December 31, 2025 • 42 mins
Brenden Abbott, known as The Postcard Bandit, is one of Australia’s most notorious bank robbers and prison escapees. He's the guy who developed the “drop-in heist,” hiding in a bank’s ceiling overnight and dropping down as staff opened the vault.
Abbott continued a crime spree across Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland, robbing banks and avoiding police. Reports claimed he sent postcards to authorities while on the run, earning his infamous nickname.
Today, he remains in Casuarina Prison, having spent more time in solitary confinement than most inmates and serving longer than many murderers.
In this episode, we spoke to his son, James, and retired officer, Glen Porter, about whether it’s time for Abbott to finally be released.
You can watch the BINGE series, RUN, here and The Postcard Bandit from January 7 only on BINGE.
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CREDITS
Guests: James Abbott and Glen Porter
Host: Claire Murphy
Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman
Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy
Audio Engineer: Jacob Round
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The fluorescent lights of the Nolamara Police station buzz over
a cramped interview room where detectives have Brendan Abbott sitting
in what they describe as a very small space, much
like a storeroom. The stations back in nineteen eighty six
didn't have.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Interview rooms like they do now.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
They're pressing him about a recent spate of thefts from
electrical goods stores. One of his mates has been busted
over it, and they'd watched him deliver a brand new
Hoover washing machine to his mum's house before nabbing him
and his then girlfriend. Abbott refuses to spill any information,
so the senior detectives leave, putting a young probationary officer
in charge, who offers to make him a cup of
tea while he waits. As the officer is dunking the
(00:39):
bag in the hot water from the kettle, he hears
a bang, and immediately he knows Brendan Abbott has just
walked out the back door. Cutting through backyards and side lanes,
Abbot dodges the patrols and vanishes towards the Perth skyline.
This is his first real escape by nineteen eighty seven, Brendanabba,
(01:00):
but it has graduated from breaking into retailers to going
straight to the source of the cash he wants, the
local bank. He meticulously scouted a Commonwealth Bank branch in Belmont,
southeast of Perth, where he used a method that he
would pioneer the drop in heist. He and his accomplices
hid in the ceiling and then as the staff would
arrive for the day and importantly open the door to
(01:21):
the vault, they would just drop in and demand the cash.
This time he would make off with one hundred and
twelve thousand dollars, a huge amount in that day, but
that would pale in comparison to some of the totals
he would remove from bank vaults around Australia in the
next few years.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
There was just one hiccup.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Eventually ratted out by that same girlfriend after finding out
he'd been seeing another girl, Abbot landed himself in Fremantle Prison. Inside,
Abbot was assigned a job in the taylor's workshop sewing
uniforms for staff and inmates, and it was.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
There that he hatched his next escape.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Plan, sewing his own uniforms to make them look like staff.
Abbot and mate Aaron Reynolds in nineteen eighty nine, scaled
the roof and executed the escape that would cement Abbot's
soon to be well established legend, with a cross state
crime spree and an ever growing rap sheet.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Media would report that Abbot teased.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
The authorities that he was continually evading by sending the
mail from his root across the country, but while it
turns out that isn't actually true, it gave rise to
Abbot's notorious title, The Postcard Bandit. I'm Claire Murphy and
you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the
(02:36):
world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who
know the most about them. After breaking out of Fremantle Jail,
Brandon Abbots spent five years traveling across WA's, South Australia
and Queensland, using multiple aliases and changing his appearance as
he went. He funded this lifestyle by doing what he
does best, robbing Moore Banks, leaving a trail of traumatized
(02:57):
bank staff in his way.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Eventually, tip offs would see.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Police monitor a po box that they believed Abbot was
using in Queensland, and while the fugitive had caught wind
of the investigation and stopped going to empty it. He
couldn't stop mail from going into it, and a bill
for a pager service sent police straight to Abbot's house.
He was walking outside his home when a plane closed.
Detective confronts him on the street, telling him to put
(03:22):
his hands up and get down on the ground. Abbot complied,
but seemed quite confused as to how they'd finally caught.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Up with him. His sentenced to.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Spend time in the David Longland Maximum Security Prison, where
he hatches his next escape plan. In nineteen ninety seven,
Abbot and four others, using diamond wire normally used by
jewelers to cut gems, sawed through the high tensile steel
bars of their cells. Racing across the yard, they arrived
at the fence, which they scaled by stacking chairs on top.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Of one another.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Now they could be seen on CCTV, but still no
one's raised the alarm. The next barrier was easier. An
accomplice on the outside has thrown wire carters and a
gun over the fence, allowing them to cut through the
next layer and the next. Now by this time the
alarms are now going off, but the understaffed prison guards
don't seem to be responding fast enough until the group
(04:14):
are confronted by the perimeter guard vehicle, which they shoot
at and gives them the time they need to jump
into the getaway car.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And run for six months.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Brendan Abbott and one of the other eskpees Brendan Breshon,
rob More Banks and try to stay away from the police,
but Beershon has a drug habit he can't let go of,
and that would eventually lead detectives to Abbot's whereabouts, tracking
him to Darwin, where Abbot, casually doing a load of
washing at the laundromat before strolling into the nearby pizza joint,
is intercepted by police once again. Back in jail in Queensland,
(04:47):
he's sentenced to eighteen years for his original crimes, new
crimes and the escape.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
When that sentence is done, he's immediately.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Extradited to wa to face another sixteen years for crimes
committed there and the original escape. He's now in Casarina Prison,
having spent more time in solitary confinement than any other inmate,
doing more time than many murderers have ever faced. Something
his son James, his lawyers, and even one of the
detectives who chased him back in the day, Glenn, Porter
(05:15):
feel is something that needs to be rectified.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Glenn and James join us now.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
James, Glenn, thank you so much for joining us today
to talk about Brendan Abbott. Welcome to True Crime Conversations.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah. Hello.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I guess we.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Want to start just to get a little bit of
a perspective on Brendan's criminal past. But I think it's
worth noting before we sort of kick into the details
that he seems to be quite a different sort of criminal.
From all the reading and the videos, etc. That I've
seen about him, he seems smarter than the average kream.
Would you say that's the case, Glenn, He certainly is.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I look back at all the crooks that I've put
away over the years, he would be in the top group,
mainly because I think, and I thought about it's a lot.
He's a very strategic thinker. Everything we did when we
were chasing him was all about trying to outwit his strategy.
For many years. I think we were always behind the April.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I guess what we saw at the beginning of his
criminal career as far as we are concerned, because we
don't have a lot of info about what he was
doing as a very young man, but when he was
in the mid eighties stealing electrical gear from wholesalers and
kind of on selling it. There was a lot of
strategy involved in that even from the very beginning, in
that he didn't hold on to a lot of the
big ticket items like some of the other guys in
his crew were doing. It made it a bit more
(06:33):
obvious of what they were up to, and that he
was doing things like making sure he had an income
because he was on the doll at the time, to
make it look like that he was actually doing something
whilst he was on parole and work cashy jobs on
the side. So he's really quite a lateral thinker, not
just where the next job is coming from and what
he does immediately after that.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
I think society has a lot of people who think,
you know, just to cut a slightly cut above everybody else,
not much, but just enough. And I think when he
was doing those jobs, the electrical good ones, there was
a market. He understood the market. It was almost entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
James, I don't want to leave you hang in there
not saying anything while we're talking about your dad in
amongst all of this, I guess we'll get to whin
he's on the run and when you guys first really
meet properly for the first time. But have you spoken
to your dad about his early life? I mean you
only are allowed to speak to him through the prison system,
phone system, or face to face while being monitored. Have
(07:32):
you had a chance to get to understand him as
a young man at all?
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Not so much, really, Like there's a few questions that
I'll ask him here and there, but I'm sure there's
a lot more that he'll be telling me once he's released.
That time's a very cut short ten phone calls and
then the one hour visits, which usually aren't even a
full hour.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, we'll talk about that too.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Because you're in the documentary, you do express the frustrations
at trying to get to know your and it does
seem like maybe purposefully your visits are not well planned
when it comes to actually you're there and you're waiting,
and then your dad will be waiting, and sometimes they
put you in places where speakers don't work, and they
(08:15):
knew that. And do you feel like there is intervention
happening behind the scenes to purposely limit your contact with him,
or do you think it's just coincidental?
