His accomplice while he was on the run was Helen Deane, a nurse and the sister-in-law of Great Bookie Robbery mastermind Raymond "Chuck" Bennett.

Dennis William Smith is rumoured to have laundered some of the proceeds from the 1976 raid on bookies on their settling day at a Melbourne club.

Shortly after, Smith and long-time partner, Kerry Ashford, opened the sleazy Aussie Bar in the Philippines capital Manila, an offshore haven for major criminals from Sydney and Melbourne.

One of these was Russell Cox.

Cox was also a former lover of Kath Pettingill, matriarch of the famous crime family whose sons included Dennis and Peter Allen and Victor Peirce.

He was also a good friend of the families'.

In 1978 there was a shootout in Ross St Northcote, outside the Pettingill home.

Russell Cox, still on the run, and friend Tom Wraith, had arrived to pick-up Pettingill's daughter Vicki, who was in a relationship with Wraith.

As Vicki was talking to the men, a police car sped towards them and shots were fired.

Wraith swung the wheel of the car and drove into a brick wall and knocked himself out.

Cox escaped, running along the nearby Merri Creek.

On April 21, 1981, Raymond John Denning, another regular absconder, caught up with Cox, an old acquaintance from Katingal in Queensland where the pair had served time together.

Denning was also on the run having escaped from Grafton Jail about a year before.

After their respective escapades, Cox had always been referred to as public enemy number one while Denning was invariably described as Australia's second most wanted criminal.

Denning was involved in at least two robberies in Queensland.

Denning once told an inquest that Cox was involved in a July 11, 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 and Mark Moran and Santo Mercuri.

In mid-2001, Melbourne police said that Mark Moran was known to associate with Cox and Mercuri, by then both in jail.

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.

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 which were believed to be an underworld ''payback'' for Jensen's death.

In 1988 Denning made another jail-break, this time from the minimum security wing of Goulburn 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.

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

They then travelled back to Melbourne.

While Longley says Melbourne's reputation as a place to hide hasn't changed, police aren't convinced.

A former member of the now-disbanded Major Crime Squad, which used to have responsibility for hunting fugitives, didn't have much time for his theories.

"Some of our best information on the whereabouts of escapees and other fugitives came from the Melbourne underworld," the retired officer says.

"And Victoria can't have been that great a place to hide in because all the crooks nominated by Longley, other than Ronnie Biggs, were caught or killed."

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

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.

Left is a photograph of Cox's car which was riddled with police shotgun blasts when he and Denning were arrested.

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.

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

The pair had a falling out in Pentridge which was said to be caused by Cox who gloated that police 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 Arne Tees who he had dealt with since he was a juvenile delinquent in Sydney.

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

For this reason Tees says Denning decided to give a statement against Cox.

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

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.

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

He was immediately put on to a witness protection scheme.

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

Seven weeks after the witness protection was withdrawn, Ray Denning died of a suspicious heroin overdose.

Cox on his release from jail in 2006