NSW: Helicopter hijacker wins freedom: report

AAP General News (Australia)
04-23-2006
NSW: Helicopter hijacker wins freedom: report

SYDNEY, April 23 AAP - A gun-toting librarian who hijacked a helicopter to spring her
lover from a maximum security Sydney prison in 1999 will be set free next month.

The NSW State Parole Authority has decided to grant Lucy Dudko parole on May 8 after
model behaviour behind bars at Silverwater jail and because she is a first-time offender,
The Sun-Herald reports.

But she has been banned from visiting her lover, serial armed robber John Killick,
who is serving 23 years in Lithgow jail.

The earliest the "Bonnie and Clyde" couple can be reunited is 2013 when, at age 71,
Killick can seek parole.

In a strange twist, his former wife, Gloria, had been visiting the Moscow-born Dudko
regularly in prison.

Ms Killick, who was estranged from her husband, struck up an unlikely friendship with
the Russian mother-of-one -- helping her with her English and taking her in when Killick
was locked up for bank robbery.

"They formed a really close bond and it helped Lucy regain her life," a family friend
told the newspaper.

Yesterday, Ms Killick confirmed from her home in Sydney's Milson's Point she was still
in touch with Dudko, who turns 48 tomorrow.

But she told The Sun-Herald she was not aware of the parole conditions and did not
know where Dudko would be living on release.

Dudko had made inquiries about hiring a helicopter and had hired prison escape videos
before she helped stage the most dramatic escape in Australian penal history seven years
ago.

She forced a helicopter pilot to fly at gunpoint to the exercise yard of the nation's
biggest maximum security jail to free Killick.

After six weeks on the run, the lovers were captured in a Sydney caravan park.

AAP rs/evt

KEYWORD: DUDKO

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