Pod Insights ABC Rewind A Good Honest Criminal About this episode It’s March 25th, 1999, and Australia’s most remarkable prison escape has just taken place, after a helicopter hovers above the recreation grounds at the Silverwater maximum security prison, in Sydney. In the blink of an eye, a prisoner runs towards the chopper, climbs onboard, and is on his way to freedom.
This is the story of that airborne escapee, John Killick, a man who spent much of his life leading the authorities on a merry dance. Somehow he survived his dangerous escapades and many prison stints.
Today, in his early 80s, John is a writer, a public speaker. and a counsellor to ex-crims.
Credits:
Producer: Brian McKenzie
Sound Engineer: Tim Symonds
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:10 Speaker 01 Australia's most remarkable prison escape took place in Sydney 25 years ago, on March 25, 1999. Hello, Kirsty Melville with you and today on the History Listen, we meet the man at the centre of that escape, John Killick. For much of his life, John led the authorities on a merry dance. He took a number of lovers and partners down a dangerous criminal path, with many violent confrontations. Just about all the prisons in South East Australia are familiar to John Killick and it's remarkable that he survived to tell the tale. In this episode of the History Listen, producer Brian McKenzie
0:54 Speaker 01 sits down to hear the story of a good, honest criminal. And just a heads up that this episode does contain descriptions of self-harm and violence.
1:07 Speaker 02 It was an escape that stunned prison guards with its audacity.
1:11 Speaker 03 This is a very daring Hollywood-style escape.
1:15 Speaker 02 They say 30-year-old Lucy Dudko chartered a helicopter for what was supposed to be a joyride over the Home Bush Olympic site. She then asked for a closer look at nearby Silverwater Jail.
1:26 Speaker 04 Lucy asks the pilot to fly over the jail and then puts a gun to his head and tells him to land.
1:34 Speaker 02 The chopper was on the ground a bare 10 seconds, but her boyfriend, 57-year-old John Reginald Killick, on demand for armed robbery, was waiting.
1:43 Speaker 04 And this was timed perfectly for John's one hour of exercise in the yard. The helicopter hovered about a foot off the ground. John jumps in, Lucy gives him a gun. John says, "You can either be on 60 minutes or you can be dead. It's your choice."
2:01 Speaker 02 Nearby workers watched the escape unfold.
2:04 Speaker 03 And as the helicopter made over the fence, the warden went out with at least three shots and they fired at 12 guys.
2:12 Speaker 04 As they were flying away, the prison guards opened fire on the helicopter. One of the bullets struck the helicopter and damaged it.
2:20 Speaker 02 After a short flight, the chopper put down on a nearby park.
2:25 Speaker 02 The pilot was tied up with radio wires the pair carjacked a blue Commodore, forcing the driver to take them to North Sydney at gunpoint.
2:33 Speaker 05 Dudko was the key figure in the escape. She studied a Hollywood movie about a helicopter breakout. And she abducted helicopter pilot Tim Joyce at gunpoint. She was determined on one thing, and that was to rescue her lover.
2:55 Speaker 06 Lucy is a librarian with no history of involvement in crime. But who's John Killick, this man who dares to make such an escape? Joe Crowley, John Killick's lawyer.
3:06 Speaker 04 He is a highly intelligent bloke. He's a great storyteller, self-deprecating. He's really a pleasure to deal with, I've found.
3:17 Speaker 06 Yet John Killick remains a conundrum. One thing's for sure, he never lies down to accept his fate. We start with a momentous upheaval in his life, which occurred in 1959, when John was 17.
3:30 Speaker 03 It was late June, Sunday night. Heard a thump, mum had fallen out of bed. And I got up and she was on the floor. And dad said, "Go and ring the doctor." Jumped on my bike, pedaled down to the phone box. You wouldn't believe it, the panels had hit it. Then I went to the next. I always thought not having money costs us her life. Because if we'd had a phone, if we'd had a car, we could have driven her straight to hospital. It might have saved her. So then I went to the next phone booth and rang a regular doctor. His wife answered and said it was too late, he wouldn't come because we owed money. She hung up. And she died that night.
