ran in
Speaker 3: and I bought this. In those days, you can just
Speaker 3: go and buy twenty two rifles and stuff. You just
Speaker 3: going by them. Didn't need to idea down to George
Speaker 3: Street and so easy ran in there and was so
Speaker 3: nervous my left knee was shaken and the gun went
Speaker 3: off into the floor, just bo them into the flour.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget the sound of it. It's just like
Speaker 3: an explosion, you know, and we're all unshot, including me.
Speaker 3: And then I pretended self instinct, you know, I pretended
Speaker 3: reloaded and pointed at the manager and I said give
Speaker 3: me a gun. He said, I said give me a gun.
Speaker 3: And I walked up the point in the empty rifle
Speaker 3: at him and he's going and I said, grab it
Speaker 3: by the hand. He passed to me by the hand.
Speaker 3: First I said grab it by the barrel, and he
Speaker 3: grabbed the gun by the barrel, ham into the Royal gun.
Speaker 3: The police were screaming later because they said they had
Speaker 3: me calm down, but in that situation you haven't got
Speaker 3: a cool mind. He didn't notice that. Probably it was
Speaker 3: a single shot, yeah, rather than going off and why
Speaker 3: risk your life anyway. So he's given it to me
Speaker 3: and I got the gun off here night. That's what
Speaker 3: I started doing, taking guns off off the tellers. But
Speaker 3: after that I did one on.
Speaker 1: Did you get away with that al must? How much
Speaker 1: did you get?
Speaker 3: And get a lot that they put eight thousand pound
Speaker 3: if you go through the old things gerally here, I
Speaker 3: have a look, I've had a lot of news for
Speaker 3: eight thousand pounds. I think they did that to try
Speaker 3: and to cause as sension between where and the guy
Speaker 3: because it wasn't it was. It was probably about two thousand, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And we split it quickly and separated and he went
Speaker 3: on his way. I never saw him again. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't even know who he is really. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't know who he was.
Speaker 1: And but you still trusted them to do a bank
Speaker 1: robbery with it?
Speaker 3: Well that's it memory. I picked him up and yeah,
Speaker 3: but he didn't want to do it. In the end,
Speaker 3: I give him a scotch, you know, the scotch and
Speaker 3: any any had to pretend he was a customer. You know,
Speaker 3: she did. He jumped down and got the money because
Speaker 3: you had to customer. But I was scared. She was.
Speaker 3: You know, I've never done any like it, and uh,
Speaker 3: And I knew they had real guns. The fact that
Speaker 3: I was out of the bluff that guy and get
Speaker 3: the gun and show me that I could coup cool
Speaker 3: under tight situation. So I knew I could. It's just
Speaker 3: it just came natural to me. I don't panic. I
Speaker 3: don't sit, never panic. No, I mean, as you get it.
Speaker 3: But you know, I was like, I was like, in,
Speaker 3: there's no doubtbout I could have been shot there. But
Speaker 3: I just think it's fain. I believe in faine. I
Speaker 3: believe certain things in my life happened. I think I'm
Speaker 3: still here today. I should have been dead. I've been
Speaker 3: shot out nine times and that never been hit once?
Speaker 3: And what was it?
Speaker 1: What was up from? Like? Well, why were you shot up?
Speaker 3: I did another bank, Cara Mata.
Speaker 1: You know, but before you do, you know, when you
Speaker 1: do a bank, save the Cara matter bank.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, and you're you're about to do that, do
Speaker 2: you go in there first to scout it out into
Speaker 2: the sus all out?
Speaker 3: Most of them? I did. Cara Mato didn't because I
Speaker 3: knew they were asked me for that one. They got
Speaker 3: on to me for that one. I don't know how,
Speaker 3: but oroonomy and so I didn't care. I ran in
Speaker 3: a Cabramata. I just said some glass. I didn't even
Speaker 3: have a mask on the other one. I had a
Speaker 3: master because I knew they would asked me. I thought,
Speaker 3: one bank, two banks. I've got to get away, and
Speaker 3: my intention was to get to America. I had this
Speaker 3: girlfriend in America and that said. That's another story. But
Speaker 3: what happened is with caver Matda I thought it'd be
Speaker 3: a huge amount of money because they changed currency from
Speaker 3: poundshillings and pencil to desert currency on the fourteenth of
Speaker 3: February nineteen sixty six, and that's the day I changed
Speaker 3: and I style the car the same way, and this
Speaker 3: time I had a real gun because I had I
Speaker 3: had the bank managers gun's, put on a pair of sunglass,
Speaker 3: had a suit on, and left the engine running. And
Speaker 3: this was what I meant about fate. Later on, I
Speaker 3: found out later years later, I found out when it's
Speaker 3: all went to court that the bank about twenty meters
Speaker 3: on this side where I parked. The guy I had
Speaker 3: seen me it was suspicious and had his gun ready,
Speaker 3: and he made it same in the police after it happened.
Speaker 3: He said, if you had come in here, I would
Speaker 3: have shot him. So that's how lucky I was. So
Speaker 3: I'm about I get out. I got the motor running.
Speaker 3: I'm about to run across here and hit the bank.
Speaker 3: Run out and said, I never forget it, old lady,
Speaker 3: because it was Valentine's Day. And this old lady Kamara
Speaker 3: and excuse me, young man, she said, I said. She said,
Speaker 3: you've left the motor running. I said, don't do that.
Speaker 3: She said, around here had a lot of foods. She said,
Speaker 3: wherever you're going, she said, you come back to your
Speaker 3: car will probably be gone. I said, look, thank you
Speaker 3: very much. I went over and she followed me, and
Speaker 3: I didn't have any curves. He said, So I'm filling
Speaker 3: ignition and she's looking. I don't know what. She thought,
Speaker 3: what's going on? And so I switched the engine. I'm
Speaker 3: on cursing, you know, and she said there, it's safe now.
Speaker 3: I said, thank you very much. I said, man, it's
Speaker 3: Valentine's Day, so I could have gone boy some roses.
Speaker 3: She saw you were a loving young man, you know.
Speaker 3: Two minutes later she would have seen me running out
Speaker 3: of the bank getting chased by the bank management gun
Speaker 3: and a buddy butcher. They came because I robbed the butch.
Speaker 3: He put all his takes and I said, I'll take that.
Speaker 3: He said no. When I saw take that you had,
Speaker 3: I'll never forget. He had two bank books. One was
Speaker 3: Donald Duck when we're making you his kids. I said,
Speaker 3: we won't take that. I said, you're covered by insurance,
Speaker 3: and they are. I knew that. I said, you'll get
Speaker 3: that money bag. I knew this, and that's one thing
Speaker 3: people kream has turneding evering. Yeah, they know. And when
Speaker 3: you go into a bank, anything happens, you're covered by
Speaker 3: insurance if you get robbed. So I wasn't worried about
Speaker 3: taking his money, but he came after me. He didn't
Speaker 3: believe it. So the bank manager grabbed the gun and
Speaker 3: come with me. And when I jumped in the car
Speaker 3: and cursed the old lady because I've got to get
Speaker 3: it started again, and I seen him in the rear
Speaker 3: vision and I thought, he's going to come with a gun,
Speaker 3: and what am I going to do? I got my
Speaker 3: gun because I've always had the mindset I'm like going
Speaker 3: to shoot anybody, and I have and shot it. They
Speaker 3: came after me. I managed to lose them get away,
Speaker 3: so I got away. So I knew by now I
Speaker 3: was getting pretty hot. So I went to went down
Speaker 3: to Melbourne once again. I thought it's too hard on
Speaker 3: my own. I'll get somebody to help me. And this
Speaker 3: guy ran in me. I was going to the illegal
Speaker 3: casino's backs. There were a couple of heavy old cooks
Speaker 3: here that found out what happened to me later and
Speaker 3: sent money in the jar. You know, there's a blake
Speaker 3: called Brewster. He's a good old crime used to be
Speaker 3: a crimin back in the thirties, and said that he
Speaker 3: was running a two ur game. I used to go
Speaker 3: now and I ran into a guy and knew me,
Speaker 3: and he was always biting me. I was going in
Speaker 3: and I used to work a system and I was
Speaker 3: actually winning, winning a bit each night. And he come
Speaker 3: on me and I said, look, he said, he came
Speaker 3: to me. He said, John, He said, the cops have
Speaker 3: got me for house breaking, imbalance. I need two hundred. Well,
Speaker 3: I don't want to give you fifty years fifty there,
Speaker 3: and I was getting sick of you know, so I
Speaker 3: need two hundred to get out of it. I said,
Speaker 3: I even got two hundred, you know. I said, look,
Speaker 3: I said, and I was getting low and I said look,
Speaker 3: I said, you want to do a job. He said,
Speaker 3: What I'm going to do. So we're going to do
Speaker 3: is drive a car for me. I said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to rob a bank. Big mistake. This guy's a pickpocket, pickpocket,
Speaker 3: chop lifter. I said, you and a housebreak. I said,
Speaker 3: you just wait outside the bank in the car and
Speaker 3: I'll get it. Half.
Speaker 1: This is Melbourne, yet, Yeah, did you ever robbed the
Speaker 1: bunk in Melbourne before?
Speaker 3: But I did study, just want to. I worked out
Speaker 3: to get away, run and the idea was run out
Speaker 3: of the bank, get into the car, drive down the
Speaker 3: end of his road, which is a dead end, get
Speaker 3: out and run through is paddic. There was a railway
Speaker 3: station Kensington at the end, and I had a time
Speaker 3: I timed it. I did try to run and the
Speaker 3: trains were always regularly down there and I get the
Speaker 3: train perfect peer you get away, but he didn't turn up.
