When the words “bank heist” come up (probably not regularly, we admit) pictures of cowboys with bandannas over their faces recklessly holding up a financial institution may spring to mind, or even the iconic image of Bonnie and Clyde with their guns and classic car. There’s certainly a glamorous, romantically rebellious element to the notion of heists and bank robbers, and the outlaws involved in these crimes have long captured our attention. The anarchical idea of someone living outside the law, escaping the clutches of the authorities and amassing huge fortune has made for some great stories and legendary movies, with an element of idolization and fascination directed towards these criminals.
Here's our Top 10 Most Famous Australian Bank Robbers.
(See also 10 Famous Depression-era Bank Robbers)
(See also Top 10 Most Famous Irish Outlaws and Gangsters)
(See also Top 25 Famous Australian Serial Killers)
10. Victor Peirce
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| (Victor Peirce) |
Victor George Peirce (11 November 1958 – 1 May 2002) was an Australian criminal from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Peirce was a member of the Pettingill family, headed by matriarch and former Richmond brothel owner Kath Pettingill.
In 2005, Peirce's widow, Wendy Peirce gave an interview to Australian media detailing how her husband planned and carried out the 1988 Walsh Street police shootings, a crime for which he was acquitted by jury along with three accomplices after she failed to give truthful evidence in court.
Peirce was shot dead in a car parked opposite the Coles supermarket in Bay St, Port Melbourne on 1 May 2002.
His funeral was held on 9 May 2002, at the Saint Peter and Paul's Parish Church in South Melbourne. Father Bob Maguire conducted the service. Peirce was later buried at the Altona Memorial Park. Present was Jason Moran, former running mate of slain gangster Alphonse Gangitano. Moran was a suspect in the murder of Gangitano, who was shot dead in his Templestowe home on 16 January 1998.
In 2008, he was portrayed by actor Andrew Gilbert in the series Underbelly. He was also portrayed in the 2011 Australian television series Killing Time.
9. Keith Faure
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| (Keith George Faure, circa 1980s) |
Keith George Faure (born June, 1951), from Norlane, Victoria, is an Australian career criminal, convicted of multiple murders and manslaughters. He is currently serving life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 19 years for his role in two murders related to the Melbourne gangland killings. Faure's criminal history includes further convictions for armed robbery and breaking and entering.
Faure and Chopper Read continued a lengthy prison war while imprisoned in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison during the 1970s and 1980s and Faure features prominently in Read's first few books. Faure was also the basis for the character of Keithy George in the film Chopper, who is stabbed to death in the film's opening scenes. Faure, portrayed by actor David Field was reported to be unhappy with his portrayal and used his anger at his depiction in the film as a defence in a minor traffic offence. In the drama series Underbelly Faure is played by Kym Gyngell although as with several other characters his name is not mentioned in the series due to a court order.
8. Brenden Abbott
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| (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.
Abbott has been imprisoned in Woodford Correctional Centre and Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, and held in both mainstream and Supermax conditions. He was moved to Brisbane Correctional Centre in August 2011, and is detained under severe Supermax-style conditions. Though scheduled for release in 2020, he faces further charges in two other states.
A film about Abbott, The Postcard Bandit, was made in 2003.
7. Darcy Dugan
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| (Darcy Dugan) |
Darcy Ezekiel Dugan (29 August 1920 – 22 August 1991) was an Australian bank robber and New South Wales' most notorious prison escape artist.
During his criminal career, he committed numerous armed holdups, robbing banks and even a hospital. However he became more famous for his daring escapes than for his initial crimes.
In 1950 Dugan was sentenced to death, along with a co-offender. An appeal against sentence failed but Cabinet later commuted the sentences to life imprisonment.
After another prison escape, Dugan reportedly left behind a note scrawled on the wall of his cell which read, "Gone to Gowings." The reference to Sydney department store's advertising slogan was slang for many things including "left in haste".
Dugan served a total 35 years in prison, exactly half of his life. He served his final prison sentence at Long Bay Correctional Centre and was released on parole in 1984.
Darcy Dugan died in the Sydney suburb of Glebe from Parkinson's disease on 22 August 1991. He was buried at Rookwood Catholic Cemetery on 29 August 1991.
6. Steve Hart
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| (Steve Hart) |
Steve Hart (1859 – 28 June 1880) was an Australian bushranger renowned for his membership in the Kelly Gang.
