Technology | 2010.01.05
Facebook fugitive: the story so far
Craig Lynch, has been taunting the police on Facebook after absconding from prison. So what has he been up to over the festive period?
\'You\'ll have a laugh with me," he promised on his Facebook page. "But it will end in tears. It always does." It hasn\'t yet, though.
Despite being on the run from the low-security Hollesley Bay prison in Suffolk (an institution so escape-prone it\'s known locally as Holiday Bay), Craig "Lazie" Lynch, a convicted burglar nearing the end of a seven-year sentence, has managed to "have bundles of fun on the ice in me motor", celebrate Christmas with tinsel and roast turkey, watch the New Year\'s Eve firework display in London – all the while keeping police (and a growing army of followers) informed of his progress via updates on the social networking site.
"Just nearly wrote my motor off again," he posted gleefully last month. "Ice everywhere I went round the corner and ended up halfway on someone\'s driveway!!" Later he was "sticking the sunbed on as an extra heater . . . felt like the Caribbean in the bedroom ha ha", and enjoying "a 12lb venison steak mmm roasted veg and chips, bangin meal". Just before Christmas, Lynch was at the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, "taking my little princess to see Santa", while on the day itself he posted a photograph of himself, turkey in one hand and obscene gesture in the other. "If any of you was doubtin my freedom, here\'s proof," he wrote. "YES YES i fuckin made it to Xmas i beat their fuckin system and i love it."
Not even Facebook\'s closure of his personal page on New Year\'s Eve could keep him quiet for long. According to the East Anglian Daily Times, Lynch has now resurfaced on the site as one Maximus Justice, posting on some of the 20-plus Facebook groups dedicated to him.
"Guess whos back?" he reportedly asked, before demanding: "Lets get this show back on the road." This weekend, Lynch promised "a fantastic video" of "me in Westminster watchin the London firework display surrounded by thousands of incompetent pigs. I\'m even recorded asking police for directions."
Lynch\'s fame has spread as far as America, where country singer Kent Crawford has written a YouTube song in his honour. But life as a digital-age fugitive isn\'t all laughs. "I hate moving, it does my head in all the ducking and diving," Maximus Justice posted on Saturday, lamenting that the police – who have said they are actively looking for Lynch, and working with Facebook to try to find out where he is posting from – "just towed two of my vehicles away on trucks and ransacked my business."
And the poor man is clearly upset by the less than complimentary comments on Facebook groups such as We\'re Sick Of Craig Lynch and Craig Lynch Is No Hero. "I havent touched or robbed no old lady," he complained recently. "Now move on and find a life."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/06/craig-lynch-facebook
