His criminal career began in 1966.

Aged fifteen, Denning was released on probation for 18 months for car stealing charges and driving without a licence.

Shortly after he was fined for goods in custody, for car theft again.

In 1968 he was put on probation again, this time for breaking and entering.

Later in the year he was sentenced to the McNally Training Centre for two tears after being 'found without sufficient means.'

In 1969 he was fined for resisting arrest.

He was also charged with causing malicious injury.

In 1970 Denning received a five-year bond for a break enter and steal charge.

He was also fined for possessing an unlicensed pistol.

In 1971, the Adelaide Magistrates' Court convicted Denning of false pretences (two months jail).

He also received three months for unlawful possession.

In 1972 Denning was found guilty in the Cloncurry (Queensland) Magistrates' Court of assaulting police and car theft.

He received 14 days jail.

In 1973 Denning was convicted in the Sydney Court of armed robbery, stealing a motor vehicle, common assault and breach of bail conditions.

He was sentenced to 13 and a half years jail with a five-year non-parole period.

In 1974 he was charged with maliciously wounding prison warder Willy Karl Faber during an escape attempt from Parramatta Jail.

Faber died four years later.

In 1976 Denning received a life-sentence for his attack on Faber.

On September 1, 1977, Ray Denning escaped from Maitland jail, about 150km north of Sydney.

Ray and six accomplices were only on the lose for a couple of hours until police rounded them up.

Outside the jail the group had split in two.

Ray took off with his good friend, Ray "The Rad Rat"  Pollitt and two others.

Eventually a car was commandeered and a police chase ensued.

Denning and some of the other escapees at one stage swum across a river and stole another car.

That vehicle was rammed by police.

Pollitt couldn't swim and was found hiding in a warehouse shortly after.

Roy Pollitt headed to Melbourne.

He was harboured for a number of years by Dennis Allen who hired him to kill confessed drug supplier Alan Williams.

In a case of mistaken identity, Pollitt shot dead Williams' brother-in-law, Lindsay Simpson, at Lower Plenty on September 18, 1984.

He was jailed for life in 1990. Alan Williams was the dealer who sparked the Mick Drury shooting conspiracy in Sydney in the mid-eighties.

In 1978 Denning was sentenced to six years for the Maitland escape, to be served after his life term.

The only jail that would accept him was Grafton.

In 1978, shortly after Willy Faber died, Denning was attacked at Grafton jail.

He was of the opinion that prison officers, upset their friend and colleague had finally succumbed, could not resist taking some revenge.

Denning was later to charge five Grafton officers with assault, and his 'case notes' became the diary he kept for 18 months.

On March 18, 1980, his case against the prison officers was dismissed in Grafton Magistrates Court.

On April 2, 1980, Denning escaped from Grafton jail, the first man to escape from the establishment in its 80-year history.

Denning had other prisoners hide him in the days rubbish.

When the trash was put out the front of the jail, Denning jogged off.

His escape was not detected for over two hours.

Policeman on foot, horseback and in helicopters searched bushland around Grafton for days but there was no sign of Denning.

For weeks rumours persisted that he was holed up like a bush ranger somewhere in the Blue Mountains but alleged sightings failed to lead to an arrest.

While he was on the run, Ray cheekily made demands regarding the conditions of a possible recapture.

These were delivered to, and aired by, radio 2JJ.

He also appeared on 60 Minutes and left a note outside the CIB.

It would later become clear that Ray was helped out while he was on the run by many young women who fell for his rebellious cause and his boyish good looks.

Cox had made a spectacular escape from Long Bay in 1977.

Cox was a master of disguise.

With girlfriend Helen Deane (sister-in-law of Great Bookie Robbery mastermind Raymond "Chuck" Bennett), he had eluded police for nearly 11 years.

Denning once told an inquest that Cox was involved in a July 1988 armed robbery at the Coles warehouse at Barkly Square Brunswick in which a guard was shot.

The other two, he alleged, were the notorious Jason Moran and  Santo Mercuri.

Mercuri spent four years on the run until he was captured in 1993.

Police believed Graeme Jensen was responsible for the robbery and he was shot while they pursued him on 11 October 1988, the day before the Walsh Street shootings of Constables Tynan and Eyre.

The gunman, wounded and bleeding escaped through the supermarket and commandeered a car from a woman at gunpoint.

During a search of Russell Cox's home, the page of his telephone directory containing the woman's name and address had been ripped out.

After escaping from Katingal, Cox had always been referred to as public enemy number one.

Denning was invariably described as Australia's second most wanted criminal.

Ray was involved in at least two robberies in Queensland.

One, at the Treasury Company offices in September 1981 netted $392,000.

Denning might have been better off staying in Queensland.

Cox survived on the run in that state for more than ten years.

Denning returned to Sydney with a girl named Linda Jacobsen.

They took up a life of 'prosperous anonymity' in the northern beach-side suburb of Mona Vale.

But the police had formed a special 12-man task force to recapture the fugitive.

Telephones were bugged and movements watched.

On November 8, 1981, Linda collected Denning from a Manly ferry terminal.

The pair drove about a block and then a man dressed in a straw hat and a swimming costume approached the car at a set of lights.

