Original subtitles

(CLOCK TICKS)

(BREATHES HEAVILY)

(TENSE MUSIC)

(UP-TEMPO MUSIC)

Get on the ground!

(BELL RINGS)

Australia's most wanted criminal,

the notorious Postcard Bandit, Brenden Abbott.

We don't want anyone dead today, do we?

His robberies have the mark of genius.

We've got a Ned Kelly running around.

Taunting police with postcards and holiday snaps.

Everybody likes to see

the coppers outfoxed.

Most crooks you deal with

are as dumb as a box of hammers.

Brenden was not stupid.

Brenden was a larrikin,

he was a cheeky bugger.

A master of disguise.

Abbott made a daring escape from a Perth jail.

(SIREN WAILS)

That was a pretty smart escape.

Oh, it's genius.

(SIREN WAILS)

The hunt is continuing

for two extremely

dangerous prisoners.

Hitting banks in Perth, South Australia,

New South Wales and Queensland.

I first met my dad

when he was on the run.

Police were watching the house.

He'd take the risk

of coming around,

got some balls to be doing that.

(DOG BARKS)

If the police see him, they're gonna shoot him,

and that was my greatest fear.

One of Australia's most wanted men has been arrested on the Gold Coast.

The man no jail has been able to hold,

finally, back in custody.

Abbott is being held in strict security

in solitary confinement.

Brenden Abbott has done more solitary confinement

than any prisoner in Australia ever.

The nation's longest serving prisoner

who hasn't committed murder.

28 years. It's shit.

I'm sick of playing these games.

Five-hour flight for a 20-minute visit,

but at the same time, it's all I've known.

Australia's most notorious bank robber and prison escapee

has begun a last ditch bid for freedom.

Do you think it's fair

that he's spent more than some murderers?

It's been way too long.

He knew what he was getting involved in.

You do the crime, you serve the time.

What's been going on?

(THEME MUSIC)

Australia's most notorious prison escapee

is plotting a fresh bid for freedom.

This time within the law.

In a legal challenge,

the now 63-year-old

is seeking to have his sentence deemed unlawful.

My name's James Abbott...

Son of Brenden Abbott,

'Postcard Bandit', as everyone refers to him.

Dad's over in Casuarina Prison in Western Australia now,

couldn't be any further away from Sydney if he tried.

I try to get over there twice a year.

He's been in jail for way too long,

27, 28 years now straight.

I've never known him out of prison basically.

(PHONE RINGS)

Oh, Dad's calling now.

You're about to receive a phone call

from a prisoner at the Casuarina prison.

Your conversation will be recorded.

If you do not wish to receive this call,

please hang up now.

Go ahead, please.

Hey.

Good. What's happening?

Turning up? For what?

Is that today?

(LAUGHTER)

Yeah, nah, I'm pulling up shortly actually.

My brother Brenden has well and truly served his time.

Brenden needs to get out of jail

and he needs to spend time with his own son.

I kind of do beat myself up a bit now

thinking like how many years I wasted

not going to visit Dad.

James is desperate

to have some sort of a connection with his dad.

The authorities need to let it go.

It's been cruel, it's been inhumane, and it's been unnecessary.

So, Dad's got a court case coming up.

They've somehow managed to change his earliest parole date now

from 2026 to 2028 or 2029.

I don't see how they're allowed to just change

someone's earliest parole date and add an extra three years to it.

His lawyers,

they're working on to say that he's been unlawfully detained.

What we're hoping for is that

he's to be basically released immediately.

Brenden had been involved in,

I guess you could call it a black-market ring,

stealing electrical items

they would steal from warehouses, load up trucks...

And there's a lot of people who are happy to buy cheap goods.

Price rises will be hefty.

Electrical items and white goods are all set to rise.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

Back in June, 1986,

I was a brand-new

probationary detective.

I think it was my second day

and a series of raids had been planned

with the break and enter squad targeting some individuals

who were doing high-end burglary.

The crooks were smashing open walls,

getting inside and taking significant amounts

of high-end electrical stuff.

So, the warrants were executed on this morning

and a number of people

were brought back to Nollamara detective's office,

which was an old house converted into an office.

I saw Brenden Abbott when he came in.

He just looked like

a normal run-of-the-mill person.

Nothing odd about him

or anything like that.

A young detective, John, was watching him.

My job that morning was look after Abbott

while we interviewed the others.

Abbott's in a back room, which was effectively a store room.

There were no cells in this place.

"Mate, would you like a cup of tea or a coffee while you're waiting?"

