One of Australia's most prolific violent criminals, Alexander Robert Macdonald, is due to be sentenced on September 30, having pleaded guilty to two lucrative bank hold-ups in regional NSW in the 1990s.
During a brief mention of the 76-year-old's case on Monday, the crown prosecutor indicated one of the victims of the robberies wanted to appear at the sentencing in person.
Macdonald, representing himself in court virtually from prison, told the Port Macquarie District Court he did not want to attend in person because of his physical disability.
"I'm restricted to a walker ... I have a lot of problems with my lumbar and hips," he said.
But District Court Acting Judge Michael King said the murderer and bank robber would be required to attend.
The NSW robberies are two entries on a lengthy and varied criminal history for Macdonald.
After breaking out of a Queensland jail while serving a 22-year sentence for armed robbery, the wanted man stepped into a Commonwealth Bank branch in Coonabarabran in October 1996, wearing a balaclava and armed with a sawn-off shotgun, agreed facts tendered in court state.
After bank staff put nearly $19,000 in cash into his bag, Macdonald grabbed a 22-year-old woman and used her as a human shield to safely reach his motorbike.
"No alarms, no police. I will let her go when I am free," Macdonald told staff of the northwest NSW branch.
The woman was let go without injury once he reached the getaway vehicle and took off.
About two months later, Macdonald picked up a sawn-off shotgun and stepped into an ANZ branch near Port Macquarie on the mid-north coast.
Staff this time handed over $78,000 before Macdonald again took a hostage to protect his escape route.
"Walk quickly but don't attract attention to yourself," Macdonald told the 36-year-old he used as cover to exit the bank in Laurieton.
The pair of bank hold-ups came after Macdonald's most violent and cunning crime.
Soon after breaking out of prison, he moved to Melbourne and placed a newspaper ad purportedly for a general hand to work in the West Australian mining industry.
After interviewing candidates, he and Ronald Joseph Williams began driving west on February 25, 1996.
But Williams, 47, never made it to the mines.
Macdonald later confessed to shooting Mr Williams twice in the head in late February or early March 1996, stripping his body of identification and burying it on Cheyne's Beach, near Albany.
Assuming the dead man's identity, MacDonald moved north to Carnarvon then hitchhiked back to Victoria.
There, he bought a yacht for $20,000 cash and made $40,000 worth of renovations, intending to sail to another country to avoid arrest, a WA court was told in 1997 following his arrest in Victoria.
Macdonald pleaded guilty to Mr Williams's murder and another armed robbery in Busselton, south of Perth.
He served 25 years in WA prison for the crimes before being forced to return to Queensland to serve the 10 years remaining on the sentence he cut short in his 1995 escape from the Borallon Correctional Centre, near Ipswich.
When his Queensland sentence expired in March, NSW Police applied for Macdonald's extradition so he could finally face court for Coonabarabran and Laurieton hold-ups.
Representing himself, the career criminal pleaded guilty to both robberies on August 6.
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