They all found themselves back behind bars
Shaun Walmsley(Image: NOT TM)
These criminals tried to escape the law by going on the run. One convicted murderer made his dramatic escape after a visit to hospital and another notorious criminal organised a dramatic prison van escape.
A recent and prominent case was that of Liverpool gangster Daniel Gee absconded from a category D open prison – Kirklevington Grange prison in North Yorkshire – in May 2024. Shaun Walmsley, a convicted murderer, escaped police prison guards’ custody on February 21 2017 and became one of the UK’s most wanted men after he vanished into the underworld.
The criminal was captured on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, 18 months after going on the run. He smugly told the officers who arrested him: “Good job boys.” Walmsley was locked up in June 2015, after being found guilty of conspiring to murder Antony Duffy, 33, in Aintree in May 2014.
He began hatching the plot after an appeal against his sentence was rejected in December 2016. The ECHO has taken a look at recent and prominent stories of prison breaks below.
Prisoner found hiding a bakery
Rhys Allen(Image: Merseyside Police)
A prison inmate escaped by scaling a fence before being found hiding near to a bakery more than two weeks later. Rhys Allen was said to have walked out of jail then travelled 75 miles across the country to Merseyside, where he was ultimately apprehended, after becoming “frustrated by the progress of his application for parole”.
Liverpool Crown Court heard in December last year that the 29-year-old was serving an eight-year sentence, imposed in 2018, for aggravated burglary and possession of a firearm at HMP Sudbury in Derbyshire on October 20 2024. He had been granted day release privileges from the open prison at the time, but was “pulled up for covering the window in his room” by a guard earlier in the week.
Officers noticed that the glass had been covered up again at around 5.30am on the day in question. They received no response after knocking on his door and discovered that Allen was not present upon entering the cell.
CCTV footage subsequently revealed that he had absconded from the category D jail roughly an hour earlier by climbing over a fence. Then, 16 days later on the afternoon of November 5, police on patrol on West Derby Road pulled over a Ford Fiesta in which the fugitive was being carried as a passenger.
Allen however fled from the vehicle, leading to a foot chase with officers. But he was arrested after members of the public “pointed out where he was hiding, near to Townsend bakery” in Anfield.
Allen, who is scheduled for release in April 2026, admitted escaping from lawful custody. Appearing via video link to HMP Liverpool, he was locked up for a further 28 days.
A sandwich before armed police
Daniel Gee smiling as he is arrested in Wigan on June, 25, 2024 after almost a month on the run(Image: Merseyside Police)
Another recent case on this list involves a Liverpool gangster who turned his own estate into a 24 hour drug trading zone.
Daniel Gee was originally jailed on an indeterminate sentence for the public’s protection in 2010 following his conviction for gun offences after he plotted to arm himself to take revenge against a teenager. The courts heard he had plotted to arm himself after making death threats to 16-year-old gunman Jamie Starkey.
Gee was seriously injured after being shot by Starkey, which happened outside an Anfield pub in the early hours, with one of the bullets piercing his stomach and lung before emerging from his back. In a trial in October 2009, Gee was found guilty of two counts of making threats to kill and another two of blackmail.
Jurors were unable to agree on the two more serious charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition. As his second trial was about to start, Gee, formerly of Maryport Close, Everton, admitted the second charge. Prosecutor Ian Unsworth KC said Gee’s desire for revenge “knew no bounds”.
A recent mugshot of Daniel Gee(Image: Cleveland Police)
On May 27 last year, Gee absconded from a category D open prison – Kirklevington Grange prison in North Yorkshire.
Police released CCTV footage of Gee showing the 44-year-old boarding a train from Darlington to Liverpool Lime Street after he absconded.
In June 2024 armed police stormed a local off licence on Albion Drive in the Kirklees area of Wigan in Greater Manchester. The former gangster was buying a sandwich but moments later he was staring down the barrel of a gun as he was ordered to get down in the small shop.
