A charismatic criminal, corrupt cops, and the brutality of Grafton Gaol – the story of Kevin John Simmonds is more than compelling true crime. 

In 1959 most people in Australia would have known the names ‘Simmonds and Newcombe’. They were the two prisoners who broke out of Long Bay Gaol and eluded an enormous police search over five weeks. This excellent book is a biography of one of those escapees: Kevin Simmonds.

It starts with his traumatic childhood, including the drowning death of his young sister and the savage beatings he, his mother and siblings often received from his dreadful father, which he seemed to mostly rise above. He was a handsome, musically gifted, charming, happy-go-lucky fellow who enjoyed risky adventurous behaviour. His car stealing gradually escalated to police chases and burglaries and he was imprisoned in the brutal children’s prison at Mount Penang near Gosford. His criminal behaviour further escalated to safe-blowing and ultimately to the armed robbery of a Rose Bay bank, which culminated in his arrest.

Two other villains entered his life, each a narcissistic servant of the criminal justice system.

Simmonds was arrested by publicity-seeking Detective Sergeant Ray ‘the Gunner’ Kelly, famous for shooting suspects when he was arresting them. He was a notorious verballer/ perjurer who was close to the presumed corrupt premier Robin Askin. He was also a mentor of criminal cop Roger Rogerson. I was once told by a judge who had previously been a policeman that he had once entered a police interview room where the always bespectacled Kelly was interrogating a suspect. He saw Kelly in one swift single movement remove his glasses with one hand and at the same instant hit his suspect in the face with the other. My source said it was so neat that it must have been well practised. It was Kelly who arrested Simmons for various burglaries and the bank robbery and who later led 500 police and several hundred civilians in pursuit of the escapees, while often leaking disinformation to the media.

Simmonds was given a very hefty 15 years by the controversial Judge George Amsberg. Simmonds presciently then stated, ‘They’ll never hold me.’ Hence the title of the book. A Crown prosecutor once told me that in his earlier career, when he was acting for an accused being tried before Amsberg, anyone reading the trial transcript would think the judge was summing up the defence case to the jury in a balanced way. But all the while as he did so, the judge walked along the bench holding his nose with one hand and pulling an imaginary toilet chain with the other. My source said that in spite of affidavits attesting to this gross misbehaviour, the Court of Criminal Appeal protected Amsberg and upheld the conviction.

It’s good to be able to reflect on the extent that New South Wales policing and the judiciary have improved in recent years

Simmonds had his own code of principled behaviour. While being interviewed by Kelly, he confessed to a burglary that the police did not know he had committed, for which someone else had been convicted and sentenced. Simmonds believed that he could not live with the idea of an innocent prisoner, who the police had presumably verballed, continuing to be imprisoned for his crime. This confession must have caused Kelly considerable difficulties.

The book is very well researched with the author poring over many newspaper reports during his subject’s 37 days on the lam, court transcripts and exhibits, police files and Simmonds’ loving sister Jan’s memoir of her brother For Simmo, published after his death, as well as Newcombe’s 1970 memoir Inside Out. It makes very good use of references to films, TV shows and news of the times. There are detailed recreations of the escapees’ various hideouts, which included the bowels of a pavilion in the Moore Park showground (now Fox Studios); beneath the floor of a rural Methodist church (and listening quietly to the Sunday sermon); and a cave in Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Simmonds was finally caught when a park ranger discovered him digging a great hole into which he planned to push a caravan he intended to steal.

Stupidly, the two escapees also broke into the minimum-security Emu Plains prison farm, where Newcombe had at one time been a prisoner, to get supplies. They were armed with a baseball bat and a cricket stump when they were confronted by an unfortunate prison officer, who died after they hit him. Their trial for murder was presided over by Justice Jock McClemens. The prosecution case was not that they had intended to kill but that they had acted with reckless indifference to human life. On the evidence it was also open to the jury to find them guilty of manslaughter, and this is what the jury did. A conviction for murder carried a mandatory life sentence; manslaughter, a maximum life sentence. The judge was contemptuous of the jury verdict and sentenced Simmonds to life, the same as if had been convicted murder. Both prisoners were sent to the intractable section of Grafton Gaol.

This book is more than just a well-written true crime thriller. It educates readers about the terrible details of one of the most disgracefully sordid episodes in government-sanctioned criminality in this nation’s history.

