The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Monday, February 5, 1968 — Aiden Diggeden, the man who claims no prison can hold him, is still on the run. And now, as his stretch of freedom enters its fifth day, the search is concentrated on his home town of Bulawayo.

Two railway workers are thought to have got nearest to him so far. It is believed he was the man they tackled in a toilet in a north-bound train just outside the City on Saturday night.

The man concerned, who was wearing a blue T-shirt and blue jeans, managed to escape and was seen to jump from the train at Heany Junction.

A police spokesman said in Salisbury yesterday that the men who challenged the man were the conductor, Mr RG Chilcott, and another railway employee. The African employee managed to wrest a maroon travelling bag from him.

The first hint that Bulawayo-born Diggeden (28), who slipped out of Salisbury Prison on Thursday, was in Bulawayo came at midday on Saturday, when it was reported that a man answering his description had stolen clothing from a washing line at a block of flats in Rhodes Street.

He escaped in a stolen white Ford Zephyr, and, after being chased by an African policeman on a bicycle and then by a police patrol car, he abandoned it in Lobengula Street between Selborne and Sixth Avenues.

Then a huge police net was thrown round the City with roadblocks on all major roads and patrol cars touring the City. It was mid- afternoon when a man answering his description was seen near Queens Club in Fife Street.

Police are confident the man who has escaped seven times –at Bulawayo, Cape Town, Johannesburg (twice), Gwelo, Lusaka and Salisbury – has come home. The mystery is why, after coming all the way from Salisbury, should he try to go north again?