Fugitive killer Malcolm Naden upon his capture in 2012 after almost seven years on the run. Photo / NSW Police
Fugitive killer Malcolm Naden upon his capture in 2012 after almost seven years on the run. Photo / NSW Police
Double killer and fugitive Malcolm Naden ate the heads of tortoises and stole food from zoo animals during his headline-grabbing seven years on the run, it has emerged.
The fugitive famously evaded police between 2005 and 2012 before he was captured, but a new book has revealed the horrifying detailsof how he survived inside a New South Wales Zoo.
The book called The Contractor details Naden's time in the zoo where he stole bananas from elephants, slept in the roof space of a zoo manager's hut and cooked himself meals on a coin-fed barbecue.
Staff recalled discovering food wrappers in odd places and barbecues still warm in the early hours of the morning, while one worker vividly remembers seeing Naden escape the tortoise enclosure where he ripped the head off one tortoise and sucked its guts out.
Naden, a 32-year-old loner, was wanted over the June 2005 murder of his cousin's girlfriend Kristy Scholes and the disappearance six months earlier of his cousin Lateesha Nolan.
CCTV footage of Malcolm Naden captured while he was on the run, wanted for two murders. Photo / NSW Police
He was also wanted over the aggravated indecent assault of a 15-year-old girl. All the crimes had been committed in and around Dubbo, Naden's home town.
Naden was Australia's most wanted criminal while on the run for seven years.
He was finally captured in a cabin at Rawdon Vale, about 30km west of Gloucester, north of Newcastle, on March 22, 2012.