And he said, "Yeah, I'd love one."

Walked down the corridor into the kitchen...

And as I'm making this cup of tea, there's this tremendous bang.

(DOOR BANGS) (UPBEAT MUSIC)

Brenden's out the back door and he was pretty quick.

He was gone within a matter of seconds.

Over fences and just disappeared

into the back blocks of Nollamara.

So, we did a search around the area

and no sign of Brenden.

So, effectively, that was his first escape.

It wasn't a good start

for a brand-new probationary detective,

and it caused me a fair bit of grief from the more senior people there.

We all felt a bit sorry for John.

He was only a very junior, young detective.

Yeah.

Abbott was then on the run,

and that's when he started planning the Belmont job.

Get on the ground!

Brenden Abbott was obviously

looking at what his career was gonna be

and he decided he was going to be a career criminal.

Could have been anything.

I actually quite liked him.

I probably shouldn't say that,

but he was a likeable sort of character

and very intelligent.

Like any intelligent, you know, knockabout bloke,

he decided that crime was gonna be

the best way forward and the rewards were great.

The Commonwealth Bank, Belmont,

8:45, Friday morning, two men brandishing guns.

They escaped with more than $100,000.

These dramatic photos

come from the bank's security camera

as the robbers fled the scene.

In WA,

we were just beginning

to experience growth in armed holdups.

You could have two or three a week.

Petrified bank employees were held at gunpoint by the men.

One wielding a handgun, the other a shotgun.

Yeah, I remember the Belmont

robbery particularly

because it happened to be

my birthday that day.

We got a call out to go out there.

We soon discovered

staff were pretty traumatised by the way it occurred.

How does it feel

when you had a gun pointed at your head?

You stupid bitch.

The Belmont robbery was the one

that really brought him to everybody's notice.

Brenden Abbott opened a new era to us as investigators

of what crooks, bank robbers were going to do.

This was a real smart,

well-planned thing

where they got into the roof

and they hid there in the roof...

Until they realised

or until they could see

that the bank manager had opened the vault.

Once it was open,

then they dropped down through the roof.

On the ground!

Gave them an element of surprise.

Everyone on the ground!

The staff wouldn't have been suspecting anything

until they came down through the roof.

Stay there!

I don't want any heroes pushing any buttons.

As it turned out they had planned it quite well.

We don't want anyone dead today, do we?

Up, up...

With me.

They were going to get far more money

if they could get into a bank and into the vault

before the bank had opened

than if they walked in the front door

and did the usual style of stickup that you would normally do.

Stay on the fucking ground!

Hurry up, big night, stay down!

Coming through the ceiling was something new.

Stay down. Stay down.

Let's go! Come on. Come on. Come on.

I hadn't come across that before,

and I don't think

too many of my colleagues had at the time either.

Most crooks you deal with, especially in that era...

They was dumb as a box of hammers.

Brenden was not stupid.

That was a fucking disaster.

What happened?

We get here, we get here half an hour early.

The visit starts at 1:45.

They delayed us,

didn't get us out of here until up there until about 2:00.

Then they call us up there.

Then I go sit in the waiting booth waiting to see Dad.

I sat there for probably 20 odd minutes waiting,

and I ended up walking back out of the door saying,

"What's going on?"

And the guard asked me, he goes, "Are you ready to leave?"

I said, "He hasn't even fucking walked out yet."

So, don't know what the deal is.

So, sitting there, waiting, waiting, waiting,

and then by the time he comes in,

Dad comes in,

he's losing his fucking mind.

He goes,

"I've been sitting in that waiting room

"for you to come."

He's been sitting there waiting for me

to come the last 15 to 20 minutes,

but I've been sitting there waiting for him too.

They haven't communicated.

So, by the time Dad's come in for the visit,

I got maybe 15, 20 minutes out of the whole hour.

So, fly all the way from Sydney five-hour flight

for a fucking 15 or 20-minute visit.

Yeah, they do this all the fucking time.

I don't understand what happens.

So, Dad's in a bad mood.

He is sick of this stuff happening all the time.

What?

Yeah.

They've delayed us twice already.

Then moved us to non-contact

and then put us in a room

where they know the speaker doesn't work.

The visits are getting cancelled, left, right and so on.

So, it's like even for me now

to book a visit to go see him in Perth,

I'm sitting there just thinking, "Am I wasting money?"

And gives you anxiety about driving there.

Alright, no worries.

I'll chat to you soon.

No worries, mate. I'll chat to you soon.

See you, bye.