4:15 Speaker 03 Dad said she had a heart attack, but I knew she bloody slept. And there was a rotten doctor who wouldn't come had given her. I left home next morning, just packed up and left. Hooked up with a few guys, bit older me, and they taught me really how to shoplift.
4:31 Speaker 06 Just walk in and walk out and stuff. We got chased a few and they couldn't catch us. One of John's new friends, Albert, worked as a postman and said he delivered mail to Athel Muller, a top jockey. Jockeys weren't allowed to bet on the horses and rumour had it that they kept their winnings under the bed. The boys broke in, but it was the wrong house.
4:53 Speaker 06 Soon as I got in there, we knew that this guy had got it wrong. The suits belonged to a giant. You could have fitted jockey in legs. And I said, "You know, Athel Muller, you've got to be kidding." Next day, they roll up at the hock shop at King's Cross and Albert spins a tale about the oversized suits, explaining that he'd lost a lot of weight. Next thing, the police arrive. So they threw us out to Long Bay, refused mail. Three of us in assault, no sheets, just dirty blankets. Toilet in a bucket. Young blokes were getting raped. I got in a fight playing chess, beat this young bloke. He picked the board up, hit me over the head with it. He couldn't fight. I was covering inside him and belting the shit out of him. My old man had taught me to fight.
5:37 Speaker 06 Anyways, Bellemain champion in thirty-two and we had the trophy. You've still got it somewhere. He was tough. Yeah. And he was abusive. So your mum had to suffer that. Yeah, that's right, yeah. She left him once, that made it worse. She ran off with a taxi driver, took me with her and he never forgave her for that. I only saw him when he hit her once and she was coming at him with a knife. He backhanded her, knocked her over.
6:03 Speaker 06 How'd he go to school the next day with that sort of shit?
6:07 Speaker 06 John did three months in Long Bay, got a bond, then went to Orange in country New South Wales. There, he caught up with old friends who convinced him to help them break into a department store. John said he was scared of heights. Even so, he agreed to be lowered on a rope. The only thing they do is put a rope around you, it'll lower you down. So I did it and I was swinging like a pendulum. I thought I was gone.
6:33 Speaker 03 Glass case underneath me, but they managed to control it. First of all, we emptied the jewel cases, took a lot of watches, a few rings and whatnot. Whatever was there, we took, and that's all we could fit in the car. So, driving along, and we're coming to lift gate, and Taffy said, I'm nearly out of petrol. I said, why didn't we fill up? And then I realised, it's stolen car. We stopped at a side street, it's two in the morning, and I'm looking at Sparrow, and I'm saying, this is not good, mate. Sure enough, straight away the cops come.
7:09 Speaker 06 Right on cue, the police show up and they're taken to the station and told to strip off.
7:13 Speaker 03 In the middle of winter in a lift gate, imagine what it's like. Me and Barry stripped off, Sparrow stripped off down to his socks, and they said, take your socks off. He said, no, it's alright, take your socks off. I said, don't worry if they stink, we're used to that here, you know? Took your socks off, and some diamond rings fell out on the floor. What a prick this guy was, you know? He just had to get extra.
7:35 Speaker 03 They put me in a black cell, made me strip off, I couldn't see anything. They had a bible there, but you couldn't read it. You got bread and water at night time. Forty-eight hours, no clothes. I was seventeen when I went in. Got out in April, got arrested in July, and did twenty-one months, so got out in March sixty-two. By then I was twenty.
7:59 Speaker 03 When I got out of there, I met Cathy. I fell in love with this girl first time I met her. The father, he liked me, the mother liked me.
8:07 Speaker 06 You were close to the whole family, it was sort of like, this was the family.
8:11 Speaker 03 That I never had, really, yeah. Then they told me that they're going to America, to live.
8:17 Speaker 06 And what did you and Cathy decide to do as a son?
8:20 Speaker 03 So I'd go with them. But when I applied to go, they knocked me back. They said, you will never get into America, forget about it, forget about the girl. America would not let me in because I had a criminal record. I couldn't handle that, so I rode the bank.
8:37 Speaker 03 Sure enough, they went to America and they arrived there today that Kennedy was assassinated. But when they got there, I was already in jail. And I've given a sentence.
