Prison - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1866: Moondyne Joe Caught 322 Kilometres From Perth While Trying to Walk to Adelaide

By 1866 Joseph Bolitho Johns, known as Moondyne Joe, was already the most persistent escapee Fremantle Prison had ever held. Free again in August after breaking out once more, he teamed up with two other escaped convicts and raided Everett’s store at Toodyay, a shopkeeper who had arrived on the very same convict transport as Joe, stripping it of boots, blankets, guns and ammunition to equip an overland trek all the way to Adelaide.

They made it 322 kilometres east of Perth before running out of luck at Bodallin Soak, recaptured on 29 September 1866, the escapade that first put the name Moondyne Joe into print. Back at Fremantle Prison, he was handed a further five years, two for the escape and three for the robbery, in a saga that would run for another three decades.

Moondyne Joe - Perennial Escapee — Moondyne Joe – Perennial Escapee

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Adelaide Australia Escape Fremantle Historical Crime Perth Prison Robbery Toodyay WA

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1882: Ned Kelly’s Executioner Jailed for Indecent Exposure in Melbourne

Elijah Upjohn had hanged Ned Kelly at Melbourne Gaol in 1880, earning five pounds for the job. Two years later he was back in front of a City Court bench, this time as the accused: drunk in Carlton, he exposed himself in front of witnesses, to whom he tossed peppermints moments before.

Fined 10 pounds or three months, Upjohn refused to pay and was sent to Melbourne Gaol, the very institution he had served as executioner. While locked up he kept working, flogging inmates at Pentridge under sentence, and walked free at year’s end with wages still owed to him.

Elijah Upjohn: Executioner of Bushranger Ned Kelly

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Australia Carlton Execution Melbourne Prison Public Indecency Scandal VIC

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2011: Killed Behind Bars: Matthew Johnson Convicted of Murdering Gangland Assassin Carl Williams

Carl Williams had already been convicted of multiple murders during Melbourne’s gangland war when he was bashed to death with the stem of an exercise bike in a high-security unit at Victoria’s Barwon Prison in 2010, an inmate supposedly protected by round-the-clock surveillance.

Matthew Charles Johnson, a fellow prisoner sharing the unit, was charged with the killing. On this day in 2011 a jury found him guilty of murdering the man once considered one of the country’s most feared underworld figures, in an attack that exposed how little safety the prison’s most secure wing actually offered its most notorious inmate.

Gangland: more than a dictionary definition in Melbourne, 1998–2010.

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Australia Melbourne Murder Organised Crime Prison Trial VIC

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1983: The Great Escape: 38 IRA Prisoners Break Out of the Maze in Britain’s Largest Prison Breakout

On 25 September 1983, 38 IRA prisoners staged a mass breakout from the Maze Prison in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the largest prison escape in British history. The men overpowered guards inside H-Block 7, some using smuggled handguns, and seized control of the wing before storming the front gate disguised in stolen prison officer uniforms.

In the chaos one prison officer was stabbed to death and twenty others were injured during the breakout. Several escapees hijacked a delivery lorry to get beyond the perimeter fences, and while a number were recaptured within days, others evaded capture for years, some fleeing abroad before eventually being caught or negotiating their return.

The escape became known among Irish republicans as the Great Escape, a name that stuck for decades and turned the breakout into one of the defining episodes of the Troubles.

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County Antrim Escape Northern Ireland Political Crime Prison Terrorism UK

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