And so, Archie McCafferty, serial killer and arguably the most violent prisoner the Australian penal system had ever seen, became a model prisoner and for the last four years of his incarceration was allowed to visit and stay with the family of his brother and his wife and children from Friday nights to Sunday nights without supervision.
This position of trust developed to the stage where Archie was allowed to leave the prison each day for six days a week on work release until the parole board agreed that he was indeed a changed man who was no longer a danger to society and decided that he would be released on parole. The only condition of the parole was that Archie would be deported.
When Archie heard that he was to be deported to a Scotland that he hadn't seen in almost four decades and, even worse, to a hostile community that wanted nothing to do with a vicious serial killer, he did everything within his limited powers to stave off the inevitable but his pleas fell on deaf ears and amid protests from the Scottish authorities he was put on a plane on May 1, 1997 and sent back to his birthplace.
Off the plane back in Scotland Archie was reunited with Mandy Queen, a woman he had married and then divorced while in jail in NSW.
Interviewed by Australia's current affairs program {Witness} shortly after his arrival back in Scotland, Archie told presenter Paul Barry; "I've come out of the system a good person. A changed person. I believe that people change."
He then toasted his freedom with a glass of champagne with Mandy Queen and said; "This is my first drink since 1973. But now there is no need for alcohol in my life. It is a thing of the past. I don't need it."
In October, 1998, Archie McCafferty was put on two years probation after threatening to kill police officers. McCafferty threatened the police after a car chase near Edinburgh following a drinking session and argument with his de-facto wife, Mandy, who complained he had left home with their four-month-old baby.
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| Edinburgh Sheriff Court |
In the Edinburgh Sheriff Court McCafferty also pleaded guilty to careless driving, driving with no license or insurance, failing to provide a breath specimen and breach of the peace. The court did not take into consideration Archie's previous convictions because they were considered foreign offences which did not occur in Britain.
Archie and Mandy Queen were remarried in a secret ceremony in Scotland in October 1998.
On 21 July, 2002, Archibald Beattie McCafferty was arrested in New Zealand for failing to declare his criminal convictions when he arrived in the country. McCafferty was believed to be on the first leg of a secret journey back to Australia. Detective Sergeant Stuart Mills of Interpol said they were alerted to McCafferty's presence in New Zealand when his wife followed him there. McCafferty was voluntarily deported back to Scotland immediately.
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