Speaker 6 (08:24):
It seems that way. I think it's more so frustration.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Like part of me thinks like at the time when
I'm angry, I'm like, they're doing this on purpose. But
then later on, once I've calmed down, I'm like, well,
they don't really have a reason to be destroying that,
you know, So I think it just falls into bad
communication between the systems sometimes, like you'd have to be
pretty spiteful to intentionally, you know, destroy that time we
have together for no reason whatsoever. Really, So I think
(08:49):
a lot of times when I do think like they
are doing it on purpose, I think it's just me
just being angry at that time.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
I think when you, if you ever work in government,
you realize that they're very sometimes quite incompetent. And I
think James is right, I think that it's probably not spiteful,
it's just incompetence.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Well, can we talk about that for a bit, because
it seems Brendan over his career cashed in on the
incompetence of systems that were in place at the time
of In his first sort of registered escape, he essentially
walked out of a police station because the young man
who was supposed to be watching him went to make
him a cup of tea. But then, like he managed
to escape from two very intense prison systems using things
(09:33):
that have been smuggled in. And maybe that's why they
keep a very close eye on you, James, because the
two escapes that he has done have been using items
that were brought in from outside with people he was
visiting with. But those systems, Glenn, within the prison that
have allowed Brendan and others to escape at the same time,
do you think we would be shocked to know that
(09:54):
those systems aren't as secure and as tight as what
we think they are or think they should be.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
First of all, I think in relation to his first escape,
I know John, the young detective at the time who
did that. I wouldn't say there was a different time
in the eighties. There was a more of you know,
there was almost a you know, you're going to do
the right thing. Yeah, there was trust and I'm not
saying Brendan brushed it. He took an opportunity. In relation
(10:19):
to the other escapes, holding people in custody is very complex,
and we go back to the eighties when we're holding
him at Premantle Prison. If you look, have you ever
been of his Premantal prison is the disgrace you know.
I know they closed it in the late eighties early nineties,
but it was a nineteenth century prison complex trying to
(10:40):
cater for twentieth century prisoners. So I think they were
behind the eight ball anyway. In relation to the second escape,
no one's done it since and probably no one did
it before. So that tells you something about Brendan and
his capabilities and his planning In this way, he was
a strategic thinker when he was doing things. When we
(11:01):
talk about the chase for him, how long he was
on the run for, and I know we're going to
go there, you've got to remember that the whole time,
every police officer for many for the first five years
was just Ren would pop up somewhere in Australia, that
local police force would deal with it, then he'd pop
up somewhere else. It was very, very difficult until we
(11:22):
got a national approach to chasing Brendan. And I'm sure
we'll talk about that a bit later on.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, let's touch on that now.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
The fact that his spree of bank robberies when he
did escape prison was across WA, South Australia and Queensland.
That kind of worked in his favor right. And I've
heard some suggestions too that maybe police officers during that time,
during the late eighties early nineties weren't keen to share
information with their intero state counterparts.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Would you say that's true.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
I think there was a very siloed approach to policing
in the eighties and into the nineties. The states really
worked quite separately and it wasn't until something like the
National Crime Authority came along that we started cooperating across
all areas. But I think the good thing about it
is that when we had squads and we had the
(12:14):
Armed Robbie Squatt in Perth, we had a very dedicated
officer in South Australia, we had the Armed Robbie Squad
in Queensland and also Melbourne and Sydney. Those relationships actually
started to get us to talk to each other on
this one issue. We're always talking to each other, but
not about one specific issue. And you know, Brendan Abbott
(12:35):
in the initial stages was only known in WA. He
wasn't someone who we were looking at elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Can we just mention how well he hid himself while
he was on the run for those five years. Even
his sister has been interviewed and said that he tapped
her on the shoulder at one stage and she didn't
recognize him, and he said something like, don't you know
who I am?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Like you went through a lot to look.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Different, to act different, and as far as I can see,
had more IDs than any human would ever need to
get through, you know, twenty years at alone, five years
of moving around the country.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
I mean, there's an example of why he was a
cut about everybody else. He was operating at a different level.
He knew that, especially in the eighties and nineties, that
it was mainly visual identification. So if he changed this appearance,
he dyed his hair, shaped his hair off, grew a beard,
wore glasses, he was certainly doing something that no one
else particularly was doing, you know, unless we're talking about
(13:35):
spy age his agencies or something like that. So you know,
that's what allowed him to.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Stay on the run.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
And he also going to remember that Brenda Nabbott wasn't
the only criminal running him up in Australia. There was
a lot of lesser criminals who were keeping us very busy.
So and when you think about his escape from Queensland,
he made us very busy, or the police very busy,
because there was four or five others who we were
busy chasing.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, that's the thing he did in both escape attempts
attempt to have several go with him. The first it
was only one, but five of them escaped at one
stage from the Queensland prison. But do you think he
learned his lesson after that first escape attempt when he
is with the other prisoner he's escaped with for quite
(14:20):
a long period of time, which if you look at
the movie representation of that was it often quite strained relationship.
And then the second time around he kind of discarded
the majority of those men and had one with him afterwards.
Do you think he learnt from that first escape attempt?
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Oh, I'm sure he did. The one he stayed with Beerschon.
I think he actually felt sorry for him. I think
there was a law, the loyalty issues that mostly I
think we was certainly after the second escape caused him
grief and I think ultimately brought him undone.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
From what I can tell, he was an armed robber,
which in itself causes trauma to the victims who are
being held up. But I think part of the folklore
around Brendan Abbott is that he didn't hurt people, and
that he was essentially even polite to police when they
did finally apprehend him, and that he was just kind
(15:19):
of a nice bloke.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Is that true?
Speaker 4 (15:22):
I wouldn't have called him a nice bloke. I would
call him a professional in what he did. He knew
that being a dickhead dealing with people would only cause
him more grief. When he's doing a robbery, it's important
to try and stay in control. It's like anything you
do that's high risk, so you're going to control your emotions.
(15:43):
And I think that's what he did during the robberies.
When we dealt with him, he was very controlled, and
that puts him at a kind of almost an even
standing with those who are trying to interrogate him or arrested.
So I think he was very smart in that regard.
His crimes were. How he threatened people with guns and
(16:04):
verbally violent has caused a lot of damage and for
which he's paying for.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Now.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
That's something that you know, we've got to be very
careful when we mythologize these people who commit these crimes,
is that you know we've done it with Ned Kelly.
Ned Kelly was a brutal killer, and yet he's an
iconic Australian as far as most people are concerned. So
we have to be very careful that we don't go
(16:32):
down that road. So he did a lot of damage,
did a lot of damage to people in relation to.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
The fear they felt.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
And if you've ever been at the other end of
a gun, you know it what stays with you.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me Claire Murphy today,
I'm joined by James Abbott, the son of Brendan Abbot,
and Glenn Porter, a retired WA detective who helped put.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Abbot behind bars.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Up next, I asked James about how his father, Brendan Abbot,
met his mother and what it was like visiting his
dad in prison for the very first time. James, your
dad was on the run when he met your mom.
How did they come into contact with each other?
Speaker 5 (17:12):
I'm pretty sure it's just through a relation with other friends.
So I have some childhood friends that we grew up
with basically, and I think dad knew the father, So
I'm pretty sure that's how they came to be. I
haven't really got too much information on that though, but
I know they had a close close connection with this family.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Were you aware as a young child of who your
dad was not Really.
Speaker 6 (17:36):
Mum never kept anything from me. She's always honest about it.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
But maybe the kid Obviously wasn't something that I actively
thought about. So I had a step father around, So
I'm just a kid. I don't really know much about
people are in jail. She say, your father's in jail.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And do you remember meeting him when you were young?
Speaker 6 (17:55):
I do, Like the first time I went with my
grandmother when I was probably I would have been.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Maybe seven or eight, I think it was she I
remember that was the first time she ever took me
up there to go visiting me in the prison. And
I remember going out for that visit because I remember
throwing up all over the visiting the visiting room.
Speaker 6 (18:15):
So that was a wasn't one of my finest moments.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
But kids just doing kids stuff.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Well at that stage back then, with the visits, the
prisoner could buy chocolates and lollies and chips or anything
for the guests. So I been a kid obviously, just
had a whole bunch of stuff in front of me,
so I just kept eating and eating and eating until
I had nowhere else to go but back out. So yeah,
that dad found it pretty amusing because the prison guards
had to clean it up.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
But yeah, I wasn't feeling too crash.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Hod.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
When do you think you became aware of your dad's reputation.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
It's probably more so my early to mid twenties, Like
I knew as I got to like a later teenager
distilled it all and everything too. I didn't really have
much thought of it or really much interest in anything.
But I think it's around the time twenty sixteen when
he actually got transferred from Queensland Sorry to Perth is
when I kind of took a step back and I
(19:12):
was like, I really need to try and put some
effort and time into because he's always tried it with
me as much as he could.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Has he ever spoken to you about his reputation and
the fact that he is quite often referred to in
media reports as the most notorious bank robber in Australia
and obviously the mantle of the postcard bandit has stuck around,
even though it's not really as true as what we know,
but how does he feel about having that?
Speaker 6 (19:35):
Yeah, look it's for him.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
It's like it's not something he ever wanted, like he
just want the rob banks basically get that money wasn't anything.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
He was trying to build some sort of notoriety for.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Himself and be well known down the track, which is
pretty much what it has come to now. As far
as the name of postcard, bet he hates it, but
this was something that the media have created and a
lot of people still stick by those you know what
They've been told like, oh, he used to send postcards.
So there's been nearest times where people have mentioned that
to me and I correct them. I've heard that many times,
(20:05):
and I guess the point is someone does bringing up
I don't even bother say anything.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Well, Glenn, can we address that? Because James is right.