Doing your crimes, you get obviously jail time

for doing the wrong thing, but it's been way too long.

It's enough now.

For you to be released out of prison,

they have to say

that you're no longer a threat to society.

Recently, I've seen some murderer got out,

has killed all these people.

You see there's other people getting released

for other stuff they've done...

and they get less time than what Dad has,

I don't understand how it works.

No idea.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

The Belmont robbery,

that woke everybody up.

To come through the ceiling...

On the ground!

..and get away in such a brazen hold-up.

We have a problem here.

The hunt began.

Police immediately launched a massive hunt for the robbers

and their getaway car, a white Cordia Mitsubishi.

This helicopter was also called in for a wide aerial search

of the metropolitan area.

Catch me if you can.

Brenden Abbott had some type of relationship

with Jackie Lord at the time.

I was 15 when I first met Brenden,

and I remember meeting him at a swimming pool.

He seemed almost shy, but he was also mysterious.

But I was quite normal

when I met Brenden,

it wasn't like I was anything bad,

I was working, I had in fact two jobs.

I wasn't a thief as such, but I started to shoplift.

I suppose it might've even been in competition

with what Brenden was doing.

We were soulmates,

but I had to make some choices,

otherwise I would've gone the wrong way as well.

So, I decided that I'd have to cut it from there.

They did have an off and on,

an up and down relationship for many years...

After the Belmont robbery.

Jackie found out that Brenden had been seeing somebody else.

She then contacted the police and said

where they would be able to find Brenden.

It was her tip-off

that let the authorities know

that Brenden Abbott was a part of that robbery

and she did receive reward money.

I was furious.

How dare you do that to my brother?

I was pretty annoyed with her for doing that.

I mean, I know that he did the wrong thing,

but it was all over jealousy as far as I was aware.

So, he had seen another woman or something

and Jackie had got jealous about that

and so she reported it where Brenden was to the police.

Jackie Lord pointed us towards Abbott.

He was in Port Headland at the Walkabout Hotel.

We let the local detectives know,

they went out there, but he was gone.

His vehicle was seen pulling into the Port Headland airport.

We knew Brenden Abbott was fairly cunning,

we thought maybe he's coming back to Perth.

We got to the airport,

we made contact

with the Ansett security officer out there.

We told him what was going on

and that we wanted to see if Abbott was on this plane.

This is just a little mud map, that's Ansett flight 347.

All the passengers got off.

He was the last one off

And immediately I recognised it was Brenden Abbott.

He was looking around.

He was well aware of his surroundings.

He made his way down following the other passengers,

but he kept on putting his hand inside his jacket,

which made me think he probably was armed.

He was starting to walk faster, so, I had to walk a lot faster,

and I was able to catch up with him.

Some people started yelling, "Hey, he's got a gun."

And so, then I knew that straight away

had to make a move.

We jumped on him.

We had to use a bit of force.

Oh, yeah, we weren't messing around at all.

We had to do what we had to do very quickly...

In typical Brenden Abbott style,

and when he did see his face...

He saw this graze on his eye and he made a comment.

He said, "This is going to look good in court tomorrow, isn't it, boys?"

(CHUCKLES)

Abbott with a huge bruise on his face,

members of his family weeping.

I was very distressed about the mark on his face

because it was very clear

that they've shoved his face into the ground.

I was angry with the police and how they did things.

And he said, "Diane, they're just doing their job.

"They've got a job

"and their job is to catch a thief and I'm the thief."

Brenden James Abbott, 25, of no fixed address

faced a variety of serious charges in the East Perth court today.

Abbott was jailed for 10 years with no minimum term.

As Abbott left the court,

he turned to Mr Justice Smith and said, "Thank you.

"You're a real gentleman."

I wasn't surprised by the sentence

because I think

bank robbery's up there with murder in sentence time.

I think when somebody goes to jail...

There's always that concern that they could be beaten up,

raped, murdered.

Fremantle prison's a very old prison

and very archaic.

So, when he went to jail,

it is natural, I think,

for any family member to be concerned

about where do we go from here, you know?

Australia's most notorious bank robber and prison escapee

has begun a last ditch bid for freedom.

The so-called Postcard Bandit,

Brenden Abbott,

has spent three decades in jail.

The nation's longer serving prisoner

who hasn't committed murder.

His lawyer, Matthew Crowley, claims

he was essentially no longer liable to serve any more time.

First thing I'll do with Dad, probably go out and have dinner,

I probably won't want to sleep.

I'll just want to stay up and keep talking.

