A serial robber and blackmailer dubbed the “prison break king” of Hamburg has gone on the run for the fifth time after giving his minder the slip during an outing in the city.
Police have been searching in vain with a helicopter since Karl Laubinger, 53, went to ground on Friday after spending the best part of three decades in and out of the notorious Fuhlsbüttel prison, nicknamed “Santa Fu” because of its supposed resemblance to the Santa Fe facility in New Mexico, US.
Laubinger, who is facing fresh charges of robbery and violent blackmail, had been kept in pre-trial detention because of his long record of escape attempts, but was afforded the right to occasional excursions in the company of a prison officer.
After a chaotic childhood and a spell of cocaine and heroin addiction he was first sentenced to prison in 1990. He has a string of convictions for armed robbery, theft, hostage-taking and threats of violence.
“I suffer because of my long periods in prison,” Laubinger once told Bild, a German tabloid. “Prison is life-threatening. After all, I never hurt anyone.”
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His first escape, from a now defunct open prison on the grounds of what was once the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg, was in 1995.
In 2005 he threatened two police officers with a pistol in the street before fleeing and threatening to shoot himself dead outside a nursery, only to be arrested six hours later by armed commandos.
In 2017 he escaped custody by slipping out through a side door during a trip to the prison’s psychotherapist.
Last year he took advantage of an excursion from Fuhlsbüttel to run away and hide in a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of the city, where he was caught three days later.
