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- [00:00]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. Brendan James Abbott is one of Australia's most notorious bank robbers, a figure whose crimes, repeated prison escapes and years spent evading capture throughout the 1990s turned him into something of an outlaw legend. It was during this time on the run that the media released photos cementing his nickname, the Postcard Bandit, as his image spread widely and his story took on a mythological quality that blurred the line between criminal and folk anti hero. To unpack the story behind both the legend and the reality, we're joined by Abe Madison, author of the Postcard Bandit. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung. People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
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B
With Brendan Abbott's story, one of the tricky things is we still don't know exactly which robberies he did commit and didn't commit. There is. There's a handful that he's been convicted of. There are dozens that he's suspected of. How many of those did he actually commit? Well, he's never going to tell us because he doesn't want to serve any more time than he's already doing.
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A
No.
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B
So there's. There's a fair bit of mystery there.
- [01:17]
A
The first time he escaped from custody is a very hilarious story about how Australia used to operate 40 years ago or 50 years ago, whenever it was where basically the coppers took him to a police station that was just an old house, the copper was meant to be guarding him. Said, do you want a cup of tea? Brendan said, sure. And while he was making him a cup of tea, Brendan got up and ran out the other door, which he knew wasn't locked. When's the next escape?
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B
The next escape was from Fremantle Prison in 1989.
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A
That one was massive. Fremantle Prison. You also describe evocatively. I'll just put it this way, no toilets.
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B
Yeah. No paint buckets to shit in. Yeah. Every season it was pretty grim. 45 degrees plus in summer, freezing in winter. You can do tours these days and it's a very stark and unforgiving place.
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A
My favourite story about Fremantle was when they had a riot, maybe partly so that Brendan could get on the roof of a building and see the rest of the site. Right. To get a really good look at where the walls were and where stuff was.
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B
I mean, the riot was because of the conditions. There's no. There's no doubt about that. They were way over capacity. It was the height of summer in 1988 and it just exploded. The place literally exploded and they set fire to it. But when they had the subsequent trial, Abbott was one of the ringleaders and they were able to get a look at aerial maps of the prison which was perfect for Abbott because he had been wondering about exactly how he was going to get out and he needed to know if he could make the jumps from one roof to another.
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A
So as a defendant, the police had to supply him with their evidence, which included aerial photos of the jail.
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B
They did. And also during the riot trial they were of course they would wear civilian clothes into court and he was able to tuck a few of those away that ended up in the prison tailor shop which was where the escape began. And I particularly love that story. They've got this old tailor, he's not a prison guard, he's actually a tailor. And they distracted him with pornographic magazines, stick books I called them. And he would go off to his office and get very engrossed in looking at the stick books that the prisoners had given him. Whilst Abbott and the other prisoners would be working away with a hacksaw on the, on the bars at the tailor
- [03:51]
A
shop and sewing themselves outfits that looked a bit like the guards uniforms.
- [03:56]
B
Well, more than a bit like. Exactly, exactly like. Abbott convinced the tailor to show him how to make those uniforms that the, the Metropolitan Security Unit wore. He also stole a badge from, from his drawer, but he knew he needed several badges. So in his cell late at night he actually was like, he is a bit of an artist. So he's actually drawn up a few of these badges to go on the caps because they wanted to look like prison guards. Because when they got onto the roof there was the small issue of guards in towers with guns, which of course is the most off putting thing about trying to escape a prison. So one day they've, Aaron Reynolds has been. One of their fellow escapees has been working away at the bar and it suddenly snapped and it's bowed because of the pressure. So the moment anyone's looked up at it, it's going to be seen. So they realised that they had to make an instantaneous decision to we either go now or we're going to get caught. So they decided to go. They got into their overalls, they had $20 cash. Abbott had a small transistor radio that he'd somehow fixed up to tune into police frequencies.
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A
Wow.
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B
So that he could tell when they were, when they were alerted to the escape. So they got out onto the roof, Abbott and Reynolds have, have made it over and they've hightailed it out of there. And within, within 20 minutes they were on an old MTT bus driving past the prison and they could hear the sirens going off. And a short time later they were, they were eating whoppers in a Hungry Jack's a few kilometres away, which was just extraordinary.
- [05:33]
A
What was the big robbery that landed Brendan in there? Was that the famous through the ceiling robbery?
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B
Yes, yes. So that was in, that was in Belmont in Perth, suburban Perth, IN, in 1987. So at the time it was WA's biggest ever bank robbery. It was Brendan Abbott's first known bank robbery.
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A
And it was innovative, wasn't it?
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B
It was.
