Kevin John Simmonds was a charismatic crook whose brazen crime spree had scored him a lengthy prison sentence in 1959. But as he was led from court, he boasted, ‘They’ll never hold me’.

Two months later, Simmo made good on his promise, staging a daring escape from Long Bay Gaol. When his bid for freedom took a deadly turn, legendary Detective Ray ‘the Gunner’ Kelly took charge of the search, putting the fugitive in the crosshairs of the biggest armed manhunt in Australian history.

Now MICHAEL ADAMS tells Simmo’s story in his book They’ll Never Hold Me about an antihero with a code of honour who captured the public’s hearts and minds even as he enraged the cops and the establishment.

It’s fitting that writing a book about the fugitive Kevin John Simmonds had me chasing him all over Australia.

Back in late 1959, Detective Sergeant Ray ‘the Gunner’ Kelly and his 500 armed police had wanted their man dead or alive – preferably the former. Sixty-five years later, I was after the truth about the life, times and crimes of the charismatic antihero whose escape from Long Bay Gaol made him the last big news story of the supposedly ‘boring’ ’50s.

By running rings around the cops, this 24-year-old non-drinking, non-smoking, fashionable and fitness-mad fella with Hollywood good looks became a Ned Kelly for the rock and roll era. Teenagers set up ‘Simmo’ fan clubs. Housewives left milk on their doorsteps because they knew it was his favourite tipple. Even detectives on his trail couldn’t help but marvel at his ability to survive in harsh bushland conditions and his ingenuity in creating the most ‘fantastical’ hideouts.

Yet somehow, despite the manhunt being front-page news every day and the first to be broadcast live on Australian television, the incredible tale of this modern-day folk hero was to be forgotten. In They’ll Never Hold Me, I wanted to shine light on how Simmo came to be beloved despite being wanted for murder – and how he was later fated to die as the victim of secret crimes far worse than he ever committed.

Kevin John Simmonds

Kevin John Simmonds was born in 1935 and spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Griffith. While a smart kid with plenty of charisma and a good sense of humour, Simmo got into trouble with the law from the age of 14 and was sent to Boys’ Town in Engadine, later revealed as a place where much abuse took place. A few years later, after more petty crimes, he was banged up in Mount Penang Training Centre, known as a ‘finishing school for criminals’. Having ‘graduated’ and become a confirmed car thief and break-and-enter artist, Simmo was sent to Goulburn Gaol for two years.

Amusingly, Simmo, who was a talented singer and musician and who’d even cut a few records, had asked the magistrate to be sent to this institution because it had a good music program and he wanted to hone his skills. In reality, he wanted to be reunited with his criminal partner Frank Foley, who was doing time there. Inside Goulburn’s walls, they plotted the crimes they’d commit when they’d served their sentences.

Immediately after his release in February 1959, Simmo reunited with Frank and embarked on a wild crime spree that comprised dozens of car thefts, more burglaries and, most seriously, two armed robberies. While Frank was nabbed by a detective in a pub in Bondi, Simmo remained on the run. Hunted for months, he repeatedly evaded the cops, leaving them red-faced. Eventually, Simmo was caught and, upon being sentenced to 15 years, he vowed ‘They’ll never hold me.’ Two months later, in October 1959, he made good on that promise by busting out of Long Bay Gaol. A couple of days after his breakout, Simmo and his escape partner, Les Newcombe, broke into a minimum security prison farm to steal a gun, food and clothes. Their plan was to knock out the one guard on the night watch. Things went badly wrong, and their blows killed the man.

I first read a brief description of Simmo in As Crimes Go By, a decades-old memoir by Daily Mirror crime journalist Bill Jenkings. Using online archival copies of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, along with microfilm newspaper articles from the State Library of NSW, I pieced together much of the story. I got further insight from For Simmo, a 1980 memoir penned by his sister Jan.

From these sources, in 2019 I made a four-part miniseries called The Fugitive for my podcast Forgotten Australia. While I was happy with the result, the story haunted me; I realised there was so much more I didn’t know.

In 2023, thanks to a listener, I was put in touch with Tony Sergi, who’d been Simmo’s best friend in Griffith in the 1950s. Having Tony as a living link to Simmo reinvigorated me. I decided to re-examine every aspect of the story.