Steve Hart was born in Wangaratta to Irish immigrant parents Richard and Bridget Hart (née Young). He was their second son. His family consisted of his brothers Richard Hart (Jr.), Hugh Hart and Thomas Hart, and sisters Esther 'Ettie' Hart, Jane Hart, Winifred Hart and Agnes Hart.
Hart was a sometime jockey around Beechworth and Wangaratta and was reported to win 'The Benalla Handicap' after a protest was upheld. It was rumoured that he rode around in feminine attire and rode sidesaddle to avoid detection.
In 1877, Hart was convicted of horse theft and illegal use of a horse and sentenced to 12 months hard labour in HM Prison Beechworth. When he was released with the usual remission period he promised to work, and he kept his promise—seeing as he never specified where he would work. One of the Kelly brothers (most likely Dan, as he and Hart were friends and had likely met in gaol at some point) came to his property and asked him to help them pan for gold. This prompted Hart's most famous quote, "Here's to a short life and a merry one!" as he rode off to Bullock Creek to help the Kelly brothers and their friend Joe Byrne pan for gold. He was a good person to the poor.
In 1878 the party of four heard shots being fired and, when they investigated, found a police party camped nearby at Stringybark Creek. The next morning the four killed one of the police party. The other two policemen were out looking for the Kelly Brothers as it was not known that Byrne and Hart had joined them. When the two policemen returned to the camp they were ambushed and killed. It is likely that Hart was not armed when the police camp was first held up, but he obtained a firearm afterward. He became an outlaw shortly thereafter, with the rest of the Kelly Gang.
Hart took part in the robberies at Euroa and Jerilderie, and a few of the things he did are worth comment. At Euroa he met an old school friend of his, Francis 'Fanny' Shaw (sometimes known as Maggie Shaw) and through her, the police found out the name of the last member of the Kelly Gang. Hart also stole a watch from Robert Scott, the bank manager, and when teller Bob Booth asked him for something to remember the visit by, Hart gave him a lead bullet carved with the letter 'H'. At Jerilderie in 1879 Hart stole a watch from The Very Reverend Gribble, a parson at the Protestant church, and Ned told him to return it, which Hart did, 'looking daggers'. (Ned Kelly: A Short Life by Ian Jones.) Aftedoper Jerilderie, Hart went into hiding with the gang and, for most of 1879, the gang remained shadowy and elusive figures although Hart did appear at a St. Kilda doctor's surgery to be treated for a foot condition.
In 1880 Hart took part in the infamous siege of Glenrowan in which he, Dan Kelly and Joe Byrne were killed. Following Joe's death from a police bullet during the night, and Ned's capture in the early morning (at roughly 7am) of the 28th, the two found themselves trapped in the hotel and in a hopeless situation. It seems almost definite the two committed suicide sometime during that afternoon.
Their corpses were then badly burnt, as police (not knowing the two had already died) set the Glenrowan Inn on fire in an attempt to draw the outlaws out of the hotel. Hart's body, little more than a charred stump, was claimed by his brother Dick Hart and buried at Greta Cemetery the following day (29 June) in the same grave as Dan Kelly. He was 21 years old.
It has been rumoured that Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were not, in fact, buried in Greta Cemetery but somewhere in either the Hart of the Kelly properties. It has also been rumoured that the pair survived the siege of Glenrowan to escape to either America, South Africa or simply to Queensland.
5. Gregory David Roberts
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| (Gregory David Roberts) |
Gregory David Roberts (born Gregory John Peter Smith; 21 June 1952) is an Australian author best known for his novel Shantaram. He is a former heroin addict and convicted bank robber who escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980 and fled to India, where he lived for ten years.
Roberts reportedly became addicted to heroin after his marriage ended, and he lost custody of his young daughter. In his efforts to finance his drug habit, Roberts became known as the "Building Society Bandit" and the "Gentleman Bandit", because he had chosen to rob only institutions with adequate insurance, he would wear a three-piece suit, and he always said "please" and "thank you" to the people he robbed.
Roberts believed at the time that in this way he was lessening the brutality of his acts, but later in his life he admitted that people only gave him money because he had made them afraid. He escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980.
