By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - One of Victoria's most notorious prisoners has placed his freedom in the hands of the state's newspaper readers.
Hugo Rich, jailed for 13 years for armed robbery in 1995, is now eligible for supervised day leave from prison under a system designed to prepare prison inmates
for release and return to work in the community.
But dismayed by the fate of fellow inmates featured in Rupert Murdoch's Melbourne daily tabloid Herald Sun, Rich, aged 47, has decided to seek public approval first.
Last week Rich appeared on the newspaper's front page as one of the "dirty dozen" high-profile inmates who cost state taxpayers about $A1 million ($1.2 million) a year to keep in jail.
In a letter to the newspaper through his lawyer, Terence Grundy, Rich said that once the Herald Sun took an interest in their sentencing arrangements, prisoners had had their day leave cancelled and had been moved to high-security jails.
Rich said in his letter to the Herald Sun that he believed it would be a pointless exercise for him to gain a place on the day-leave programme if it sparked public outrage, and wanted to seek approval in advance.
The newspaper has set up a yes-no hotline asking the loaded question: "Should armed robber and prison recalcitrant Hugo Rich be given supervised day leave from prison?"
Under his real name, Olaf Dietrich, Rich was jailed in 1988 for importing heroin.
The conviction was later quashed by the High Court - by which time he had spent six years in jail.
During that period in prison he fought with warders and was stabbed in a jailyard brawl.
Free again, Dietrich changed his name to Rich, moved into a flat in the elite Melbourne suburb of Toorak, drove a gold BMW and became a stockbroker - robbing banks to pay for it all.
In 1995, after a trial in which he called the judge an idiot and a "silly old dog", he was jailed for three armed robberies.