I went back to the State Library – and copied every single article I could find in The Sun, the Daily Mirror and The Daily Telegraph, including those about Simmo’s pre-1959 criminal exploits. From Trove’s historic newspapers database, I was able to find more about Ray ‘the Gunner’ Kelly and the late 1940s/early 1950s panic about ‘teenagers’ and ‘bodgies’. Similarly, I learned a lot about juvenile justice institutions, later revealed as places of brutal abuse.

I applied for police, court and incarceration records. It was expensive and time-consuming, but I was rewarded with 1000 pages of documents dating from 1949 through to 1960. These included police charge sheets, detective and witness statements, records of interview, trial transcripts and much, much more. From these it was possible to reconstruct crimes, chases, arrests, prison time and the escape and the inside details of the massive manhunt that transfixed Australia for six weeks in 1959.

Then I hit the road to Griffith. I spent many days traipsing around Simmo’s old haunts, from the Hermit’s Cave on the mountain range overlooking town, where as a teen he used to hide stolen goods, to his old angling spot at Darlington Point, where he used to hang a dead rabbit over a bend in the river so falling maggots would attract schools of fish he could then catch. I also spent many hours with Tony Sergi, who shared not only his memories but photos, telegrams, letters and artefacts from his time with Kevin from 1951 to 1959. Tony also helped me track down other friends from as far back as 1943. I went further south-west to Hay, where Simmo lived with his family beside the POW camp during World War II.

I also visited crime scenes in Marulan, Queanbeyan, Goulburn, Gundagai and Wagga Wagga. I spent days traipsing around manhunt territory, from the bush in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the rugged hills of Wyong and Jilliby, up to Morisset, Mulbring and the coalfields town of Kurri Kurri. I went north to Grafton and on to Brisbane to follow more age-old crime trails. In each place, I sourced more newspaper microfilms and regional history books, helped by wonderful local studies librarians.

Using a private detective, I got an address for Simmo’s younger sister, Jan, who was his closest sibling and his sometime accomplice back in the day. At the National Library of Australia in Canberra, I read the original handwritten-and-typed manuscript of For Simmo to glean extra little details that didn’t make it into the final published version.When it came time to meet Jan, I wanted to be able to present her with all the materials I’d uncovered, many of which weren’t available to her when she wrote her book. Arriving at Jan’s home on the South Coast, I knocked on her door, but no-one answered.

I spent days traipsing around manhunt territory, from the bush in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the rugged hills of Wyong and Jilliby, up to Morisset, Mulbring and the coalfields town of Kurri Kurri.

I returned that night and the next morning. Still no answer. I began asking after her in the town’s shops. ‘Yes, I know her,’ an op shop worker told me. Having briefly explained myself, I asked: ‘Can you put me in touch?’ The woman eyed me. ‘No, she died a few weeks ago.’ I felt terrible that Jan had passed – and that I’d left it too late. But I was also glad I’d not arrived on her doorstep in her last days and potentially dragged up painful memories.

Through the op shop worker, I was able to contact Jan and Simmo’s surviving sibling, the youngest sister, Dawn, and Jan’s son, Tony, who’s Dawn’s age. They were wonderful, giving me access to Jan’s papers and we spent many hours swapping stories. They confirmed what I’d learned: that in 1938, Kevin, aged three, was blamed by his father for the drowning death of his sister Jean, aged 18 months. So, from the start, Simmo had been made to feel guilty – and his bastard of a father would never let him forget it as he laid in fists and boots. It was a tragic origin story. Dawn and Tony also shared their memories of seeing Simmo at the other end of his life: in Grafton Gaol in 1965, reduced to a broken and battered shadow by brutal guards who bashed and tortured him with impunity.

It was this visit with Simmo’s family that revealed the coronial inquest file from his death in custody. Previously unseen and unpublished, it tells a very different story from the one the Grafton Gaol governor and warders were trying to put on the record. Does it prove that Kevin John Simmonds was murdered by officers of the state who were sworn to uphold the law? If it’s not a smoking gun, then the barrel is pretty bloody warm. •

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You can listen to Michael Adams’ podcast, Forgotten Australia, wherever you get your podcasts or on his website