Pod Insights True Crime Conversations The Prison Guard Who Fell In Love With An Inmate About this episode In 1992, career criminal Peter Gibb met prison guard Heather Parker while serving a 12-year sentence at the Melbourne Remand Centre. Heather claimed she didn’t notice Peter at first, but she quickly became smitten, and their relationship developed from flirtatious to physical.
When their affair was exposed, Heather was immediately transferred, with communication between the two forbidden. But they couldn’t be stopped, and with the help of another inmate acting as their middleman, the pair hatched a plan to break Peter out of prison.
Their escape sparked one of Australia's largest criminal pursuits and saw Heather and Peter dubbed Australia’s Bonnie and Clyde.
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Guest: Megan Norris
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Transcript 0:04 Speaker 00 The Melbourne Reman Centre looms large on the corner of Spencer Street and Latrobe Street, just west of the city’s bustling CBD. A state-of-the-art, high-security holding centre, it’s home to over 250 dangerous and hardened criminals while they await trial, sentencing and transfers. With towering red brick walls and bullet-resistant polycarbonate windows, the Reman Centre is said to be “escape-proof”. But 38-year-old inmate Peter Gibb is about to put that to the test. Gibb is a career criminal, who’s been in and out of prison for over 20 years.
0:47 Speaker 00 His most recent offence: payroll robbery, for which he’s looking at a 10-year stretch. But his stint at the Reman Centre has had its perks this time around: a prison guard named Heather Parker. Heather is a 30-year-old mother of two, and despite claiming she didn’t even notice Gibb at first, she quickly becomes smitten. Their relationship began to develop the more time they spent together, eventually turning from flirtatious to physical. On one occasion, a fellow prisoner even caught them locked in a linen closet together inside the Reman Centre. After that discovery, Heather was transferred to the Corrections Head Office in South Melbourne
1:32 Speaker 00 and forbidden from contacting Peter, but that didn’t stop their illicit affair from continuing in secret. In fact, Heather’s new job had given her access to restricted files that she soon realised could be used to their advantage. And with the help of another inmate acting as their middleman, Heather and Peter hatched a plan. At around 6pm on the 7th of March 1993, during a prison boxing tournament when everyone was distracted, Peter Gibb and his wingman Archie Bartley initiated their escape plan. They attached plastic explosives that had somehow been smuggled inside the jail
2:15 Speaker 00 to the window of their cell, shattering the bulletproof glass. They fled down a rope made of sheets and racing to the getaway car Heather had left for them nearby. But the escape quickly turns into a chase, with police cars right behind them as they race through the busy streets of Melbourne's CBD. Archie and Peter would eventually evade police and meet up with Heather, fleeing to regional Victoria in hopes of anonymity. But their escape plan would set them on a deadly path. A fire to cover their tracks in a small town would alert authorities to their whereabouts. And soon, police descending on a remote patch of bushland
3:00 Speaker 00 would face a ferocious gunfight that not all of the fleeing trio would survive.
3:16 Speaker 00 I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a Mamma Mia podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Dubbed Australia's Bonnie and Clyde, Peter Gibb and Heather Parker's unorthodox relationship made headlines around Australia in 1993. Peter's escape from prison with Heather's assistance sparked a five-day manhunt that would go on to become one of Australia's largest criminal pursuits. But Peter and Heather's star-crossed lovers storyline would captivate the media long past their capture
3:57 Speaker 00 and become the basis for the TV movie One Way Ticket starring Peter Phelps. Melbourne journalist and author Megan Norris has followed this story for years and has spent time investigating the psychology behind prison romances. She joins us now.
4:20 Speaker 00 So Megan, who was Peter Gibb before he met Heather Parker? Why was he even in jail in the first place?
4:29 Speaker 01 Well, he was a career criminal dating back to very early days. He was in jail at the time he met Heather Parker. He was in Melbourne Remand Centre in the city centre in Melbourne, facing charges of armed robbery and he'd got a past conviction for manslaughter, I think. So he's heavy duty, you know, he's a heavy duty, dangerous, violent criminal.
4:51 Speaker 00 And the prison breakout that we're about to dive into wasn't the first time he'd attempted something like this, was it? He'd broken out of, was it Victoria's Pentridge Prison in the past? How did he manage that one?
