Curtis gets 2 1/2 years' jail

By SCOTT INGLIS and PAUL YANDALL

Recaptured drug importer Brian Curtis faces a total of up to 12 years behind bars after admitting escaping jail - but the investigation into his life on the run is far from over.

Curtis was yesterday sentenced to 2 1/2 years' jail for escaping from Auckland Prison, a sentence the judge added to the 18-year drug term he was serving when he broke out.

Brian James Curtis, now aged 67, pleaded guilty in the North Shore District Court to escaping from Auckland Prison at Paremoremo on August 18, 1993.

At the time, he was nearly two years into an 18-year term for importing 35,000 LSD tabs, worth up to $1.5 million on the street.

After nearly eight years on the run, he was caught this month living with a new partner and their 3-year-old daughter in Manila, the Philippines.

He will now serve between about six and 12 years - depending on when the Parole Board decides to release him.

In court yesterday, Sergeant Paul McKenzie said that Curtis and fellow escaper Michael Jeffrey Bullock - a convicted murderer - spent months planning their escape.

They concealed their sawing of prison window bars with toothpaste and just after 7 on the night of their escape, they removed the bars and escaped from the complex through the dining room in A block.

They climbed over prison walls, and fled through a perimeter fence, which had already had a hole cut in it from the outside.

The pair then crossed a paddock to a stolen motor vehicle, which was driven to an upper harbour estuary on the North Shore to a boat that had been left waiting.

From there they travelled to the nearby suburb of Greenhithe, where another stolen car was waiting, and then vanished.

Bullock was recaptured in Wellington two years ago when an off-duty police officer recognised him in a bar, but Curtis remained on the run. He fled the country in 1994 using a fake passport.

His lawyer, John Mather, asked Judge Bruce Buckton to consider Curtis' age and the fact that Bullock was sentenced to only 2 1/2 years for escaping.

The maximum escape sentence is five years.

Judge Buckton said there was no reason Curtis should get more time than Bullock: "Although you were the mastermind, you could expect to serve more, but I take into account your age," he said.

Curtis, who was handcuffed and in orange prison overalls, nodded silently from the dock where he stood with a police officer, when the sentence was handed down at 10.45 am.

He was then taken back to Paremoremo, where he is understood to have been placed back in maximum security A block, where he will be able to mix with other inmates.

The officer who led the hunt for him, North Shore Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Bush, told the Herald afterwards that he and a team of investigators were in the early stages of investigating Curtis' life at large.

They were focusing on building a picture of his activities overseas and if they had affected the New Zealand crime scene.

Inquiries had been made in the Philippines and in Europe. Police did not know how long their probe might take.

Detective Senior Sergeant Bush refused to elaborate further. "There's not a lot to say. It would be very unprofessional of me to go on about what I'm doing or who I'm looking at."

Curtis' Manila partner, Daisy Ahat, told the Herald yesterday that she felt bad about his sentence.

"It's very, very hard you know ... I'm still very, very sad and lonely."

Police had told her that Curtis would be ringing her on Sunday. He had previously mentioned to her about arranging for money to be sent over.

Miss Ahat, with their daughter, Loresa, is about five months behind on the rent at the apartment the family lived in.

She wants to come to New Zealand to live and will soon contact the New Zealand Embassy in Manila for help.

"He's old now ... I want to be with him, just visiting and to encourage him to have a long life."

Loresa, she said, continued to ask where her father was, but Miss Ahat had told her he was at work.