Speaker 3: And I was going to I was going to dance
Speaker 3: schol because the girl in America was a really good
Speaker 3: ballroom dancing. I was learning. I was playing big Bucks
Speaker 3: learning boreroom dancing and she said, make sure you can
Speaker 3: do the ten believe it. So I was getting private
Speaker 3: lessons one of the best sorts you've ever seen, which
Speaker 3: made a tang out. I said, I've got to get
Speaker 3: down my tang out lessons. And that was after the
Speaker 3: after I on the bank, well, he told the cops
Speaker 3: he realized when he saw that the bank roll had
Speaker 3: gone down. He told him to get out of that ship.
Speaker 3: And they've done it, and they dressed up his dancers.
Speaker 3: I walked in there and you know, they got me.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget it. Shot of my life, really, you know.
Speaker 3: The cops threw stop and stands and just grabbed me.
Speaker 3: And I finished up doing seven years down Pintach for that.
Speaker 3: But what happened with the bank This is the first
Speaker 3: time we got shot at. I'd been shot at, you know,
Speaker 3: when I escaped Baptist. But this time the bank tell
Speaker 3: has shot me. What happened is the young guy to
Speaker 3: manage it. You can see he's a tough guy and
Speaker 3: he just didn't want to didn't want to be robbed.
Speaker 3: And I said, pull ripped, ripped the phone out from
Speaker 3: the wall, and he wouldn't do it. I just ripped
Speaker 3: the phone out of the wall, you know. And this
Speaker 3: way you've got to get a long time. You're intimidating people,
Speaker 3: accept that. You know, it's a bad thing you're doing.
Speaker 3: And so I said, and it was sort of his
Speaker 3: will against mine, but I got the gun. I said,
Speaker 3: you'll rip the pone out of the wall, because I
Speaker 3: knew he'd be trying to so he ripped it out
Speaker 3: like that, and I thought, this guy is trouble. This
Speaker 3: guy he's going to come after me. I knew it.
Speaker 3: I knew but paid the car across the road, you know,
Speaker 3: and I'm a pretty quick runner, so I had the
Speaker 3: money in the bad The other blow was crabbing himself
Speaker 3: and got it spun around and ran across and then
Speaker 3: he got knocked over. And I get I get to
Speaker 3: the bloody car and they're already there. They were already
Speaker 3: already across the street. They're only about six cars back,
Speaker 3: and I have the doors opened the door. He's gone
Speaker 3: bang bang, he's fired the shots. He wasn't a good shot.
Speaker 3: He hit the boot. He hit the boot. So I
Speaker 3: went like that, and you know, I wasn't going to
Speaker 3: shoot it. I went like that and they dived down.
Speaker 3: I want a car, and then I jumped in. And
Speaker 3: as I jumped in read the car, there's a truck
Speaker 3: driver pulled in front of me try to stop me.
Speaker 3: And I was really dirty and that I you know,
Speaker 3: he doesn't know where I'm a good guy, the bad guy.
Speaker 3: You know, they could be the bad guy. So I
Speaker 3: went up around on the footpath and he's tried to
Speaker 3: cut me and I just got around him and he's
Speaker 3: come after me. I saw in a rear visionary. He's
Speaker 3: asked me back behind him. The two bank tools are running,
Speaker 3: both got guns, and I've got a train's going to
Speaker 3: get me away. But I'm that dirty. And this is
Speaker 3: where ego tastes control. I get to the dead end
Speaker 3: and a truck driver pulls up behind me, and I thought,
Speaker 3: no fuck is how I jumped out, Well, I know
Speaker 3: the train's coming, and I run up to the thing
Speaker 3: and he saw me coming. He's pretty smart. He wound
Speaker 3: the window, ups wound the window. What's what's that going
Speaker 3: to do? So I just chapped on a window, I said,
Speaker 3: I just shoved in the gun. I said, what are
Speaker 3: you going to do now? What are you going to
Speaker 3: do now? But I was really dirty because he got
Speaker 3: me shot and he like that. He was shaken, and
Speaker 3: I just laughed and I ran. But those trains always
Speaker 3: in time. And I was seen the train coming in
Speaker 3: and I ran and this money falling out of the bank.
Speaker 3: And this little guy they had the little uniforms, he's
Speaker 3: like that. He come and he weighed on about ten
Speaker 3: meters away and he closed the gate and I got
Speaker 3: up and I'm puffed there. I said, listen, you gotta
Speaker 3: let me in. I've got to get that train. You
Speaker 3: said you missed it, fellow. I said, I mean, I've
Speaker 3: got to get that train. He's you have to get
Speaker 3: the next one, mate, And I looked around. I could
Speaker 3: see him up at the top end of the padding.
Speaker 3: There's two guys up there with guns and the back
Speaker 3: they're pointing to amount. So the train went and he
Speaker 3: just went went to his office. So I went in
Speaker 3: after you open, and I went in, jumped down on
Speaker 3: the track, and those idiots thought I had caught the train.
Speaker 3: They didn't watch closer. They thought, yeah, so that that
Speaker 3: that was lucky. So but I was stuck in the
Speaker 3: middle of nowhere and next train is half an hour away.
Speaker 3: There was a big fence and somehow, I don't know how.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're district you can do it. Ripped
Speaker 3: my finger and that got over this fence. There was
Speaker 3: a factory and there were cars and the guys are
Speaker 3: having our lunch and there's a couple of guys and
Speaker 3: these two guys were in the front seat of the cars.
Speaker 3: It was home. And I went up and I just
Speaker 3: got in the bank and said, hi, guys, understand, I
Speaker 3: showed them a gun. I slip. I got to get
Speaker 3: into town. I said, can you help me and the bag?
Speaker 3: It's just cool as a key going. He said, so
Speaker 3: we can do that, just so bloody cool. And his
Speaker 3: mate said yeah. I said, I just outscore Melbourne. I said,
Speaker 3: struck a bit of trouble and the old blade said yeah.
Speaker 3: So he had the waves through security, waves through security
Speaker 3: went through, and siren's going to where cop cars going around.
Speaker 3: The young Blake said Jesus there after somebody I said, ah, said,
Speaker 3: there's always things happening wrong, and he said, yeah, we
Speaker 3: left know it's madly looking for you. And we start
Speaker 3: talking about football because I love football out there, and
Speaker 3: i'd actually started bearing for Geelong and to have a
Speaker 3: te him when he went down here and I started
Speaker 3: barring for Geelong and I said, who'd you barring for us?
Speaker 3: Homage a long supporter, they said, I went, were died
Speaker 3: in the warm Collingwood all that life, collin would and
Speaker 3: Collinwood was working man's that they always were. And so
Speaker 3: when we stopped, I said, to stop us here, I
Speaker 3: got out, give me a one on money. I don't
Speaker 3: know how much it was. I said, look, he said,
Speaker 3: what's that for? I said, that's that's for the petrol.
Speaker 3: He said, I wouldn't come that I saw anyway. I said,
Speaker 3: racked rack the west on Collinwood to win the win
Speaker 3: the premiership. I said, you never know. He said, mate,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do that. Colin Wood got to the
Speaker 3: Grand Final. They got beat a point on the siren
Speaker 3: in sixty six by Saint Coler and Saint Coler was
Speaker 3: trained by a cop Caln James. I mean the irony
Speaker 3: of it, and I often thought, I did you know
Speaker 3: that they didn't go to the police. I was never
Speaker 3: mentioned that was that would have been extra time for me,
Speaker 3: and I didn't go to the police, didn't report me.
Speaker 3: I always had a soft spot for coming without there.
Speaker 3: But the truck driver he was on the six o'clock news,
Speaker 3: and when I got home, I was feling pretty good.
Speaker 3: I think I got nearly four thousand and so we
Speaker 3: said I had got away and there he was this
Speaker 3: Bankrobb the truck drive was the star guy and they
Speaker 3: said what happened? And he said, well, what happened? He said,
Speaker 3: I chased him? He said, and did he come? And
Speaker 3: he said he somehow he squeezed through and he said
Speaker 3: I chased him. He said, we both jumped out, said,
Speaker 3: we jumped out and I went to go for and
Speaker 3: he said he ran away. They said, what about the gun?
Speaker 3: He said, you know what I would have done with
Speaker 3: that gun before I got and he said he ran
Speaker 3: across a thing like a curved ong, you know. And
Speaker 3: they said, say, he's blady here. So I thought, okay,
Speaker 3: that's that's his story. But when they caught me the
Speaker 3: dance to Goon, we had to go to Committal and
Speaker 3: I was told this truck I was going to be there.
Speaker 3: I knew what he was going to say. He was
Speaker 3: going to get in caught, and so I terrorized him,
Speaker 3: and at which I did to a degree, And yet
Speaker 3: here he is on Channel nine saying this. So as
Speaker 3: we walked past the screws, I stopped. I said, remember me,
Speaker 3: and he looked at he turned white. I said you're
Speaker 3: going to testify, I said, and you're going to tom.
Speaker 3: I said, how you jumped out the truck and you
Speaker 3: chased me like I was a curved on And I
Speaker 3: said I was terrified of you. I remember that. And
Speaker 3: he said, I like that you didn't testify. What's he
Speaker 3: going to do? What's you going to do? So that
Speaker 3: helped me a bit, but yeah, when I got to Pantridge,
Speaker 3: I knew I had to try and escape and there's
Speaker 3: anything I could do and either it because I was
Speaker 3: wandering for bank robbin in New South Wales as well
Speaker 3: as down in Melbourne, and they just don't take kind
Speaker 3: in the bank was particularly in those days. They were
Speaker 3: hardly anybody. They were getting ready to hang Ryan that
Speaker 3: caught them, and they're getting ready.