8:51 Speaker 03 I hit a bank at the end of January, 1966. I went in, clown's mask, and was very nervous, rifle went off. They stood there looking at me and everybody was shocked. And I pretended to reload, the rifle pointed straight at the first teller. And said, "Give me a gun or I'll shoot you." He's given me the gun. Jumped over the counter, got the money. I went up on the highway, across the street. There was a woman doing gardening and I asked her if I could use the phone. She went in and made me a cup of tea. They called a taxi and she was intrigued because I had a suit on, stuffed full of money. And I told her my car had broken down and I was driving to the station, but I wasn't very fit.
9:35 Speaker 03 We walked out and sure enough, there's a cop car just cruising by to stop. I cracked a joke with her and got her laughing, so they drove off.
9:46 Speaker 06 John robbed another bank, the ANZ, Cabramatta, Sydney. But he picked the wrong day to do it.
9:57 Speaker 06 The bank teller apologized to John for the meagre takings. Everyone had come in to get the new decimal currency.
10:06 Speaker 06 By now, the authorities knew who the bank robber was and John was on the run. He dyed his hair, got some gold-rimmed glasses and went to Melbourne, where he tracked down the illegal baccarat club.
10:18 Speaker 03 Ego took control of me because I'd got away with a couple of bank robberies. They didn't have a clue where I was. Guess who he turned up? Sparrow, plenty of Sparrow.
10:27 Speaker 06 Remember Sparrow? With the socks full of stolen diamonds?
10:31 Speaker 03 We got talking and he used to borrow 50 bucks off me. Every time I saw him, he'd give me 50 bucks.
10:41 Speaker 03 I was going to dance school, Fred Astaire's. I was learning war room dancing, but particularly the tango. I was getting pretty good at caffeine, like that sort of stuff. Because I was determined I was gonna get to America still if I had plenty of money.
10:56 Speaker 03 I had a bit of a run on the horses, you know, a backstorm queen. Won a golden slipper, I won some good money on that. Sparrow come to me and said, "Look, he needed two hundred to pay the cops. He got caught housebreaking him, two hundred dollars and they'd drop it." I said, "Look, I'm gonna hit a bank, I knew the driver." And he said, "Oh, I'll be in that for sure." Told him to meet me outside the dance school.
11:25 Speaker 03 He didn't turn up. I went and stole the car, did it myself. Went into the bank, straight away I knew there was trouble because the bank manager, a young bloke, was aggro and I knew they had guns. I said, "Fill the bag up, I had a fair bit of money." Spun around, ran across the road, nearly got knocked over. Got to the car, looked around, sure enough, they're coming after me. Angry guy's got the gun. Bang, bang, they hit the bloody boot. So I started the engine, bloody truck driver pulled out and tried to stop me. So I dived inside and went up and went a foot bump and he's come after me.
12:04 Speaker 03 I always look for getaway routes. This one I planned that I drive a car down this dead end. And then there's a big paddock, blue into a railway station. But I was that angry with this truck driver, I've jumped out and ran back. He saw me and he wound the window up. I tapped on the window, you know, "I've got a gun."
12:26 Speaker 03 "What are you gonna do now?" He was shaking like that. I said, "What are you gonna do?" He went, "You got me now, what are you gonna do?"
12:36 Speaker 03 I ran across the paddock. And in Melbourne, what they do, they close the gate just as the train's coming in. And this little bloke, saw me coming, I'm ten meters away, and he's closed the gate. Sweat's pouring off, I looked around, I seen them, the three of them standing up there, two tellers and the truck driver. I said, "Open the gate, I've gotta get that train." He said, "Can't do it, can't do it." So I jumped down the railway track and there's this really big fence, twelve foot high. Somehow I got over it. What had happened, they thought I got the train. They told the cops I got the train.
13:13 Speaker 03 When you're on the run, you're living on your wits, your senses. Well, after the bank robbery, I went to the dance studios. I knew straight away it was a trap. I knew because the reception girl was wide-eyed and terrified.
