Timothy David Burt became a Probationary Prison Officer in 1985. Through time and diligent service he had made his way through the ranks to the substantive position of Senior Prison Officer, and was acting up to the position of Assistant Superintendent at Parklea Prison. It seems somewhere around 1997 he accepted a voluntary redundancy package, just more wasted money by the government to my way of thinking.Mr Burt gained employment with the Queensland Corrective Services. In September 2000 he returned to NSW and again sought employment with the NSW Department of Corrective Services and was accepted with open arms, proving my point about wasting our taxes on redundancy packages. In February 2001 Mr Burt returned to Parklea Prison as a First Class Prison Officer.
On the 27th December 2001 he was rostered as compound 1 Officer. Part of his duties was to relieve the officer in the control room for a break. In this case he relieved Correctional Officer Trevor Burke at about 10.20 hours. Senior Correctional Officer James “Jim” Linos was the officer in charge. I remember Mr Linos well from my time at Parklea Prison.
At about 10.30 hours or shortly thereafter, two prisoners escaped over the wall in the activities/oval of the prison. They were Silva and McMillan and one prisoner failed the fitness test as he was unable to pull himself over the formidable wall of the oval in Parklea Prison, his name was Cooper. As can only be expected, the “suits” within the Department had to head hunt someone to blame at the lowest level possible in order to protect their mates a little higher up the promotional ladder.
The fiasco that followed investigating the escape was nothing short of shameful and disgraceful behaviour on behalf of the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services at the time, in particular the way they wasted valuable resources in pursuing Mr. Linos and Mr. Burt.
To find out more about this story and others, read my book “Australia’s Best Prison Stories”.
This I believe.
Peter T Egge