5:03 Speaker 01 He removed a window. He got some gear that he'd found in a boiler room and he broke out of the prison through a window. And he was at large for about a month. And that was some time before he met Parker. And he was in St Kilda lurking around and that leaves you cold. You know, St Kilda is a very busy place of all sorts. It's a mixture of all sorts, but he was hanging out in St Kilda with another guy who'd escaped from a prison in Beauchamp, who has also had a dreadful record for violence and manslaughter and stuff. And that guy ended up getting shot and killed when the police were pursuing him. And Gibb was rearrested and sent to Melbourne Remand Centre where he met Heather Parker.
5:48 Speaker 00 Was he known as someone who manipulated people? Because that's the story that's come out since then, is that he manipulated the women around him in that Remand Centre. Was he known for manipulating people whilst committing those crimes?
6:00 Speaker 01 Yes, he was. They all were. And Archie Butley too, who he then teamed up with, very clever at convincing people to do what they want. And that's the danger with these sort of illicit trysts. It's not just, you know, I know it was painted as a sort of Bonnie and Clyde love story, but it was actually much more than that. It was a really dangerous liaison, much more than a love story. Because once an affair like that starts, there's opportunity for blackmail. There's opportunity to manipulate people to bringing things into prison contraband, like drugs and weapons, as it was in this case, explosives. And persuading people, you know, other people find out, other inmates find out. So it leaves bigger opportunity for...
6:43 Speaker 01 A potential scandal and for her to be manipulated by other people.
6:48 Speaker 00 Well, let's talk about her for a moment. Who was Heather Parker before she got involved with Peter Gibb? Was there any suggestion that she would do this or had she done anything like this before in her career?
6:59 Speaker 01 No, to all intents and purposes, I think she appears to have been carefully targeted. And one thing these crims are good at is they're predators. And they target people and they watch people and they keep people under surveillance. So at close quarters like that, she'd have been a pretty easy target. She was thirty years old, she was married to another prison guard, but that marriage was failing. And she was, you know, feeling a bit lost. She wasn't getting as much access to her two kids as she wanted. I think she was lost and I think that would have become very apparent to some clever criminal like Peter Gibb.
7:36 Speaker 00 So how does something like this start to blossom inside a remand centre? I mean, I know that there was a case where they were caught at one stage in a linen closet together. But how do you have a relationship between a prison guard and a prisoner when you're in prison?
7:52 Speaker 01 Well, it would have been tricky. There would have been a lot of watching. Certainly, they were observed coming out of the linen cupboard. And at that point, the other prison guard's colleagues of Parker's started to kick up. And there were concerns expressed about the relationship. There were rumours flying everywhere. And she was immediately transferred, I think, to Pentridge. And then she was transferred, I think, to the secure wing of St Vincent's Hospital. So she was places where she couldn't have a relationship anymore. But that did not stop the relationship which had begun behind bars in the Melbourne Remand Centre. So she then became a visitor. And you have to wonder how that happened. You know, I thought, how do, you know, they screen visitors' lists, they screen phone calls.
8:35 Speaker 01 Surely that would have caused alarm bells to be rung. You'd have thought that those visits would have been even more strictly supervised than your regular visit, given her job.
8:45 Speaker 00 Since she's then transferred out, is there any evidence that Peter Gibb tried to start a relationship with any other of the female staff of that remand centre?
8:53 Speaker 01 I haven't found any information to that effect. It did appear to be a romance, but for one end, from his point, he wanted to escape. So you have to wonder, don't you? But they did appear to be in love and, you know, certainly that was used as a defence when it eventually came to court, that there were star-crossed lovers that were just wanting to be together. And he was looking at a very, very long sentence. He'd spent most of his life in jail.
9:20 Speaker 00 So while Heather is off working at these other jobs, still in the correction service, she's visiting Gibb, and at some point, a plan is hatched to break him out. Like, it was never confirmed exactly how, but she manages to smuggle in just a little bit of plastic explosive. What does Peter Gibb do with that?