Given Gee was in a category D open prison before he absconded, it was likely he would have soon been released from his indeterminate sentence.
However, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police confirmed to the ECHO that Gee was sentenced to four months concurrent to his Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence.
The IPP sentence – a prison term introduced in 2005 for serious crimes but abolished in 2012 after public pressure – was introduced for offenders considered particularly dangerous. The new sentence will mean Gee’s likelihood of parole from his indeterminate sentence will be set back.
‘Get the f****** keys’
Tony Downes (left) and Kirk Bradley
One notorious criminal organised a dramatic prison van escape and used a secret mobile phone and an armed gang to free him.
Tony Downes used the phone to organise the break-out, when an armed gang freed him from a prison van bound for Liverpool Crown Court. The escape directly resulted in the collapse of a major trial at Liverpool Crown Court , which was in its 11th week.
The complex case was later moved to Woolwich crown court for security reasons. At just after 8.30am on July 18, 2011 a gang of masked men, armed with a sledgehammer and a gun, ambushed the G4S van containing Downes and Kirk Bradley in Trinity Way, Manchester.
One of the guards was beaten in the street while a gang member shouted at the driver: “Get the f****** keys out or I will blow your f****** head off.”
The two Liverpool men were bundled into a White Saab which was later found abandoned. Downes and Bradley were on remand at HMP Manchester after being accused of presiding over a wave of contract violence across Merseyside.
It later emerged that prison bosses at Strangeways had been aware that Downes had a mobile phone secreted in his body when he arrived from HMP Liverpool.
The Huyton criminal was allowed to hold on to the mobile despite the fact that he had already been accused of using a phone to organise a city gang war from his Walton jail cell.
It is a criminal offence for a prisoner to use mobile device while behind bars. Bradley was not thought to have a phone while in jail, and the ECHO understands he had little or nothing to do with the escape plot.
The two men were later arrested in Holland, and brought back to the UK to begin their prison sentences. In March 2012, Downes and Bradley were jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years after being convicted in their absence of conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life and conspiracy to cause damage with intent to endanger life.
Fake bowel condition
Killer Shaun Walmsley, who was arrested after more than a year on the run
Shaun Walmsley escaped police prison guards’ custody on February 21, 2017 and became one of the UK’s most wanted men after he vanished into the underworld.
He was captured in Leeds on August 21 2018 after 18 months spent on the run, smugly telling the officers who arrested him: “Good job boys.” Walmsley was locked up in June 2015, after being found guilty of conspiring to murder Antony Duffy, 33, in Aintree in May 2014.
He began hatching the plot after an appeal against his sentence was rejected in December 2016. The prisoner deliberately set about losing weight and started complaining of fake bowel problems.
His feigned illness was part of a plot to engineer unnecessary hospital visits, where Walmsley complained repeatedly of rectal bleeding and said his father died from bowel cancer.
Prison examinations could not find anything wrong with Walmsley, but his repeated complaints, combined with his weight loss led the convicted murderer to be taken to Aintree Hospital from HMP Liverpool.
Shaun Walmsley.(Image: Merseyside Police/PA Wire)
It was later confirmed he had no condition of any kind. But it was during this trip that his henchmen armed with a Uzi-type submachine gun, ambushed the prison officers.
Walmsley was in a private hire taxi handcuffed to one of three prison guards and they were ready to go back to prison when a car pulled up and they were approached by two men. One had a very visible Uzi-style submachine gun. Another had a knife and canister. The knifeman demanded the officer with the key unlock the handcuffs telling him he would cut him.
Another threatened to shoot the manacled officer in the leg. The officer uncuffed Walmsley who appeared calm. He escaped and that was the last time he was seen by any authority figure for the next 546 days.
Walmsley was arrested on a street in Leeds in August, unrecognisable having grown a long beard and shoulder length hair. The convicted murderer is now a Category A prisoner being held under far more stringent conditions. The earliest date he can apply for parole in January 2051, when he will be 63.