In 1943 part of Grafton Gaol was dedicated to prisoners regarded as intractable – essentially those who had escaped, or tried to, and those who had killed or harmed a prison officer. The book details the regular, often daily, brutal baton bashings and psychological torture meted out to the prisoners. It is not easy reading. All of that torture was substantiated by Justice Nagle, who stated in his 1978 royal commission report:

It is the view of the Commission that every prison officer who served at Grafton during the time it was used as a gaol for intractables must have known of its brutal regime. The majority of them, if not all, would have taken part on the illegal assaults on prisoners.

Simmonds spent six years in this terrible place, and Adams describes his descent into a mumbling, shuffling, vacant-eyed self-harmer. Describing Simmons’ time in the tracs, Adams says:

You become paranoid. You think you are being poisoned by guards and fellow-prisoners. You eat your tobacco ration. You have burn marks all over you even though you don’t smoke. You don’t make sense sometimes. Your behaviour is of such concern to a fellow intractable in March 1965 he risks writing a secret note saying you need psychiatric help. You are seen by (a government psychiatrist) in the company of your basher-in-chief.

This regime was well known to many in the criminal justice system but continued for 33 years until the Nagle Royal Commission into New South Wales Prisons commenced in 1976.

Simmonds died in Grafton in 1966 aged 31 years, having spent 20 per cent of his life there. The coroner claimed it was suicide by hanging. It is still unclear if the prison officers directly or indirectly killed him. The book has a thoughtful analysis of the inquest.

It is important for the public to know these details of the Grafton regime to prevent its reintroduction and the book has done a fine job in this regard. A recurrence can never be ruled out given the current trend of governments’ law and order polices, as well as the recent examples of Australia’s greatest ally’s history of CIA-led rendition, Guantanamo Bay, and Trump’s contempt for the rule of law. Amazingly, since Justice Nagle delivered his damning report, the largest court complex in Sydney has been named after John Maddison, who was the minister responsible for the state’s prison service for a substantial period of the brutal Grafton regime.

The book had personal resonance for me as I knew both Jan Simmonds and Les Newcombe. At the Nagle Royal Commission I represented public interest organisations and I was particularly interested in what various witnesses had to say about Simmonds’ death. Jan had somehow heard about this and in 1977 came to see me. I was able to guide her to various parts of the royal commission transcript that referred to her brother and she spent some hours in my office taking notes. She was not what I expected a notorious criminal’s sister to be. She was stylish and articulate and told me that she worked in the fashion industry. It was obvious she loved her brother very much and was no fan of Les Newcombe. She was researching the book she wanted to write about her brother, For Simmo, which was published in 1980.

The next I heard from Jan was in 1980 when I received an invitation to her wedding in the Wayside Chapel to ex-prisoner and escapee Darcy Dugan, who had somehow survived the brutality of Grafton for over 11 years, twice as long as Simmons. Conducted by the admirable Rev. Ted Noffs, it was different to other weddings I had attended. The couple separated after several years but remained on friendly terms. Jan was one of a number of women I have known who fell in love with a prisoner or ex-prisoner, and the book discusses the large number of female fans Simmonds gathered while on the run. Psychologists call the phenomenon hybristophilia.

As part of his research, in 2019 Michael Adams traced Jan to the New South Wales south coast and discovered that she had died a few weeks earlier, aged 82.  

In the late 1970s I met Les Newcombe. He was part of a group of actors, writers and builders I used to drink with, some of whom were clients. He presented as an average, convivial, likeable and unassuming bloke who worked variously as a car salesman, professional fisherman, builders’ labourer, coffee shop proprietor and nursing home staffer. He was using the name Les Duncan. In the early 1980s his loyal girlfriend contacted me to say that he had been persuaded to commit a crime in Brisbane by a celebrity fraudster and ex-prisoner, Jack Karlson. I gave her some advice about legal representation. Consequently, he did further time in Boggo Road Gaol and I never saw him again, nor did any of his other associates with whom I was friendly.

However, about four years ago I attended a play titled Simmons and Newcombe produced by Deadhouse Productions and performed in the crypt of St James church in King Street, Sydney. After the play I chatted to the cast and complimented them on their performances, and they introduced me to another audience member who said she was a close relative of Les. She told me that after he was released from Boggo Road, Les returned to Sydney and led a quiet life enjoying the company of his grandchildren; he had died a few years previously. I was pleased to learn that his life had ended so much better than that of Kevin Simmonds.

STOP PRESS: They’ll Never Hold Me has been shortlisted for the Best True Crime Award in the 2025 Ned Kelly Awards. Winner to be announced later this month.

Michael Adams They’ll Never Hold Me Affirm Press 2024 384pp $34.99

Tom Kelly is a retired solicitor.

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