In 1990, Roberts was captured in Frankfurt after being caught smuggling heroin into the country. He was extradited to Australia and served a further six years in prison, two of which were spent in solitary confinement. According to Roberts, he escaped prison again during that time, but relented and smuggled himself back into jail. His intention was to serve the rest of his sentence to give himself the chance to be reunited with his family. During his second stay in Australian prison, he began writing Shantaram. The manuscript was destroyed by prison wardens, twice, while Roberts was writing it.
After leaving prison, Roberts was able to finally finish and publish his novel, Shantaram. The book's name comes from the name his best friend's mother gave him, which means "Man of Peace", or "Man of God's Peace".
There is debate as to how much of Shantaram is based on true events or is a conflation of real life and fantasy. On that aspect of Shantaram and of the follow-up novel, The Mountain Shadow, Roberts has stated:
Some experiences from my life are described pretty much as they happened, and others are created narratives, informed by my experience. I wanted to write two or three novels on some bare elements from my life, allowing me to explore the themes that interested me, while keeping the narrative immediate by anchoring it to some of my real experiences. They’re novels, not autobiographies, and all of the characters and dialogue is created. It doesn’t matter how much of it is true or not to me, it’s how true they are to all of us, and to our common humanity.
— 180Q&A: GDR's Final Interview, c. 2015
Roberts lived in Melbourne, Germany, and France and finally returned to Mumbai (Bombay), where he set up charitable foundations to assist the city's poor with health care coverage. He was finally reunited with his daughter. He got engaged to Françoise Sturdza, who is the president of the Heart for India Foundation. Roberts also wrote the original screenplay for the movie adaptation of Shantaram.
In 2009, Roberts was named a Zeitz Foundation Ambassador for Community. Ambassadors help raise awareness and shape activities in their areas. In 2011, Roberts stepped aside as an Ambassador due to the pressure of other commitments but continues to assist the Zeitz Foundation as a Friend.
The follow-up novel The Mountain Shadow was released on 13 October 2015 by Little Brown.
4. Joe Byrne
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| (Joe Byrne) |
Joe Byrne (1856 – 28 June 1880) was an Australian bushranger born in Victoria to an Irish immigrant. A friend of Ned Kelly, he was a member of the Kelly Gang, who were declared outlaws after the murder of three policemen at Stringybark Creek. Despite wearing the improvised body armour for which Ned Kelly and his gang are now famous (and which he is reputed to have designed), Byrne received a fatal gunshot during the gang's final violent confrontation with police at Glenrowan, in June 1880.
Joe Byrne was present at Stringybark Creek with the Kelly brothers and Steve Hart on 26 October 1878 when they surprised a patrol of four police officers on their trail, with three of them shot time of his death. The gang were declared as outlaws for this incident on 15 November 1878 and a price of £2000 (equivalent to approximately A$754,000 in 2008) was placed on their heads.
The Kelly Gang started developing a strategy with Byrne acting as Kelly's lieutenant, always being consulted about strategy. The Kelly Gang robbed the Euroa branch of the National Bank of Australia stealing over £2,000 which was the largest heist to that point. Joe Byrne drafted the Euroa letter (now known as the Cameron letter) in red ink sent by Ned Kelly to Donald Cameron, a local MLC. claiming that justice had not been done in the case of his mother and himself. It concluded "For I need no lead or powder to revenge my cause, And if words be louder I will oppose your laws."
The police locked up over 20 alleged supporters of the Kelly gang between 3 January 1879 and 22 April 1879 under the Felons Apprehension Act 1878. This cemented public support for the gang especially in northeast Victoria. Joe Byrne was able to use this support to advantage by penning a number of bush ballads about the exploits of Kelly and his gang:
My name is Ned Kelly,
I'm known adversely well.
My ranks are free,
my name is law,
Wherever I do dwell.
My friends are all united,
my mates are lying near.
We sleep beneath shady trees,
No danger do we fear.
By writing the various letters that were issued in Kelly's names and the bush ballads and designing the armour, Joe Byrne was the man responsible with Kelly himself for creating the Kelly legend. In the following 125 years, the legend has grown. There have been a number of films made about the Kelly Gang including a 1906 film which was one of the first feature films ever made. In 2003, Orlando Bloom played the part of Joe Byrne in Ned Kelly.
Australian novelist Peter Carey won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize the same year for the True History of the Kelly Gang. This was inspired by the Jerilderie letter drafted by Byrne.
