14 Aug 2021

Ex-con Arthur Taylor: 'I take full responsibility'

From Saturday Morning, 9:08 am on 14 August 2021

Career criminal Arthur Taylor has served nearly 40 years behind bars, had over 150 convictions for bank robbery, fraud, theft, possessing weapons and explosives, and escaping.

Arthur Taylor

Arthur Taylor Photo: Supplied

He became a legal expert, representing himself in court, advising other prisoners, and taking on corrections when he believed prisoners' rights were being breached - over issues such as the right to vote, to smoke and to not be convicted on the word of a jail snitch.

He's now written an autobiography called Prison Break: The extraordinary life and crimes of New Zealand's most infamous escapee. 

Kim Hill asked Taylor about his recidivism, his reputation and whether he has taken full and honest responsibility for all the crimes he's committed. 

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Photo: Supplied

Taylor received his first conviction at 16 years old for forging entries in his savings bank deposit book. He was paroled from prison two years ago and is living in Dunedin - Ōtepoti. 

The book, like the title, is not short on braggadocio.  

But for a smart man, he made some dumb mistakes in his lifetime, and continued to end up behind bars.

Hill challenged him - what led him to keep breaking the law? Did he do it for the fame? 

"Nobody likes being in prison," he says.

"You get in a certain rut, and it's hard to get out of it until you learn new things. You can only do what you can do. Things arrive on a day-to-day basis and you get a bit lackadaisical after you've been out for a while, you start... slacking off." 

Taylor blames his life of crime on his stay at the now-notorious Epuni Boys' Home in Lower Hutt, where he says he learned how to do crimes.

He says before that he came from a solid home in Masterton, and his arrival at the institution for boys was due to truancy.

"It seems extraordinary in the way we look at things these days, but not back in the 60s it wasn't. We had up to 100,000 kids go through those homes. I call them our lost generation. 

"I come from a very loving family, I'd never been away from my family. That's why I say to people: Don't take children away from their families, unless you've got no option... try and fix the family."

Taylor himself has three children, who he says he's supported both financially and by making sure they know they are loved and wanted.

Hill says it seems that was doable because he made a lot of money from crime before the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009, and he "is not a poor man".

"Well, I'm not a rich man either, but we do what we do within our means," he says. 

Challenged by Hill that those gains were actually from "other people's means", he is reluctant to concede, eventually saying "well, you could be on the right track". 

Taylor admits to making over a million dollars from crime. 

He also gained from settlements received from Corrections. 

"No, I don't think I've done quite well. I probably could have made a good living at any sort of occupation I chose." 

"I did go straight for considerable periods, and usually it came to an end when the police began harassing me, and making life difficult for me. You get your back up and say: 'well bugger these people, if they want to harass me and annoy me well it's a two-way street'." 

Taylor says he's come from a different world to what Hill has experienced, one that would be hard to understand from the outside. 

"[Police] treat you completely different. There's a story in the book where I was hauled into the Paraparaumu police station, one night after stabbing a guy... 

"I heard that the CIB [detectives were] on the way from Porirua, they knew who I was. I knew it was all going to change - they treat people differently, Kim."

Hill proposes officers might understandably treat him differently because of being a repeat offender and escapee - and that his suggesting otherwise is shirking personal responsibility. 

"I take full responsibility for everything that's happened with me, and I've been severely punished for it, spending years in prison."

Hill asks if he set fire to the Stratford courthouse - or engaged someone else to do it - in order to escape charges because of the loss of original documents.

"All I'm going to say about that is what's in the book. Join the dots is what I'm going to say." 

He agrees there are still outstanding charges against him - mainly related to drugs: "Methamphetamine and that's it." 

However, he claims he's never had anything to do with methamphetamine himself. 

Taylor does believe his and his wife's drinks were spiked with P after their wedding, and as a consequence, his wife told police he had a massive drug warehouse. 

However, Kim read him the police account of was in the storage unit they had then raided: "This is what they found... class B and C drugs, cannabis, cannabis oil, weighing scales, morphine, a cut-down semi-automatic pistol, a semi-automatic shotgun, home-made firework pipe bombs, substances to make bombs, a robbery kit with tape, handcuffs, a balaclava, and $60,000 in cash. Most of it you say was yours."

Taylor agrees: "Correct. That's the business I was in."  

Hill clarifies: "drugs?" 

And Taylor agrees: "Among other things.

"...I thought you meant 'do I take drugs?' "

She asks what the sub-machine gun was for, and Taylor says police had alleged he was trading weapons, and that "If I got the right price I would have [traded it]."

He says despite that history, he's now gone straight.  

"Because I'm older and wiser... because I'm on parole, and if they've got any evidence of any substance on you at all on a charge, an allegation is virtually enough to put you back in jail." 

Taylor has been back in jail on recall warrants since his last release, but those allegations didn't stand up when investigated and could be described as harassment, he says.

"I've never actually physically harmed anyone." 

"People change, people move on, people move into another sphere of life, if you don't believe in that, then why do you bother about rehabilitation?"