Donnelly — did he get help from outside?

Press, 26 November 1977, Page 1

Donnelly — did he get help from outside?

\Nas it a lucky break, or did John McKinnon Donnelly gel outside help when he escaped from the Supreme Court in Armagh Street. Christchurch, yesterday?

Donnelly was in a holding cell at the court waiting to be sentenced for one of his seven other escapes when he punched his way through a wall and disappeared. The police have not decided whether Donnelly was helped with transport. A car disappeared from near the court about the time of the escape, and a man claiming to be Donnelly has referred to outside help. But whether he was helped he was still free early this morning, in spite of a big police search. Brief statements were made by telephone to “The Press” and other news organisations in Christchurch after yesterday’s escape by a man claiming to be Donnelly. In one conversation the caller identified as a helper a person who appeared in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday on a charge unrelated to Donnelly’s activities. The authenticity of the telephone calls is still in doubt, but they tally with the attitude Donnelly has shown in seeking publicity. During one of his earlier excursions, a message to the police, written on a pair of pyjama trousers and signed “Johnny Donnelly,” was left in the mail box at the front door of “The Press.” Seven of Donnelly’s escapes have occurred while he was in the hands of the Justice Department. One of the mysteries about the escape yesterday is whether pure luck played a part in the timing or whether Donnelly was briefed about the lay-out of the court building. Donnelly and another prisoner were put in a cell at 9.10 a.m. and their handcuffs removed. They were the only prisoners in that cell and were due to be sentenced with two others at 9.30 a.m. on charges of assaulting a constable with intent to facilitate their escape from lawful custody. The charges arose from the “pepper” escape from the Magistrate’s Court in August. (Report, Page 7.)

Fifteen minutes later, a prison officer entered the cell, but Donnelly had disappeared. He had unscrewed a fibre-board panel above the pan in the cell’s lavatory alcove and smashed a hole in the fibrous-plaster wall to crawl through to the women’s lavatory in the barristers’ robing room. It appears that from there he walked down the stairs and out the front doors of the court building to Armagh Street without being recognised. Within minutes of Donnelly’s escape being discovered. the court building was swarming with detectives and uniformed police. They were joined

by prison officers and officials of the Justice Department in a thorough search of the area, but no trace of Donnelly was found. What police, prison officials, and court staff find perplexing is how Donnelly knew (if indeed he did) that he could get through the wall behind the lavatory to the robingroom lavatories. Counsel for Donnelly

and the other three escapers had been using the robing room and left only a few minutes before the break; several other counsel arriving for 10 a.m. divorce hearings reached the robing room only minutes later. Donnelly’s movements from then are also in doubt; there has been a suggestion that an accomplice had a car waiting. But another possibility (on

which the police place some weight) is that Donnelly might have been the person who took a yellow 1976 Cortina car, registered number HUB4OB, from a building yard nearby about the time of the escape. Another report, that a man looking like Donnelly was seen driving a white Holden car near the Selwyn River bridge yesterday morning, resulted in police roadblocks at Ashburton and the Rakaia Gorge. An R.N.Z.A.F. Airtrainer returning from Timaru to Wigram was asked to keep a watch for the vehicle and a second Airtrainer left Wigram, at the request of the police, to search the area. But the police are no longer maintaining those road blocks and are concentrating their search in Christchurch. Several houses have been visited and former acquaintances of Donnelly’s questioned. In the meantime, the Justice Department will hold an inquiry into the escape as part of normal procedure. The superintendent of Paparua Prison and his deputy (Messrs H. Stroud and J. Leimon) visited the scene of the escape with the Supreme Court registrar (Mr T. A. F. Withers) yesterday afternoon. Before repair work is done to the cell on Monday, Ministry of Works architects will help to devise some way of strengthening the holding cells to prevent any further through-the-wall breakouts.