I hope he gets out really, really soon.

And I'm getting older as well too.

So, you know, be good to have him around a little bit.

Yeah, I can see you.

I've never got to speak to Dad

or see Dad

without someone else listening

or someone else being present.

It's always monitored all the time.

My camera's off, that's why.

Oh, yeah? Tell me about 'em.

Let's go.

Yeah, yeah.

What's your feeling with the court case though?

You feel like it's going to...

What do you think?

What are you leaning towards?

It doesn't make any fucking sense.

Sometimes if he makes a remark

or says a certain thing,

they'll just shut the call down.

I've never known him to be out, so it's normal to me.

So, when he gets out, that's going to be really strange.

When I go visit Dad,

it's just like hanging out with a friend,

just chilling out, have a conversation,

just have a bit of a laugh.

The more I've gotten to get to know him now and talk to him

and we can have mature conversations now,

realise how similar we are.

Kind of scary though,

considering he's never been around

and how much me and him are very alike.

G'day, g'day, g'day.

How you feeling about getting this tattoo?

Oh, yeah.

I can't wait to show Dad later.

I think the postcard outline is going to be,

the poster stamp's going to be the funny thing for him.

It's like a little bank robber with a money bag

and put a pair of aviator sunglasses on as well

just to give it the look of Dad

and then look at the postcard stamp outline around it.

What do you think he's going to think

when he sees that?

He's going to think I'm a fucking idiot.

(LAUGHTER) But that's what it's about.

He'll love it.

As Mum always says to me, she goes,

she goes, "Even though Dad hasn't been around,"

she goes, "you and him are exactly the same as each other."

They walk the same too.

They walk the same, smart-ass attitude.

What do you mean they walk the same?

They walk like on their tippy toes.

(LAUGHTER)

Expose me.

Feel like you're going to do a lot of cooking as well.

Dad likes to cook, so do I.

So, I think it might be something we'll do together as well.

What else does he like to do?

Rob banks.

(LAUGHS)

(PHONE RINGS)

It's Dad calling now actually.

You are about to receive a phone call from a prisoner

at the Casuarina prison.

Your conversation will be recorded.

If you do not wish to receive this call,

please hang up now.

Go ahead please.

Hey, mate.

Good. What's happening?

Any updates on the lawyers or anything for this court thing?

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, that's why I don't understand it, all good.

I'll chat to you in a couple of hours.

No worries. I'll speak to ya then. See you mate. Bye.

10-minute calls.

Whenever he rings, before you know it, the call's over.

Brenden Abbott's problem is that the offences he committed,

regardless of the fact he didn't shoot anybody,

they were very violent offences.

That's the top of the scale.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

My first memories of Brenden Abbott

was at that time I was on the armed robbery squad.

He'd escaped from a suburban police station

and he was suspected of doing a number of armed robberies,

particularly one in Belmont where he came in through the roof.

On the ground!

He was charged at that stage with the robbery at Belmont

to walk into a bank

and shove a loaded shotgun

into somebody's face and say,

"Give me your money or you're going to die,"

he was going to be in jail for a long, long time.

Anyone who's been to Fremantle Prison,

now, when you go and see it as a historical thing,

the conditions in there

were terrible.

Absolutely terrible,

locked up like that.

But let's not be too soft on them,

there's some pretty terrible criminals in there.

People have murdered and raped and done some terrible things.

So, do we have any sympathy?

No, but the reality is that

you put people in those conditions,

you're going to have to deal with things like riots and escapes.

The full-scale riot

has broken out tonight at Fremantle jail

and the century-old prison is on fire.

There are reports that the rioters have taken some hostages.

(SIREN WAILS)

Two of the prison guards had had an altercation

with one of the prisoners.

The allegation was that they bashed this particular prisoner

and that went around the prison like wildfire.

(HELICOPTER WHIRS)

There was a whole group of prisoners that resisted

and then attacked the prison guard.

135 inmates took control of a cell block

and held five prison officers hostage.

Locals and former inmate

blame inhumane conditions in the jail

and today's heat for the riot.

You know, any opportunity to get rid of those conditions,

either by burning it down, they're going to take.

When the prison riot occurred,

I was one of the senior negotiators

in the police department at that time.

When I first got here, this place was all on fire.

We couldn't come out through there.

We walked around onto the hill and looked down into the yard.

It was just absolute pandemonium.

There were five wardens that had been taken hostages.

One of them was fairly badly injured.

Abbott was one of the first ones to get up on the roof over here,

the roof of the exercise yard.

