He ran away, intending to tell his parents what had happened, but his father was very ill with emphysema. And in any case, Russell was too ashamed.
Manser, about to turn 17, was sentenced to 12 months in an adult prison to deter "kids from Mount Druitt stealing Porsches from affluent areas". A couple of nights later, another inmate sexually abused him. After the abuse he told Manser, "don't say nothing and I'll give you this." It was his first shot of heroin.Manser was angry and hiding his pain while in prison as a young man.
As the addiction deepened, so too did the need to feed it. "He started going for the serious money," says his biographer and former bank robber, John Killick. He was, says Killick, "at the top of his game." Except that he kept getting caught. At the age of 23 he was handed a 15-year sentence.Joining a jail program designed to address behaviours that constantly got people into trouble, Manser was belligerent, tough, never revealing the sexual abuse, as a documentary from the time shows.
"Bank robberies were sort of a dying art form for criminals with security and changing amounts of cash that was available," says Detective Terry Dwyer, who led an investigation into some of Manser's robberies.
Ahh yes the ABC romanticising violent criminals again. What about the people he traumatised with his actions? You rekon they empathise with him?