You can read a ton of media reports and the
majority of them will say that he's notorious for taunting
police by sending postcards from the various locations he was
on the run in. But that's not true, and in fact,
it was the police who created that story in order
to get media coverage. Do we know whose idea that was.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Let's be specific about that. Issue it was.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
The photograph was in my role of film found in
the back of the stolen car Richard, Brendan and Reynolds
had dumped after a shootout with police, and so that
film was developed and in that film there's a picture
obviously Reynolds standing outside and many other photos of what
they were doing, but outside the drawing up police station.
They were released to the media and one of the
(20:57):
media outlets was the Australasian Post and they ran with postcards,
sending postcards. The thing the police didn't do is they
didn't correct it because immediately as an investigator you see this, well,
you know this is going to get coverage across the
whole of the country because now we've got someone who's
(21:18):
robbing banks and sending postcards. That's going to get media coverage,
which means more media coverage and more charts is going
to be identified. And that's how that rolled along. I
don't think it was a specific decision by anyone, but
certainly the police did allow it to run.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
To get some perspective.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Glenn, how many banks do we know for sure Brendan
Abbott robbed.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Well, it's the number he was charged with which at
the top of my head is not the number that
we suspected him off. But there's also a point that
you know, look how long he's inside for, for the
banks and the escapes he's done. I mean, how many
more banks would you put on them?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Fella? And it makes no difference.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
And of course, you know robbing banks people going there
with disguises. It's happened. It's over in two or three minutes.
Your witnesses are struggling to come up with anything concrete
to identify with someone unless you see a tattoo on
a neck or something like that we've seen in the
old black and white bank photos, or you get an informant.
So really you just go with what you've got. I mean,
(22:24):
there's a figure banded around that possibly forty banks.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I find that.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Really high wa At the time that Brendan was running
was the bank robbery capital of Australia. It was not
uncommon to go to as when I was in the
Armed Robbie Squad, to go to four or five banks
in a day. They've been robbed at gunpoint, so you know,
it was not an unusual offense or an incident.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Did Brendan's interesting way of robbing banks that idea of
hiding in the ceiling and then dropping in on the
staff as they arrived in the morning when the vault
was open. Did that spur any kind of copycat criminals
to try the same thing.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
I mean, certainly it was an ingenious way of doing it,
and increased his getaway time by doing it, because you know,
the guys who run through the front door rob the banks.
As soon as they go through the door, the alarm
goes off, cameras start rolling, and so on. If you
drop through the ceiling, then invariably it's unlikely the cameras
(23:23):
are going to go off that the alarm goes off.
If they're quick enough to stop the staff from doing it.
There's no customers in there, so it kind of makes
it easier for them, And I think that was probably
his thinking, is that this is a more efficient way
of rubbing a bank. And of course your bank robbers
generally were addicts who were not very good at what
(23:46):
they did, and certainly no one got the amounts that
he did. I mean, if you were talking about the
average bank robber, they might get five to ten thousand dollars.
I mean, you look at the difference of what Brendan
got by going through the ceiling because he was able
to get access to the bolt without the worry of
police coming there. I think it was a smart way
to do a Hollywood heist.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Did that change bank security?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You think, are you across that, because obviously that's maybe
a flaw that they didn't really consider. It was how
easy it was to infiltrate the ceiling and then be
able to spy on the stuff and see when that
vault door was open.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Did that change things in wa Look?
Speaker 3 (24:22):
It did.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
It made people certainly more aware of it. And I'm
not saying they didn't put things like movement alarms in
ceilings and so on. Banks changed the way they operated.
The importance of banks meant ultimately that bank robberies just
don't occur anymore. The nineties was the time of the
bank robbery, and I think by the late nineties they
had really trailed off and it turned into things like
(24:44):
video stores and so on. So I think also the
gun buy back had a bit of an impact on
the availability of guns to criminals, and so instead of
seeing guns as much as we did, and they were
everywhere prior to that, it was more like knives and
syringders became the weapon of choice.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Can we talk through his second escape from Casarina in Queensland,
because it feels like there was a whole lot going
on that allowed those five men to escape that day.
So they've had diamond wyre smuggled in, so they're cutting
through the bars slowly over a period of time, and
then it seems that the prison is understaffed. They notice
(25:28):
that they have the go ahead from Brendan to breakout.
They all five of them at the same time run.
No alarms go off until they get to a perimeter
defence and start cutting through it. Someone's chucked wire cutters
in over the fence, so they have access to that
and a gun which no guard has seen happen. They're
(25:49):
cutting through several layers of fencing and it's only really
when they get to the very final perimeter that a
guard in a vehicle spots them and get shot at.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
That seems like an awful lot.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Of things to be lined up for them to essentially
just kind of and there's a getaway car standing nearby
like that feels like there's a lot of planning that's
happened there, but there was a lot of things happening
that made that a bit too easy in sense.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Yes, So, I mean prisons, like every major government department,
are understaff They always are, they have been for years.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's not a modern phenomena.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And getting the funds to maintain prisons must be extremely hard.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
So you've got a minimum.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Staffing, you've got people who may not be as watchful
as they should be, and then you've got someone who
wants to plan. And I mean he had it, had
time to plan this escape from the moment he got there.
It was the same as what he did to pre model.
He watched and he waited, and then the opportunities came up,
and the opportunity of getting the diamond wire, well, he's
(26:51):
organized that to get in it, organized his his co
offenders for people to run with. Having someone on the
outside was a good, a good way to plan it.
So you had to get away vehicle. You had your
go ling verishon with the rifle waiting. They knew there
was going to be a vehicle response. They also knew
(27:13):
that if they pined that vehicle down with gunfire, that
gives him a free reign. So then they've got a
time frame they've got to get over. I'm sure that
the system's changed radically after that escape. And we talk
about Brendan Abbott being a bank robber. Brendan Abbott is one,
if the only one that I know who's escaped from
maximum security twice, and that's pretty amazing, and the authorities
(27:37):
obviously took note of that. When with the length of
his sentences now and the way he's been treated, no
senior politician or prison authority will ever want to give
him any slack, rightly or wrongly, because for fear that
he does it again, in their.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Head will be on the chopping pot.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
So that's created that's created a monster for Brendan as
well well.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I was wondering that the lengthy sentences that he has
been given, and he's done time in Queensland and now
in wa do you think partly that is a response
for making the system look foolish.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Oh, there may be an element that there's always politics involved,
you know, when government officials get involved. But if you
look at the offenses he committed across the different states,
plus two escapes, plus also finishing his original time, in
terms of imprisonment, it probably adds up close to where
we are now. However, there comes a point, and I
(28:34):
think this is where James and I will agree, It
comes a point that what good is occurring here? And
do we have a prison system or a system incarceration
that is what I would call civilized.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
After the break, we explore Withether decades of solitary confinement
have had a lasting impact on Brandon Abbott and whether
he's ever felt remorse for the victims of his robberies. Well, James,
I wanted to ask you to where you've ever spoken
to your dad about this? But there's been a lot
of mentioned, especially from his legal team, that at some
stage he was the longest held prisoner in solitary confinement
(29:11):
and that was purely because they were terrified that he
would escape again. But that's got to have such a
major impact on his mental health. Has he ever spoken
about that to you?
Speaker 6 (29:21):
Not that it really impacted him.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
Like, as far as I'm concerned, when I speak to him,
he seems pretty with it normal. It doesn't really seem defeated,
like he still with his know, his personality's high spirits
stuff too. So even though no matter who you are,
how strong mind as you are, it's going to have
some sort of mental effect on you, Like like I
said to people before, like look at us when we
went through COVID. People had access to the internet, people
(29:44):
had access to friends and family, could speak to on
the phone, do whatever they wanted. But you want to
let to leave the house. People went nuts. You can
do with them, and you were allowed to walk outside
your house. At least he was locked in a room
twenty three hours a day, probably no bigger than most
people's bathroom, with no access to the outside world at all.
Like me myself, Like I'm pretty strong minded, but that
(30:05):
would drive me insane, Like I can't stand just being
at home for a day, not leaving the house. So
no matter who you are, it's going to take some
sort of toll on your brain for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Now, I know you mentioned that he never set out
to do what he did for the notoriety and that
he doesn't love being tagged the postcard bandit, But has
he ever shown remorse for the trauma that the victims
of his holdups have gone through?
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Of course, like he's mentioned before too, Like you know
at the time, you're not really thinking clearly. You just
got your mindset on the prize of what you're after
he's told me before, after he's done a robbery and stuff.
You know, the adrenaline will be there once it's worn off,
he as you'd actually sit back and you'd have a
strong feeling of depression over you think about what you've
done and where you position. You put other people in
(30:51):
as well too, But that's just when you have that
mentality where you're hungry for money and just want to
do the wrong thing. It's just you kind of have
that moment and then you'll go and do it again.