9:38 Speaker 01 Well, Peter Gibb by then is involved with Archie Butterley, and then talk about kindred spirits. Here's another one, you know, and he's another dangerous, violent criminal, a lot smarter than Peter Gibb. He'd done time in WA, in Fremantle Prison, where he'd actually attempted to break out. He wasn't quite so smart, though. He sort of dug a hole in his cell with the help of a cellmate into the next-door cell, and then they dug a hole from that cell into the Catholic chapel next door. And then they tried to escape by shimmying down a drainpipe from the roof to the ground, to the parade ground. But he, he fell from the roof height on that drainpipe and broke his ankle. The cellmate, it was bungled, you know, it was chaos. And the cellmate panicked and got back in the
10:23 Speaker 01 cell and went back to bed and stayed there. Archie Butterley ended up handing himself in because he knew he couldn't get far on a broken ankle. So it was all over. But he was described as a really clever, intelligent, charming inmate at Fremantle, and was very clever. He wrote loads of poetry and prose, and he even went to Murdoch University as an external student and studied. He was one smart guy, but he was also a total career criminal, came out here as a kid from Scotland, got into loads of trouble. By 14, he's in trouble with the law. By 18, he's in an adult jail. And he'd got convictions for armed robbery, manslaughter and firearms offences. So, you know, they were very similar. And I wonder whether Archie Butterley would have known about this relationship and said,
11:08 Speaker 01 well, you know, I'm in on that. But they built a homemade bomb, which they used to blast through an armoured window on a second floor of the remand centre. And I don't know if you know where the remand centre is in Melbourne. But it's at the bottom of Spencer Street. It's really busy down there. And they blew that window out, they blasted that window out. And tied sheets into knots and lowered themselves down into La Trobe Street. At six o'clock at night, it's rush hour commute home traffic. Maybe that was the plan, you know. Pick rush hour traffic and disappear into the traffic very quickly.
11:47 Speaker 01 But I used to work up there and I thought they would have gone into the height of the evening rush hour home. And yet they pulled it off.
11:57 Speaker 00 Would that, like you said, have made it easier? I mean, a lot of prisons we know are out sort of in regional and remote areas. So if someone does escape, there's a whole lot of nothing between that jail and the next, you know, community that they could escape into. Did that essentially make it easier for them?
12:11 Speaker 01 No, it didn't. It was a sort of ill-conceived idea really altogether. But they sort of lowered themselves down on this rope made of prison sheets. To a waiting car that you presume Parker had her hand in organising. Where there was a pistol inside the car, firearms inside the car. And that was waiting in an alleyway just off La Trobe Street. And they literally disappeared into the traffic, but not that well because a prison officer witnessing their escape hailed a taxi and basically says, follow that car. Which the taxi did. And look, I was in Melbourne twenty six years. I covered courts in Melbourne and I worked in Melbourne. And I'm sort of picturing which way they would go at that time of night.
12:56 Speaker 01 Because they could have just been sitting in the traffic, going nowhere. But they didn't. They charged off and crashed into a kind of barrier gate. And headed off towards the Westgate Freeway, obviously trying to get out of the city. Now, that would have been a bad idea too, because the traffic on the Westgate Freeway at six o'clock at night. Would have been, you know, really heavy traffic. And they did this with a taxi in pursuit and a prison officer on a walkie talkie radio. Telling the police which way they were going. You know, following them. So they had a couple of crashes. They crashed a couple of times and then in one of the crashes.
13:36 Speaker 01 A kindly motorist, not knowing what he was pulling over to help, pulled over on his motorbike to offer a hand because. They were quite injured in that accident. These two escapees take his motorbike, his Honda motorbike, and hair off on the motorbike. So they head off with this, losing this prison officer. But he knows which way they're going. He's seen them bolt. And so a divvy van turns up with two other police officers. Also really not knowing what they're walking into. So the one gets out with his baton raised, you know, to to approach these two dangerous violent criminals. And they start firing at him. So he's shot twice and collapses to the ground unconscious immediately. The other one exchanges fire, I think with Gibb.
14:21 Speaker 01 And Butterley, who's got a pathological hatred for police, so he's a man with nothing to lose, is looking at a long sentence. He approaches the unconscious police officer and pulls his pistol off him and holds the pistol to his head. And says to the other officer, stop shooting at us now or I will kill him. And he has a pathological hatred for police. So I'm amazed he didn't kill that officer. That I think in interviews since, that officer has said. He is amazed that he's still alive. You know, given his history, that he didn't just shoot him in the head, but he didn't. They then took off again, this time in the divvy van. So they hair off through more traffic and managed to get out of the city. And they head towards the southeast. They go towards Seaford to a warehouse.