Speaker 1: I was actually there with how would how would the
Speaker 1: your mates that towards you?
Speaker 3: Though they don't like Melvin Sidney crims really no, But
Speaker 3: because I was a bank robber and I was young guys,
Speaker 3: only twenty three twenty four, I got them pretty well.
Speaker 3: But there's one inch and I remember and when they
Speaker 3: arrested me, they had me on a higher security, didn't
Speaker 3: send me back on the normal band. They sent me
Speaker 3: back on a special small van with someone following them.
Speaker 3: And I was in the back handcuffed to a red
Speaker 3: headed guy and I said, have you ever going to
Speaker 3: Penry Foot? He wouldn't talk, He wouldn't talk. So when
Speaker 3: we got off at Penry they came over and I
Speaker 3: knew it was a tough job, and I said, some
Speaker 3: tough crims down there staring at us and some pretty
Speaker 3: heavy prison of other of there. We're probably going to
Speaker 3: get bash here, you know. So they owned handcuffs and
Speaker 3: they said who's Rory? I said, I'm killing. I said,
Speaker 3: you come with us killing. So we started to walk away.
Speaker 3: Don't have heard his scream and looked around and the
Speaker 3: crims nothing screws. The crims had this Rary on the ground.
Speaker 3: I bumping him, kicking, he smashing his yelling out give
Speaker 3: him the trouble. I turned out Riary had raped and
Speaker 3: murdered a sixteen year old and raped and murder the
Speaker 3: three a six year old and a sixteen year old.
Speaker 3: He raped the murder. Now, eventually I went down to
Speaker 3: Haystis because I tried to escape. There were two screws.
Speaker 3: I tried something in baths come out and and you know,
Speaker 3: not CAF taking their cuffs on and as their handcuffed
Speaker 3: me again, I worked one and he's gone down and pushing.
Speaker 3: I went off, young guy and I got to the door,
Speaker 3: but I had to stop and pull it out and
Speaker 3: there were steps down there. As I got there. When
Speaker 3: they go to you wouldn't believe he's tackled me. You
Speaker 3: wouldn't believe the AFL state they ran me a tack
Speaker 3: on me from the top. I couldn't believe. Nobody else
Speaker 3: could believe. That's fate too. He was the faith to
Speaker 3: get caught. We're rolling around on the grass and I'm kicking, pumping,
Speaker 3: and he's screaming out like blue murder, and the cops
Speaker 3: just loved those away. I would have been because I
Speaker 3: was dressed in Simmy's or whatever. Got away and so
Speaker 3: they give me a hiding and then they took me
Speaker 3: down to Hats Division and knew i'd go, and I
Speaker 3: got another hiding down there. They strip you off down
Speaker 3: there and they just smash your batons in your unconscious.
Speaker 3: But you know, it seems like thirty minutes to get
Speaker 3: in based it's probably two minutes. I BITCHU my lip
Speaker 3: to stop myself singing out because I knew it grafted.
Speaker 3: And they used to say try not to yell out
Speaker 3: because all they other crimsonal listening. You know. Some of
Speaker 3: them cry like babies, you know, and some of them don't.
Speaker 3: So I got a pretty bad hiding then for that.
Speaker 3: And I was there, I used to see Ron Ryan,
Speaker 3: the last man hanging in Australia, was there. They were
Speaker 3: definitely going to hang him. But there's a lot of evidence.
Speaker 3: There's grounds form of opinion now that I reckon that
Speaker 3: he didn't do it at the screw from the town.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of eminence to point that that. Anyway,
Speaker 3: what happened all he hated him, wanted to die, and
Speaker 3: I used to see him and bring him out as
Speaker 3: a security beld on him. And the night they hanged him.
Speaker 3: In the morning they hand him and the night before
Speaker 3: and the Gary was ready to erupt. The government came
Speaker 3: around and said, look, I was just spoke to Ryan.
Speaker 3: He's accepted his fate. He's answer like the playot for
Speaker 3: everybody say so they didn't they didn't play it. You
Speaker 3: had produce outside right around, right around Astralia. The produce
Speaker 3: about it. And they hanged him and reproved Rory similar names,
Speaker 3: Ryan and Rory. Reprieved Rory who raped the murder. The
Speaker 3: two guys reprieved him. He got out and sells paintings
Speaker 3: as a living stone. So that's why people are dirty
Speaker 3: about it. It's such a controversial issue anyway. If any
Speaker 3: far from Van reabilitated, I was, I was even worse,
Speaker 3: and I was ready to bust out again and sixty
Speaker 3: eight I got, I got two guys tornised a lot week.
Speaker 3: We can get out of here. And the security has
Speaker 3: been ramped up because of Ryan Warmur. They even had
Speaker 3: two screws in the town during the day. What we're
Speaker 3: going to do, I said, we can cut through these bars.
Speaker 3: We're in the door with his eight of us. So
Speaker 3: we cut the bars. There was a big circle of iron,
Speaker 3: iron circle screws, iron bars, screws had come in through
Speaker 3: a door. Just check everybody, go back out. I said,
Speaker 3: I have a guy up here sand paper and something.
Speaker 3: So if they hear a noise, I think it's looking
Speaker 3: through the people and we get it. So I got,
Speaker 3: I got two smuggle two weight bars. When the weights
Speaker 3: there's two bars, pretty big ones, and smuggled them in
Speaker 3: and had a hacks at blade got through the bars.
Speaker 1: How long will that take you to get through the bus?
Speaker 3: Three hours? Three hours because just very slow. But are
Speaker 3: good blades. But that they were smuggled to me you
Speaker 3: had to pay for that. But the thing is the
Speaker 3: three of us gone, but the other guys on there
Speaker 3: were twelve when im the other night. We're very happy
Speaker 3: about it because They said, we're going to lose that
Speaker 3: to you. But you've got to the mentality of some crims.
Speaker 3: I said, look, you can come. They said, when I going,
Speaker 3: you're crazy, You're crazy, you know. And it was crazy, really,
Speaker 3: but at that stage I just didn't give us stuff.
Speaker 3: I was even going to get out. I wasn't and
Speaker 3: so too. What I did. We got through the bars.
Speaker 3: We looked through the to see who was on We're
Speaker 3: going to hit after midnight. The screw was upstairs all
Speaker 3: night and he had the couz and he used to come.
Speaker 3: We had to get him down overpower him, get his gun,
Speaker 3: get the couz. So I looked through the changes. Shift
Speaker 3: usually change shifts about twelve. It's about ten to twelve
Speaker 3: or something. So I'm coming through. Damn bluddy six foot four,
Speaker 3: big dutchman, but a great guy, you know, one of
Speaker 3: the few screws I actually liked. I said, I can't
Speaker 3: hit this guy. How am I going to hit this guy?
Speaker 3: You know, you know you're going, You're planned all this,
Speaker 3: but I've got the bars cut and you gave here
Speaker 3: in the morning and say, look, excuse me. I cut
Speaker 3: the bars. I was going to escape, but there was
Speaker 3: a nice officer on. I couldn't I couldn't eat it
Speaker 3: them on bars, so just handing himself, well they'd just
Speaker 3: take it out and flog anyway. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't have any officer. And then I used the
Speaker 3: green against the blue? What had happened to me? How
Speaker 3: did smash me? And I thought, look, you know, sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to do it. So we one
Speaker 3: guy kept in, kept watching the others, and we said
Speaker 3: we're going going to do it now, and any of
Speaker 3: you sing out. Matthew was going to wake him with
Speaker 3: the bar, and they didn't ever go to that gup.
Speaker 3: So what I got through the bars, got into the circle.
Speaker 3: I had a knife cut there was a soft petitioning
Speaker 3: part of the door. I cut through there, got my
Speaker 3: hand for and when you put your hands for, you
Speaker 3: think it could play chop it office something, put your
Speaker 3: hands through it. And I knew that because I used
Speaker 3: to come through a lot. They didn't lock. They just
Speaker 3: lit a bolt through. I got under the bomb. Well
Speaker 3: then I was out into this coldor I knew he
Speaker 3: was upstairs. Say then mat and Jeff had a bar
Speaker 3: and I at a bar. I said, look, if you're
Speaker 3: going to come down the stairs. If he turns around
Speaker 3: to me, I said, you hit him in the back
Speaker 3: of the head, I said, and rubbish, gunn I said,
Speaker 3: if he turns around to you, all hit him in
Speaker 3: the back of the head, because we've got to hit
Speaker 3: him on the back, you know. So wait mill of nights.
Speaker 3: It's about a bit after midnight, and it's cold and
Speaker 3: we're shivering, and it's so eerie. I never forget. You
Speaker 3: can't hear anything, and all of a sudden he's knocking
Speaker 3: up and HER's I'm coming, I'm coming, and we hear
Speaker 3: him coming down, and I'm looking at We're standing on
Speaker 3: the other side, and I'm looking across at Jeff and
Speaker 3: he's like that. You know, I knew it. He can't
Speaker 3: do it. He can't do it. I'm going to have
Speaker 3: to do it. It doesn't matter which way to. So
Speaker 3: sure enough he come down. He turned around to me, Well,
Speaker 3: Jeff shure to hit him, just like I couldn't couldn't
Speaker 3: do it. So I got the bar of the screws.