Speaker 6 (31:01):
But he doesn't.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
He's not happy with there's things he may have done
to people, and the truis put people for him. Myself too,
I don't agree with it at all, Like you're going
to do those kind of crimes, you deserve to get
a jail.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Minus argument is now like how long he's supposed to
be serving for that though? You know, so like I.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Don't support what he's done at all, and I don't
support anyone doing that, even myself.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
I wouldn't put anyone into that sort of situation.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
But it's happened now and just he's just he's copying
it basically for all that.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Well, let's look at where he currently sits because from
initial reporting he was due for parole next year, but
is that now no longer the case that.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Has been changed, So I think there was some missuh
miss lining up with the numbers and stuff there too.
So we've gone to court now trying to look at
time service. That lawyer's coming through the DA and said,
I think there's some way here we can see you.
Your time should have been served already. But in the
process of doing it that it's made someone go over
(32:02):
the numbers and have a proper look. We realize that
the twenty twenty six was an actually correct date anyway, So.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
In saying that, though even if nothing.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
We hadn't put anything through to the courts now, someone
would have obviously gone over this closer to his proble
day and gone, hold on, this date's incorrect. The original
time was twenty twenty six pro and twenty thirty three
was full term.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
I believe it's now been changed to.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
Twenty thirty full term and twenty twenty to nine for
parole date, which is only a year apart, which is
I think it's pretty ridiculous. Usually prole dates are a
fair bit before the actual full term, so he's just
finished up a court case now and it's kind of
not ruled in his favor, but the lawyers did know
that that was what was going to happen. So where
it stands now, I think he's had his high security
(32:46):
high security escort status has been dropped now, so he's
gone down to low security. So that's basically the process
of someone getting closer to being released back out into
the system.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
I know that his lawyers have been talking about the
fact that they feel that he's being unfairly kept behind bars.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
What are they asking for?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
And because I understand there was some legal precedents for
the amount of time he's been given that might have
come in after he was actually sentenced for those things,
so it can't. Yeah, and I'm not quite sure what
the legal terminology is for that, but it shouldn't have
been applied to him at the time because.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
His crimes are done before that law came in.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
I like I said, I walked into those courtrooms when
all this stuff's going on, and some of them as
be speaking Chinese to me. I've got no idea what
is happening. It's just they try and dumb it down
for me a little bit. So when he was first
locked up, and then he broke out of prison. There
was some legislations or something that changed, and when he
came back the time they gave him, they've tried to
put him under the some new I don't understand it completely,
(33:47):
but the lawyers are trying to look into something saying
that the way he was charged shouldn't have been shouldn't
have applied to him because he was already it was already.
It was just an escabe basically. So I think Glenn
may know a bit more about that. I'm not too sure,
but it's just, yeah, it's just a scramble process, and
there's just so much to understand. Nless you're an actual
lawyer yourself, and it takes your weeks to try and
(34:09):
get your head around it properly. Like I'm pretty switched on,
I'm pretty smart, and even me myself, I'm kind of yeah,
just throw.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It around from it, Glenn, can you shed some light
on that for us, like what sentence should he being handed?
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Well, the legal system has always been a strange monster
that most people can't understand. Look, the big issue here
is that there's an accumulative effect of all the different
sentences that's Brendan's cop and it becomes I think James
is dead right, becomes a mathematical nightmare. And I think
that it is just I mean, these these sentences on paper,
(34:45):
and the accumulation is something that's probably technically correct. The
sad part about it is it's doesn't take into account
that a man who's committed the offenses that aren't murder,
aren't you know, the if we talk about rape and
murder and those type of things is the worst of
the worst. They're still bad what brend has done, but
(35:07):
he's copying it more than that the people who have
done those offenses, which to me, as you know now
I'm a retired person. Now I just look back and
going is this really fair? And this is where, you know,
I think that the amount of time that Brendan is
he's probably well, all the amount of the isolation he's had,
(35:29):
the fact he was under strict security for so many
years because there was a possible a warrant in South
Australia didn't allow him to have any rehabilitation and so on,
I think there needs to be a look at that,
and but no government is going to do that because
quite frankly, they'll be terrified of the fact that what
if he does his scope again, What if we do
(35:50):
let him out and he commits an armed robbery. The
thing about that is we have to accept that that's
our system.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
I can't say with a crystal ball that he won't
commit a further offenses. But I can't say he will,
So that's our system. There should be an element of
enough is enough?
Speaker 1 (36:08):
James, have you talked to your dad about life potentially
on the other side of the prison bars, And I
mean it would be it'd be hard pressed to find
a bank brunch to rob these days, let's be honest,
with so many of them shut down across the country.
But has he allowed himself to think or hope or
look beyond his prison sentence at this point.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Well, we do have conversations sometimes about what we'll do
when he is to be released. So the plan is
from to come over Sydney and live with me for
a while, But he doesn want to do a bit
of traveling to catch up with small friends and stuff
like that too, which I said I will go with
him for and he wants me to go. The whole
thing of being released these fee past that life of crime.
Even if I'm a bank these days, it's not even
worth it. I'd try to go to bank. Sometimes we
(36:48):
will draw ten thousand dollars out and I'm going to
give them forty eight hours notice to get my own money.
So I don't think roblem banks these days is the
way to go.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
He don't.
Speaker 5 (36:56):
There's his sixty sixty three and now I'm going on
sixty four. That's just he's past that point of doing
everything like that. I think he's kind of supposed to
have a child life. Now me and him get to
know each other, Like I said, like once he is released,
it's going to be just like meeting someone basically, like
we're best mates now, but there's obviously a lot to
be spoken about time to hang out together too. So
(37:18):
it's like I have the whole my whole life, I've
spent I couldn't say, maybe in more than twenty hours
with him, just like people, people watching, listening, So just
having a time alone.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
With him is.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Do you think he's prepared for the potential amount of
attention he'll get when he's released. I mean, he is
known by all these titles and he's very notorious. Do
you think he would sit down for interviews with people.
Do you think he would talk about his past himself.
Speaker 6 (37:51):
Well, he knows that kind of stuff's going to happen.
Speaker 5 (37:55):
He's going to becoming out of jail over sixty odd
years old, mid sixties, He's going to need some sort
of income, so these kind of things are going to
be benefits to him financially, I guess, so it'd be
an idiot not to really take advantage of that. When
it comes to doing all this stuff. I don't think
it's something you want to rush into straight away. This
is the world has changed a lot, like since he's
been the amount of people on the street, like, it's
(38:17):
going to be very overwhelming for him. There's going to
be too much, too much going on, So I think
it might have to slowly ease his way into that.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
I've spoken to a few people who've been realised from
prison and they all said that stepping into the modern
age is really weird because everyone is so busy and
frantic yea all the time everywhere. So I guess it's
going to be a pretty big transition for someone to
step into that for the first time.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
Really, Look, he's going to be very overwhelmed with everything's
happening like just me and myself. I hate going shopping
centers and stuff like. I don't like a big, big
crowds people, and I'm around people all the time. I
think she's never really have any understanding of it until
he's actually put him put in the end of it
really bright.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
The center, Glen.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Is there a chance you mentioned that there was an
outstanding warrant for him because he did rob banks in
South Australia and he's done no time in a South
Australian prison. Is there a slim to any chance that
if he was to step foot over the South Australian
border that he could be arrested again.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
There's always a chance of that. It depends on the
Obviously you have to have evidence. But we're talking thirty
years now, witnesses recollections de kay very quickly. Thirty years
later is going to be really, really difficult. And there's
also a public interest, you know, and that's for directors
(39:32):
of public prosecution and so on to the side. I
don't think anyone will be running in or rushing in
to charge Brendan Abbott if he crosses any borders.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
But if I was here, I'd go from here to Sydney.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
What was it like to meet and spend time speaking
with James. I mean, he's the son of a man
that you spent so many years chasing and pursuing and
then finally helpful behind bars. And for you, James, is
there anything you want to leave us with finally, just
about your dad and any message that you want people
to know about him.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
I only met Jane during the filming of the of
the series, and when I first saw him, I thought,
my god, he's a spitting image of his father when
I spoke to him. But James is, Yeah, he's a
knock about blow, aren't you mate?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, he's a stand up fella.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
And I think that's really really important that people know that.
You know, he's he's taken the road that his father
should have and I think that's that's a credit to James.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
So there you go, mate, that's.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
A lovely thing to say.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
Glenn, like a lot of people say, too, Dad, he's
very intelligent. If he went down a.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
Different path, I'm sure, like they said, he could have
been a CEO of a company. He just chose different,
different life to go down. And uh, this just this
has put him pretty.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Much in the place he is now.
Speaker 5 (40:44):
But as far as like the media goes and everything
like that too, he's just My Dad's a very soft
hearted person.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
He didn't have a conversation. He's got a lot of empathy.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
He's very caring, like if I've been going through something
in life too, He's always made sure to check on
check on me if I've told HI about something else
or with a friend of mine for example, too, He'll
always check in and ask about that person if if
he doesn't really know them. He's always interested in people
in my life as well to any friends and partners
and stuff I've been with.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Glenn, James, thank you so much for joining us and
for chatting about Brendan, and hopefully we can check back
in with you guys when he's finally released. We appreciate
you both giving us some of your time. Thank you
to James and Glenn for helping us tell this story.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Today.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
You can find a link to the new Binge series
based on Brendan Abbott's life of crime at the link
in our show notes. It's called Run the Postcard. Bandit
documentary will be available to watch on Binge from January seven.