13:29 Speaker 03 The cops were dressed up as dancers. They ate them. Two of them coming from behind me, whacked me as hard as they could in the gut. I thought about it later, and it had to be Sparrow.
13:45 Speaker 06 Next stop, Pentridge, Melbourne's Bluestone Penitentiary, built by convicts and the size of a suburb.
13:52 Speaker 03 As soon as you got there, they stripped you off and bashed you. Then you had to break rocks. They terrorised people. You missed a beat, and it didn't have a button done up. They'd clip you with a baton across the head. People were trying to commit suicide, a few did kill themselves. It was horrific.
14:08 Speaker 06 John spent seven years in Pentridge, where he watched fellow prisoner Ronald Ryan preparing to be hanged for an escape where a guard was killed. John made his own escape attempt, smashing a guard with an iron bar and taking his gun. It ended in an all-night siege, which John was lucky to survive, and it extended his stay a couple of years. You get out of Pentridge and try to live the quiet life. You got a room in mascot?
14:33 Speaker 03 Got a room in mascot?
14:34 Speaker 06 But you're a bit lonely.
14:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:37 Speaker 06 How old were you by now?
14:39 Speaker 03 I was only about 31.
14:40 Speaker 06 Were you rehabilitated?
14:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, but no, look, they didn't give me a chance. They said, "What are you going to do when you get out?" I said, "I'm going to try and ride." They just said, "No, if you get about being a rider, you're working in a factory." What I did was, I entered the chess tournament, and Bobby Fisher just won the world championship from Spassky, and I'd played all the games out. I used to beat everybody at Pentridge.
15:02 Speaker 06 I think it was over seven weeks, every Friday night you'd go there. Nice lady, about my age, was running the tournament. And sometimes I'd finish the game early, so I'd get up to the tournament to her. And then I asked her out and she saw no, she really wasn't interested. And a couple of weeks later, I asked her again. She was humming and hawing about it. I said, well, look, what about if I win the chess tournament? So she said, yeah, okay. If you win the tournament, I'll even cook you dinner.
15:32 Speaker 06 I went through undefeated.
15:35 Speaker 01 So here's this fellow that comes in and he looks ordinary. Less like a serious chess player. Soon as he was finished, he'd go again. And then, and then one time he waited until everyone else had gone. I was putting things away. He asked me if I liked music. I said, so I love music. She said, what's your favourite singer? And it turns out that he liked her as well, Ella Fitzgerald. That's where it started.
16:05 Speaker 06 To interview John, I'd take the train across the bridge to his home in Milsons Point, Sydney. And that's where I met Gloria. They live in a flat next to the station with their dog Rocky. Gloria's maiden name is Bonafidi, which in Italian means in good faith. At some stage, he must have let you know what sort of trouble he'd been in.
16:25 Speaker 01 Oh, he was just quite honest about it, how it came. First of all, he said, I've been in jail. But when he said, no, I rob banks. Rob banks, you know. Well, it's a shock, but you could see he was a nice person, good mannered and quietly spoken. I still liked him.
16:44 Speaker 06 Gloria and I, we got married, had a son and everything was going fine for five years, with a few ups and downs. Quite a few. Gambling debts and a certain inability to accept unfairness in the workplace plagued him. Then a good job came John's way, fruit and veg manager at a coal store. Did pretty well for a couple of years. Then there was an old Russian guy installing some garlic. I went to bat for him, but they made a big development. I said, well, you could have left him with some dignity, because he was an old guy, you could see he was poor. The way he was being pushed and dragged, he probably thought the KGB had him. Well, I'd already had a fallout over the young blokes. They were making a. Work and they weren't paying him.
17:28 Speaker 06 That was the end of Carl's. I ran into this Greg, who I'd known.
17:33 Speaker 04 Greg Isles.
17:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, at the races and we got talking and he said, look, I want to rob a bank. I was in a bit of debt, had a few things hawked. So I said, look, we might do it.
17:48 Speaker 04 The cause of these quite irrational decisions is the gambling addiction that he has.
17:55 Speaker 06 Joe Crowley again, John's lawyer.
