Graeme Burton

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Graeme William Burton (* 1971 ) is a New Zealand violent criminal, prison escape and murderer. He is one of the most dangerous prisoners in the country and is currently serving the longest preventive detention ever imposed by a New Zealand court in the maximum security Auckland Prison .

Criminal beginnings and conviction for murder

Graeme Burton was adopted by adoptive parents as a newborn, with his adoptive father dying when Burton was three years old. He started taking drugs at the age of 15 and committed, among other things, frauds, burglaries and robberies in order to finance his growing drug addiction. At the age of only 21, he had already had 91 convictions.

In May 1992 he stabbed a clerk at a Wellington nightclub while on a drug intoxication and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Burton had previously been denied entry to the club. Since he was classified as unscrupulous and very violent, he was sent to Auckland Prison to serve his sentence , the only maximum security prison in the country that was also considered escape-proof.

Breakout from Auckland Prison

He and three other inmates planned a prison break there . His accomplices were the 41-year-old professional criminal Arthur Taylor, who had already had around 130 convictions, the 26-year-old Darren Crowley, who was convicted of murder, and the 23-year-old Matthew Thompson, who had been convicted of a series of armed robberies.

In March 1998 they discovered a damaged Plexiglas window in the shower wing that led directly to the prison yard. With a smuggled metal saw blade, they managed to completely remove the Plexiglas window in three weeks, covering the visible interfaces with a color-matching soap mixture. They then removed the nuts from the window grilles with smuggled wrenches, while an accomplice from outside cut a hole in the prison fence. On June 18, the four inmates escaped through the window and hole and escaped in a prepared getaway car. At around 7:45 p.m., about ten minutes after they escaped, their absence was noted.

In one of the largest manhunts in New Zealand's history, which cost the state the equivalent of almost 400,000 euros, special forces, roadblocks, dog squadrons and helicopters with thermal imaging cameras were used. The four fugitives had meanwhile hidden in the vacant villa of an American businessman in Tairua and were provided with food and drugs by an acquaintance. After Taylor drove into town with his acquaintance, he was recognized by a police officer who called for reinforcements.

Another arrest

After Taylor fled back to the villa, it was surrounded by special forces. The wanted managed to escape into the nearby forest, but Taylor and their mutual acquaintance were arrested shortly afterwards. Burton and the other two inmates hid in the holiday home of a German vacationing couple, but after an eleven day escape they were tracked down and overwhelmed without resistance. Burton was found guilty of seven charges for escape and was sentenced to three additional years in prison.

Dismissal and renewed crime

On July 10, 2006, he was paroled. The decisive factors for this were his participation in courses on coping with aggression and successful treatment against his drug addiction. In freedom, however, he quickly came back into contact with drugs and attacked several drug dealers. Since December 22nd, he has been wanted for violating his probation requirements. He also entered apartments forcibly twice and injured two people with great brutality.

On January 6, 2007, he attacked a group of cyclists near Lower Hutt for no apparent reason. He shot and killed the young father of the family, Karl Kuchenbecker, and injured three other men and one woman, some seriously. Then he delivered himself, possibly with suicidal intent (see Suicide by cop ), a gun battle with intervening police officers, in which he was shot and overpowered.

Because of the gunshot wound, his right leg had to be amputated. On April 3, 2007, he was again sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 26 years for murder, among other things, which was the third highest minimum imprisonment ever issued by a New Zealand court. His simultaneous placement in preventive detention made the sentence the longest preventive detention in the history of the country. He was also the only New Zealander to date to have been convicted of murder twice in his life.

While he was being transferred from the hospital to the Rimutaka prison, he attacked a guard and seriously injured him. In the prison itself, he instigated a riot lasting several hours, during which he and seven other prisoners damaged furnishings, started fires and violently attacked the guards. He was then transferred again to Auckland Prison, where he seriously injured his fellow prisoner Dwayne Marsh with 27 knife wounds in December 2008 and was sentenced to another ten years in prison. An early discharge would not be possible until January 2033 at the earliest.

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personal data
SURNAME Burton, Graeme
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burton, William Graeme
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand prisoner
DATE OF BIRTH 1971