Speaker 3: He's gone for the gun, and I waked. But I
Speaker 3: liked the guy, so I pulled it. And I mean
Speaker 3: that I pulled it and instead of waking him. Mart
Speaker 3: was a soft tap that drew blood. Blood spurred it out,
Speaker 3: and I thought, you're standing here in the middle of
Speaker 3: the night in a maxim security jarm hit the screw
Speaker 3: in the heaven iron bar and I thought, it is
Speaker 3: just really happened. It's the worst thing in my life
Speaker 3: that I still think back about. It was just a nightmare.
Speaker 3: And he stagged, A big tough guy staggered. So I
Speaker 3: hit him again. Still pulled at that and probably like you,
Speaker 3: I did pull it, you know, I guess. But it
Speaker 3: didn't knock him unconscious. And there was a belt and
Speaker 3: he stagger towards a bell, so I dropped the bar
Speaker 3: and hit him on a chimney. He went down, and
Speaker 3: when he went down, I grabbed his gun. I said, listen,
Speaker 3: listened to the door. I said, I knew who he was.
Speaker 3: I said, give me the courtes where the court? He said,
Speaker 3: have you got the course? I said, what do you mean,
Speaker 3: you haven't got the courage? He said, When Ryan and
Speaker 3: walkt escape, they up secured and it wouldn't let him
Speaker 3: have the couries anymore, someone from outside them. So that
Speaker 3: was the end of that. We were trapped, I thought,
Speaker 3: and my mate said, we have to blow a long
Speaker 3: off and I said that in the movies at work,
Speaker 3: and I doubt it's going to work here. And then
Speaker 3: a screw come the door, John Johant, and he's John
Speaker 3: the Ball. So they'd heard the noise and I dived out.
Speaker 3: He was standing there. The door was open, and I
Speaker 3: dived out, and the pointed the gunner and stay where
Speaker 3: you are, your dad, and he just dived in the shadows.
Speaker 3: I heard him running. I said, where off, guys?
Speaker 1: So what we did?
Speaker 3: We went upstairs. We had this old piano they used
Speaker 3: to do church services upstairs to and pulled it across
Speaker 3: the top of the stairs so he couldn't get in.
Speaker 3: You couldn't get it. Then I turned open the doors.
Speaker 3: There were free dorm whites upstairs. Opened open the doors
Speaker 3: of them and tell all the guys we saw the
Speaker 3: lights on us. Tell them what's happening. They couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: And I said, look, I said, I said, they might
Speaker 3: try and come in through the roof or cut through
Speaker 3: the bait. You gotta let me know. They said, was
Speaker 3: they were excited? I said, we'll piss on them all
Speaker 3: that they were excited about it. So I knew I
Speaker 3: had them on side. So the only way they're going
Speaker 3: to be able to get me is come up through
Speaker 3: these stairs. And you know, I had it blocked, and
Speaker 3: eventually they came. You know, I do tours down there
Speaker 3: now and that place division is now a bar and
Speaker 3: a restaurant, the cafe, and we go down and we
Speaker 3: eat meals and buy drinks fifteen bucks for a beer.
Speaker 3: But people, as soon as they come in, they go
Speaker 3: and they tell them about because Ada and Carlo's swat
Speaker 3: team coming. They opened up an explosive place but tear
Speaker 3: gas haart works and it went there was five hour seedge.
Speaker 3: They brought the commissioner in and they had the loudspege.
Speaker 3: The thing I had in my favorite I knew was
Speaker 3: that they couldn't get up there. About coming up there
Speaker 3: just bastards, and they didn't want to do that because
Speaker 3: the newspapers. And the other thing is there were a
Speaker 3: thousand crimins listening because it was an allowed figure and
Speaker 3: you had a thousand crimins surrounded in those wings. They
Speaker 3: could all hear what was going on. And I knew
Speaker 3: the governor and he's got a reputation even now is
Speaker 3: because he's dead. He had a reputation as a man
Speaker 3: of his word. I knew I could get him to
Speaker 3: do a duel that he created the duel he had
Speaker 3: to because they do duels every day with crimson. He's
Speaker 3: got asand criminals. If he's got to do it. So
Speaker 3: I wouldn't come down. I said. The only way I
Speaker 3: will come down, give you the gun. I said, it's
Speaker 3: got to be kept in a low court, because we
Speaker 3: went to high court, get buddy, twenty years. We kept
Speaker 3: the low court. And I said, no bashing. You know
Speaker 3: well in the end he said, there's no problem with
Speaker 3: no bashing. You've got my word. You will not be
Speaker 3: touched down here. If we didn't get that, that turned
Speaker 3: us into eventually and and the other thing is he said,
Speaker 3: I can't speak. I can't get you in the law court.
Speaker 3: I said, we're not coming in. They could do it.
Speaker 3: And when I was coming to Jeff Wigan, he went down.
Speaker 3: He's worried about what his mother was going to think.
Speaker 3: And that's fair enough. He was worried about He's worried
Speaker 3: about his moment, so he went down. So they still
Speaker 3: had a tourist his me in the red bag, Matt
Speaker 3: because Mack was tatl Mac started going and saying, run
Speaker 3: up down from bottles and him and corn counts and
Speaker 3: you can't do that. So he cracked up. He finished
Speaker 3: up in an arrow out of mental assign anyway, in
Speaker 3: the end he agreed. He said, I've got to get
Speaker 3: my jil up and running. And morning he said, you've
Speaker 3: got my word or be kept in the lower court
Speaker 3: and you will not have a hand laid on it.
Speaker 3: So like I went down. I remember, I remember when
Speaker 3: I went down those stairs, hands on my head, and
Speaker 3: soon I could seem life thwing up about six bloody
Speaker 3: heavy weapons aimed at me. I don't just won't press
Speaker 3: on the trigger, and I'm gone, yeah, but to buy that,
Speaker 3: and I just think it's faint that I was meant to.
Speaker 3: And you know, I remember they took me down. They
Speaker 3: put me in a cell and all the screws came
Speaker 3: in off duty surround me, about six on them. When
Speaker 3: I was inside the cell and they were outside. It
Speaker 3: was the soul that Ryan had burned. You can see
Speaker 3: right through the bars on the outside. And they said,
Speaker 3: you know what you've done, And I just said, get fucked.
Speaker 3: I did because I'd cross the line, and I made
Speaker 3: up my mind. If you're going to bash me, and
Speaker 3: you're going to bash me, I'm not going to cop
Speaker 3: shit from now. I'll get back to them. If I
Speaker 3: get bash then I'll probably kill me anyway. That's the
Speaker 3: I've got to rely on the go, And they did.
Speaker 3: He came down every day, saw us on you got
Speaker 3: You're okay, yeah, okay. But what they did to you,
Speaker 3: how they got me was we got me a lot
Speaker 3: of mind games for years. But he came down about
Speaker 3: there's probably ten days later. It was a Friday night
Speaker 3: and he came to a cell because the government going
Speaker 3: home and step out. They said about six of there.
Speaker 3: I do it here at Commers, here at Connors. So
Speaker 3: I steeled myself for it. I thought I'll be likely
Speaker 3: to survive this. I stepped out and they said turn left,
Speaker 3: turn left. They masked me up to Ryan Song where
Speaker 3: he'd went, and I said step inside. I stepped inside.
Speaker 3: They locked it and they said officer at the ball
Speaker 3: died at four o'clocks today. They said, you'll hang like Ryan,
Speaker 3: you bastard, and you'll swing. They walked away. Well forty hours.
Speaker 3: They left me there thinking that right that the guy died.
Speaker 3: Definitely they would hang me. They're going to hang Ryan.
Speaker 3: Mine was premeditated. Ryan's was done to Spurad the moment
Speaker 3: during the escape. Mine was a premeditated act, no doubt.
Speaker 3: If he's dead, I'm going to I will swing. But
Speaker 3: I thought, you got to use your brains. You've got
Speaker 3: to think things out and trying and to use reason.
Speaker 3: And I thought there's one thing here. If he died,
Speaker 3: would I should pot screws coming in and tell me
Speaker 3: or would I have the homicides work coming into me
Speaker 3: and take me out and charge me? And that's what
Speaker 3: kept me going. But you still got that doubt. You
Speaker 3: still got that doubt. Anyway, Sunday night they come and
Speaker 3: got me left, turned right, turned down, and they said
Speaker 3: offs the boards made a remote recovery. It's okay, put
Speaker 3: me back and they'll laughing. Now. The thing is they
Speaker 3: left it to me where I'm going to tell Grinally.
Speaker 3: Grinally come around on Monday morning, didn't knowing about it,
Speaker 3: said we were right. I said, yeah, that means fine,
Speaker 3: because if I tell Grinley, he's already in the ship.
Speaker 3: They were going to jack up overspan in low Court
Speaker 3: only got eighty months for what happened months if I
Speaker 3: say to him what happened, he's going to have to
Speaker 3: say to them what They're going to deny it. He's
Speaker 3: going to be in a position then what's he going
Speaker 3: to do. I didn't want to put him in that position,
Speaker 3: because he's in enough shit over me. And he got
Speaker 3: he got some payback from me because in sixty nine
Speaker 3: seventy seventy one we all went on rights and practically
Speaker 3: reckoned the place with disobeying orders. But one Irish guy
Speaker 3: call this screw down Landed. He was an Englishman and
Speaker 3: he was a macculate, you know, spit polysh shoes straight out,
Speaker 3: straight out of the military, and a lot of them
Speaker 3: were military guys, and come down, mad irishman said, and
Speaker 3: he threw some shit all I mean, fucking hit him
Speaker 3: in her face, down his uniform and I heard him
Speaker 3: was screaming. He ran up the thing and you know,
Speaker 3: I hurt him on the phone, and we're all listening
Speaker 3: and some of the oraceans realized he did a lot
Speaker 3: of shit. He's quite mad. And we heard him shut
Speaker 3: officer the silence because we knew the screws were coming
Speaker 3: down and going to bash him. And he said, afic, sorry,
Speaker 3: about that. There's no answer. He said, I'll pay for
Speaker 3: the dry clanet. No answer. Next thing, the squad come down.
