True Crime Conversations · Mamamia Podcasts

The Russian Woman Who Hijacked A Helicopter To Free Her Aussie Lover

·1 hr 2 min·4 clips

John Killick is presented as one of Australia's better-known criminals, but the episode quickly settles on why his name stuck. He was the country's first decimal currency bank robber, hitting the ANZ in Cabramatta on the day Australia switched from pounds and shillings to dollars and cents. The episode uses that fact as part of a bigger pattern: Killick was not just a robber, he was someone who kept pushing against custody. On remand for burglary, he once ran at a court appearance and stayed free for about an hour before police found him and took him back to Bathurst Jail. A later attempt to flee from Pentridge ended with him in H Division, the notorious block where violence was an everyday occurrence, a place even Chopper Reed would later avoid. From there the story shifts into a more personal register. After his release, Killick married Gloria and had a child. That chapter does not last. A run-in with Roger Rogerson, the notorious New South Wales police officer known to many listeners from Underbelly, sent him back inside. The episode then reaches the mid-80s Boggo Road jailbreak, when another woman helped bust him out of the Queensland jail. The sequence itself is the point: the robberies, the failed escapes, the prison consequences, and the later break for freedom. What gives the episode weight is the move into reflection. Killick talks about risk-taking as something built into him, and the conversation does not play that for a laugh. He describes the violence of prison life, the choices he made, and the damage that came with them. He says he has true remorse about the harm done to people. He also talks about trying to give back after years of taking, including helping children in the Philippines. That reads as an attempt at repair rather than a neat redemption arc. The show also leaves room for the contradiction at the center of Killick's public image. He speaks about having a code of ethics as a criminal, which is exactly the kind of statement that makes the whole story harder to flatten. The episode does not rush past that tension. It lets him explain how he sees his past, then leaves the listener to sit with the difference between self-justification and accountability. That is where the conversation becomes more than a list of escapes.

As heard by us

A jailbreak story that settles into risk, damage, and remorse.

The episode tracks John Killick from bank robber to escape artist, then back through the consequences of a life built around risk and custody breaks.

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Why you'd press play

A jailbreak saga built around bank robberies, repeat escape attempts, and one bust-out that should not have worked.

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