15:07 Speaker 01 Where they've got this car waiting that Heather Parker has organised. So they leap in this Pajero and they set off. To get out of the city, they go to a rural area. They head down to Gibbsland, to Troligan, where they were bold enough, I'm amazed by this. They were bold enough to call at the local hospital to get themselves patched up. Because Butterley had got a very injured arm. And one of them had a head injury. So there was all blood all over the motorbike when the police found it. So they knew they were injured. But they got the boldness to go into this hospital in the Latrobe Valley and go into casualty and get fixed up.
15:45 Speaker 00 And did no one in that hospital raise the alarm at all?
15:49 Speaker 01 Obviously not. And then they took off. So, you know, I'm sure it was all happening fast. I'm sure an alert would have gone out to all the city hospitals. But that's not where they went. And they then headed for the bush.
16:01 Speaker 00 So they go to the hospital, they get patched up. Do we know where they're actually heading towards, where their final destination is?
16:09 Speaker 01 I don't think that was clear. I think they were just panicking. They were just looking for somewhere to hide. So they headed north towards the bush. And they've set up a little camp in the bush. And I think they might have been there for a few days. Because I think it was around the eleventh that they turn up in a little place called Gaffneys Creek.
16:31 Speaker 00 You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Claire Murphy. I'm speaking with journalist and author Megan Norris about Australia's Bonnie and Clyde, Peter Gibbs and Heather Parker.
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17:25 Speaker 00 So they'd been on the run for five days by that stage.
17:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, so they turn up at Gathness Creek Hotel, which is a historic 125 year old, real Aussie pub. You know, and they turn up there, book a room, this is Parker and Gibb. So they book the room, sneak Archie Butterley in as their child. They claim they have a child, a sick child, and they sneak him in the room. But he's bleeding really, really badly by now, he's really injured. In the meantime, enjoying their freedom, their brief freedom, Romeo and Juliet go downstairs and mingle in the restaurant, in the pub restaurant, and that's a tiny little town, so strangers would have stood out. And they hang out, they wine and dine in this restaurant, they take a meal back upstairs for Archie Butterley,
18:10 Speaker 01 who's really injured, and then they decide he is so injured, they'd better get the heck out of there. So they burn the room, they set the room on fire to cover the evidence, because there's blood everywhere. And they didn't want anyone to know he'd even been there, so they set fire to the room, but actually burned down the entire hotel. So the poor old licensee was pretty upset that the whole hotel burned down, but that then attracted attention. So then the local police are called to the hotel. And when they described the two guests that were in the dining room that night, it fits the description of Heather Parker and Peter Gibb.
18:47 Speaker 00 But Peter Gibb had tried to change his appearance by this stage, hadn't he?
18:50 Speaker 01 Yes, whilst in the bush, he, it's, isn't it bizarre, I looked at the photos of him and he had shaved, a massive streak, like an airstrip, right down the middle of his head, he'd got quite dark hair, to try and make himself look bald and old, you know, so he's got these mad professor tufts either side and this great expanse of bald patch in the middle of his head, which was, it looked pretty bizarre.
19:13 Speaker 00 And had they done anything whilst they were socialising with the people in the pub that caused them any suspicion? Was any of their behaviour questionable while they were enjoying a few drinks and dinner?
19:25 Speaker 01 Well, it doesn't appear to be because no one raised the alarm. And you would have thought their faces would have been all over the telly. You know, because they were on the run. However, at that stage, certainly the police initially were concerned that they described a skinny woman with sunnies and a headscarf in one of the cars with them or had been sighted with them. They were not sure at that stage whether this pair had taken a hostage. So it wasn't clear whether Heather Parker was complicit and was an accomplice in this escape. Or even if it was Heather Parker, they didn't know. But there was a suspicion that she could either have been an accomplice and had helped in this elaborate escape, or else she was an innocent hostage that they just abducted in a car.
