Prisoner used laxatives and butter knife to escape

An Australian inmate who used laxatives to lose more than two stones in weight so he could squeeze through a hole in a prison wall had been frustrated by the indefinite sentence he was serving, a judge said today.

Robert Cole, 37, spent three days on the run from police in January after slipping his 8st 11lb frame through a 6-inch wide hole he had chiselled with a butter knife in the window frame of a hospital wing at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail.