The man who escaped jail with the last man ever hanged in Australia has been accused of running a drug lab inside an old Victorian post office.
Peter John Walker, 73, had been allegedly trying to flee the country from Perth Airport when he was arrested and hauled back to Melbourne late last week to face a string of drug, weapons and fraud charges, according to charge sheets tendered in court.
Walker fled Melbourne's Pentridge Prison in 1965 with Ronald Ryan who shot and killed a guard during their dramatic escape.
Ryan was executed two years later.
Nearly 50 years on, Walker appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday charged with 97 offences, including drug trafficking and possessing a haul of illegal weapons: a handgun, sawn-off shotguns, flick knives, capsicum spray, Tasers, and a half-dozen gun silencers.
Detectives had uncovered a drug lab set up inside the old post office in Yaapeet, about 120km north of Horsham, nearly a year ago.
Walker is accused of stealing a man's identity to set up mail boxes, bank accounts, a mobile phone and car registration in the other person's name before buying the disused building in 2012.
Police say the building was full of drug-making equipment and drug precursors and used for trafficking between May 2012 and March 2013.
It's believed a file folder containing a CV and other personal information was stolen in 2006 and 2007, court documents reveal.
Walker, of Wyndham Vale, has been remanded in custody to reappear in court at a future date.
The former bank robber was serving a 12-year sentence in Pentridge when he and Ryan escaped.
During their two weeks on the run, Walker shot and killed tow truck driver Arthur Henderson and served another 19 years in jail, being released in 1984.
