Brenden Abbott

Brenden James Abbott (born 8 May 1962) is a convicted Australian bank robber.

He is reported to have stolen and hidden millions of dollars, and was dubbed "the postcard bandit" by police seeking media coverage.

As a hearing-impaired 12-year-old in November 1974, he was maltreated at Hillston Boys Home.

Abbott attended Eastern Hills High School in Mount Helena and was considered an average to good student.

Abbott had fled from police during questioning in relation to burglary at the Nollamara police station in 1986 and in 1987 successfully stole $11,200 from the Commonwealth Bank in Perth with his first bank robbery.

In the months following, police arrested Abbott at Perth Airport.

Sentenced to Fremantle Prison, Abbott was given duties in the tailor workshop, fitting and sewing uniforms to order.

It was through the workshop Abbott and Aaron Reynolds were able to create fake prison guard uniforms.

On 24 November 1989 Abbott dressed in the false uniform, cut through the bars in the workshop and gained access to the guard's walkway, he made his way across the rooftop and out of the prison grounds.

This escape earned Abbott his lifelong notoriety as a criminal genius, and ultimately led to his permanent and erroneous branding as "the postcard bandit."

Media reports in the 1990s said Abbott sent postcards of his travels to the Western Australian Police.

However, the story was a WA Police media unit concoction; the "postcards" were photos Abbott lost while running from police with Aaron Reynolds after the Fremantle Prison escape, and were intended for his friends and family.

They included a picture of Reynolds outside the Dwellingup police station.

In the almost 150-year history Fremantle Prison was operational, Abbott is the only prisoner to escape and never return due to its closure in 1991.

While Reynolds was arrested within weeks of the Fremantle escape, Abbott went on to establish himself as a "professional" bank robber, believed to have been responsible for "40 to 50" bank robberies across Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland's Gold Coast.

Working in Abbott's favour, the Adelaide police force was structured with each suburb having its own CIB office, limiting communication between the departments and making Adelaide a repeated target.

Rivalry between the states made intelligence sharing minimal and Western Australian Police were yet to issue a warrant for Abbott's arrest almost five years following the escape.

By 1994 the states' police departments compromised and agreed to work together.

Elevated to the status of Australia's most wanted man, his five-and-a-half years on the run came to an end when police tracked down a post-office box on Queensland's Gold Coast used by Abbott, which was found to contain a pager bill registered to the address where he was living.

On 26 March 1995 Abbott was recaptured.

On 5 November 1997, less than three years after his recapture, Abbott escaped with four other prisoners from Sir David Longland Prison at Wacol, Queensland.

Using angel wire—diamond-encrusted wire—smuggled into the prison to cut through the bars in their cells, the escapees made it to the perimeter sensor fence where they were thrown bolt cutters by an accomplice, Brendan Berichon, who had been released in September.

Uncharacteristically for Abbott, the escape from Sir David Longland Prison in November 1997 involved actual force rather than an implied threat of force.

While cutting through the sensor fencing, the alarm was raised.

Berichon was armed and fired on a patrol vehicle successfully disabling it.

Guards were pinned down by the shots.

The offenders alleged that this occurred in panic, when the escapees' escape plan went awry.

Nonetheless, it gave the escapees enough time to cut through the fence and escape in the car driven by Berichon.

Abbott was on the run for six months from 1997 to 1998.

A film about Abbott, The Postcard Bandit, was made in 2003.

A former ward of the state of Western Australia, Abbott continues to suffer anxiety and related health disorders, as noted in a semi-biographical work, Australian Outlaw, by Derek Pedley.

His watercolour "Little Boy Blue" was painted after the November 2009 national apology to Forgotten Australians.

Abbott is recognised as a highly intelligent criminal and "minor genius" with a strong reliance on memory and observational skills to carry out his criminal activities.

He used his knowledge and self-taught skills in make-up to create convincing disguises, computers to create false IDs, and electronics to dodge alarms and police.

Weeks were spent methodically planning each bank robbery including observing the staff in the bank, identifying weaknesses in security, patterns of behaviour and the layout of the premises prior to the robbery taking place.

These skills are widely thought to have assisted him in both successful prison escapes.

Police officers who have interviewed Abbott have stated he is always probing for information on how he has been caught or what the police know about him.

Abbott used his understanding of police methodology and intelligence gathering to successfully avoid capture during his time as an escapee.

Abbott was held in a maximum-security prison in Queensland until he was transferred in 2016 to Casuarina Prison in Western Australia.

He will be eligible for parole in 2026.