17:57 Speaker 04 I see it so often in recidivist criminals. There's terrible upbringing in this violent household that deeply affects his mother. She commits suicide when he's seventeen. Add that with a gambling addiction. It goes some way to explain his eventual turn to bank robbery.
18:21 Speaker 06 What happened is that I went around their place, Greg Isles' place. They were arguing in the kitchen, they didn't hear me knock. They were arguing and yelling at each other. And I heard the baby crying, picked the baby up. Baby was hungry, there was no food in the cupboards, no food at all. And they had a noodle on the sink. Turned out they were arguing about who'd had the biggest hit. So I just said, do something about your baby, the robbery's off.
18:51 Speaker 06 They decided they're going to go ahead and do it anyway because they had the gun. And I told them, I said, you just don't know enough about it, yours will blow it, don't do it. They went ahead anyway with the young mother driving the getaway car and they were caught. The day of robbery, I reported bail at eight o'clock on the dot. In Sydney. At Chatswood. And that became important because they robbed the bank, stuffed up, they'd got Isles.
19:18 Speaker 06 And they got his wife. And they said, who was the third one? Either you give us the main guy. Or your wife's gone. So he said it was me, John Kelly. Never mind that the bank was in Adelaide and John was in Sydney. The police take John into custody and also arrest Gloria and son, Little John. They bring him in and put him upstairs. And they said that she was going to be charged as an accessory. And he'd be made a ward of the state if I didn't confess. What happened? They typed up her confession. It was absolute fantasy. At the trial, I had a guy called Darren Stevenson, the best criminal lawyer in South Australia. But he was also a gay.
20:02 Speaker 06 And before I could get the committal, he finished up dead in a freezer. So I didn't have a lawyer and did my own committal.
20:12 Speaker 06 The trial goes for seven weeks. There are 50 witnesses and one is crucial. Senior detective Roger Rogerson flies in from Sydney. He produces an airline ticket. Rogerson claims that John flew on the night of the robbery from Adelaide to Sydney to report for bail. That's what sent me down. I'd never seen him in my life. He walked into court, looked across me, said, "Good day, Johnny." He said, "We were great friends." I didn't know who he was. And the jury hung every word he said that he was a decorated officer. And we all know what he is now. And what is Roger Rogerson now? Well, he's doing life.
20:52 Speaker 06 Roger Rogerson, the notoriously corrupt New South Wales detective, died recently whilst in custody.
20:59 Speaker 04 The criminal justice system is not set up to deal with police who lie or fabricate evidence. John did a very successful cross-examination of the police officers. But he was stymied by the magistrate.
21:13 Speaker 06 They turned on me to jury and found me going on all four. John was sentenced to eight and a half years for the bank robbery. And three other armed robberies that the South Australian police had on their books. Despite not having been in attendance at any of them. But look, we got through, but it was years out of our life. And John missed. Some really good years when his child was growing up. And the boy missed him, believe me. John fought to have his conviction overturned, but the years ticked over. He returned to writing and became the editor of the prison magazine in Yattler. Eventually, his case came to the High Court, where a deal was struck.
21:57 Speaker 06 And John is out of prison. He flies home to Sydney to Gloria and his son. Soon he'll be 40.
22:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, went back home, went to the highlights of my life. Gloria and John were waiting for me at the airport. It was, it was great. You had to rebuild your life. Yeah, but I had a chip on my shoulder about what had happened. Suffice to say, John went off the rails. He teamed up with a much younger woman, whose story we can't tell. And they went on a spree, like Bonnie and Clyde. He was caught and went to prison. She broke him out with a plastic toy gun. Eventually, their time together finished and she went home. John continued, but without her driving the getaway car, was nabbed.
22:46 Speaker 06 We resumed some 15 years later. It's 1999. John has had a stint in Brisbane's Boggo Raid Prison and six years in Long Bay. Then John Killick went straight. He got a job and met a woman who he had a steady relationship with, Lucy. I was out for quite a while then. It was about eight years. And, you know, Gloria and I just, you know, we'd split. That was it. We were good friends. And met a girl that I did like. Lucy was a Russian girl. Lucy was a librarian, completing her masters. They'd been together for some time, when one night, there was a knock at the door. The police had a warrant for a decades-old breach of parole.