Mainly they were acting as lookouts.

He was also one of the ones with the group

that was surrounding the hostages.

I then start to negotiate with him to see what it was they wanted.

The prison superintendent said to me,

"Don't tell 'em you're a copper."

And I said, "You've got to be joking.

"I said, I've put half the bastards in here."

We negotiated

that we would exchange cartons of cigarettes

and then they said they wanted something to eat.

Well, they brought in

these big plastic dust bins full of beans

and a big plastic dust bin full of toast.

So, then for about the next 20 minutes,

it was pretty silent in the yard

because they all had their beans on toast.

Brenden was one of the rioters.

He'd argue against that,

but it was well known he was one of them.

He was quite clearly part of that core group.

He was always looking for an opportunity.

I've no doubt, when he was climbing on the roof of the exercise yard,

he was in a position to actually see

what the perimeters were around the prison.

Brenden Abbott would've been looking for opportunities to get out.

I think his planning would've started

the day that they locked him up back here after the riot finished.

Well, the aftermath of the riot

was all of the main protagonists

were all interviewed by the police,

and it turned into a massive trial.

The trial itself went on for months and months.

I sat around the Supreme Court for weeks waiting to give evidence,

and every morning,

Brenden Abbott and all the rest of them

would be brought in...

And of course the photographic evidence

and all of the exhibits would be handed

to the various prisoners to look at and everything.

They had aerial photographs of the prison

and it was almost like having a Google map.

Brenden Abbott was ultimately charged

and convicted of those offences.

When Brenden got charged for the riot

and they added the sentence

on top of what he was already serving,

I was really surprised by that.

He was going to be in jail for a long, long time,

which I think led to his subsequent escape

later on down the track.

'Cause it was very meticulous in what he did.

Given Brenden's cognitive ability,

he's mentally switched on.

I think if the system had have picked that up earlier,

they could have changed his direction dramatically.

My first memory growing up...

Brenden was obsessed with knowing how things worked.

(MACHINES WHIRS)

Brenden never had any problems

with his schooling or anything,

and he was always a smart one.

He'd take things to pieces to see how they worked

and put 'em back together.

I don't know how old he was when I said to him one day,

I said, "When you start going out with a female,"

I said, "are you going to take her to pieces

"and try and put her back together?"

And he said, "Mum,"

and I said, "No."

I said, "Well,"

but there was nothing that he couldn't take apart.

I remember when Brenden was 13,

my mum bought us a boombox back then.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

And that night...

My mum walked in the bedroom

and he had the whole thing pulled apart on the bed...

And put it back together again...

And it worked.

But that he enjoyed doing that stuff.

So, he's always had a very inquisitive mind

when it comes to the operations of things.

(UP-TEMPO MUSIC)

Hey, how are ya?

Good. Good.

Oh, do you want to see it now or you want to?

I'll give you a quick little look.

Fuck it. Whatever. It's right in the ankle.

You'll have a bit of a laugh out of this one.

Hold on, I've got to drop the camera down.

One second.

So, Sammy's sister changed it to a bank robber.

Just put the little postcards,

little postcards sticker around the side too.

And then it's got your aviator sunglasses,

and a little moustache that you had.

(LAUGHS)

Sammy.

Come say hello.

Hello, how are you?

May is the one that did the tattoo for me today.

Yeah.

I had to look at photo references of you

to get some inspiration.

I like your hair...

Show us the side, show us the back.

That's my head for sure.

Yeah, I was just thinking that.

(LAUGHTER)

No, I don't think so.

They cut it out. Aw.

That sucks. Can't even say bye.

No, they cut it out 'cause they came on the camera,

I think that's probably why.

That sucks.

It's my partner talking to her on the camera

and it's not harming, harming anyone at all.

It makes me angry when stuff like this happens

actually frustrates me and it plays in my mind for ages.

It just sucks having a family member,

someone you care about...

someone else's telling you what you can and can't do with them.

28 years, it's shit.

I'm sick of playing these games, but at the same time,

it's all I've known...

that I'm just like, it gets a bit frustrating.

But it is, what it is.

In Fremantle prison,

Brenden had got himself working in the prison tailor shop.

He knew a number of things.

That there was an area across the roof

that was very vulnerable,

so, anything he could do

to lessen the reaction from the guards

to make them unsure of who they were dealing with.

Working in the tailor shop gave him access to making uniforms.

So, he obviously came up with the idea,

let's make some uniforms

that appear like prison guards

that will give them

a moment of hesitation for the guards

to get across the roof and get to the wall.

