[MUSIC]
On the 3rd of February 1967, Ronald Ryan would be the last person to be executed in Australia,
“before capital punishment was abolished nationwide. Since then, the death penalty has been abolished”
in 111 countries around the world. However, there are still 53 countries who retain capital punishment. Countries such as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and of course the United States. Another country which still uses the death penalty for certain crimes is Thailand. Since 1953, Thailand has executed 300 and 26 people. 319 of these has been by firing squad, a firing squad of just one. Traditionally firing squads use multiple individuals with firearms.
The aim of this is to reduce the psychological pressure on each squad member. As no single
individual can be held accountable for the killing. Also, in many instances, a subset of the squad
“actually receives blanks, but of course nobody is informed prior, who has these blanks. So again,”
reducing the burden on those involved. However, in Thailand, this job was done by just one person. Thailand's last executioner, who held the position for 35 years, was a man by the name of Shavaraj Eribun. He executed a total of 55 prisoners during his time at the Bangkok Hilton. This number could have been 56. If David McMillan had not made the decision to do something no other Westerner had ever managed before. Escape. I thought, well, let's not be hasty. I thought,
yeah, now, help. Fuck yeah, this way out. It's where I'd have everything. My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wontid. I'm a warrior of the soul before the end of the plan to be whole. But I've no illness myself along the way. In our previous episode, David and his business partner Michael Sullivan and their Thai counterpart were on trial in Australia. Arrested after a large-scale operation by Victoria Police into their drug operation had swooped in and arrested them. The trial itself
would be somewhat of a production, lasting an astonishing six months with over 160 witnesses. David Michael and their Thai connection each day would be led into the courtroom in chains, flanked by heavily armed police. David says the judge hated them. Especially after an impromptu performance to the jury after lunch one day. The jury came in after lunch before he did and there was that sort of, I said to everybody, listen, this is embarrassing moment, the jury sitting there.
We're here in the dark and the judges are looking. So we started seeing to them a couple of songs. The Nailons had a bit of a hit with "I'm not that kind of guy" and we got a little bit of percussion going down there. I'm not that kind of guy. Really the guy from Thailand was a really terrible sense of rhythm. But in time to come ten years in prison we had improved his musical taste. No end. Anyway, they eventually came back, not guilty and not guilty, guilty of one count and the same for Michael.
So that was good enough for the judge. And he could have handed out life but he didn't to 15 years. So ten years in prison I got a little bit more for the habit of culture. David was off to prison for what would be a ten-year stretch. But what about his money, homes and expensive purchases? There was a bit of a rule for being in a bigger rest.
Whenever you're ill, you've gotten gain, you can divide into three. A third of it disappears
quite rapidly because you didn't secure it within your direct control. Another third of it goes in your desperate attempts to win the case or bring it to a lawful conclusion. And the last sort of it goes during your long incarceration, which various feeble weaknesses tell you to reveal the last location of the last biscuit tin. So this really nothing there. It's really anybody.
“I think somebody could probably survive two, three, maybe even a four-year sentence with it”
with enough planning and come out relatively in tech. But they have their ways now. They don't buy
That.
and smuggle drugs, they are similarly treated. But the money, well, sure it's the forbidden fruit.
Shall we burn that? No, what we'll do is we'll call it 100% taxation on your journey. And what we think you might have heard too for that matter. Oh, right. So, yes, if you took a holiday, that was a drug run. Oh, thank you. Funny. I came back with a tent. Well, who would you feel so criminal? You know, any return to be some preshing dignity. The police moved into my house and burned Morris. They patted like it was 1999. The local police had to come down to
stop the noise. And they burnt everything. The paintings in the fire. They shoot in the pool.
“What? Absolutely destroyed everything. You know, the only thing I had to my name as I said in”
the concrete bed and concrete sink and concrete window of the Supermax were smolded,
seen 90 cassette tapes that my lawyer managed to get, which were the bug tapes from my house. So, I could listen to my former life on tape and wonder who it was in that former life. Some of it was quite disturbing. I played a wondering around the house and speaking of the phone to assist her and she was in tears. I was having not, not big solbs who was tearing her back, upset. David made it through his 10 years of incarceration, but says just prior to his release,
he would get a visit from police to let him know that he would be getting no peace on the outside.
And true to their word, they followed him everywhere. The police who came to visit me before I
“got released. Now I'm around open prison by this stage. Everything was under control.”