If you want to see images from this story head
to our Instagram page at True Crime Conversations. True Crime
Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy. Our senior producer
is Charlie Blackman. The group executive producer is Alaria Brophy,
(41:53):
with audio designed by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on
The fluorescent lights of the Nolamara Police station buzz over
a cramped interview room where detectives have Brendan Abbott sitting
in what they describe as a very small space, much
like a storeroom. The stations back in nineteen eighty six
didn't have.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Interview rooms like they do now.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
They're pressing him about a recent spate of thefts from
electrical goods stores. One of his mates has been busted
over it, and they'd watched him deliver a brand new
Hoover washing machine to his mum's house before nabbing him
and his then girlfriend. Abbott refuses to spill any information,
so the senior detectives leave, putting a young probationary officer
in charge, who offers to make him a cup of
tea while he waits. As the officer is dunking the
(00:39):
bag in the hot water from the kettle, he hears
a bang, and immediately he knows Brendan Abbott has just
walked out the back door. Cutting through backyards and side lanes,
Abbot dodges the patrols and vanishes towards the Perth skyline.
This is his first real escape by nineteen eighty seven, Brendanabba,
(01:00):
but it has graduated from breaking into retailers to going
straight to the source of the cash he wants, the
local bank. He meticulously scouted a Commonwealth Bank branch in Belmont,
southeast of Perth, where he used a method that he
would pioneer the drop in heist. He and his accomplices
hid in the ceiling and then as the staff would
arrive for the day and importantly open the door to
(01:21):
the vault, they would just drop in and demand the cash.
This time he would make off with one hundred and
twelve thousand dollars, a huge amount in that day, but
that would pale in comparison to some of the totals
he would remove from bank vaults around Australia in the
next few years.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
There was just one hiccup.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Eventually ratted out by that same girlfriend after finding out
he'd been seeing another girl, Abbot landed himself in Fremantle Prison. Inside,
Abbot was assigned a job in the taylor's workshop sewing
uniforms for staff and inmates, and it was.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
There that he hatched his next escape.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Plan, sewing his own uniforms to make them look like staff.
Abbot and mate Aaron Reynolds in nineteen eighty nine, scaled
the roof and executed the escape that would cement Abbot's
soon to be well established legend, with a cross state
crime spree and an ever growing rap sheet.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Media would report that Abbot teased.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
The authorities that he was continually evading by sending the
mail from his root across the country, but while it
turns out that isn't actually true, it gave rise to
Abbot's notorious title, The Postcard Bandit. I'm Claire Murphy and
you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the
(02:36):
world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who
know the most about them. After breaking out of Fremantle Jail,
Brandon Abbots spent five years traveling across WA's, South Australia
and Queensland, using multiple aliases and changing his appearance as
he went. He funded this lifestyle by doing what he
does best, robbing Moore Banks, leaving a trail of traumatized
(02:57):
bank staff in his way.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Eventually, tip offs would see.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Police monitor a po box that they believed Abbot was
using in Queensland, and while the fugitive had caught wind
of the investigation and stopped going to empty it. He
couldn't stop mail from going into it, and a bill
for a pager service sent police straight to Abbot's house.
He was walking outside his home when a plane closed.
Detective confronts him on the street, telling him to put
(03:22):
his hands up and get down on the ground. Abbot complied,
but seemed quite confused as to how they'd finally caught.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Up with him. His sentenced to.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Spend time in the David Longland Maximum Security Prison, where
he hatches his next escape plan. In nineteen ninety seven,
Abbot and four others, using diamond wire normally used by
jewelers to cut gems, sawed through the high tensile steel
bars of their cells. Racing across the yard, they arrived
at the fence, which they scaled by stacking chairs on top.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Of one another.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Now they could be seen on CCTV, but still no
one's raised the alarm. The next barrier was easier. An
accomplice on the outside has thrown wire carters and a
gun over the fence, allowing them to cut through the
next layer and the next. Now by this time the
alarms are now going off, but the understaffed prison guards
don't seem to be responding fast enough until the group
(04:14):
are confronted by the perimeter guard vehicle, which they shoot
at and gives them the time they need to jump
into the getaway car.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And run for six months.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Brendan Abbott and one of the other eskpees Brendan Breshon,
rob More Banks and try to stay away from the police,
but Beershon has a drug habit he can't let go of,
and that would eventually lead detectives to Abbot's whereabouts, tracking
him to Darwin, where Abbot, casually doing a load of
washing at the laundromat before strolling into the nearby pizza joint,
is intercepted by police once again. Back in jail in Queensland,
(04:47):
he's sentenced to eighteen years for his original crimes, new
crimes and the escape.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
When that sentence is done, he's immediately.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Extradited to wa to face another sixteen years for crimes
committed there and the original escape. He's now in Casarina Prison,
having spent more time in solitary confinement than any other inmate,
doing more time than many murderers have ever faced. Something
his son James, his lawyers, and even one of the
detectives who chased him back in the day, Glenn, Porter
(05:15):
feel is something that needs to be rectified.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Glenn and James join us now.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
James, Glenn, thank you so much for joining us today
to talk about Brendan Abbott. Welcome to True Crime Conversations.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah. Hello.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I guess we.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Want to start just to get a little bit of
a perspective on Brendan's criminal past. But I think it's
worth noting before we sort of kick into the details
that he seems to be quite a different sort of criminal.
From all the reading and the videos, etc. That I've
seen about him, he seems smarter than the average kream.
Would you say that's the case, Glenn, He certainly is.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I look back at all the crooks that I've put
away over the years, he would be in the top group,
mainly because I think, and I thought about it's a lot.
He's a very strategic thinker. Everything we did when we
were chasing him was all about trying to outwit his strategy.
For many years. I think we were always behind the April.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I guess what we saw at the beginning of his
criminal career as far as we are concerned, because we
don't have a lot of info about what he was
doing as a very young man, but when he was
in the mid eighties stealing electrical gear from wholesalers and
kind of on selling it. There was a lot of
strategy involved in that even from the very beginning, in
that he didn't hold on to a lot of the
big ticket items like some of the other guys in
his crew were doing. It made it a bit more
(06:33):
obvious of what they were up to, and that he
was doing things like making sure he had an income
because he was on the doll at the time, to
make it look like that he was actually doing something
whilst he was on parole and work cashy jobs on
the side. So he's really quite a lateral thinker, not
just where the next job is coming from and what
he does immediately after that.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
I think society has a lot of people who think,
you know, just to cut a slightly cut above everybody else,
not much, but just enough. And I think when he
was doing those jobs, the electrical good ones, there was
a market. He understood the market. It was almost entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
James, I don't want to leave you hang in there
not saying anything while we're talking about your dad in
amongst all of this, I guess we'll get to whin
he's on the run and when you guys first really
meet properly for the first time. But have you spoken
to your dad about his early life? I mean you
only are allowed to speak to him through the prison system,
phone system, or face to face while being monitored. Have
(07:32):
you had a chance to get to understand him as
a young man at all?
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Not so much, really, Like there's a few questions that
I'll ask him here and there, but I'm sure there's
a lot more that he'll be telling me once he's released.
That time's a very cut short ten phone calls and
then the one hour visits, which usually aren't even a
full hour.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, we'll talk about that too.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Because you're in the documentary, you do express the frustrations
at trying to get to know your and it does
seem like maybe purposefully your visits are not well planned
when it comes to actually you're there and you're waiting,
and then your dad will be waiting, and sometimes they
put you in places where speakers don't work, and they
(08:15):
knew that. And do you feel like there is intervention
happening behind the scenes to purposely limit your contact with him,
or do you think it's just coincidental?
Speaker 6 (08:24):
It seems that way. I think it's more so frustration.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Like part of me thinks like at the time when
I'm angry, I'm like, they're doing this on purpose. But
then later on, once I've calmed down, I'm like, well,
they don't really have a reason to be destroying that,
you know, So I think it just falls into bad
communication between the systems sometimes, like you'd have to be
pretty spiteful to intentionally, you know, destroy that time we
have together for no reason whatsoever. Really, So I think
(08:49):
a lot of times when I do think like they
are doing it on purpose, I think it's just me
just being angry at that time.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
I think when you, if you ever work in government,
you realize that they're very sometimes quite incompetent. And I
think James is right, I think that it's probably not spiteful,
it's just incompetence.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Well, can we talk about that for a bit, because
it seems Brendan over his career cashed in on the
incompetence of systems that were in place at the time
of In his first sort of registered escape, he essentially
walked out of a police station because the young man
who was supposed to be watching him went to make
him a cup of tea. But then, like he managed
to escape from two very intense prison systems using things
(09:33):
that have been smuggled in. And maybe that's why they
keep a very close eye on you, James, because the
two escapes that he has done have been using items
that were brought in from outside with people he was
visiting with. But those systems, Glenn, within the prison that
have allowed Brendan and others to escape at the same time,
do you think we would be shocked to know that
(09:54):
those systems aren't as secure and as tight as what
we think they are or think they should be.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
First of all, I think in relation to his first escape,
I know John, the young detective at the time who
did that. I wouldn't say there was a different time
in the eighties. There was a more of you know,
there was almost a you know, you're going to do
the right thing. Yeah, there was trust and I'm not
saying Brendan brushed it. He took an opportunity. In relation
(10:19):
to the other escapes, holding people in custody is very complex,
and we go back to the eighties when we're holding
him at Premantle Prison. If you look, have you ever
been of his Premantal prison is the disgrace you know.