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A
We see Brendan's brain at work here.
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B
Yes. Yeah. Well, he decided that if they dropped in from the ceiling before the bank opened, he'd have a better chance of accessing the big money. And you know, he was spot on. You know, $112,000 doesn't seem like very much these days, but back in 1987 it certainly was. Whilst the robbery itself was successful. Yeah, things fell apart very quickly in the days after.
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A
Did things fall apart because Jackie, his girlfriend, got the shits that she thought he was seeing someone else and she put him in. Is that true?
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B
Correct.
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A
Wow.
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B
100%, yes. And she actually received reward money for that? Yeah.
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A
Okay, so after Fremantle, was that the beginning of the five year, the long stretch on the run?
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B
It was. So Aaron Reynolds and Brendan Abbott successfully escaped from Freo. They knock off a gun shop, they hit a couple of banks and they set up a bush camp near Perth. Aaron Reynolds had himself a little camera and he took a whole bunch of photos. The pictures really, I think were intended to be sent to friends, to be sent to relatives, people like Glenn. While Abbott and Reynolds were in a stolen car in Perth, the police have spotted them and Abbott said to Reynolds, you know, we can outrun them. Reynolds didn't listen to him and starts leaning out the window and firing a shotgun at the pursuing police. They eventually abandoned that vehicle and that's where the first rolls of film were discovered from their bush camp. So that's, that's. Those are the first so called postcards. They eventually left Perth on a couple of stolen motorcycles and they headed to Adelaide where there was some more bank robberies. And Aaron's camera was still working overtime. There's pictures of them climbing Uluru. They went to a crocodile farm in Darwin, then they go across to Brisbane. All the while they're doing bank jobs. Things come to a head Between Abbott and Reynolds, Reynolds was a bit of a loose cannon. Abbott was very aware that if he was going to stay on the run, they needed to be discreet, they needed to fade into the background aside from those moments when they were robbing banks. So there's a sort of final confrontation between them. And Reynolds says he's going back to Perth, which he does. He was very quickly arrested because he really wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. And that was when the police found another roll of film. And this was from, I suppose you'd call it part two of the postcards trip. And this was them traveling across the country and really looking, looking like tourists. And these pictures looked like postcards. So he, he just disappears. After Reynolds arrest, there was no, no links to Abbott, track him down. That was why the Perth Armed Robbery squad actually released the so called postcards. And at the time they didn't call them postcards. They said that they thought the pictures were going to be sent to his associates as a reminder of how good life on the run could be. And that was accurately reported by the West Australian newspaper. But unfortunately the truth was not as interesting as the myth. And you know, as I say, the magazine called him the postcard bandit. That, that stuck very quickly and once the story got into the media that that was it, he was the postcard bandit from then on.
- [09:14]
A
And eventually he would, they caught up with him in Queensland. This is a great part of the story because now he's in a different jurisdiction and as one of the old coppers said from Perth, he said, I just thought, good, now they're his problem. Now he is in custody in Queensland and he's taken into custody. And he says in retrospect that was the moment he began planning his next escape.
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B
So they sent him to a special cell, they put him in chains everywhere. Every time he was, there was a court appearance, he was transferred using a helicopter. There was, they very much treated him like a, like a super villain. You know, it was, it was understandable that they, they were using such tight security because you know, he had shown that he could, could not only escape but could remain on the run for a very long time. So he then faced trial on several of the bank robberies in Queensland. He ended up cutting a deal where I think he pleaded guilty to three or four of them. He's ended up in Sir David Longland and he's for whatever reason, within two years of being recaptured, he's back in mainstream. And I'm sure there would have been plenty of questions Asked as to how that was allowed to happen. He's very focused on escaping again. And they were sitting around one day talking about potential escape plans. And Abbott's made the point that you really need some help from the outside. And that's when a young bloke called Brendan Bereshon has spoken up and said that he'd be willing to do that. He was due for release soon and he'd be willing to organise things on the outside. So in the days leading up to the escape, Abbott had been speaking to Baruchon via another prisoner's phone calls. And they were talking in code. They were saying that a girl is going to come and visit you and she'll give you a flash. And that was actually in reference to using a torch to flash and signal outside the prison. He's turned up, he's given the flash. So Abbott and. And the other four of them have sawed through their bars. They'd already done work in the days leading up on these bars and they had this diamond encrusted wire that they were using to cut through the bars that they were then able to pull back.
- [11:33]
A
My favourite aspect is the weird sort of ladders they built out of the plastic lawn furniture. They welded them together to help them get over the walls with the razor wire on top of. They built these contraptions to throw over the top, didn't they? Ingenious.