Speaker 3: They give me the biggest flog of his life. But
Speaker 3: the guy's hurt him getting and it went. It just
Speaker 3: went too bad. What they did was pretty heavy, and anyway,
Speaker 3: we're all jacked up. And what happened is that he
Speaker 3: got really bad. And the governor came down and in
Speaker 3: the middle of it and said, look, we'll do some negotiations.
Speaker 3: I'll bring in the ministry and we're going to do
Speaker 3: and they said we wouldn't take your word. Then he
Speaker 3: saw the man my word and they said burn it
Speaker 3: because I just didn't believe in it, he said. And
Speaker 3: he said, well, John Killick will tell you. And we're
Speaker 3: in the middle of a right. This is the worst
Speaker 3: right in Pendridg's history. And got the governor asking me
Speaker 3: for a reference. Then he said tell them Killick. I said, well,
Speaker 3: all I could say is govinor Greenley kept his word
Speaker 3: and we did a due well tonight. I tried to
Speaker 3: escape and he kept his word. That's all I can say.
Speaker 3: He said, thank you, Killick. He said, there and then
Speaker 3: it stands Taylor Near say He's a heavy crim heat
Speaker 3: bomb buddy Russell Street lighter. He said there, if John
Speaker 3: said we're gonna take his word, We're gonna take his word.
Speaker 3: So dealers were done and has got a lot better
Speaker 3: by the time Chopper Red got there because I'd gone.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the same place when Chopper got there. So
Speaker 3: you know I did. I did seven years there, got
Speaker 3: extradited to quit news out Wales. I didn't do very
Speaker 3: long there because all the time I've done here and
Speaker 3: what happens, got out, got married, started writing stories and whatnot.
Speaker 3: Got you know. I had a shop that I did
Speaker 3: really well, and started photographic business. I did a lot,
Speaker 3: was working all the time, five years working, and then
Speaker 3: I lost the shop on one day, So I was
Speaker 3: I haven't mentioned it was pretty heavy gambler. He's gambled
Speaker 3: pretty heavy. And when I was robbing banks. That's why
Speaker 3: I robbed one bank after another. Was I used to
Speaker 3: gamble pretty heavy.
Speaker 1: And that's the pay to be the debts that you gambled.
Speaker 3: That was it. You know. I was never a professional
Speaker 3: bank robber as such, because professionals that's what they do.
Speaker 3: They rob banks. And I rob another bank, and I'd
Speaker 3: rob a bank. Hopefully that was the end of it.
Speaker 3: Get bank in the business, do what I was doing,
Speaker 3: and then lose money at the horse. I lost the
Speaker 3: shop in one day. That at the damage son at
Speaker 3: Elinori Eyanes just about ruined my marriage coming. But what
Speaker 3: I did do is planned a bank robberie and we
Speaker 3: went out lived in South Australia for a couple of years.
Speaker 3: I was working over there for Carls and whatnot. Dad
Speaker 3: got sick. I had to come back to Sydney and
Speaker 3: ran an old guy at the races and he said, John,
Speaker 3: I've known it r on the bank and I got
Speaker 3: involved in it to the extent that I introduced him
Speaker 3: another guy. They didn't know who you were, but I said, look, okay,
Speaker 3: we'll do it. We'll go over there later because I
Speaker 3: looked at this when I was there, and I've spent
Speaker 3: a lot of money on the bank and I just
Speaker 3: knew Friday afternoon the free guys can take this. So
Speaker 3: I said, okay, we'll do it. But when I went
Speaker 3: to his place a few days before the bank, i'd
Speaker 3: introduced him another guy. I didn't know who he was,
Speaker 3: but the other guy had the gun. I didn't have
Speaker 3: a gun at that stage, he and his wife they
Speaker 3: were fighting. They had some substance on the table and
Speaker 3: on a single send a noodle and the baby's cry.
Speaker 3: I knew what it was, and I thought he's a junkie.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize he's a junkie. And my mate had
Speaker 3: told me he had temper cent of his liver left.
Speaker 3: They called Harry visit and said, John, don't ever try
Speaker 3: suggest a junkie, said, I saw the rome. He said,
Speaker 3: it's just the way it is. They can't help it,
Speaker 3: and he'd burn a junking. He'd cured himself, but he loosto.
Speaker 3: So I just called her off. I said look, and
Speaker 3: he couldn't believe it. And I said, no, look, I'm
Speaker 3: not doing it because half me didn't want to do
Speaker 3: it anyway, because I was burnt out five years, I
Speaker 3: had a baby, you know, so I thought, I'm not
Speaker 3: doing it. I didn't do that Rory, but they went
Speaker 3: ahead and did it. He didn't know who the other
Speaker 3: guy was now going. They got caught. One guy got away,
Speaker 3: they got the money, got away. What happened somebody saw
Speaker 3: them the getaway car when they parked change the cars
Speaker 3: made They came around a cornerpparently made a lot of anoise,
Speaker 3: and a kid was food, and chooks looked the sword
Speaker 3: and took the number, and the other boat flew back Sydney.
Speaker 3: But he and his wife, she drove a car. They
Speaker 3: got in the car and drove booked you may tell it,
Speaker 3: and just outside outside of called Renmark, Redmark, and they
Speaker 3: had the number of the car, so they got or
Speaker 3: when they got him, he didn't know who theever guy was.
Speaker 3: So I read the transcripts later and the statement you
Speaker 3: made my lawyer show me, and he did try to
Speaker 3: coot me out of it. But when they said to him,
Speaker 3: either you tell us who the other guy was, or
Speaker 3: will charge your wife. And she drove a car and
Speaker 3: you'll lose the baby in a room. If you tell
Speaker 3: us who he was, we'll let her go. So that's
Speaker 3: what he did. He said it was mate, you didn't
Speaker 3: know the other guy. So they come and grabbed me.
Speaker 3: And I was in Sydney. Everybody saw me in Sydney.
Speaker 3: I had six seven witnesses saw me. People good, good character.
Speaker 3: I was not an adelaide. Couldn't have burn an adelaide
Speaker 3: because they got all the statements throwing out they extra
Speaker 3: owed me to salbustrated because they had a lot of
Speaker 3: pool in those days. And I just went along with
Speaker 3: that stuff. But what happened when I get there. I
Speaker 3: was winning a trial. I got the statements throwing out
Speaker 3: and I was going to walk Yeah, seven witnesses. Roger
Speaker 3: Rogerson came in. I didn't know who he was. And
Speaker 3: he walked in and he looked across and he was
Speaker 3: a glamor guy at the stage. He said, good ad,
Speaker 3: Johnny like that, and he's smiling him so and then
Speaker 3: what's that jury? They all said, oh, there, and they
Speaker 3: know each other pretty well. I never met him. And
Speaker 3: what he said, this is devised lodging. He said that
Speaker 3: the day the extradition hearing, that extradition hearing, I had
Speaker 3: called my witnesses. Seven of them said, look, collect was
Speaker 3: the Sydney when it happened. There was just no even
Speaker 3: at all, And they said that. Rogerson said during the
Speaker 3: lunch break he had another couple of men. He said,
Speaker 3: he and Peterford show me an air ticket was in
Speaker 3: the name of Richards And I said that there was
Speaker 3: a false name and that do you know anything about
Speaker 3: this anticket? And I'm spouted, said, oh ye, you share that.
Speaker 3: That's the one I use when I flew throw on
Speaker 3: the bank. How'd you get that? Come on? Am I
Speaker 3: going to say that the corner? Anyway? They used that
Speaker 3: and then the judge got in the end and said,
Speaker 3: you're going to believe Rody Rogerson and his friends, Well
Speaker 3: you can believe John killing, So who are here going
Speaker 3: to believe? They just ignored your evidence. So I went
Speaker 3: down on that and the High Court of Pearl had
Speaker 3: it all course, but three years. Took me three years
Speaker 3: to win it, and because it's very expensive getting the
Speaker 3: high court. So I finally got there and won the
Speaker 3: High Court of the Pearl. That got out and I
Speaker 3: am harm but the marriage stuffed because for me I
Speaker 3: was very better haw to chip my should and just
Speaker 3: there was no interested in real I wrote an article
Speaker 3: and I had some articles. I did a three year
Speaker 3: writing for media. Course was there and yah got top
Speaker 3: marks of state, bloody distinction, passes, hacked articles, funlies. I
Speaker 3: was running a John magazine. I was doing pretty well.
Speaker 3: I had a career. I was off at a place
Speaker 3: of deacon but that was down moadent. I wouldn't do it,
Speaker 3: take it, but I just wasn't interested in anything. I
Speaker 3: just thought, fucking I'm hitting back, and I hooked up
Speaker 3: with a girl half my age and we were the
Speaker 3: next three years, We're going around Australia, hitting banks, shop left,
Speaker 3: and stole a lot of cigarettes. We changed the whole
Speaker 3: system of cigarettes, put them in corn flag boxes, and
Speaker 3: I described them a book and just was a true criminal.