I know they closed it in the late eighties early nineties,
but it was a nineteenth century prison complex trying to
(10:40):
cater for twentieth century prisoners. So I think they were
behind the eight ball anyway. In relation to the second escape,
no one's done it since and probably no one did
it before. So that tells you something about Brendan and
his capabilities and his planning In this way, he was
a strategic thinker when he was doing things. When we
(11:01):
talk about the chase for him, how long he was
on the run for, and I know we're going to
go there, you've got to remember that the whole time,
every police officer for many for the first five years
was just Ren would pop up somewhere in Australia, that
local police force would deal with it, then he'd pop
up somewhere else. It was very, very difficult until we
(11:22):
got a national approach to chasing Brendan. And I'm sure
we'll talk about that a bit later on.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Well, let's touch on that now.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
The fact that his spree of bank robberies when he
did escape prison was across WA, South Australia and Queensland.
That kind of worked in his favor right. And I've
heard some suggestions too that maybe police officers during that time,
during the late eighties early nineties weren't keen to share
information with their intero state counterparts.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Would you say that's true.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
I think there was a very siloed approach to policing
in the eighties and into the nineties. The states really
worked quite separately and it wasn't until something like the
National Crime Authority came along that we started cooperating across
all areas. But I think the good thing about it
is that when we had squads and we had the
(12:14):
Armed Robbie Squatt in Perth, we had a very dedicated
officer in South Australia, we had the Armed Robbie Squad
in Queensland and also Melbourne and Sydney. Those relationships actually
started to get us to talk to each other on
this one issue. We're always talking to each other, but
not about one specific issue. And you know, Brendan Abbott
(12:35):
in the initial stages was only known in WA. He
wasn't someone who we were looking at elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Can we just mention how well he hid himself while
he was on the run for those five years. Even
his sister has been interviewed and said that he tapped
her on the shoulder at one stage and she didn't
recognize him, and he said something like, don't you know
who I am?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Like you went through a lot to look.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Different, to act different, and as far as I can see,
had more IDs than any human would ever need to
get through, you know, twenty years at alone, five years
of moving around the country.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
I mean, there's an example of why he was a
cut about everybody else. He was operating at a different level.
He knew that, especially in the eighties and nineties, that
it was mainly visual identification. So if he changed this appearance,
he dyed his hair, shaped his hair off, grew a beard,
wore glasses, he was certainly doing something that no one
else particularly was doing, you know, unless we're talking about
(13:35):
spy age his agencies or something like that. So you know,
that's what allowed him to.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Stay on the run.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
And he also going to remember that Brenda Nabbott wasn't
the only criminal running him up in Australia. There was
a lot of lesser criminals who were keeping us very busy.
So and when you think about his escape from Queensland,
he made us very busy, or the police very busy,
because there was four or five others who we were
busy chasing.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Well, that's the thing he did in both escape attempts
attempt to have several go with him. The first it
was only one, but five of them escaped at one
stage from the Queensland prison. But do you think he
learned his lesson after that first escape attempt when he
is with the other prisoner he's escaped with for quite
(14:20):
a long period of time, which if you look at
the movie representation of that was it often quite strained relationship.
And then the second time around he kind of discarded
the majority of those men and had one with him afterwards.
Do you think he learnt from that first escape attempt?
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Oh, I'm sure he did. The one he stayed with Beerschon.
I think he actually felt sorry for him. I think
there was a law, the loyalty issues that mostly I
think we was certainly after the second escape caused him
grief and I think ultimately brought him undone.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
From what I can tell, he was an armed robber,
which in itself causes trauma to the victims who are
being held up. But I think part of the folklore
around Brendan Abbott is that he didn't hurt people, and
that he was essentially even polite to police when they
did finally apprehend him, and that he was just kind
(15:19):
of a nice bloke.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Is that true?
Speaker 4 (15:22):
I wouldn't have called him a nice bloke. I would
call him a professional in what he did. He knew
that being a dickhead dealing with people would only cause
him more grief. When he's doing a robbery, it's important
to try and stay in control. It's like anything you
do that's high risk, so you're going to control your emotions.
(15:43):
And I think that's what he did during the robberies.
When we dealt with him, he was very controlled, and
that puts him at a kind of almost an even
standing with those who are trying to interrogate him or arrested.
So I think he was very smart in that regard.
His crimes were. How he threatened people with guns and
(16:04):
verbally violent has caused a lot of damage and for
which he's paying for.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Now.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
That's something that you know, we've got to be very
careful when we mythologize these people who commit these crimes,
is that you know we've done it with Ned Kelly.
Ned Kelly was a brutal killer, and yet he's an
iconic Australian as far as most people are concerned. So
we have to be very careful that we don't go
(16:32):
down that road. So he did a lot of damage,
did a lot of damage to people in relation to.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
The fear they felt.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
And if you've ever been at the other end of
a gun, you know it what stays with you.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
You're listening to true Crime Conversations with me Claire Murphy today,
I'm joined by James Abbott, the son of Brendan Abbot,
and Glenn Porter, a retired WA detective who helped put.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Abbot behind bars.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Up next, I asked James about how his father, Brendan Abbot,
met his mother and what it was like visiting his
dad in prison for the very first time. James, your
dad was on the run when he met your mom.
How did they come into contact with each other?
Speaker 5 (17:12):
I'm pretty sure it's just through a relation with other friends.
So I have some childhood friends that we grew up
with basically, and I think dad knew the father, So
I'm pretty sure that's how they came to be. I
haven't really got too much information on that though, but
I know they had a close close connection with this family.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Were you aware as a young child of who your
dad was not Really.
Speaker 6 (17:36):
Mum never kept anything from me. She's always honest about it.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
But maybe the kid Obviously wasn't something that I actively
thought about. So I had a step father around, So
I'm just a kid. I don't really know much about
people are in jail. She say, your father's in jail.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And do you remember meeting him when you were young?
Speaker 6 (17:55):
I do, Like the first time I went with my
grandmother when I was probably I would have been.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
Maybe seven or eight, I think it was she I
remember that was the first time she ever took me
up there to go visiting me in the prison. And
I remember going out for that visit because I remember
throwing up all over the visiting the visiting room.
Speaker 6 (18:15):
So that was a wasn't one of my finest moments.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
But kids just doing kids stuff.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Well at that stage back then, with the visits, the
prisoner could buy chocolates and lollies and chips or anything
for the guests. So I been a kid obviously, just
had a whole bunch of stuff in front of me,
so I just kept eating and eating and eating until
I had nowhere else to go but back out. So yeah,
that dad found it pretty amusing because the prison guards
had to clean it up.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
But yeah, I wasn't feeling too crash.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Hod.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
When do you think you became aware of your dad's reputation.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
It's probably more so my early to mid twenties, Like
I knew as I got to like a later teenager
distilled it all and everything too. I didn't really have
much thought of it or really much interest in anything.
But I think it's around the time twenty sixteen when
he actually got transferred from Queensland Sorry to Perth is
when I kind of took a step back and I
(19:12):
was like, I really need to try and put some
effort and time into because he's always tried it with
me as much as he could.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Has he ever spoken to you about his reputation and
the fact that he is quite often referred to in
media reports as the most notorious bank robber in Australia
and obviously the mantle of the postcard bandit has stuck around,
even though it's not really as true as what we know,
but how does he feel about having that?
Speaker 6 (19:35):
Yeah, look it's for him.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
It's like it's not something he ever wanted, like he
just want the rob banks basically get that money wasn't anything.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
He was trying to build some sort of notoriety for.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Himself and be well known down the track, which is
pretty much what it has come to now. As far
as the name of postcard, bet he hates it, but
this was something that the media have created and a
lot of people still stick by those you know what
They've been told like, oh, he used to send postcards.
So there's been nearest times where people have mentioned that
to me and I correct them. I've heard that many times,
(20:05):
and I guess the point is someone does bringing up
I don't even bother say anything.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Well, Glenn, can we address that? Because James is right.
You can read a ton of media reports and the
majority of them will say that he's notorious for taunting
police by sending postcards from the various locations he was
on the run in. But that's not true, and in fact,
it was the police who created that story in order
to get media coverage. Do we know whose idea that was.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Let's be specific about that. Issue it was.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
The photograph was in my role of film found in
the back of the stolen car Richard, Brendan and Reynolds
had dumped after a shootout with police, and so that
film was developed and in that film there's a picture
obviously Reynolds standing outside and many other photos of what
they were doing, but outside the drawing up police station.