Yeah. I thought, but they were waiting for me and they'd follow me every day. I just wasn't up to it, so I decided to leave Australia pretty much for good. David is out of prison and has had enough. He's leaving. Police are hounding him on a day-to-day basis. Now, of course, David was on parole. When he leaves prison, that means no travel outside the state in which he's been paroled to.
And most certainly no overseas travel. But of course, this is a man who's well versed in traveling undetected. So, a quick visit to organise a false passport and he's off to Thailand. But as soon as he lands at the airport, he almost immediately realizes he's in trouble.
“Well, I went to the airport and they were, I could see something had gone wrong. They were everywhere.”
Not looking at me. A couple of playing clothes that I didn't particularly didn't like the look of. A staring down from a balcony. The plaque behind the counter, she took my passport and said, "You wanted to look at something about it." Oh, yeah. Well, she said it'd only be a few minutes and what I had in mind would only be a few minutes too. I was out of there like a shot. I'll see you left. You didn't stay at stick around
to why you want to see what you know. And I'll give you a tip when you're leaving an airport. Don't go down to arrivals because that's where all the taxis are. Yeah, I got about in pest years. What you do is when I say arrivals, I mean the arrivals, passengers from somewhere up. Yeah. You go to departures which is a four-up. It confuses them because you're going to the wrong place and you're seeing passengers arrive getting on-plane.
That's grab one of their taxis. They have throws some money in his direction because they're not supposed to pick up fairs like that. They drive down and join the queue. Yeah. But it really blocks up any of your pursuers. And I went into Bangkok City, took three top-tugs, walked through the Shangrelah hotel, took a drink somewhere, scratched my head. Went off to see a couple of people I knew in Chinatown. I just to use the phones there. They don't. And when things fall to pieces
don't get sentimental. When it's all over, you don't exist. Just go to the B-plan, which is for you, the ghost. But I was so infuriated. I just couldn't. It only came to me all night to tell you the precautions I took. I had this feeling in place convinced I was still in Melbourne. They'd heard me. They'd tap my phone there and heard a conversation between me and Michael. It was actually Michael standing in a pay phone with a little tape recorder. And my mobile phone holding them together.
Hang it over.
me. Yeah. It was a tap phone. And my typhrine refused to believe that the phones could be tap there.
“This is Thailand. We don't do that. But the USDA, more or less, donated or re-equipment that”
ran the telephone system back then in the 90s. And sure enough, it was. [Music] Authorities once again have David and custody. However, this is not Australia. This is Thailand. With a punishment for anyone involved in the drug business is severe. I knew what being written in Thailand meant. It meant you're finished in 20 years if you survived
that death penalty maybe. During a visit into the prison in Thailand by some Australian liaison
officer said, "Oh, by the way, you know, your fact actually, you're finished. I saw you mean me." I said, "Yeah, it does look that way." Oh, and if you do somehow survive 20 years in here,
“we don't take the offer spitting. The sweepstakes says you don't make it more than 10.”
Oh, thanks. But anyway, if you did make it, don't think you're getting off. We've got plans for you." David now under a arrest says, "At this point, he just didn't care anymore." After serving a hard 10 years in maximum security in Australia, losing everything he had, including his wife,
to the prison fire, he began to contemplate suicide. However, there was just one problem.
Because you couldn't kill yourself inside the type of prison there's no privacy, dormitories with 160 people like sightings in there. It lights on all night. Mad gambers slapping down dice and dominoes all the time. There's just no, no, no seconds. You know, it had to take a crap in pieces, just rose a little holes in the ground. Thailand, people getting sick and die slowly, not the kind
“of quick death you want. But when I'd been told that those absolutely no way out, I kind of”
came together a bit then. I thought, "Well, let's not be hasty. I thought no, I should really yeah, now help. Fuck yeah, this way out is where I'd have everything. I'd been in Jai-Hu been rub it right when it had got out that night." It's the 30th of July 1983, 445pm on a warm afternoon in Melbourne, Australia. Six prisoners of Jai-Ka Jai-Ka, the high security wing of Pentridge Prison, are brought in to the day-room and are being monitored
by one prison officer. The men were allowed access to this day-room until 9pm in the evening. They were all doing handcrafts. When one of the inmates began to do some leather work in the corridor just outside the day-room. The leather and the glue being used began to give off fumes. This situation with the fumes and the leather had actually been going on for many months. And unbeknownst to the prison officers, they'd been being groomed by the inmates to open the
electric doors that led to the exercise yard in which to release these fumes. For three months, this had been going on without incident. So just the same as the previous occasions, the prison officer in the big glass booth overlooking the corridor and day-room opens two electric doors leading to the outside exercise yard. One of these doors was fully open while the other was raised about 30 cm. The prisoner who was in the corridor then asks to be led into the
day-room and the door between the corridor and the day-room was opened automatically by the prison officer. This was it. It's go time. Four prisoners, Robert Wright, David McGorley, Timothy Neville, and David Yulton got down and crawled into the corridor as the other inmates entered the day-room. They then had to crawl around eight meters straight past the prison officer's booth, remaining out of sight and low to the ground in the guard's blind spot.