Speaker 3: There's no doubt was absolutely true. I've gone from being
Speaker 3: reform to that because that can been convicted, and knowing
Speaker 3: that i'd versely proven that I didn't do it, I
Speaker 3: still do it about it today. You know that sixteenth
Speaker 3: for June nine, nineteen sixty eight, seventy eight, nine seventy eight,
Speaker 3: it happened. And you know I only those dates. The
Speaker 3: sixteenth June ninety seventy eight when that happened sixteen during
Speaker 3: ten years. I sixty eight is a day I hit
Speaker 3: that prison over the head. So ten years later, two
Speaker 3: rotten things happened in my life. Wow, I really did it,
Speaker 3: because I eventually I got caught. Then she the girl,
Speaker 3: slipped me a pistol. It was a toy gun, and
Speaker 3: I was in Boga Road and shot my place and
Speaker 3: I said, look, we've got to get out of here.
Speaker 3: And she wanted me out. I said, we look, the
Speaker 3: only way we're going to do it is she going
Speaker 3: to have to slip me something a pistol, And we didn't.
Speaker 3: They'd taken a gun or she bought a report a pistol.
Speaker 3: I got to get someone in a friend of mine
Speaker 3: through a hole in the middle painted blake make it
Speaker 3: look Roal found out when I was going to the
Speaker 3: hospital in my space and over and I managed to
Speaker 3: find out, and she came over from adelaide was waiting
Speaker 3: there well, WI gone, but he standing behind a pot
Speaker 3: plant and I came out. I was handcuffed and really
Speaker 3: heavy screws here with me, and I just never forget.
Speaker 3: I coughed. The sceneer was that. I coughed, and she
Speaker 3: she runs over and I coughed, and she's standing there.
Speaker 3: He shot her young. She couldn't he couldn't move, and
Speaker 3: I coughed again. She's still standing in the stading there
Speaker 3: with a big old standing at me, and I thought
Speaker 3: she can't do it. And then the screws getting spich
Speaker 3: he did said, seen him under his fingersment like that,
Speaker 3: got the pistol in there, and ever screws standing there.
Speaker 3: One of what's going on? And I coughed, were aloud.
Speaker 3: She ran across. She had it inside inside a newspaper.
Speaker 3: She thrust it at me and I was hand got
Speaker 3: by the hand and got it, put it up like that,
Speaker 3: put to his head, and I see he was going
Speaker 3: to go for his gun. I said, don't do it.
Speaker 3: I said, I'll blow your head off. He thought about it,
Speaker 3: and he saw that the barrel of boon drawn it
Speaker 3: had black and he knew what he thought that it
Speaker 3: was wrong. So she'd run. She'd already gone. Then I
Speaker 3: spun around. I'd practiced with the cuffs, running up and
Speaker 3: down and inside itself, and got to the car and
Speaker 3: then we said we got the car. She had a shotgun.
Speaker 3: She mad a shotgun. He couldn't use a two B
Speaker 3: to use anything. I made of mind to give her that,
Speaker 3: and we got away and had for about twelve months.
Speaker 3: So I hit more banks when I was out, and
Speaker 3: I was probably most wanted to go in Australia at
Speaker 3: the time. So that that's how heavy I got. When
Speaker 3: I say heavy, it's not heavy, not something to be
Speaker 3: proud of. There was the wrong thing I was doing.
Speaker 3: And I've learned and I've worked was so college for
Speaker 3: a lot a long time the last ten years, getting
Speaker 3: across I get it across the young people. I've been
Speaker 3: out ten years and get it across it. You're robbin banks.
Speaker 3: So there's always that thing with me, Robin at banks,
Speaker 3: hitting bank in the banks. But you're not not Robin
Speaker 3: at banks. You know you're actually what you're doing, it's
Speaker 3: you against not the banks, but it's you against people
Speaker 3: inside the customers. Bloody tell us and what I do.
Speaker 3: And now I put Gloria as she's eighty four and
Speaker 3: she's pretty. If she was she was in a bank,
Speaker 3: somebody ran in Marista Yellown, orders were gun, she could
Speaker 3: have a heart attack. That's the way I look at it.
Speaker 3: So I know I have traumatized some people. A lot
Speaker 3: of them recover, some that don't. And so I say
Speaker 3: to guys, when you think about bank Robinson's and hold ups,
Speaker 3: what you've got to understand is you are traumatizing pople
Speaker 3: You're doing a lot of damage. You don't know, you
Speaker 3: might not know you're doing a lot of damage, but
Speaker 3: the thing is that you are. And that's why we
Speaker 3: get the big sentences. And we can never understand why
Speaker 3: we've got sentences as her as they were. But I
Speaker 3: always felt and I always said that the only thing
Speaker 3: that I always disagree with and still disagree was, although
Speaker 3: it's catching up now, but pedophiles, we see pedophiles get
Speaker 3: up for nine months, that they should have got nine years,
Speaker 3: but that that start try now too. But the way
Speaker 3: I would say look at it now is anybody that
Speaker 3: you don't glamorize bankrops, you don't glamorize escape because you
Speaker 3: know they're really they're bad people. And I accept that,
Speaker 3: and I accept that I was a bad person. But
Speaker 3: you can turn around. We can. We can all change.
Speaker 3: We just need the right attitude and and you've got
Speaker 3: to believe that you can do it, and you've got
Speaker 3: to have a reason to do it. And it does
Speaker 3: help if you've got friends. And I've always had a
Speaker 3: good friends. I've always had people stick by me.
Speaker 2: I think that's all the lot you know, but your
Speaker 2: your But when you when you when you did your
Speaker 2: bank robberies, they went massive halls there worthy.
Speaker 3: That's what I mean. I wasn't a professional. People say
Speaker 3: as a professional bankrop, and I robbed a lot of banks.
Speaker 3: But the thing is I just ran in usually nearly
Speaker 3: always ninety percent on my own ninety five percent of
Speaker 3: min and got probably between twenty to forty thou you
Speaker 3: look at guys like Abbott, they got a lot more money.
Speaker 3: And what I did, I would class have it as
Speaker 3: a professional bank. That's what he lived for. He didn't
Speaker 3: do any gass. He just ran backs. That wasn't me.
Speaker 3: You know. I worked at shops, the fat great bus writer.
Speaker 3: I job went around putting peoples and doors. I was
Speaker 3: working most of the time. Yeah, And it was the
Speaker 3: game they had got me if I would get into trouble.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was running a Lucy. They came
Speaker 3: up with this bloody warrant. It was thirty years old
Speaker 3: and we're on the run. And I borrowed ten grand
Speaker 3: from the guy that I had to pay it back,
Speaker 3: and I said, they're always optimus. So I said, we'll
Speaker 3: go down to Star City. I'll double it. I'll double
Speaker 3: the money. I said, we'll give it a ten grand
Speaker 3: back and then we'll go to mil I had seven ingrand,
Speaker 3: built up seven ingrand. She's as bad as me. Where
Speaker 3: Buddy now was going any breaks? She should have said
Speaker 3: to me, John, let's go. You got seven ah. But
Speaker 3: so three o'clock in the more, we walked out, broke nothing.
Speaker 3: I still remember to hear a click of her hurls
Speaker 3: behind me. She said, what we're going to do it now?
Speaker 3: I said, rober bank. She said, okay, that was it,
Speaker 3: And I got caught on that bank. That's the one
Speaker 3: I got caught on. It was twenty January in ninety nine,
Speaker 3: twenty fifth marths. She bowed them out in the chopper.
Speaker 3: So was that?
Speaker 1: What was that planned?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Did you plan that? Like when she was coming in
Speaker 1: to visit?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it had to be planned, could Yeah?
Speaker 1: And she just knew that, and she just thought, who's
Speaker 1: new thought of that?
Speaker 3: No, there was a lot of a lot of work
Speaker 3: gone to that. That's why people talk about it. But
Speaker 3: to do it it you need a lot of luck.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you. That's what I mean about fate. With fate,
Speaker 3: we got shot three times. They shot it three that's
Speaker 3: another three times. I got shot out now, yeah, down there,
Speaker 3: but they hit the chop three times. Yeah, but look
Speaker 3: I've said that, you know, I've been shot out all
Speaker 3: these times. I'm still alive. The things that have happened
Speaker 3: that suage channel more and that I was like they did,
Speaker 3: they didn't come there. Then the chopper they hit the chop,
Speaker 3: it didn't bring it down. All the things that have
Speaker 3: happened to me, I just believe it's fate that was
Speaker 3: meant for me to bured, to get out and to
Speaker 3: tell the stories, to write the books, and to tell
Speaker 3: a true history of kind of the not a chopperlike
Speaker 3: version of history, a true version, because I've got a
Speaker 3: photographic memory on dates you wanted to and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and I know exactly where I was anytime, and I
Speaker 3: can tell you where I was, what I was doing.
Speaker 3: And now it had to be fate. We got why.
Speaker 3: I turn to why it worked. Lucy came to mend
Speaker 3: and said, look, I've got to get you out. She said,
Speaker 3: Jackie got you out on cos, I'll get you. I said,
Speaker 3: I've looked around. I said there's no way. She said,
Speaker 3: we can do it at court. But the spot used
Speaker 3: to take me to court because of my background, I
Speaker 3: had always escapes on me. So when I went to court,
Speaker 3: I had lead cuffs on me and a security built
Speaker 3: I said, and heavy screwters. I said, you try and
Speaker 3: put me out from there. I said, they're going to
Speaker 3: secure it. They're trying to do it. They're special trains.
Speaker 3: I said, we're not going out to do it, and
Speaker 3: I'd given her gun. She still had it. Calling an
Speaker 3: assassin's gun you can hold in your hand, she had
Speaker 3: it for protection. There's just two shots in it, but
Speaker 3: it's deadly. You can walk the assassins you and just
Speaker 3: came and walk past, and you're doing what they've done.
