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Russell 'Mad Dog' Cox

Long before he got the nickname ‘Mad Dog’ due to his escapes from prison and fearless bank hold-ups, Russell Cox was in trouble with the law. Born prematurely as Melville Schnitzerling in Brisbane on 15 September 1949, he was nicknamed ‘Tim’ by his loving family. But for no apparent reason, it wasn’t long before he was well and truly off the rails.

Most of his growing up was spent in and out of training centres for juvenile delinquents and by the time he was sent to adult’s jail for car stealing in 1966 he had a formidable record for just about every crime in the book. There seemed little doubt that young Melville had chosen crime as his life career.

Notorious by 1972 at the age of just 23, he changed his name to Russell Cox and embarked on what would become his specialty – holding up banks with a gun. But Cox’s modus operandi as a bank robber was a new approach. During his one-man hold-ups he remained calm and spoke pleasantly to the staff and customers as he robbed them. There was no screaming and yelling and poking guns in their faces.

Once his job in the bank was done he would calmly leave the building and make good his escape in a waiting car. And he got away with it for years. But it was only a matter of time before he came unstuck.

In 1974 Russell Cox was arrested in Sydney for armed robbery and car theft and sentenced to 14 years in jail. In August 1975 he attempted to break out of the Metropolitan Reception Prison at Long Bay by taking prison warder Stephen Tandy hostage at gunpoint. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the attempted murder of the warder and the judge threw in 15 years’ hard labour for good measure.

By now Russell Cox was known as Mad Dog.

Deemed an ‘incorrigible’, Cox was sent to the only known place in New South Wales that could contain such men – Katingal – the window-less, concrete monolith within Long Bay Jail that housed up to 40 of the state’s most dangerous criminals at a time under 24-hour constant surveillance.

In the 1978 Royal Commission into Prisons in New South Wales, Mr Justice Nagle described Katingal as being designed for ‘the containment of dangerous violent criminals which arose directly out of general dissatisfaction with Grafton, which had just been closed. Katingal very quickly began to suffer from the same problems as Grafton, for the same reasons; the classification of inmates as “the worst 1 per cent” allowed the abuse of authority that led to unacceptable conditions’.

But none of that meant a thing to the Mad Dog. In November 1977, after plotting Katingal’s weak spots and the moves of the guards down to the split second, the super fit and extremely intelligent Cox was over the wall without so much as a hand laid on him let alone a shot fired.

When the news spread to the mainstream of Long Bay Jail the prisoners erupted in the knowledge that one of their own had done the impossible and escaped from what the government had claimed was a mixture of Alcatraz and Devil’s Island rolled into one. There were celebrations in the old jail that night. It was the night that Mad Dog Cox became a legend.

No one but the ultimate optimist expected Cox to last very long on the outside given his demeanor and penchant for violence if cornered. They all expected him back within days. But that was not to be. The Mad Dog stayed on the run for 11 years. During this time Cox was cunning enough to stay calm and live the life of a normal citizen – apart from the odd bank robbery for spending money. With glowing faked references Cox and his de-facto wife and dog rented modest homes and outwardly lived the life of the average couple next door.

Cox and his wife exercised regularly, were modest drinkers and non-smokers. They ate out often and didn’t make friends. They travelled to Asia on numerous occasions on faked passports and indulged in their favourite Japanese foods. Cox also spent three years in the UK and Europe.

But the ever-alert Cox kept a machine gun under the front seat of his car and carried a pistol at all times. He was also tapped into the local police station to keep up to date on all of the news of his whereabouts. Mad Dog had no intentions of giving in without a fight.

Rumour had it that Cox was in contact with another notorious escape artist, Raymond John Denning, while Denning was still in prison and that Denning was let out early to lead the police to the Mad Dog. Rumour or fact, it worked.

On 22 July 1988, Cox was arrested with Denning in the car park of the Doncaster Shoppingtown complex in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. After the police riddled their car with bullets Cox and Denning surrendered passively. The car was full of guns and the pair had been staking out an armoured van full of money.

Mad Dog was extradited to New South Wales and arrived back in jail to a hero’s welcome to serve out the remainder of his life sentence. In 1996 the life sentence was reduced to a non-parole term of 29 years which, taking into consideration the 11 years on the run and good behaviour, expired in early December 2004.

Russell Cox is a free man. One of the people who strongly recommended his parole was Stephen Tandy, the officer Cox attempted to murder in his first escape attempt. If what was said of him by his parole officers, warders and prison officials is true, we shall never hear of Russell Cox again.

An intelligent, quiet, likeable man who by all accounts could have done a lot better with his life than stick up banks and escape from jail, Cox wants to live a simple life and try and make up for those lost years. For all our sakes, let’s hope he does.