20:08 Speaker 01 You know, there was no, that wasn't clear to begin with, but then the police did a search of Heather Parker's house. She would have come up in bright lights, I think. And they found love letters from Peter Gibb, which became clear from some of the content of those letters that she was part of a plan to get emailed.
20:26 Speaker 00 Do we know where Heather accessed the guns and explosives that were used during their escape? Because she armed them from the very beginning, from the explosives to the guns she left in the car, to the guns they took with them while they were on the run. Any ideas where she sourced all of this from?
20:44 Speaker 01 Well, she was a former prison officer and he had known acquaintances. And she would have surely known who those acquaintances were. Certainly at the time that they embarked on that, it was a massive nationwide police hunt for this pair because they were really dangerous. And during that, they raided her home. And then they turned, they also raided the homes of known acquaintances of both Butterley and Peter Gibb. So you would have imagined he would have told her exactly where to go to organise that sort of stuff.
21:17 Speaker 00 So they burned down the hotel, raised suspicions with authorities who realise, hey, this is who we're looking for. Do they have any idea where they've gone from that point?
21:28 Speaker 01 No, they obviously must have guessed they couldn't have got too far from the time they'd left the hotel. So they started to look in that in regional North Victoria. To see if they could find them. I think it's actually towards Jamieson, which is, you know, it's pretty remote bush at that way. And I guess there was a an idea they were probably heading. Towards the border of New South Wales, I would say. So what happened was some walkers found the Pajero abandoned in the bush and half covered with bracken. It was partially concealed and they found a makeshift, you know, there was a makeshift camp obviously near. Where this vehicle had been hidden, because obviously the people knew now what they were driving, because the hotel would have known. So they started to look around and the original plan was that.
22:13 Speaker 01 The police would sit it out and wait for them to come back to the car, but the media were following the story. So the media who got wind of the fact that the cops were on a stakeout for these two dangerous fugitives in the bush. Sent out media choppers, you know, so you've got the Channel Nine or Channel Ten. Media chopper hovering over the area where they can see the police, which alerted. Butterley, Gibb and Parker to the fact that. The police are on to them. So they bedded down, they bunkered down in this sort of foxhole in the bush. And Butterley wanted to shoot it out, you know, he was, he hated the police. And I think as well, there was a sort of sense from that, that the other two might have been a bit worried about him.
22:55 Speaker 01 Because he was crazy and he was dangerous and. Later on in his police record of interview after they were captured, Peter Gibb did say. From the minute he shot that policeman, Gibb felt like it was all over. You don't do that. He really crossed the line and shot a police officer. It was almost then fatalistic view of it. This is all over for us now. We've really got to go for it. He was unpredictable and erratic, Butterley. And they were quite nervous about him.
23:25 Speaker 00 So they've dug themselves into this little. Spot in the bush and the police bring in sniffer dogs to try and hunt them down. From my understanding, they didn't initially see them, but the dogs alerted them that there was definitely at least somebody there, if not the people. That they were looking for. What happens after the dogs alert police that there's someone there?
23:52 Speaker 01 Well, it got a bit confusing because in general terms, normally you'd expect the major crime squad to be dispatched to deal with a situation like that. But they dispatched members of the special operations group because the major crime squad at that time had just been disbanded following some series of scandals. So the people who'd normally deal with it within the police force were not. So they sent the special operations group, these are the tactical guys, they'll be armed to the teeth. And they're used to those sorts of hostage type situations and shootout things. So they sent members of the special operations group. But there was also a little group of officers that were also dispatched, a small unit. And they included people like, there was officer, I think his name was Graham Spook Arthur, they called him Spook.
24:37 Speaker 01 And there was another officer called, I think it was Cameron Duncan. And Cameron Duncan, that guy was in a precarious situation because he had arrested Archie Butterley before for armed robbery. And Archie Butterley was intercepted on a prison phone making death threats towards Duncan and his family. So the minute these guys busted out, Duncan becomes part of the team, knowing Archie Butterley certainly would have had a gripe with him. But Duncan's family had to be immediately relocated to a safe place. So while these guys were at large, Duncan's family were in danger too. So there were all these complexities, so they got special operations group with their high powered weapons
25:21 Speaker 01 staking out the car, but then the media choppers go over and alert the fugitives to the fact that the cops are on to them. Then the sniffer dogs go in. Then this little unit with Duncan and Spook Arthur and Rod Miller, senior constable Rod Miller. So when the whole thing kicked off and they started exchanging shots, there was this massive crossfire between the special operations group police and Butterley who took aim and started firing at them. Soon as they got within twenty metres of his camp. He just started firing and he was absolutely armed to the teeth. So he'd got the weapons that Heather Parker had put in the car. They had high powered rifles and rounds and rounds of ammunition. So he, you know, he was in there for the long haul.