Ned Kelly and the Kelly Gang has been immortalized by Sidney Nolan wearing the armour designed by Joe Byrne in a famous set of paintings. This inspired a scene at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics.
Joe Byrne is referenced several times in the 2008 song 'Luck in Odd Numbers' by Australian Band The Drones from the album Havilah.
3. Dan Kelly
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| (Dan Kelly at 17) |
Dan Kelly (1861 – 28 June 1880) was an Australian bushranger and outlaw. The son of an Irish convict, he was the younger brother of the bushranger Ned Kelly. Dan and Ned killed three policemen at Stringybark Creek in northeast Victoria, near the present-day town of Tolmie, Victoria. With two friends, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart, the brothers formed the Kelly Gang. They robbed banks, took over whole towns, and kept the people in Victoria and New South Wales frightened. For two years the Victorian police searched for them, locked up their friends and families, but could not find them. Dan Kelly died during the infamous siege of Glenrowan.
There was no autopsy held on Dan or Steve, and there have been many stories about what might have happened. The arrangement of their bodies in the hotel suggests they may have killed themselves. This was the story that was used in the first Kelly film, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, and in the 2003 Ned Kelly movie.
Despite his body being identified by police and a priest before being burnt, there have also been stories that both Dan and Steve survived the fire. There is little evidence to support these claims. One man, James Ryan, said he was Dan Kelly. In 1934 he went on stage at the Brisbane Exhibition and told stories about the Kelly Gang. He died on 29 July 1948, after being struck by a train. The Ipswich City Council have put a memorial on his grave.
In 2001, scientists took a small piece of bone from the grave of Charles Devine Tindall at Toowoomba, Queensland, to see if they could find DNA to prove he was Dan Kelly. Devine, who had burn scars on his body, told his family he was really Dan. He said he had hidden under the floor of the Glenrowan hotel and escaped after the fire. An archaeological dig at the site of the hotel by Adam Ford in 2008 found that there was no cellar or other hiding place under the floors.
In October 1902, a Melbourne newspaper printed a story that Dan Kelly and Steve Hart were living in South Africa. The men had fought in the Boer War. Another man, Jim Davis from Darra (a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland), said in 1938 that he was Dan Kelly. He claimed that he, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne had escaped from the hotel. He also said he was born at the Eureka Stockade in 1854, which makes him too old to have really been Dan. "There are three people alive today who met Dan or Steve. Mr John Harris and Vince Allen both met dan Kelly. Vince (now 82) met Dan at Main Junction in 1944. Then Helen Stanwick, now 103 met Steve Hart (who called himself Harry Thompson - who was also treated by Dr Harry Power at Devil's Pulpit) when she was a young woman. I have many emails and photos which are testimony that these two men escaped the hotel fire at Glenrowan."
The story of the Dan and Ned Kelly has been told many times. There have been more books written about the Kelly Gang than any other event in Australian history. The very first full-length film in the world, made in 1906, was The Story of the Kelly Gang. In the 2003 Ned Kelly movie starring Heath Ledger as Ned Kelly, the part of Dan Kelly was played by Irish actor Laurence Kinlan. Orlando Bloom played the part of Joe Byrne.
2. Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor
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| (Joseph Theodore Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor) |
Joseph Theodore Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor (29 June 1888 – 27 October 1927) was an Australian gangster from Melbourne. He appeared repeatedly and sometimes prominently in Melbourne news media because of suspicions, formal accusations, and some convictions related to a 1919 violent gang war, to his absconding from bail and hiding from the police in 1921–22, and to his participating in a robbery where a bank manager was murdered in 1921.
Taylor enjoyed a fearsome reputation in 1920s Melbourne. A "spiv", described as the Australian equivalent of the 'American bootleggers', his crimes ranged from pickpocketing, assault and shopbreaking to armed robbery and murder. He also derived income from sly-grog selling, two-up schools, illegal bookmaking, extortion, prostitution and, in his later years, is believed by some to have moved into cocaine dealing.
In Frank Hardy's 1950 novel Power Without Glory, Taylor is portrayed as the character Snoopy Tanner. A fictionalised account of the life of Melbourne businessman and Australian Labour Party power-broker John Wren, Power Without Glory depicted Taylor as an associate of Wren and suggested that, together with John Jackson, Taylor was involved in the 1915 Melbourne Trades Hall burglary in which a Constable David McGrath was shot and killed. While some people continue to suspect Taylor's involvement in the Trades Hall burglary, there is no known evidence of this or an association between Taylor and Wren.
