Peter Neale
Sep 3, 2018 · 6 min read

A Fortunate Life

John Killick — reformed gambler and former prison escapee

John Killick was born in Sydney in 1942. He is most remembered for a brazen escape from Sydney’s Silverwater jail in 1999 when his then girlfriend, Lucy Dudko, hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint and demanded that the pilot land on the oval at Silverwater Prison where Killick was hiding behind a tree. He ran out, jumped into the chopper and forced the pilot to fly to a sports ground in northern Sydney. From here, the couple hijacked a car and fled. After 6 weeks on the run they were arrested in a caravan park in western Sydney. Killick has spent 30 years of his life in prison. He was finally released in 2015.

Lucy Dudko in custody, police examine the helicopter, John Killick immediately after his arrest.
John Killick

I remember the grainy unfocused footage on the television news. You couldn’t see much. Security cameras were pretty crude back then.

We’re sitting having lunch in the buffet of an RSL in Sydney’s inner west. He is remarkably frank about his life. Yes, he takes full responsibility for everything he has done. Yes, he feels ashamed about terrorising all the staff and customers who were in the banks that he held up to feed his gambling habit and for the impact on his wife and family whom he has consistently let down over the decades.

But Killick’s no snivelling, hand wringing Uriah Heep. He doesn’t try to sell a version of himself. He just says plainly what he sees as the truth.

He’s direct but polite, in an old school way. He believes in manners. He could easily pass for a good-humoured, gravelly voiced farmer or retired builder.

Since his release, he’s been busy. He’s had two books published and is working on a third. The latest one “The Last Escape” has been walking off the shelves in bookshops. It’s already had a couple of print runs.

He talks to young people who might be at risk of getting involved with the law. He says it’s hard. They want to idolise him. They want him to be the outlaw hero. They ask him if there’s anything they can do for him.

He says to them that he’s there to tell them not to be like him. He tries to be friendly but candid, while at the same time having a few laughs and avoiding lecturing. Do they want to spend half of their life in prison?

He is also involved in a program to help find jobs for young people who don’t have many options.

Besides socio-economic disadvantage, there are two other big hurdles that a lot of these kids face: drugs and low levels of literacy. While sympathetic to somebody who is trying to get off drugs, he reckons that there has to be a line in the sand. Unless someone really wants to stop, they won’t. In that situation you can really only help yourself.

The literacy issue is huge. Without being able to read and write, people have no chance of having a normal engagement with society.

A fierce advocate for prison literacy programs, Killick has been involved in representations made to several politicians. However these appeals for change have been fruitless.

Over the last few years despite increases in the number of inmates, prison education programs have been reduced by neo-liberal governments intent on making public sector cuts.

This is little short of insane given that around 60% of people incarcerated in Australian prisons do not have sufficient literacy and numeracy skills to function independently in the workforce. On release, opportunities to find productive work are few and far between.

Killick however, contends that a difficult background should not be an excuse for people who commit crimes. He cites his own background. His father was a violent alcoholic. His mother took an overdose. Young John was sent to fetch the doctor.

Calling from a public phone he was dismayed to find that the doctor wouldn’t come because the family owed money. By the time another doctor was found, his mother was beyond help and died in hospital.

He says that the day she died, his life changed completely. It was him against the world. A year later in 1960, he was in jail for the first time.

And that was it really, the well worn but depressingly efficient machinery of recidivism ground into action. One thing led to another and another. He got hard quickly. There are no options if somebody has a go at you; you’re either going to be the hammer or the anvil.

In retrospect he can see how things played out after the death of his mother. However he insists that no matter what happens, everybody has to take responsibility for what they feel, think and do.

Certainly there are contributing factors that can, and should be, taken into account when assessing culpability, but in the end, individuals must accept what they have done and admit that there have been consequences for others.

This tenet has been central to the treatment that he has received for his lifelong gambling addiction, a drive that was so strong that he was willing to rob a bank to get a stake.

Some years he went straight. He and his then wife Gloria, owned a milk bar/delicatessen that did okay. He lost it during one Saturday of madness at the races.

There was always the irresistible adrenaline of the race and the promise of the pot of easy gold. And at various times he won, and won a lot. His Achilles heel was his inability to stop when he was losing.

So is he cured? He shrugs. The old fire’s gone. Maybe it’s the treatment, maybe it’s getting old, maybe it’s both. In any case, life’s different now. He’s busy, really busy.

There’s been the promotion of the latest book, the talks to the youngsters and meetings with various groups making representations to government and the media on behalf of prisoners.

He’s also doing things that he’s always enjoyed, like chess. He’s always been a pretty decent player, which actually caused some strife in the past when he won games in jail against opponents who didn’t take losing well. He’s played in a number of competitions.

Recently he requested that the parole authority vary his parole conditions so he could spend a weekend in Canberra playing in a tournament. They knocked him back. He reckons it was just spite. What did they think he was going to do? Embark on a pensioner’s crime spree? Corrupt the squeaky clean image of the nation’s capital? He’s pissed off, but not really surprised.

Up until now, I’ve refrained from asking him the obvious crass question. Does he feel like he’s wasted his life? He grins. People have often asked him that. Funnily enough, he’s always been an optimist in the manner, he’d like to think, of A.B Facey

He grins. OK, he’s spent 30 years in jail. For a third of that time, like everybody else he was asleep. That’s 10 years off right there. Then there’s all the time that he’s avoided sitting in traffic jams, and escaped all the boredom and soul — destroying crap that people go through at work.

Even when he was breaking rocks in H Division in Pentridge, he was staying fit, fitter than a lot of blokes will ever be. And to cap it all he’s been shot at a number of times and not killed when evading capture. How’s that for a fortunate life! I realise I’m being gently mocked. We laugh.

On the way out of the club, he thanks the lady at the reception for a nice meal and says that we’ll be back. Old fashioned good manners. She replies that perhaps next time we might like to try the gaming room.

He shakes his head and smiles “ Nah. Not for me. I never win.”

    Peter Neale

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