After one of Australia’s largest man hunts concluded earlier this month, I reflected on an article I wrote for an Australian adult magazine. They edited the fun right out of it, so, behold, the director’s cut.
John Dillinger, American
Active from 1933 to 1934
We are lucky to have avoided treatment for gonorrhoea at the Indiana State Prison in the 1920s. John Dillinger didn’t and doubled over holding a beaming red penis, said, ‘I will be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here’. After his stint in the can, JD was freed – headfirst into the US Great Depression.
Dillinger thought fuck that! passed the job queues and went straight to the bank. Posing as a bank alarm salesman, he robbed it. JD knew he had talent, decades before the game show. In one year, Dillinger racked up so many robberies, he made Patrick Swayze and the ex-Presidents in Point Break look like Patrick Swayze in Ghost. After 24, they had to create the FBI which cornered Dillinger as he left a theatre.
Josef Mengele, German
Aka: The Angel of Death
Active from 1944 to 1979
The mad scientist of the Nazi party slithered his way out of Europe after WW2 and dodged capture for 34 years.
‘Uncle Mengele’ as he introduced himself to the children of Auschwitz, preferred anaesthetic-free surgery and had a stomach-churning fascination with twins. Twins, he figured, would restore the German army in half the time.
After the war, the angel of death fled to South America, thinking all was rosy. It was there that the feared Nazi hunters MOSSAD bagged his golf buddy, Adolf Eichmann. MOSSAD could ill afford two snakes on one plane, and Mengele fled to Paraguay where the trail went cold. The prick died, drowning in a pool.
John Wilkes Booth, American
Dates: 1865
Booth, a dyed in the wool confederate, planned to topple the anti-slavery government by taking out the President at Ford Theatre in Washington, DC.
Booth was an accomplished stage actor so he had no problem slipping into the Presidential booth. With one shot he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Booth then lept onto stage to announce, ‘The South is avenged!’ 12 days later, and by then the subject of the biggest manhunt in US history, Booth, cornered in a barn, shared the fate of the deceased President. Shot in the back of the head.
Nancy Wake, New Zealand
Dates: 1940-1945
Aka: The White Mouse
A gifted smuggler and such a pain in the Gestapo’s arse/derriere, the Nazis put a 5 million franc reward on Wake’s head. What they didn’t consider that one time runaway was no stranger to hiding out.
Wake had witnessed the Nazi invasion of France and took up with the Resistance, helping to evacuate thousands of Allied troops. Unlike her moniker, Wake was anything but timid. She had executed a female German spy when her male comrades couldn’t, and took out an SS soldier bare-handed with a judo-chop. Wake was never captured and lived out her days on gin and tonics in London’s best hotels.
Ted Kacynski, American
Dates: 1978-1995
Aka: Unabomber (University and Airline Bomber)
The mad professor stumped the FBI for years until his younger brother turned him in.
A child prodigy with an IQ of 167, Kacynski was an assistant Professor of Mathematics by 26.
Quitting the world of academia, Kacynski became a recluse and committed local acts of vandalism to stop what he considered overdevelopment. It raised few eyebrows, so Kacynski upped the stakes. Over 17 years, he mailed 16 letter bombs, killing 3 people and injuring many more. When the Unabomber’s manifesto was printed, David Kacynski, who long suspected his erstwhile brother, linked the writing styles and gifted the FBI their most wanted man.
Gregory David Roberts, Australian.
Dates: 1980-1990
Aka: Building society bandit
For a bank robber who managed 10 years on the lam, Greg Roberts is one hell of an author.
Imprisoned for 23 years for a string of bank robberies, Roberts snuck out of Pentridge Prison and fled to India, where he became a quasi-doctor for Mumbai’s slum dwellers. On Australia’s most wanted lists, the gifted crim didn’t take long to get the Mumbai mafia’s attention. Roberts was running guns, forging passports and smuggling drugs – the latter getting him deported back to Australia. His manuscript for ‘Shantaram’ a fictionalised novel of his experiences, was destroyed not once, but twice by overzealous prison guards.