26:05 Speaker 01 So he was firing at, at the special operations group. They were firing back. And these other guys, this little unit of police, took cover because they were caught in the middle. They were caught in the crossfire, so they could have been killed. So they took cover and it went on for about half an hour, this shooter. In the meantime, Duncan and Arthur spy Peter Gibb and Heather Parker making a break for it. So Butterley's still shooting at them. The special operations behind them are shooting back. Parker and Gibb are wading across the Goldburn River because this camp of theirs was on the bank of the Goldburn River at picnic point. So they think, oh, they're going to get away. They're going to get across the river.
26:49 Speaker 01 So these guys, they're very brave. They made a break for it. They broke their cover, basically. And scrambled through the bush and jumped them. So they jumped into the river and they jumped Gibb and they jumped Parker. But they had to wrestle them to the ground to handcuff them. Because they could have been shot. They could all have been shot. So it's lucky there wasn't a fatality. I think one of the special operations group officers was shot in the leg, but maintained his position and carried on firing. But these guys could have been killed by friendly fire, not just by, by Archie Butterley. So they arrest Parker. She was laughing the entire time. They later reported. She, she was actually laughing at the whole scene.
27:31 Speaker 00 Was she having a breakdown? Was she just enjoying the experience? Did they ever explain why?
27:37 Speaker 01 No, they never explained why. I wondered if it was like panic, hysterical. I don't know, or whether she just genuinely thought it was, you know, it's all over for us. And you know, if you don't laugh, you'll cry. Who knows? But they did make that arrest under some pretty serious conditions. Amazingly, they were not shot. But they waited till the firing stopped and then the, the special operations group went in with their dog and Butterley was dead. And he'd died of what appeared to be a self inflicted gunshot wound to the back of his ear. Which is an odd place to shoot yourself, behind your ear. And so he was dead. And the other two were under arrest.
28:19 Speaker 00 Was it ever figured out whether he was the one who pulled the trigger or somebody else?
28:25 Speaker 01 Well, it was certainly the forensics. It went to an inquest because they had to determine the cause of his death. The cause of his death was this gunshot wound behind the ear. But all of it was odd. He still had rounds upon rounds upon rounds of ammunition. So why would he kill himself? Why would he do that? Given the personality he is and his hatred for the police and the fact that he had a full magazine. And rounds and rounds of ammunition, he could have kept it going for another hour. Why would he shoot himself in the head? Why would he do that? And not just shoot himself in the head. It was discovered that it taken half an hour to die. At the inquest, it was determined that he hadn't shot himself, that forensics said he hadn't shot himself.
29:11 Speaker 01 But the police couldn't have shot him. There was some thought that maybe there was a plan between him and Gibbon Parker. You make a break for it, I'm too injured. He was very, very injured. You make a break for it, I'll hold the cops off until you get away. There was some thinking about that and then he may have shot himself, but they sort of thought, no, the forensics said, no, he hadn't. They didn't believe he'd shot himself. And then there was a thinking that maybe what either Gibb or Parker may have shot him at his request before they left, you know, finish me off, I'm not going to be able to make it, you guys go. Or maybe there was also a theory that maybe they'd shot him because he wasn't going to let them leave and he was going to shoot to the death. So it was very, very open ended. It was just one big mystery.
29:55 Speaker 00 So Parker and Gibb are now in custody.
29:58 Speaker 01 Yes.
29:58 Speaker 00 What happens to them when their case goes to court?
