Leonard Keith Lawson, who signed his work as Len Lawson, was one of the most popular Australian comics’ artists and writer who created the Hooded Rider and the Lone Avenger, at one time the most popular local comic character in Australia.
However it is not his comic book work for which he is most well known, he is most remembered for his unsavory criminal career which was summed up in a newspaper article at the time of his death.
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Leonard Keith Lawson (b. 16 August 1927), creator of The Lone Avenger and The Hooded Rider comic books, drove five female models on a photo shoot to bushland in the Terrey Hills area on 7 May 1954. After binding and gagging them at gunpoint, he raped three of them, and indecently assaulted the other two women.
He was apprehended by police and was initially sentenced to death on 25 June 1954, but this was later commuted to 14 years imprisonment. A model prisoner, Lawson was paroled in May 1961 after just serving seven years.
On 6 November 1961, he raped and murdered a teenage girl, Jane Bower, and was apprehended by police the following day during a siege at a private girls’ school where, while struggling with a teacher, Lawson’s gun went off, killing a student, Wendy Luscombe. Lawson was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1962 and died at the Grafton Correctional Centre on 29 November 2003.
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Unlike America where the book Seduction of the Innocent led to the public turning against comics, in Australia it was due mainly to Lawson.
It should be noted that at the time of his first imprisonment he had the gall to ask to be let to continue to write and draw The Long Avenger, his request was refused.
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