Foster homes, prison sentences, jail breaks and cocaine addiction litter the past of convicted murderer Andre Kirk Hypolite. By age 24, Hypolite had amassed 70 breaking and entering related offences against his name when he was charged with a spree at the Cambridge Beaches, Newstead and Astwood Cove guest properties.

When the magistrate threatened to send Hypolite?s case to the Supreme Court where the sentence would be more severe, his lawyer successfully argued for lenience because ?he had spend his teenage years in various foster homes?.

?I never had a home-sweet-home upbringing,? Hypolite was quoted to say. ?Maybe this was retaliating because I was taken away from my mother.?

Hypolite also said he began drinking and using cocaine after his girlfriend?s pregnancy was terminated. ?I wish I never took the drug,? he said in 1995. ?It stripped me of my morals, pride and self-esteem.?

He stressed that he particularly wanted to apologise to his mother because he knew he had ?brought shame on her shoulders?. His pleadings fell on deaf ears and Hypolite was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Hypolite is also well-known within the Police service as a jailbreak artist, having escaped twice in three days from Hamilton Police station ? one time jumping from two storeys up and injuring himself in the process.

Police issued an appeal for witnesses for anyone seeing a shirtless man near the station and called him a ?dangerous individual?.

On April 1, 2000, Hypolite ? doubled over in pain ? had to be assisted by two Police officers into Magistrates? Court after two days on the run with a broken ankle.

Magistrate Archibald Warner asked Hypolite why he went on the run, and was told it was to get money to pay various fines. But for the second escape, he said he was under the influence of drugs, adding for emphasis: ?That was my motive.?

The court was told he was allowed to use the phone in order to contact relatives for help in paying his fines. But he walked out of the Police station past a female officer processing other prisoners, and was caught shortly after his escape.

But the following day Hypolite was taken from his holding cell to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) on the fourth floor of the Station, interviewed for several minutes, and left alone by investigators.

?Police heard a noise coming from the interview room just five minutes later, Crown counsel Cindy Clarke said. ?And returned to find Hypolite gone.?

He had dislodged security bars from the interview room window, she said, and jumped onto a nearby roof before getting to Reid Street.

Hypolite was fined him $500 and $800 for each jailbreak and $300 for damaging Government property.