30:01 Speaker 01 Well, their arrest was sensational. Obviously, there were media choppers around, the media were all over it. They burned down the local hotel, you know, it was a real Bonnie and Clyde escape. It was certainly the stuff of movies, you know, this illicit affair that that had led to this very bold prison breakout at six o'clock at night, which in March would have been daylight, broad daylight, into rush hour traffic. You know, and led police on a merry chase across Victoria. But when the case came to court, it was a really sensational court case. You know, they'd got an inquest first, who killed Archie Butterley? Did he kill himself? Did someone do it at his request? Which one of them? If if it had been one of the colleagues, well, which one had done it?
30:43 Speaker 01 And had they done it at his request, or had he killed himself? Or had they done it because he wouldn't let them leave? There were all these questions flying around, so there was a lot of media interest, but basically it became a sort of, I'll do anything for love. You know, it became a this infatuated, and and they did say she was pathologically obsessed with him. It was a real infatuation, that she was vulnerable, she was unhappy in her marriage. He'd shown her a lot of attention, whether that was intentional, because his real end game was to get himself out of there. Which was completely ironic, because the charges that he was being held on at the time he broke out were eventually reduced and he could have walked out the door.
31:26 Speaker 01 Without having to climb out. Nobody didn't know that when he did it, so, you know, it was well covered, this illicit affair. Amidst all that, there were calls from the police union and the prison officers' union that it was actually a really dangerous thing. It wasn't this lovely, harmless love affair at all. It was a highly dangerous liaison, because it put, these relationships put everyone at risk. Because they're open to manipulation or blackmail. They can be coerced into bringing drugs into jail, weapons into jail, in Heather Parker's case, explosives into jail. She's in breach of her contract. This illicit affair puts, is a breach of trust on behalf of the employer, which someone from the police union pointed out.
32:11 Speaker 01 And it put the lives of everyone she worked with in danger. It also put the lives of other inmates in danger. It put the lives of innocent people, police officers, and innocent members of the public in danger.
32:27 Speaker 01 So what if someone in that pub had gone and knocked on the door and said, I've just seen your face on telly? Would they have killed that person? Probably.
32:34 Speaker 00 Or those two walkers who stumbled across their camp, they dodged literally a bullet.
32:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you know, all of those things raise a lot of flags about the screaming, about the dangers that these relationships with inmates can cause. So underneath this sort of Bonnie and Clyde glamour story, it didn't have a happy ending. These things never have a happy ending. And they were each given ten years. I think they were charged with over forty offences relating to the escape. They each got ten years, but Heather Parker had never been in trouble before, so she would do one third before parole, one third of her sentence. So she was out in three and a half years. Peter Gibbs' charges were eventually reduced, and so he was out first. But she has lived with the notoriety of that relationship ever since. And her barrister said in court, she gave up everything.
33:23 Speaker 01 Well, she did, didn't she? You know, she gave up her family, she never saw her kids, she was estranged from her two children. She lost her job, she was vilified. He comes out first. And in sort of true Hollywood style, picks her up from Deer Park Correctional Centre when she's released in a stretched limo and drives her to flashy Crown Towers, which I laughed when I read that, because I thought, you know, Crown Towers is a stone's throw from the Melbourne Romance Centre. I'll bet you could even see it from one of the hotel windows. And that's where they went back to their old stomping grounds and stayed the night there, you know, like a loved up couple that they were. And actually moved in together and went on to have two children. But there was a furor over her selling her story after her release.
34:08 Speaker 01 You know, all these lives had been touched and ruined. So she's then gonna make a mint out of a movie. Sixty Minutes are paying her, I think New Idea were paying her, and it raised the whole question of should criminals profit from their crimes? So, you know, the D P P was saying, we should be confiscating any proceeds. She should not be allowed to have any money from the movie, and she shouldn't be allowed to have money from Sixty Minutes or from the magazines, which then raised the question of people like Kath Pettingill, who'd just done a book deal. She was a well-known matriarch of an underworld family in Melbourne. She'd just done a lucrative book deal. And journalists like myself were arguing, well, well, we'll lose our stories then because
34:51 Speaker 01 they'll never tell their stories for nothing. Why would they? So, yeah, it caused a lot of, it caused a big, big funeral about checkbook journalism.
35:02 Speaker 00 After the big Hollywood stretch limousine, Crown Towers pickup, what is Peter Gibbs and Heather Parker's relationship like? After all of this settles down and they've moved in together and are trying to go back to whatever kind of normal life those two can get back to?