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B
Again, the fact that they managed to make it out was really quite incredible. You know, Bereshon tried to throw bolt cutters over and they didn't make it all the way. He tried to throw guns to them that didn't make it all the way. I think it was only a pair of tin snips that they managed to get their hands on.
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A
Bereshon ended up having to shoot his way out of there, didn't he?
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B
Bereshon was shooting at the perimeter vehicle that came sort of trundling around the corner and that. That obviously had some that had weapons and guards inside. And they had a semi automatic weapon which he has fired at the perimeter vehicle and managed to disable it. And meanwhile they've managed to cut through the various perimeter fences and actually make it out and, and get to the vehicle that Barishon was. Was waiting in. There's traces. There's. How no one was injured or killed in the initial escape or in the crimes that unfolded afterwards is it's nothing less than a miracle that no one was hurt. There were a lot of crimes committed. Abbott and Bereshon managed to get down to Melbourne. They travel, allegedly travel to Perth and pull off another massive bank robbery in Perth. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that gives them plenty of money to set up a covert life. Abbott goes straight back to his old tricks of, you know, fake, fake IDs, his disguises. They set themselves up in a cottage in Carlton. They paid cash for this place. They used their fake IDs to get the electricity put on. But this is when Bereshawn's drug habit rears its head. He started to get back into the heroin and Abbott's not happy about it, but he's sort of tolerating it. And he's gone out to Box Hill one day to score and some passing police have, and they've confronted him. He's forgotten everything that Abbott has taught him about how to deal with a situation like this. Baruchon, you know, confronted by police, just completely went to water and he has immediately opened up his bum bag, pulled out a pistol and started firing at these two coppers. And how he didn't kill them again. Another miracle.
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A
And this is it. Cause he dropped the bum bag and the wallet and everything there, didn't he, at the scene?
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B
Yes. Yeah. All the cash.
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A
Had to tell Brendan that. Fancy having to go back and say, ah, mate, there's been an incident.
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B
If, if Abbott was, was ruthless, you know, he could have just put a bullet in Bereshon right there and then, or just walked away from him. But he, you know, he, he took him with him and, and, and they went on the run.
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A
Where were they pinched in the end?
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B
They were caught in Darwin. The Darwin cops became convinced that Bereshon and, or Abbott were in. Were in Darwin and they had started surveillance and I think they were expecting to find Bereshon, but it was actually Abbott who appeared on a. On a street to buy a pizza and he'd gone to a laundromat to, to do his washing. After the territory response group descended on him and put the cuffs on him, he did ask them if he could. If they could go back and get his washing out of the dryer for him. And in the days afterwards when he was interviewed by detectives from several states, he actually signed a wanted poster where he wrote, could have at least let me finish my washing on one of them.
- [15:08]
A
So, sense of humour intact in the end, what's happened is Brendan Abbott has ended up doing so much more time than he ever would have had. He just stayed in jail the first time or even the second time. Is that fair to say?
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B
100%, yes.
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A
What's the legal situation that we're at now, I read a stat, a thing that said he's more time than any non murderer in Australian history. Is that right?
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B
Look, I think that's a fair estimation. So he was arrested in 95, then he escaped in 97. He was on the run for six months and then he was caught in May 98. Since May 98, he's been in prison. From May 98 to May 2016, he was in the Queensland prison system. A very large chunk of that time was served in solitary. He would often be put in a detention unit on his own. There'd be no other prisoners in the detention unit. It would just be him and the prison guards there.
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A
When you say a big chunk of it, we're talking about 12 years. Roughly 12 years. Imagine being alone. Not even the circumstances of the cell. Oh, the bed's not comfortable. Forget that. Just imagine being alone with no one to talk to for 12 years.
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B
And that's where we are now. So Abbott's lawyer has filed documents for his appeal that will probably go to the Court of Appeal about the middle of this year. And beyond that is the High Court. If he loses the Court of Appeal, then there's the High Court. So the question now is, will his appeal actually be successful before he is actually eligible for parole?
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A
He's not eligible for parole again till 2028, is that right?
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B
Yes. I want to see him get to spend time with his son. James is a fantastic young bloke. I've met him several times and gotten to know him really well.
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A
One way to put it is that James seems to have his head screwed on the right way. He doesn't.
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B
He really does.
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A
He loves his dad a lot, but he doesn't idolise his criminal history. He doesn't seem to me to be. To have unrealistic, you know, expectations of his dad or he knows his dad and what he did, but he also. Is his dad.
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B
Exactly. Foreign.
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A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
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B
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders, past, present and those emerging.