Escapee claims Netflix was the reason he tried toblow up bank
A convicted inmate who escaped from his prison confines has said that he was convinced to try and blow up a bank after watching a documentary on Netflix. Alan Murphy was found with two fake firearms, a nail bomb and a knife when he was apprehended.
Murphy had been planning to bomb the HSBC bank in Blackpool following his viewing of Dirty Money: Cartel Bank. The documentary was said to show links between the global bank and drug cartels and terrorists around the world, according to Murphy.
Following the bomb attempt, Murphy was convicted at the Crown Court in Liverpool and was ruled a dangerous offender who needed to be kept away from the rest of society. Murphy was subsequently given an extended five-year license period.
The court’s judge, Judge Flewitt, claimed Murphy had been “at large” back at the end of 2020 after he escaped from prison. At the time, Murphy was hiding out in a campervan in Blackpool, and when the police asked him about his history, he gave a false name.
One area that Murphy couldn’t hide from, though, was his fingerprints, which revealed his true identity. When officers turned up to arrest him, they found that Murphy had a gun and an “improvised explosive device”, later discovered to be a nail bomb.
The officers also came across a BB gun painted to look like a real firearm, a homemade shotgun and a kitchen knife all in a rucksack along with the explosive. Judge Flewitt told Murphy, “At that point, you made the comment to one of the police officers that you were going to blow up a bank you had seen on a TV show.”
Murphy pleaded guilty to possession of a knife in a public place, two counts of possessing an imitation firearm in a public place, and one count of possessing an explosive with intent to cause serious damage to property. Murphy was previously charged with possessing an explosive with intent to endanger life but was later acquitted.
The prisoner said he had been made angry about the suspected actions of HSBC after watching the Netflix documentary and planned to damage the Blackpool branch of the bank, but said that he didn’t intend to hurt any people in the act. Rather he wanted to cause “widespread fear, damage to the reputation of HSBC bank and lead to a change in the policy of the bank”.