They all exit through the partially open door and in to the exercise yard. Once in the yard they would climb up the outer wall and Jimmy opened a steel lip at the top which would give them access to the crawl space between the ceiling and the roof. Once inside they fill their way through to the other end, crawling out and into the compound.
They then would crawl along the edge of Jyker's perimeter wire so to avoid be...
security cameras. The men then run north across the open muddy ground of the prison. There are three security towers overlooking the area. But luckily for the escapees, the prison officer's union had refused to allow guards to man these towers past certain time until they had been fitted with bulletproof glass. So it was a straight shot to the final wall. Once there the four men would scale this using a homemade grappling hook and some rope.
It's up and over the wall to freedom. Unfortunately for the escapees they were spotted by passes by who immediately contacted police and the men would be captured not long after they're daring escape. I was invited on that escape by the way, but we knew there were five murderers not ordinarily
“a bad thing but the wrong kind of murderers. What is the right kind?”
It's a right kind. The kind of murderers that normally a murderer is very easy to get along with in a prison because people feel badly treated by the law or they've got too much time away. But your murderer at the end of the day has a silent, lasting satisfaction that he
ripped a life out of somebody if nothing else and that personal never breathe a breath of air again.
Could maybe wrong, yes. But nonetheless, being in prison is not really as imbalanced as all that. So you're definitely easy to get along with particularly the kind of perverse ones that kill for some strange personal reason and kind of get the body parts of his boyfriend's and the freezer and just to take them out to make love to remain in me. He was very easy to get along with. Yeah, I did ask him because I was leaving that section there. I've never asked you about
“a little bit of business there. Just one question. Was frostbite ever an issue?”
But he never really answered them. I guess not. The wrong kind of murderer is the ones who
are more common unfortunately, than the murder of the week. So if I went out and escaped from Drifer with that bench, my first job would be to get away from that move away from them as quick as possible. The first job would be to hang on to me. So that's probably could have done it. But the trial was on and I just had to see what would happen. David now had his own escape to plan, but it certainly wasn't going to be easy. He had more than just prison walls and barbed wire to worry about.
Firstly, he needed to get himself somewhere more quiet where he wasn't surrounded by so many other inmates. As he also had to worry about the prisons trustees and room bosses, inmates who would happily rat you out at the drop of a hat. There were a lot of schemes. Firstly, he had to get to a much better place than this saddened in life. Managed to go to the section with the sentence prisoners go and meet after the worst possible night where all squashed in. They do that on purpose.
I'm sorry guys, the fan is broken. Really, and this kind of a room boss, but this place was so horrible that there wasn't even a room boss. I just remember the rest because my translator before I knew a few miserable words of time. It was English and regional. He translated the tyres out with
an English character, like the Yorkshireman. So the room boss in the place where at the first night
centre, when everybody's in chains and crowded up there, and he's got a little square of perfect clean linolement to little boys who clean up after and bring his food and everything. He's got to put up with us in the same bed. I've got to tell you I keep those chains quiet. We're all in here together. I'm no better than anything. I believe I'm a prisoner too. But I have to say, I cannot abide the smell of pee during the night. So hold your water. But if and talk to my
“boys about it before you're doing the thing, if you must, you must. But as for number two's,”
so get about it. So that was the attitude of the the trustees inside the prison. So you've got
Another bunch of enemies there.
Escaping for prisoners is always a big risk. In most countries, if you're caught escaping,
it can mean transfers to higher security prisons. Time spent in solitary confinement, and even more time add it to your sentence. Entireland, the punishment is even more severe. Some escapes which has done herd of whiskey, women, wine, whatever you like. But we're looking at the livelihoods of the gods. The gods have been so kind to take your ATM cards down to the bank and cash upon you for a percentage. So kind to let you eat the food that they charge
five times the retail price for when they sold it to you. So kind in many other ways.