23:29 Speaker 06 John's lawyer thought it could end up being a two-year jail term. The police said they'd be back in the morning to take John into custody and extradite him to Brisbane. Lucy decided that it wasn't fair, and they took flight.
23:44 Speaker 06 Couldn't get any money anywhere, so I had to go back rotten banks. I was past rotten banks. Got away the first one, second one got chased by a cop. Managed to get away from him, but there's red dye on my hands and I got trapped. Went out to Silverwater and. Silverwater's a prison. Hmm. I was charged with two bank robberies. Lucy's come out to see me. The very first day she come to see me, she said I'm gonna get you out. So I said to Lucy, we can do this, but you'll have to hijack a helicopter. And Lucy said, brilliant, brilliant, boy. Not knowing it about helicopters, uh, I needed some help, divine help really.
24:26 Speaker 06 And prison authorities put a new bloke in a prison cell with me. He was a fraudster and a con artist, but he's also happened to be a helicopter pilot. So I learnt what everything was. There wasn't much I didn't know about helicopters. I relayed this through to Lucy. And when she done the trial run, she checked out where the transponder was and everything else. The morning of the escape, my heart was pounding, it was a hot day, I was sweating and about seven minutes ago before they started taking us back in. Uh, she came. I ran across, jumped on, he didn't land, he was probably, um, six foot off the ground. Some of the screws done to run up me. She handed me the, um, machine gun. It didn't work, but it looked effective.
25:09 Speaker 06 And all the crims, they all died to the ground, so did the screws. They fired, put, put, put, hit us three times. But when I got in, she said, um, haven't got the coolies of the car. She forgot them.
25:23 Speaker 06 The helicopter's progress was being followed live on John Law's radio programme, with listeners ringing in to report on its location. Gloria was at work.
25:33 Speaker 01 I heard about it on the radio, that Kelly had, uh, escaped. The ladies that I worked with turned around and said, that's your name, Kelly. And I said, I beg your pardon? She said, well, somebody's just escaped from Silverwater.
25:51 Speaker 06 When we landed, I commandeered a car, pointed the gun at him, she looked. He'd need to take us into the city, otherwise I'll shoot you in the leg. He said, okay. Caught a train and we got away. The pilot, who'd been tied to a tree, got free and walked across to the golf course and rang the police. He explained that he'd been hijacked by a Russian woman with a submachine gun, who'd picked up a prisoner from Silverwater Jail and they've escaped. The policeman asked him what country he was in and hung up. We managed to stay out for about two months, but it was pretty heavy going, you know. Six weeks of freedom ended at this Sydney caravan park. Police acting on a tip-off surrounded caravan number 14, where John Killick and Lucy Dunco were asleep.
26:41 Speaker 06 Did you get a jail sentence then? Yeah, 28 years. Still on parole. So when you got out... Gloria allowed me to stay. If I hadn't had somewhere to live, I wouldn't have probably got out. That's the thing.
26:55 Speaker 06 I've been out about six years. I put out three books, nearly finished a fourth. I do a lot of work with charity. I send quite a bit of money to underprivileged kids and that.
27:07 Speaker 06 What happened to Lucy? She got 10 years. She found religion at the end. You could say I ruined her life, but at the same time, she had a hell of a marriage. She sort of jumped out of the frying pan in the fire with me.
27:21 Speaker 06 The one that comes shining through all of it is Gloria. She's been the love of my life, really. She's still there and we're great friends. She's the mother of my son, who's over in China, teaches English.
27:36 Speaker 06 I like to think I've ended pretty well. I know myself now and I feel pretty happy with what I am, who I am. And I know that I'd rather help someone than not.
27:48 Speaker 01 And there we have it. Brian McKenzie's deep dive into the life and times of a very unusual criminal. Since his last stint inside, John Killick's sponsored young families in need, he's mentored young kids at risk, and he's helped men emerging from prison. He's also a guest lecturer to university law students, and he runs history tours at the old Pentridge Jail in Melbourne, where, of course, he once did a stretch. I'm Kirsty Melville and I'll catch you next time on The History Listen. See you then.
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