Speaker 3: I said, we need more than that. So I bought
Speaker 3: a summer shone office guy. But I found out later
Speaker 3: he was wrought at me. And what happened is it anyway?
Speaker 3: It didn't work, and the firing pin brink cuts I
Speaker 3: didn't work. We definitely en shot dead. There's no there
Speaker 3: because the machote gun didn't work and the small thing
Speaker 3: wouldn't stopped these guys with blocks training guys. So I
Speaker 3: knew that the only way we could do it would
Speaker 3: be just pull the all over everybody's eyzing and get
Speaker 3: out by the chopper. Now everybody's thought about everything in jailes.
Speaker 3: I don't think people realize that they're trained. They're not
Speaker 3: allowed under the Geneva Convention, they're not allowed to shoot
Speaker 3: at choppers because it could be honestly situated but although
Speaker 3: are not allowed, this guy did do it. And I
Speaker 3: still think they do it today. You know, I remember
Speaker 3: driving down a bamfast driving down from Golden They're squaddling
Speaker 3: around the car and I said, they said, you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter what jar that happens in because I said,
Speaker 3: it'll happened again, and they said, yeah, they'll get shot down.
Speaker 3: I still have a ladder. I said, don't care. They'll
Speaker 3: still do it. I'll still do it. It's them a
Speaker 3: glory glory. Any other gile it would have worked. But
Speaker 3: because with saw water, I just noticed every day we
Speaker 3: only lay it out in the able twice twice a
Speaker 3: week and only allowed out for an hour. But when
Speaker 3: I was out there, I would see ten choppers coming
Speaker 3: in that hour, and I thought, what you know? And
Speaker 3: then and I looked at the screws, and they're mostly Indians,
Speaker 3: and you know they they taking notice. They stand around
Speaker 3: and chaining notes, and I thought, that's because there's so
Speaker 3: many it's happened so often they become blas if it's
Speaker 3: ten in an hour, how many a day, how many
Speaker 3: days they burn here, they've probably seen a thousand tops go.
Speaker 3: They screw up baths. Maybe see one a year. I
Speaker 3: knew they dropped their guard. So it's still going to
Speaker 3: be hard, but we've got a chance. But we didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about jobs. And that's what I mean about fate.
Speaker 3: That is where fate stepped in. There was a guy,
Speaker 3: his name is Bennett, Paul Bennett. He got extraded because
Speaker 3: he was kind man. He kind of everybody, everybody and
Speaker 3: the extra from South Africa, Scotland, New Zealand to Sydney.
Speaker 3: He arrived at Sydney. It's all a few days after me,
Speaker 3: about a few weeks after me. They put him in
Speaker 3: my wing. And this is extraordinary. I'm thinking about a
Speaker 3: tropical and all of a sudden correctly serves supplying me
Speaker 3: with a tropical pilot, you know, and they put him
Speaker 3: in my wing. But guess what I got him in myself. Now, Look,
Speaker 3: the odds are a miny to one. I reckon lad
Speaker 3: Brakes La a minute to one that this could happen.
Speaker 3: And I started thinking, this is a setup. They know
Speaker 3: what I'm going to do. Something they sent me out.
Speaker 3: But then I realized it wasn't. Then he's economy and
Speaker 3: he knew who I was, and he started saying to me,
Speaker 3: I can get you out of the chum. I said,
Speaker 3: how would you do it? He said, I'd just fly
Speaker 3: straight in pick up the fire. He said. I said,
Speaker 3: how much you want? You sit ten games? Because I
Speaker 3: tell him myself, I've still got the money from the
Speaker 3: bank road because I didn't find the money for me.
Speaker 3: They didn't find the money from the bank robbing. And
Speaker 3: I tell my still that it we didn't. But I
Speaker 3: tell him we still had it. He said, well, look,
Speaker 3: I'll do it for twenty or ten grand up front.
Speaker 3: And I said, but I didn't believe what he said,
Speaker 3: And so I got loose. She's putting money and his
Speaker 3: property for him, and getting his clothes dry, clan ringing
Speaker 3: up lawyers for him, and all the time I'm pumping.
Speaker 3: He's got books on helicopters, and I'm getting all the
Speaker 3: information from him. I said, reading the book, what's the transponder?
Speaker 3: I was a transponder that's a sign of alarm that
Speaker 3: goes through your flordays if you're in trouble and you
Speaker 3: hit that and the other choppers coming. So I thought,
Speaker 3: where's that? He showed where I was. So I said
Speaker 3: to Luci, you've got to do a trial, trial, run
Speaker 3: hire a chopper, find out where the transponder is, have
Speaker 3: a look. That's what you're going for. You got to
Speaker 3: stopping and getting that. I said, you need to take
Speaker 3: his ear phanes off so all and by the time
Speaker 3: that we're ready to do it. And when I said,
Speaker 3: I said we can get out, I said, well, you're
Speaker 3: going to have to hijack bay helicopter. She said, brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 3: So I mean she was just about fearless. You know,
Speaker 3: we've done a lot of stuff, but this this was
Speaker 3: something something else again and so she said, yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 3: So she did a trial run, came back in. She's
Speaker 3: all excited. I said, it'll work. I know where the
Speaker 3: transponder is, I know this, I know that, etc. We
Speaker 3: can do it. So that was it. We decided to
Speaker 3: do it. So the only thing is we only got
Speaker 3: I only got out twice a week and I had
Speaker 3: to bring that able when she came and to do that.
Speaker 3: It's very dicey in John particularly places order because they're
Speaker 3: always having staff shortages.
Speaker 1: Fight, things can change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fights the week before a Muslim guy, We're going
Speaker 3: to do it. Then something happened. We didn't do it.
Speaker 3: But the Muslim guy hanged himself and they shut the
Speaker 3: whole place down because they come in and do it
Speaker 3: if you straight away, and so I knew I had
Speaker 3: to be able to talk to her before she did it,
Speaker 3: So I when't it to come out that morning. It
Speaker 3: was they let us out bloody about ten minutes late.
Speaker 3: So I already I only got a number fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: and there's a line. There's only one phone. There's a
Speaker 3: line for the phone because I was out about tenth guys. Look,
Speaker 3: I've got to ring my lawyer. It's desperate. I really
Speaker 3: need to ring a lawyer. I was, I can't have
Speaker 3: anybody at court. I said ten seconds. So they let
Speaker 3: me in and I rang loosing. She was waiting near
Speaker 3: the airport and I said, I was just reading to
Speaker 3: say I'm going out for training and I don't want
Speaker 3: to get back and give you a call. Okay, Well
Speaker 3: she knew, yeah she was going out, and because I
Speaker 3: asked the screw, he said, yeah, we're going out. And
Speaker 3: there was probably I ate a nine choppers come over.
Speaker 3: Every time one come over. My heart was found. I
Speaker 3: was sweating, but I took the chop a pile out
Speaker 3: with me because I thought if if she does it,
Speaker 3: she lands and he jumps out and runs away. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you've got my own pilot. Yeah, and he'll probably come.
Speaker 3: So I had the backup, and they were dirty about
Speaker 3: that too. They knew they knew I had the backup.
Speaker 3: So finally about five about seven minutes before it comes,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking, what am I going to do this?
Speaker 3: I knew she'd do it. It's going to be a
Speaker 3: worse stand up date in history. She's going to get
Speaker 3: there and they're going to be a different career. Won't
Speaker 3: be here, should be looking around and I'm not there,
Speaker 3: and God knows what's going to happen to her. So
Speaker 3: I thought, all I'm gonna do is fall on the ground.
Speaker 3: So I'm having a heart attack because the protocol there
Speaker 3: is that they don't grab me and pick up they
Speaker 3: get might take it out of ten minutes for me.
Speaker 3: I was running away and then she came. Sure enough
Speaker 3: she came, and I got a couple of crews into trouble.
Speaker 3: There's heavy crim he's in now doing a long time Kevin.
Speaker 3: I won't say a second time, but he got Billy Mayer.
Speaker 3: You've heard Billy Bayer come over to him and he
Speaker 3: said John Kevin wants to see you, And I said Tom.
Speaker 3: He came back five minutes and he said, John Kevin
Speaker 3: wants to see it. Definitely, said christ. So nothing happened
Speaker 3: to Billy funny enough, So I went over and keV
Speaker 3: had some chocolates. They just got their mine. I said, no, Ken, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't just give them a tomorra. He said fortune once.
Speaker 3: I said no, it's all right. When I got away,
Speaker 3: they changed all ninety people out of it and they
Speaker 3: shut the thing down. They were dirty. They changed ninety
Speaker 3: of them out of the job. He was the first
Speaker 3: one I got because they got played back the camera.
Speaker 3: They didn't touch Billy Bayern, but they grabbed keV, took
Speaker 3: him to left gun and put him in seagra for
Speaker 3: eighteen months.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, eight months because they thought just.
Speaker 1: For giving you wanted to give you a chocolate.
Speaker 3: Out and left care immensely and he saw me away. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you wouldn't learned something else happened later down the track.
Speaker 3: If somebody made up the story loosers, when we got caught,
Speaker 3: who's going to jump over the wall? Can you believe it?
Speaker 3: And from where she was at the environment and she
Speaker 3: was going to bust me Kevin and another guy out
Speaker 3: of Joe instead. Now you had a lot of money.
Speaker 3: And they actually shangled and put him in sigarette so
Speaker 3: that they act on crap the information. But they didn't
Speaker 3: get any information about this. But what they did then
Speaker 3: a woman rang up John Laws and said that her
Speaker 3: husband was a screwer and they knew I was going.