Yeah, to betray them by escaping. And then they'd beat to death. Well, it was worse than front of us
by sight. We just heard it happening over several weeks. So they kept them in a code locker and dragged them out. And elephant chains. And this squeal would die out in a shake of exhaustion followed by the sound of wood hitting meat. Yeah, a bit of putting for most of my inmates friends in there. So it was hard to kind of get this great committee going. Yeah. And that was to get out of from court, skiing, even some crazy one we were going to sneak out after hours,
disguises United Nations Medical Emergency Response Team. It would have looked apart.
It would have been really confusing to the tie guards. But somehow, as we carry around a
stretcher with Swiss Theo on it and a stand from Sweden at the front and me at the back with a little helmet on. I don't know. It probably just started opening doors. We figured. But that was wisely abandoned. And Theo didn't want to play anymore because he died in a cell.
“And I think two cartons of cigarettes should get the body out of the cell.”
Yes, that's right. David had to pay to remove a dead man from his cell. He's being housed in Thailand's infamous Bangkok Hilton. Notorious for its appalling living conditions. Disease and overcrowding is just a couple of the prison's issues. The prison is designed for over 20,000 inmates but often holds more. The prison is a vast maze of walls and buildings. On three sides of the giant square compound
is a large body of water. Much like a moat around an old medieval castle. From above, the prison is so incredibly complex and vast and David will David was somewhere within it. I can realize how big it was it was before the days of Google Earth. My friends couldn't really tell me much about the place. If I'd known what I know now, I mean, it holds 22,000 people. You can imagine it's a city side.
He's building heaven as an economy in little shops and industries of its own.
“Black market, but not black market, but part of the life. I think that the general store has a”
lending library. The lead hairdressers with two ancient chairs of the 1920s. The restaurant next door. Oh, the lending library, not what the biggest rented material was. Well, I mean, is it something to do with escaping prisons? No, it wouldn't have been. It was actually a death of material on that in print. It was Chinese translations into Thai of what would you call it romance fiction?
Oh, I didn't pornography. I was going to say pornography, but I wouldn't have thought they'd have that in there. Yeah, not only that. I'm imagining you're the pornography library owner.
“How do you ensure that you ever see the material again? What a big deposit?”
Well, yes, but you know, you do want a bigger out of existence, you know, for two expensive. The magazines were cut up and put into lever art folders after having been laminated and pantialed with very clear paper numbers on front and back. Yeah, so if you're missing a page, you've got fine sessions such for me to deposit. I mean, they didn't supply a sponge and so
Just about everything else was thought of.
If it was that size, obviously you did, as you said, you didn't realize how big it was.
“So how do you even begin to try and decide what is the best way to get out of something like that?”
I realize all the plans I've been going to the prison auto repair shop and being well-led into a VW van, and I think that involved anybody else was just not going to work. Yeah, two dangerous. The courtroom should have, I couldn't find anybody desperate or enough to go for that.
I mean, I had it so it wouldn't have been so bad, but you know, you don't have to look
far to find a grim story of the aftermath of that and tag army ranges, machine gunning, everybody to death in one child history. They weren't successful, but say to yourself, and as much zen-like controllers you can, I am here in this cell and this wall,
“and I want to be out there, what are the things stopping me?”
Sneaky loves them, trusty will blow us whistle on me? Yes, what if they're in bed? Okay,
night time, good. What are the guys doing? Mostly sleeping or drunk? Can you make them more drunk? Yes, I can. What do you need? And in a kind of magpie scavenger way, anything that was interesting at Cape, like the little s-hook, those made of metal, through the old things, not so true of your 100 metres of army bootwebbing.
“From the army boot manufacturing factory within the prison, it was said,”
sick, nylon, woven stuff. No, you could swing off that. I had to disguise it with something, so I made a kind of lettuce bed frame, even though you're not allowed beds in the thing, only a kind of spongy mattressy, or a mat. Best sleeps I ever had, I have to tell you, it was great from my bed, the two inch mattress, locked me, said for it. There are all good things going to an end, and after a year and a half going to a very sporadic court room appearances,
and my Asian face, the shame face, really, lawyer said, sorry, they've had it's orphanage two weeks, three weeks maybe, if any, yeah, not good. Now, even he was admitting the feet at that stage, but when he said not good, it was going to be life sentence, he was not bad, you know? Yeah, yeah, so it looked like they were going to make an example of it, with a death penalty.
So, David's worst fears have been realized, not only was he getting the death penalty, but it was to be carried out in two weeks, three at the most. It was time to leave. With the letter above there, at the top of it, I could see dawn was coming, there was a glow in the sky, somehow happening but terrifying at the same time. Next time, on wanted. , with the world's best conversion, the right path, the checkout with the world's best conversion.
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