35:20 Speaker 01 Well, it was fraught with trouble, as you can imagine. I think that anyone could see that relationship was doomed from the start, except for Heather Parker, who had hopes and thought she'd found love. And they went on to have two children. The police were constantly being called to the house, which is ironic, isn't it? The police that they'd armed up against and were firing at. Now suddenly Heather Parker's calling the police to protect her from Peter Gibbs drunken rages. And he was a nasty drinker. He was a violent man. And her life with him was not easy. And of course, he's a career criminal. So in no time, he's back inside. So he did another armed robbery of a car yard. And I think he might have got a suspended sentence for that.
36:05 Speaker 01 But then Heather got wind of the fact that he was cheating on her with a younger woman and confronted this woman and attacked her so savagely that the woman's arm was fractured. And she spent several days in hospital having a plate put in her arm. It's a pretty vicious attack. She was hit with a bar stool and really seriously assaulted. So then Heather Parker's charged with that assault. But she's the mother of two small children now, so she's pleading with the courts not to lock her up because she's got two young children. In the meantime, Peter Gibb, who feels like he's responsible because he had the affair and cheated on her, he goes around to persuade the victim to drop the charges. So he's charged with perverting the course of justice.
36:50 Speaker 01 So he's sent to jail. She gets a suspended sentence. And their lives were not happy.
36:56 Speaker 00 Did they stay together for much longer after all of this happened?
37:00 Speaker 01 A while, they did it for a while and then she separated and in the end she left with the children. And he moved into a housing commission house at Seaford. Where in a drunken prank with friends, he locked a friend's eight-year-old son in a freezer. And it was only for minutes, but he did it. And whilst he might have thought it was funny, three of his mates did not. And so they went around to the house in 2011, I think, and bashed him up badly. And he'd got an underlying heart condition because of his heavy drinking. And he died two days later in the Frankston Hospital from a massive heart attack or heart-related problems.
37:41 Speaker 00 What was the response from the people involved in that whole breakout process after hearing Peter Gibb had died? I imagine there would have been some very relieved police officers.
37:51 Speaker 01 There were some very relieved police officers. They interviewed the two officers that had confronted them that day, about 20 years after the crime. I think they had a reunion of these officers. And Warren Trelawney, the officer that was shot, talked about how his life had changed after the shooting, that he'd gone on to a desk job in Peran and his job there, which I found really interesting because he would have been very good at it. His job was interviewing victims of violent crime, particularly women who were being violently assaulted in domestic violence situations. He interviewed rape victims. He identified with those victims himself now as a victim of a very serious crime where he could have lost his life.
38:32 Speaker 01 So he did that at Peran Police Station for quite a long time and eventually left the force. He said, "I'm amazed that, given the history of the offenders and how dangerous they were, and they'd killed before, and they were armed and they hated police, that he's amazed that he didn't pull the trigger." That Butlerley didn't pull the trigger, but he didn't. So he said, "I'm amazed I'm here today," but both of them had since left the police force, both of those officers. They did stay a while, but yeah, there were some very relieved people. And certainly people who'd been on the receiving end of them were saying like the world was a better place without them.
39:10 Speaker 00 Do we know where Heather is today? You said she's estranged from her first two children, but she would have continued to raise her second children now without a father. Do we know where she is today?
39:20 Speaker 01 No, I think she's sort of taken a step away from the public spotlight. I think she would have had more than enough of that. I was working out that the kids, at the time she went to court, her children were three and seven. That was a long time ago, 2007. So those children would be quite grown up now. And she's probably wanting to protect them, I'd say, and sort of disappear into suburbia and try and live what's left of a normal life. And there've been a number of cases since, which I found really interesting because every time another case pops up of a female guard having an affair with a dangerous male inmate, they resurrect the Heather Parker story. But they've now made
40:02 Speaker 01 it a criminal offence to have any kind of relationship between a prison guard who's in a position of power and an inmate. And it carries up to two years in jail. So they're having to police that very strictly.
40:20 Speaker 00 Thanks to Megan for her assistance in telling this story. True Crime Conversations is a Mamma Mia podcast hosted by me, Claire Murphy, with audio design by Scott Stronach. Our executive producer is Gia Moylan. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
40:49 Speaker 00 True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.
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