If they had gone across there in their prison greens,

they would've been shot.

The tailor shop normally had a prison guard,

he was the tailor.

To make their escape,

they had to distract the overseer,

the tailor who was in charge of them.

You're in a room full of sewing machines,

making a lot of noise.

That covered the sound of cutting through the bars.

And so, they had free run while that was happening.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

Come on, hurry up.

Get moving, come on.

The guards hesitated,

gave them enough time to scramble across

and over the wall.

And somehow Brenden was able to retain

some of the civilian clothes

and they aided him in his ultimate escape.

They left one behind who fell down the gap...

But two got away.

Abbott and Reynolds.

And headed off to 5.5 years of freedom.

That was a pretty smart escape.

It was one of the more,

I suppose, celebrated escapes,

if you could say that, from Fremantle Prison.

James Abbott and Aaron Raymond Reynolds

sneak out of a workshop,

climb onto a roof, and leap 3m to freedom.

When Brenden broke out of Fremantle prison,

my first thought

was the police will kill him.

If the police see him, they're gonna shoot him.

And that was my greatest fear.

My greatest fear was that somebody was gonna kill him.

If someone escapes from custody,

whether it be a prison or from a police station,

there's a lot of effort put into it to recover that person.

So, if someone like Abbott was on the run,

then they'd be all stops pulled out to try and recover.

Abbott, if he's confronted at a scene of a robbery,

then he will shoot it out.

The guns are loaded and he's prepared to use them.

They would say

he's highly dangerous and would shoot if confronted,

so, don't confront him.

And that used to really cause me a lot of grief

because I actually thought

that the police were just saying that

maybe they were telling the media that

because that would justify them shooting him

when they caught him.

Eventually,

and even if it takes us two months or two years,

he'll definitely come unstuck.

(DOOR KNOCKS)

Good morning. How are you?

Good, how are you? Good, thanks.

Can I come in? Yes, Come in.

Morning. Morning.

How are we? Yeah. Good, good.

How are you feeling?

Feeling alright.

Yeah. Pretty nervous.

What time did you guys get in last night?

Pretty late. I think we flew in... Flight was delayed.

Flew in about 11:15, 12:00 I think it was.

Got to the hotel,

parked the car, came upstairs, showered, straight to sleep.

Had about...

Probably had about four hours sleep.

But yeah.

How are you feeling, Sammy?

Um, excited.

Excited for James and excited for him to get out.

I had a call with Dad this morning beforehand,

so, he just gave me a slight rundown of everything that's gone on.

So, he spoke with the lawyers yesterday.

They said that if they get up

on one of the main matters they're going for,

that'll be everything.

That'll be end of it, Dad will walk.

If not, then I have to appeal things and go further.

So, at the moment, it's set for two days,

potentially could go for three.

Ready?

Yep. Alright, let's go.

Let's go? Yep.

A bit nervous today.

The anxiety's up there.

He's a cheeky bugger,

sending postcards to the coppers.

Thumbing his nose at the police.

But he wasn't.

The Postcard Bandit was really a myth.

One of Australia's most wanted men

has been arrested on the Gold Coast.

He was too hard to hang onto.

It was a daring breakout.

They cut their prison bars

with diamond encrusted angel wire.

To escape from a maximum-security prison twice

is the stuff that myths are made of.

(SIREN WAILS)

This latest incident

is an embarrassment for the government.

Where is Brenden Abbott?

Police are now planning a national task force to catch him.

You just can't be that lucky for that long.

The man no jail has been able to hold,

finally back in custody.

This 37-year-old will be an old man

before he ever sets foot back in the community.

Abbott spent the best part of ten years

in solitary confinement.

And now that's a pretty extraordinary thing.

23 hours a day locked down in your cell,

that would be enough to drive anyone insane.

You've got him in maximum security.

Why are you doing this?

To me that was just gutless of the authorities.

(ALARM BUZZES)

(PHONE RINGS)

Can you hear me, yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

(CHUCKLES)

How do you get through that to not be crazy?

The law.

You just got to keep your mind occupied

or otherwise you'd go loopy.

This case is set to be complex.

If successful,

the serial fugitive can walk out of prison

for the first time in almost 30 years.

Do you think it's fair that he's spent

more than some murderers?

He knew what he was getting involved in.

You do the crime, you serve the time.

He's getting older.

I don't know how much longer I got with him.

Everybody's just waiting for the decision

to come back from the judge.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

Captioned by AI-Media ai-media. tv