Escape - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1972: The Teacher Who Kicked a Hole in the Kidnappers’ Van and Saved Six Children

At a one-teacher school in rural Victoria, two unemployed plasterers, Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland, burst in with a sawn-off shotgun and forced 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs and her six young pupils into a van, demanding a million dollar ransom. Victoria’s premier agreed to pay, and the education minister himself waited at the handover point with police hidden nearby, but the kidnappers never returned to collect it.

Left alone with the children overnight, Gibbs kicked out a door panel with her heavy platform boots and led the girls through the dark bush to safety. Eastwood and Boland were run down in a manhunt; Eastwood pleaded guilty and was jailed, while Boland was convicted after three trials.

It was not the end of the story. Eastwood escaped prison years later and staged a second mass kidnapping of a teacher and nine pupils, and while back behind bars he killed a fellow inmate in what was ruled self-defence.

White camper van parked on dirt pull-off overlooking rural hills

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Australia Escape Kidnapping Prison Ransom Trial VIC

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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

⬅ See all events from 29 September

Adelaide Australia Escape Fremantle Historical Crime Perth Prison Robbery Toodyay WA

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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.

⬅ See all events from 25 September

County Antrim Escape Northern Ireland Political Crime Prison Terrorism UK

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1863: One Shot from the Bush: the Outlaw Whose Rescue Attempt Killed His Brother

Larry Cummins was 20 when a Goulburn jury convicted him of armed robbery and he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour, the first in irons. His accomplice in the hold-up, both men with blackened faces, had been his 18-year-old brother. And the charge everyone was talking about had already been dropped: the murder of that same brother.

Weeks earlier, police had found the younger Cummins hiding in the loft of his mother’s hut. He fired twice at the constables before surrendering, and they saddled one of the family’s own horses to take him to the lockup. Eight miles along the track a single shot rang out from the bush. It struck the prisoner behind the ear; he “gave one groan” and died. The constables never saw the gunman, only heard a horse galloping away. The shot was assumed to have been meant for the constable, and the man behind it to be Larry, trying to set his brother free. There was not enough evidence to try him for it.

Three years later Cummins escaped from Berrima Gaol by crawling through 120 yards of sewer, only to be recaptured within months. Released in 1876, he lived out his days in Victoria under another name, as a drover and whipmaker, and died in 1909.

Sepia portrait of bushranger Larry Cummins 1843 to 1909

⬅ See all events from 24 September

Australia Berrima Bushranger Crookwell Escape Goulburn Manslaughter Mudgee NSW Prison Richlands Robbery Trial

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