Leonard (Len) Lawson was a successful painter and photographer and the creator of the best-selling Australian comic book, The Lone Avenger, the tale of a mysterious hero who rights wrongs and defends the innocent.
In 1954 Lawson hired five young women from a modelling agency and took them to a remote location where at gunpoint he tied them up and sexually assaulted them. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for rape.
He was released on parole in 1961 after serving 7 years of his sentence. Within 6 months he had raped and murdered a teenage girl and shot dead another 15-year-old girl while attempting to hold hostage the students and staff of a Sydney girls' school.
He was returned to jail. Ten years later, he attacked a woman who had been giving a dance performance in the jail, holding a knife to her throat.
Len Lawson died in Grafton jail in 2003. He has the dubious distinction of being Australia's longest-serving prisoner.
Eye of the Beholder