They were released to the media and one of the
(20:57):
media outlets was the Australasian Post and they ran with postcards,
sending postcards. The thing the police didn't do is they
didn't correct it because immediately as an investigator you see this, well,
you know this is going to get coverage across the
whole of the country because now we've got someone who's
(21:18):
robbing banks and sending postcards. That's going to get media coverage,
which means more media coverage and more charts is going
to be identified. And that's how that rolled along. I
don't think it was a specific decision by anyone, but
certainly the police did allow it to run.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
To get some perspective.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Glenn, how many banks do we know for sure Brendan
Abbott robbed.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Well, it's the number he was charged with which at
the top of my head is not the number that
we suspected him off. But there's also a point that
you know, look how long he's inside for, for the
banks and the escapes he's done. I mean, how many
more banks would you put on them?
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Fella? And it makes no difference.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
And of course, you know robbing banks people going there
with disguises. It's happened. It's over in two or three minutes.
Your witnesses are struggling to come up with anything concrete
to identify with someone unless you see a tattoo on
a neck or something like that we've seen in the
old black and white bank photos, or you get an informant.
So really you just go with what you've got. I mean,
(22:24):
there's a figure banded around that possibly forty banks.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I find that.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Really high wa At the time that Brendan was running
was the bank robbery capital of Australia. It was not
uncommon to go to as when I was in the
Armed Robbie Squad, to go to four or five banks
in a day. They've been robbed at gunpoint, so you know,
it was not an unusual offense or an incident.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Did Brendan's interesting way of robbing banks that idea of
hiding in the ceiling and then dropping in on the
staff as they arrived in the morning when the vault
was open. Did that spur any kind of copycat criminals
to try the same thing.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
I mean, certainly it was an ingenious way of doing it,
and increased his getaway time by doing it, because you know,
the guys who run through the front door rob the banks.
As soon as they go through the door, the alarm
goes off, cameras start rolling, and so on. If you
drop through the ceiling, then invariably it's unlikely the cameras
(23:23):
are going to go off that the alarm goes off.
If they're quick enough to stop the staff from doing it.
There's no customers in there, so it kind of makes
it easier for them, And I think that was probably
his thinking, is that this is a more efficient way
of rubbing a bank. And of course your bank robbers
generally were addicts who were not very good at what
(23:46):
they did, and certainly no one got the amounts that
he did. I mean, if you were talking about the
average bank robber, they might get five to ten thousand dollars.
I mean, you look at the difference of what Brendan
got by going through the ceiling because he was able
to get access to the bolt without the worry of
police coming there. I think it was a smart way
to do a Hollywood heist.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Did that change bank security?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You think, are you across that, because obviously that's maybe
a flaw that they didn't really consider. It was how
easy it was to infiltrate the ceiling and then be
able to spy on the stuff and see when that
vault door was open.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Did that change things in wa Look?
Speaker 3 (24:22):
It did.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
It made people certainly more aware of it. And I'm
not saying they didn't put things like movement alarms in
ceilings and so on. Banks changed the way they operated.
The importance of banks meant ultimately that bank robberies just
don't occur anymore. The nineties was the time of the
bank robbery, and I think by the late nineties they
had really trailed off and it turned into things like
(24:44):
video stores and so on. So I think also the
gun buy back had a bit of an impact on
the availability of guns to criminals, and so instead of
seeing guns as much as we did, and they were
everywhere prior to that, it was more like knives and
syringders became the weapon of choice.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Can we talk through his second escape from Casarina in Queensland,
because it feels like there was a whole lot going
on that allowed those five men to escape that day.
So they've had diamond wyre smuggled in, so they're cutting
through the bars slowly over a period of time, and
then it seems that the prison is understaffed. They notice
(25:28):
that they have the go ahead from Brendan to breakout.
They all five of them at the same time run.
No alarms go off until they get to a perimeter
defence and start cutting through it. Someone's chucked wire cutters
in over the fence, so they have access to that
and a gun which no guard has seen happen. They're
(25:49):
cutting through several layers of fencing and it's only really
when they get to the very final perimeter that a
guard in a vehicle spots them and get shot at.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
That seems like an awful lot.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Of things to be lined up for them to essentially
just kind of and there's a getaway car standing nearby
like that feels like there's a lot of planning that's
happened there, but there was a lot of things happening
that made that a bit too easy in sense.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Yes, So, I mean prisons, like every major government department,
are understaff They always are, they have been for years.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's not a modern phenomena.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
And getting the funds to maintain prisons must be extremely hard.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
So you've got a minimum.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Staffing, you've got people who may not be as watchful
as they should be, and then you've got someone who
wants to plan. And I mean he had it, had
time to plan this escape from the moment he got there.
It was the same as what he did to pre model.
He watched and he waited, and then the opportunities came up,
and the opportunity of getting the diamond wire, well, he's
(26:51):
organized that to get in it, organized his his co
offenders for people to run with. Having someone on the
outside was a good, a good way to plan it.
So you had to get away vehicle. You had your
go ling verishon with the rifle waiting. They knew there
was going to be a vehicle response. They also knew
(27:13):
that if they pined that vehicle down with gunfire, that
gives him a free reign. So then they've got a
time frame they've got to get over. I'm sure that
the system's changed radically after that escape. And we talk
about Brendan Abbott being a bank robber. Brendan Abbott is one,
if the only one that I know who's escaped from
maximum security twice, and that's pretty amazing, and the authorities
(27:37):
obviously took note of that. When with the length of
his sentences now and the way he's been treated, no
senior politician or prison authority will ever want to give
him any slack, rightly or wrongly, because for fear that
he does it again, in their.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Head will be on the chopping pot.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
So that's created that's created a monster for Brendan as
well well.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I was wondering that the lengthy sentences that he has
been given, and he's done time in Queensland and now
in wa do you think partly that is a response
for making the system look foolish.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Oh, there may be an element that there's always politics involved,
you know, when government officials get involved. But if you
look at the offenses he committed across the different states,
plus two escapes, plus also finishing his original time, in
terms of imprisonment, it probably adds up close to where
we are now. However, there comes a point, and I
(28:34):
think this is where James and I will agree, It
comes a point that what good is occurring here? And
do we have a prison system or a system incarceration
that is what I would call civilized.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
After the break, we explore Withether decades of solitary confinement
have had a lasting impact on Brandon Abbott and whether
he's ever felt remorse for the victims of his robberies. Well, James,
I wanted to ask you to where you've ever spoken
to your dad about this? But there's been a lot
of mentioned, especially from his legal team, that at some
stage he was the longest held prisoner in solitary confinement
(29:11):
and that was purely because they were terrified that he
would escape again. But that's got to have such a
major impact on his mental health. Has he ever spoken
about that to you?
Speaker 6 (29:21):
Not that it really impacted him.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
Like, as far as I'm concerned, when I speak to him,
he seems pretty with it normal. It doesn't really seem defeated,
like he still with his know, his personality's high spirits
stuff too. So even though no matter who you are,
how strong mind as you are, it's going to have
some sort of mental effect on you, Like like I
said to people before, like look at us when we
went through COVID. People had access to the internet, people
(29:44):
had access to friends and family, could speak to on
the phone, do whatever they wanted. But you want to
let to leave the house. People went nuts. You can
do with them, and you were allowed to walk outside
your house. At least he was locked in a room
twenty three hours a day, probably no bigger than most
people's bathroom, with no access to the outside world at all.
Like me myself, Like I'm pretty strong minded, but that
(30:05):
would drive me insane, Like I can't stand just being
at home for a day, not leaving the house. So
no matter who you are, it's going to take some
sort of toll on your brain for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Now, I know you mentioned that he never set out
to do what he did for the notoriety and that
he doesn't love being tagged the postcard bandit, But has
he ever shown remorse for the trauma that the victims
of his holdups have gone through?
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Of course, like he's mentioned before too, Like you know
at the time, you're not really thinking clearly. You just
got your mindset on the prize of what you're after
he's told me before, after he's done a robbery and stuff.
You know, the adrenaline will be there once it's worn off,
he as you'd actually sit back and you'd have a
strong feeling of depression over you think about what you've
done and where you position. You put other people in
(30:51):
as well too, But that's just when you have that
mentality where you're hungry for money and just want to
do the wrong thing. It's just you kind of have
that moment and then you'll go and do it again.
Speaker 6 (31:01):
But he doesn't.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
He's not happy with there's things he may have done
to people, and the truis put people for him. Myself too,
I don't agree with it at all, Like you're going
to do those kind of crimes, you deserve to get
a jail.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Minus argument is now like how long he's supposed to
be serving for that though? You know, so like I.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Don't support what he's done at all, and I don't
support anyone doing that, even myself.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
I wouldn't put anyone into that sort of situation.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
But it's happened now and just he's just he's copying
it basically for all that.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Well, let's look at where he currently sits because from
initial reporting he was due for parole next year, but
is that now no longer the case that.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
Has been changed, So I think there was some missuh
miss lining up with the numbers and stuff there too.