The man reached in the window and shoved a gun in Denning's face.

About a dozen similarly dressed police, suddenly revealed pistols and pump action shotguns as they surrounded the car.

Ray didn't even have a chance to reach down for a gun he had stashed under the passenger seat.

As Ray was being held at Sydney's Central Police Station, police went to his luxury condominium-style unit.

There they said they found a .357 Magnum and three rifles.

They also found a gas mask, binoculars, holsters, a two-way radio, 18 boxes of ammunition and a 'rusty-blonde' wig.

Ray also had five Queensland driver's licences in different names when he was captured.

They weren't forgeries either.

In 1988 Ray made another jail-break, this time from the minimum security wing of Goldburn Jail.

He'd been playing tennis near a relatively low fence, and he and another prisoner, Ray Carrion, then 26, simply jumped it and made off.

Ray met a with a girl he knew and the trio drove to Queensland where Denning and Carrion robbed a bank.

They then travelled back to Melbourne.

Denning got a phone number for Russell Cox and they arranged to meet.

They met at Doncaster Shopping Centre on July 22, 1988.

It was a busy Friday at the mall. Sitting patiently in separate cars, Cox and Denning tried to look inconspicuous.

But Bramble Armoured security guards saw them, believed the pair were suspicious and alerted police.

The Armed Robbery Squad was called into action.

Kitted up in Kevlar ballistic vests and carrying revolvers and Remington 12 gauge pump-action shotguns, detectives raced to Doncaster.

When they arrived, Denning tried to speed away. Detectives were not having any of that and rammed his car head on.

Cox, seeing his mate's escape bid come to an abrupt end, accelerated along the car park with detectives in hot pursuit. Living up to his nick name, "Mad Dog" hooked a ferocious U-turn to drive straight at police. They were forced to fire upon the bandit's car, hitting it and blowing out a tyre.

Cox - holding a gun - gritted his teeth and pushed harder on the accelerator, urging his car on. A detective then let a cartridge go from his shotgun, smashing Cox's windscreen. Cox lost control and careered off a parked car into the carpark wall.

Police recovered several weapons and a police scanner from the bandit's car.

They were charged with conspiracy to rob an armoured car, using a firearm to resist arrest and being equipped to steal.

Cox had been at liberty for 11 years when he was nabbed.

Detective Senior Sergeant said the squad was proud to have ended the duo's time on the run.

"It was an extremely volatile situation and that the arresting members had on their hands and they handled it in an expert manner," he said afterwards.

After their arrest, Denning and Cox were thrown into Jika Jika the high-security unit at Pentridge.

For both of them it must have had echoes of the dreaded Karingal.

But Denning complained about spending two-hours a day with Cox.

It has also been said that the falling out the two had in Pentridge was because Cox kept gloating that they got the wrong man, Graeme Jensen, who had been blamed for the July 1988 shooting of the security guard.

In December Denning was visited by Sergeant Aarne Tees who he had dealt with since he was a juvenile delinquent in Sydney.

Tees knew that he had been turned off crime by Cox's indifference to the death of an innocent person.

For this reason Tees said Denning decided to dob on Cox, and then later, virtually every prisoner he had ever encountered in or out of jail.

Denning implicated Cox in three murders, and Tees passed on his information to Victorian police.

The Victorians said they didn't believe him.

They threatened to keep him in Jika Jika, for as long as they possibly could.

But the rugged Sgt Tees stepped in and organised for Denning to be charged, sentenced and then transferred back to New South Wales in lightening time - within three months of their meeting in December.

The five-year prison sentence he was given in Victoria was disregarded.

During a court hearing, Denning said: 

"I believe that justice goes around for everyone. And after my arrest with Cox in Victoria I learned some particulars about a murder where police arrested the wrong person. where a couple of police officers (Prahran constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre) ended up getting killed over a suggestion that somebody killed a security guard. Cox told me that somebody else did it. He was quite prepared to see all this mayhem going on around him, the wrong people arrested for that crime - it showed me I was giving my loyalty to the wrong side."

During the court appearance, a man in the gallery threw a bone towards Denning reminding him he was a "dog" informer for lagging on his criminal mates. "You forgot your lunch Denning. Here it is," the bone thrower shouted.

Tees supported Rays application for release in 1991.

The presiding judge agreed and ordered his release for that November.

But others from Denning's old days objected and he was left in jail for a further 18 months.

Denning was finally released from jail on April 21, 1993.

He was immediately put in to a witness protection scheme.

Denning claimed those who were supposed to be protecting him dropped him like a hot potato not long after.

Witness protection was withdrawn and seven weeks after the Ray Denning was dead.

A friend called an ambulance to her tiny terrace house in inner Sydney's Paddington at 2.30am on June 11, 1993.

Ambulance paramedics found Denning in an upstairs bedroom but there was nothing they could do.

By the time police arrived he was pronounced dead.

His friend, Robyn Lawson, said he had gone for a walk, come back and then got into bed with her.

She had seen his fingers and face turning blue, and had called an ambulance.

The post-mortem examination confirmed Denning had died of a heroin overdose.

He was 42.