In 1976 Frank Howson and Barry Ferrier wrote an opera based on Taylor's life, titled Squizzy, which was broadcast by ABC Radio and 3CR and received much media attention. The title role was performed by Men At Work's Colin Hay. A major stage production was in the early stages of being mounted, to be directed by Nigel Triffitt of Tap Dogs fame, when a film version by a rival producer was announced, causing the stage production to fall over. The film, titled Squizzy Taylor and loosely based on Taylor's life, was released in 1982 but flopped with critics and public alike.
Taylor was also featured in Robert Newton's Runner, a book about Taylor's alcohol runner which is set in the streets of Richmond from 1919 to 1920. No information was obtained in the book on Taylor, although Cutmore and Stokes were mentioned.
Taylor is the subject of Touch The Black: The Life and Death of Squizzy Taylor, a fictional account of his life and death by Melbourne poet and writer Chris Grierson.
Taylor was featured in the Australian series Underbelly: Razor, a 13-part series covering the Razor war which occurred in Sydney during the twenties and thirties, which was broadcast in 2011. In the fourth season of the Australian true crime series, Taylor was portrayed by actor Justin Rosniak. The sixth season, Underbelly: Squizzy, is based on his life. The eight-part series aired on the Nine Network (as with the previous series of Underbelly) with actor Jared Daperis replacing Rosniak in the title role.
1. Ned Kelly
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| (Ned Kelly the day before his execution) |
Edward "Ned" Kelly (December 1854 – 11 November 1880) was an Australian bushranger of Irish descent.
Kelly was born in the British colony of Victoria as the third of eight children to an Irish convict from County Tipperary and an Australian mother with Irish parentage. His father died after serving a six-month prison sentence, leaving Kelly, then aged 12, as the eldest male of the household. The Kellys were a poor selector family who saw themselves as downtrodden by the Squattocracy and as victims of police persecution. Arrested in 1870 for associating with bushranger Harry Power, Kelly was first convicted of stealing horses and imprisoned for three years. He fled to the bush in 1878 after being indicted for the attempted murder of a police officer at the Kelly family's home. After he, his brother Dan, and two associates fatally shot three policemen, the Government of Victoria proclaimed them outlaws.
During the remainder of the Kelly Outbreak, Kelly and his associates committed armed bank robberies in Euroa and Jerilderie, and murdered Aaron Sherritt, a friend turned police informer. In a manifesto letter, Kelly—denouncing the police, the Victorian government and the British Empire—set down his own account of the events leading up to his outlawry. Threatening dire consequences against those who defied him, he ended with the words, "I am a widow's son outlawed and my orders must be obeyed."
When Kelly's attempt to derail and ambush a police train failed, he and his gang, dressed in homemade suits of metal armour, engaged in a final violent confrontation with the Victoria Police at Glenrowan on 28 June 1880. All were killed except Kelly, who was severely wounded by police fire and captured. Despite support for his reprieve, Kelly was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging, which was carried out at the Old Melbourne Gaol. His final words are famously reported to have been, "such is life".
Even before his execution, Kelly had become a legendary figure in Australia. Historian Geoffrey Serle called Kelly and his gang "the last expression of the lawless frontier in what was becoming a highly organised and educated society, the last protest of the mighty bush now tethered with iron rails to Melbourne and the world." Despite the passage of more than a century, he remains a cultural icon, inspiring countless works in the arts, and is the subject of more biographies than any other Australian. Kelly continues to cause division in his homeland: some celebrate him as Australia's equivalent of Robin Hood, while others regard him as a murderous villain undeserving of his folk hero status. Journalist Martin Flanagan wrote: "What makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same—it's that everyone sees him. Like a bushfire on the horizon casting its red glow into the night."
On 1 August 2012 the Victorian government issued a licence for Kelly's bones to be returned to the Kelly family, who made plans for their final burial. They also appealed for the person who possessed Kelly's skull to return it.
On 20 January 2013, Kelly's relatives granted his final wish and buried his remains in consecrated ground at Greta cemetery near his mother's unmarked grave. A piece of Kelly's skull was also buried with his remains and was surrounded by concrete to prevent looting. The burial followed a Requiem Mass held on 18 January 2013 at St Patrick's Catholic Church in Wangaratta.