So we've gone to court now trying to look at
time service. That lawyer's coming through the DA and said,
I think there's some way here we can see you.
Your time should have been served already. But in the
process of doing it that it's made someone go over
(32:02):
the numbers and have a proper look. We realize that
the twenty twenty six was an actually correct date anyway, So.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
In saying that, though even if nothing.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
We hadn't put anything through to the courts now, someone
would have obviously gone over this closer to his proble
day and gone, hold on, this date's incorrect. The original
time was twenty twenty six pro and twenty thirty three
was full term.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
I believe it's now been changed to.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
Twenty thirty full term and twenty twenty to nine for
parole date, which is only a year apart, which is
I think it's pretty ridiculous. Usually prole dates are a
fair bit before the actual full term, so he's just
finished up a court case now and it's kind of
not ruled in his favor, but the lawyers did know
that that was what was going to happen. So where
it stands now, I think he's had his high security
(32:46):
high security escort status has been dropped now, so he's
gone down to low security. So that's basically the process
of someone getting closer to being released back out into
the system.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
I know that his lawyers have been talking about the
fact that they feel that he's being unfairly kept behind bars.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
What are they asking for?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
And because I understand there was some legal precedents for
the amount of time he's been given that might have
come in after he was actually sentenced for those things,
so it can't. Yeah, and I'm not quite sure what
the legal terminology is for that, but it shouldn't have
been applied to him at the time because.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
His crimes are done before that law came in.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
I like I said, I walked into those courtrooms when
all this stuff's going on, and some of them as
be speaking Chinese to me. I've got no idea what
is happening. It's just they try and dumb it down
for me a little bit. So when he was first
locked up, and then he broke out of prison. There
was some legislations or something that changed, and when he
came back the time they gave him, they've tried to
put him under the some new I don't understand it completely,
(33:47):
but the lawyers are trying to look into something saying
that the way he was charged shouldn't have been shouldn't
have applied to him because he was already it was already.
It was just an escabe basically. So I think Glenn
may know a bit more about that. I'm not too sure,
but it's just, yeah, it's just a scramble process, and
there's just so much to understand. Nless you're an actual
lawyer yourself, and it takes your weeks to try and
(34:09):
get your head around it properly. Like I'm pretty switched on,
I'm pretty smart, and even me myself, I'm kind of yeah,
just throw.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It around from it, Glenn, can you shed some light
on that for us, like what sentence should he being handed?
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Well, the legal system has always been a strange monster
that most people can't understand. Look, the big issue here
is that there's an accumulative effect of all the different
sentences that's Brendan's cop and it becomes I think James
is dead right, becomes a mathematical nightmare. And I think
that it is just I mean, these these sentences on paper,
(34:45):
and the accumulation is something that's probably technically correct. The
sad part about it is it's doesn't take into account
that a man who's committed the offenses that aren't murder,
aren't you know, the if we talk about rape and
murder and those type of things is the worst of
the worst. They're still bad what brend has done, but
(35:07):
he's copying it more than that the people who have
done those offenses, which to me, as you know now
I'm a retired person. Now I just look back and
going is this really fair? And this is where, you know,
I think that the amount of time that Brendan is
he's probably well, all the amount of the isolation he's had,
(35:29):
the fact he was under strict security for so many
years because there was a possible a warrant in South
Australia didn't allow him to have any rehabilitation and so on,
I think there needs to be a look at that,
and but no government is going to do that because
quite frankly, they'll be terrified of the fact that what
if he does his scope again, What if we do
(35:50):
let him out and he commits an armed robbery. The
thing about that is we have to accept that that's
our system.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
I can't say with a crystal ball that he won't
commit a further offenses. But I can't say he will,
So that's our system. There should be an element of
enough is enough?
Speaker 1 (36:08):
James, have you talked to your dad about life potentially
on the other side of the prison bars, And I
mean it would be it'd be hard pressed to find
a bank brunch to rob these days, let's be honest,
with so many of them shut down across the country.
But has he allowed himself to think or hope or
look beyond his prison sentence at this point.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Well, we do have conversations sometimes about what we'll do
when he is to be released. So the plan is
from to come over Sydney and live with me for
a while, But he doesn want to do a bit
of traveling to catch up with small friends and stuff
like that too, which I said I will go with
him for and he wants me to go. The whole
thing of being released these fee past that life of crime.
Even if I'm a bank these days, it's not even
worth it. I'd try to go to bank. Sometimes we
(36:48):
will draw ten thousand dollars out and I'm going to
give them forty eight hours notice to get my own money.
So I don't think roblem banks these days is the
way to go.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
He don't.
Speaker 5 (36:56):
There's his sixty sixty three and now I'm going on
sixty four. That's just he's past that point of doing
everything like that. I think he's kind of supposed to
have a child life. Now me and him get to
know each other, Like I said, like once he is released,
it's going to be just like meeting someone basically, like
we're best mates now, but there's obviously a lot to
be spoken about time to hang out together too. So
(37:18):
it's like I have the whole my whole life, I've
spent I couldn't say, maybe in more than twenty hours
with him, just like people, people watching, listening, So just
having a time alone.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
With him is.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Do you think he's prepared for the potential amount of
attention he'll get when he's released. I mean, he is
known by all these titles and he's very notorious. Do
you think he would sit down for interviews with people.
Do you think he would talk about his past himself.
Speaker 6 (37:51):
Well, he knows that kind of stuff's going to happen.
Speaker 5 (37:55):
He's going to becoming out of jail over sixty odd
years old, mid sixties, He's going to need some sort
of income, so these kind of things are going to
be benefits to him financially, I guess, so it'd be
an idiot not to really take advantage of that. When
it comes to doing all this stuff. I don't think
it's something you want to rush into straight away. This
is the world has changed a lot, like since he's
been the amount of people on the street, like, it's
(38:17):
going to be very overwhelming for him. There's going to
be too much, too much going on, So I think
it might have to slowly ease his way into that.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
I've spoken to a few people who've been realised from
prison and they all said that stepping into the modern
age is really weird because everyone is so busy and
frantic yea all the time everywhere. So I guess it's
going to be a pretty big transition for someone to
step into that for the first time.
Speaker 5 (38:38):
Really, Look, he's going to be very overwhelmed with everything's
happening like just me and myself. I hate going shopping
centers and stuff like. I don't like a big, big
crowds people, and I'm around people all the time. I
think she's never really have any understanding of it until
he's actually put him put in the end of it
really bright.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
The center, Glen.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Is there a chance you mentioned that there was an
outstanding warrant for him because he did rob banks in
South Australia and he's done no time in a South
Australian prison. Is there a slim to any chance that
if he was to step foot over the South Australian
border that he could be arrested again.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
There's always a chance of that. It depends on the
Obviously you have to have evidence. But we're talking thirty
years now, witnesses recollections de kay very quickly. Thirty years
later is going to be really, really difficult. And there's
also a public interest, you know, and that's for directors
(39:32):
of public prosecution and so on to the side. I
don't think anyone will be running in or rushing in
to charge Brendan Abbott if he crosses any borders.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
But if I was here, I'd go from here to Sydney.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
What was it like to meet and spend time speaking
with James. I mean, he's the son of a man
that you spent so many years chasing and pursuing and
then finally helpful behind bars. And for you, James, is
there anything you want to leave us with finally, just
about your dad and any message that you want people
to know about him.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
I only met Jane during the filming of the of
the series, and when I first saw him, I thought,
my god, he's a spitting image of his father when
I spoke to him. But James is, Yeah, he's a
knock about blow, aren't you mate?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah, he's a stand up fella.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
And I think that's really really important that people know that.
You know, he's he's taken the road that his father
should have and I think that's that's a credit to James.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
So there you go, mate, that's.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
A lovely thing to say.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
Glenn, like a lot of people say, too, Dad, he's
very intelligent. If he went down a.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
Different path, I'm sure, like they said, he could have
been a CEO of a company. He just chose different,
different life to go down. And uh, this just this
has put him pretty.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Much in the place he is now.
Speaker 5 (40:44):
But as far as like the media goes and everything
like that too, he's just My Dad's a very soft
hearted person.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
He didn't have a conversation. He's got a lot of empathy.
Speaker 5 (40:53):
He's very caring, like if I've been going through something
in life too, He's always made sure to check on
check on me if I've told HI about something else
or with a friend of mine for example, too, He'll
always check in and ask about that person if if
he doesn't really know them. He's always interested in people
in my life as well to any friends and partners
and stuff I've been with.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Glenn, James, thank you so much for joining us and
for chatting about Brendan, and hopefully we can check back
in with you guys when he's finally released. We appreciate
you both giving us some of your time. Thank you
to James and Glenn for helping us tell this story.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Today.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
You can find a link to the new Binge series
based on Brendan Abbott's life of crime at the link
in our show notes. It's called Run the Postcard. Bandit
documentary will be available to watch on Binge from January seven.
If you want to see images from this story head
to our Instagram page at True Crime Conversations. True Crime
Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy. Our senior producer
is Charlie Blackman. The group executive producer is Alaria Brophy,
(41:53):
with audio designed by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on
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