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The Love-struck Jailer: How Heather Parker Helped Peter Gibb Escape

When Heather Parker and Peter Gibb were caught getting it off in a broom closet in the Melbourne Remand Centre in 1992, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that surely they could have found a better place. Trouble was, they couldn’t. Gibb was on remand for armed robbery and looking down the barrel of a long sentence. Heather Parker was the jail warder assigned to look after him.

Although she was married with two children, 27-year-old Parker had fallen heavily for the swarthy, older career criminal Gibb, who was covered in jailhouse tatts and had been in serious trouble since he was a teenager. It was no secret around the remand centre that Parker had the hots for Gibb, as she was seen kissing him when she opened his cell in the mornings.

The broom closet incident caused an uproar in the remand centre; the other guards put the prisoners in lockdown and staged a stop-work meeting to demand that Parker be booted out. She was first transferred to Pentridge Prison and then to the security ward at St Vincent’s Hospital. She finally wound up in a clerical position at the head office of the Corrections Department. Parker kept in constant contact with Gibb, who had by now received 12 years for the armed robbery charges.

With the aid of another prisoner, Archie Butterly, Gibb planned a bold escape. But he would need the outside assistance of Heather Parker. She couldn’t volunteer quickly enough. She imported an automatic pistol and three stun guns from the US by mail order. Parker then recruited one of Gibb’s friends on the outside to steal a station wagon and a four-wheel drive and some extra number plates. Then she equipped the stolen 4WD with gear that she and Gibb would need for a life on the run – food and petrol supplies, camping gear, mobile phones, police scanners and a camouflage net to hide them from nosy helicopters.

With all in readiness, Gibb and Butterly put their plan into action. At 6pm on Sunday 7 March 1993, they blew out a window on the second floor of the remand centre with a small piece of explosive that Parker had smuggled in. The men kicked out the bars and dropped into La Trobe Street by sliding down a knotted sheet. There they took off in a waiting Ford Falcon station wagon that had the keys in the ignition and a revolver hidden beneath the seat.

An alert warder, Donald Glasson, ran outside the remand centre just in time to hail down a passing taxi and keep police informed over the radio as to the escapees’ progress. The Falcon wagon charged through red lights at great speed and didn’t stop after smashing into another car, but eventually crashed into a ramp on the Westgate Freeway.

Although they were both badly injured, Gibb and Butterly stole a motorbike at gunpoint. When they crashed it and attempted to steal another, a police van pulled up and they were attacked by two police officers who broke Gibb’s arm with a baton. In the brawl one of the officers was shot twice and his gun was stolen. In a hail of bullets Gibb and Butterly took off in the paddy wagon. A short distance away they abandoned the police van and were seen getting into a waiting Suzuki Vitara, which was registered to a Heather Dianne Parker. From there they vanished.

A huge police search across Melbourne turned up nothing. In the meantime, Parker, Gibb and Butterly had driven to Frankston where the stolen 4WD was waiting, hidden in a storage unit. They headed north. The following day at Latrobe Hospital at Moe, Gibb received treatment for a broken arm and Butterly had several deep gashes to his arm stitched and bandaged. Then they headed into the rugged bush of the north-east high country where it was all but impossible to find them if they were careful. But they weren’t.

Even though they had enough supplies to last them in the bush for months until the heat died down, four days later they chose to stay at a hotel at the tiny township of Gaffney’s Creek, about 200 kilometres north-east of Melbourne, where there was no TV or radio and no one had the faintest idea about the Melbourne breakout. Parker and Gibb joined the locals for dinner in the dining room and stayed for beers and a singalong before going to bed for a quick nap.

Soon after the trio vacated the hotel at around 1am and had moved on into the night, a fire broke out in their room and by first light the historic hotel, built in 1865, had burned to the ground. The fire brought police to the area, and a description of the tenants of the room where the fire had started soon had every officer in the district on alert for the escapees.

After finding the 4WD hidden in the bush 25 kilometres south of nearby Jamieson two days later, police tracker dogs picked up a scent and ran into the rainforest, to be met by intense shooting at the pursuing police. The shooting stopped and as Gibb and Parker tried to escape through waist-deep water in the Goulburn River, the dogs were let loose and were soon upon them. The lovers were quickly arrested and shackled. In nearby grass police found the body of Archie Butterly. He had been killed by a single bullet behind his left ear.

Parker and Gibb were charged with six counts of attempted murder and 23 other charges, including armed robbery, car theft, endangering life, using firearms to prevent arrest and possession of explosives. Although it was found that the gun that killed Archie Butterly was the one that the escapees had taken from the police officer during the breakout, and that he hadn’t committed suicide, incredibly no one was ever charged with his murder. Three months later, Parker was granted bail on the condition that she live with her mother.

During the committal hearing and trial Heather Parker and Peter Gibb were like two lovesick teenagers, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes throughout the proceedings. Even when they were both sentenced to 10 years, they pledged to wait for each other. And wait they did. In September 1997, Gibb, who had been released six months earlier after serving just four years (Parker did four-and-a-half), collected Parker from Deer Park Prison in a stretch limousine. They spent the night at Crown Towers. They moved in together and had two children, but with Gibb continually in and out of jail for a variety of offences, life was always going to be tough.

Then Heather Parker caught the old man playing up. She punched the girlfriend, bashed her arm repeatedly against a steel bench, hit her with stools and kicked her while she was lying on the ground. The poor woman was hospitalised for six days and had a metal plate put in her left arm, which was broken in the attack. In March 2007, Heather Parker was sentenced to 18 months’ jail, suspended for two and a half years. With Gibb awaiting sentencing for burglary, the judge said she didn’t want to see their two children go to foster homes.

The couple finally split up for good and in 2011 Gibb died of wounds sustained in a brawl.