Speaker 3: They knew I was going, And it's a disgrace. So
Speaker 3: it makes me think that that be with a pin
Speaker 3: cunt on the machine on the machine gun, they somehow
Speaker 3: knew that we're going to go. Yeah, and they were
Speaker 3: waiting for us. They just didn't expect it to go.
Speaker 3: And that's probably what it's so dirty.
Speaker 1: And I just think that what was going for your
Speaker 1: mon When that helicopter landed, well, it was incredible.
Speaker 3: I knew it was her. I knew it was her
Speaker 3: because what he did. I knew what what had to do.
Speaker 3: It just had to come in land and take off
Speaker 3: before they get it. He went around like that trying
Speaker 3: to track attends to it. He denies it, but he did.
Speaker 1: That's what he did.
Speaker 3: Well. By the time I got in there, I ran
Speaker 3: across and I looked across the the prison office, and
Speaker 3: they not having to go with Indians, but they are
Speaker 3: all Indians, and they just stood there together, and they're
Speaker 3: pointing the point that I really do think Osie screws
Speaker 3: better train would have ran out and cut off different angles.
Speaker 3: I really do think they would have done that. And
Speaker 3: because I know how to operate. And also I saw
Speaker 3: the guy from the tower from the sports thing, pretty
Speaker 3: fit guy running and the dog squad arrived quickly and
Speaker 3: they dived out there, but they had pistols. But then
Speaker 3: I jumped on to the side of a chop and
Speaker 3: shooting here in the machine gun. I sat on and
Speaker 3: I just swung around like that were even. They all
Speaker 3: died at the ground, and that's what saying. But then
Speaker 3: the guy from the tower had time to get get
Speaker 3: it out and he shown pink pink, pink freed ims
Speaker 3: hit has just just missed a silicon cable. It it
Speaker 3: hits that we're down, we're gone, and we're God knows
Speaker 3: how many people would have That's no a reason. We
Speaker 3: got to hit pretty heavy sentence because what happened. But
Speaker 3: you know, I got twenty eight years for that. He's
Speaker 3: got ten. Now. The way I said is that it
Speaker 3: had to be fate that he missed us with the bullets,
Speaker 3: you know all the time when shot outs, had to
Speaker 3: be fate that that I had to be there at
Speaker 3: that time when that pilot was there. Without that pilot coming,
Speaker 3: we couldn't have gone. Later on, he got out and
Speaker 3: got a job of Russell Crow. Yeah, yeah, but he
Speaker 3: fell out with Russell. He'd done something I don't I'm
Speaker 3: not going to be done upset Russell.
Speaker 1: So what you were on the You're on the run.
Speaker 1: Doough for forty five days? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, only forty five days? It was likely to be
Speaker 3: four days. So the heat was incredible.
Speaker 1: Wire We hardened for forty five days, just anywhere you could.
Speaker 3: We moved around. We went down to Melbourne. The thing
Speaker 3: is that I had a guy those passports and that
Speaker 3: was it. If we could have gone lower. But when
Speaker 3: he was in jail, but I rang his missus. I
Speaker 3: thought it was sweet with the missus and yeah, she
Speaker 3: very staunch, and she said, John, they're on us. She
Speaker 3: hung up, So I found out they just I don't
Speaker 3: know how they got onto so many contacts I had that.
Speaker 3: I said to Lucia, were on every bloody aren't. We
Speaker 3: haven't got any help at all. And that's that's what
Speaker 3: fucked us, because if you couldn't get out of the country,
Speaker 3: you're not going to make it. And I knew that
Speaker 3: it was a mistake about mistake, but at the time,
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, if we can just lie low
Speaker 3: for six months and you use passwords and get out,
Speaker 3: we could do it. Because I know you're Scott, tattoos
Speaker 3: or anything like that. I could sort of blend in,
Speaker 3: change hair changes, had a pretty good chance of getting out.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't to me and I look back down,
Speaker 3: both of us would regret what happened. But the thing is,
Speaker 3: I'm doing a lot of good things now, I really am.
Speaker 3: You know. I helped kids over so has written seven books.
Speaker 3: I do lectures at the university, do stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And what what I do would say to that. I've
Speaker 3: got to say this, And I've had a lot of
Speaker 3: help from Steve Cook, who was actually the guy who
Speaker 3: instigated started the Voice of the Vina. He's now the
Speaker 3: Warriors and which is versonal another name for survivor. But
Speaker 3: but the thing is, I my main message to get
Speaker 3: across is that I accept that I've been a bad guy,
Speaker 3: you know, and I accept that what I did was wrong,
Speaker 3: and I didn't, you know, I didn't see that until
Speaker 3: I work with likes. I didn't sue that. It just
Speaker 3: was a game to me, as we bank against the banks,
Speaker 3: and banks are bastards, and they're still barstards. But the
Speaker 3: people in it aren't. The people worked there aren't, and
Speaker 3: and and the people that the customers aren't, they don't
Speaker 3: as I heard someone coming at you horizonment, But I
Speaker 3: would say the same about any arm robberie where you're
Speaker 3: holding up a drunk in the park or grabbing a
Speaker 3: guy out of toilet. You know, it's the same thing.
Speaker 3: You're putting people in fear of it, and it's just
Speaker 3: it's the wrong thing to do it. And I've had
Speaker 3: guns point at me and it's not a very nice thing.
Speaker 3: I did a show with Mike Willerson and he pulled
Speaker 3: a gun on me unexpectedly and I got to shot
Speaker 3: my life and he said, now you know it. But look,
Speaker 3: I'm wanted to call in and do do a podcast
Speaker 3: with you. I think he's happy to talk about these
Speaker 3: things and get get the point across that guys like me.
Speaker 3: It's good that guys like me, And there's ronnieish Wood,
Speaker 3: so many people that have been Bernie, Bernie Matthews when
Speaker 3: he's dead now, but got out, got good books out
Speaker 3: and do the whole mornings, whole talks and get across
Speaker 3: the people. Look, you know we're the wrong guys to
Speaker 3: follow it, but you can look at what we are
Speaker 3: now and what we're doing, and the message is there
Speaker 3: that you can change. You can change, and if you're
Speaker 3: determined to change, the change has got to come from within.
Speaker 3: If you want to rehabilitate, it's people can't force you
Speaker 3: to rehabilitate. You know, it never forced me. I just
Speaker 3: went from one thing or I had to make that decision.
Speaker 3: But you know the greatest thing is to have friends
Speaker 3: and have mentors that they can help you. And to
Speaker 3: have a mentor and friends, you've still got to basically
Speaker 3: have some decency' hat you. I think that our major
Speaker 3: problem now and you would know it is drugs. Drugs
Speaker 3: is a huge point. I've done some UNI talks where
Speaker 3: we've had experts get up and give us facts in
Speaker 3: order to keep a young guy and Jarle in an
Speaker 3: institution of my young guy. I didn't believe it, but
Speaker 3: it's parish true. It is quite a way of minister
Speaker 3: a million dollars a year. That's extraordinary when you're when
Speaker 3: you think about the money we could spend manager. And
Speaker 3: Australia has always had this attitude from since seventy eight. Punished, punished, punished.
Speaker 3: They hanged to go in the first couple of weeks
Speaker 3: for a shirt and a bit of food. They set
Speaker 3: an example. And you know controversy we've had over the
Speaker 3: Hang of Brian that they've actually it's concrete now in
Speaker 3: the Lord Will. There will never be any more excuses.
Speaker 3: But you know, we hanged hundreds of people. We expected
Speaker 3: hundreds of people in this country, hundreds and women to
Speaker 3: some of them did deserve to go. And I just
Speaker 3: think people don't believe it. Down in Penridge, the last
Speaker 3: man two men were actually in the fifties fifty eight
Speaker 3: were flogged catting nine times, you know, court punishment in
Speaker 3: nine fifty eight. I was breaking rocks in the sixties,
Speaker 3: breaking rocks. You just wouldn't believe that's, you know. And
Speaker 3: when you went to buy the road, I thought I
Speaker 3: was in another century up there for a while. So bad,
Speaker 3: So well, we're trying, we're trying. And Charles got a
Speaker 3: lot more chance of rehabilitation. But they're overcrowded. They're not
Speaker 3: doing a lot for drugs. They're turned a blind idem
Speaker 3: And if you've got a kid, he's never went on drugs,
Speaker 3: he goes in the jar, he's going to come out,
Speaker 3: he's going to be addicted probably, and that that's a
Speaker 3: bad that's the sad thing about it. Now. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: we need to spend money on rehabs, and we need
Speaker 3: to spend money on mentors. They're people like me, Ronnie
Speaker 3: issued and these people. We should be working with kids.
Speaker 3: We should be working with kids, but they won't do it.
Speaker 1: But I want to say thank you for coming in
Speaker 1: before we go. I just describe you in two words.
Speaker 3: Probably still a risk taker, always been a risk take.
Speaker 3: I think I would go out of trouble. I mean
Speaker 3: even when I'm driving, I'll take a risk and dive
Speaker 3: for the car. I'm lighty too, I'll got one. But no,
Speaker 3: I'm not kidding. Uh.
Speaker 1: But in fact, I want to say thank you John
Speaker 1: for coming on and your story is being unbelievable. I
Speaker 1: could sit here all day if I can listen to
Speaker 1: your stories. But yeah, I want to say.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Look, thank you for asking you know, and
Speaker 3: it's really nice to watch you the same. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I can say this is going to be a good time.
Speaker 3: Premium U