These are the Scouse criminals who fled Merseyside to sunnier climates in a bid to evade justice after their heinous crimes.
While many chose countries in Europe as their hiding destination others scarpered nearly 5,000 miles away - all in their bid to dodge jail.
However while they certainly did run, they couldn't hide indefinitely.
Here is how police caught up with these 18 crooks and dragged them back to the UK to put them behind bars for their offences.
Mystery surrounds midnight stabbing as street sealed off by police
Benidorm
Cowardly thug Anthony Murphy slashed three strangers' faces in a nightclub leaving them scarred for life - then fled to Spain.
The 36-year-old attacked the men with a Stanley knife at Soho bar in Concert Square in Liverpool city centre in December 2016.
One of the victims, Adam Morris, needed more than 100 stitches and a cut across his neck narrowly missed his jugular vein.
He suffered a wound from the top of his forehead to his left ear and one from his left eye, down his nose and through his lips.
He also suffered slashes to his left eyebrow, the left side of his neck and his right forearm, plus several minor cuts not requiring stitches.
Mr Black received a near 7cm wound to his right cheek and Mr Pilsbury multiple small cuts to his right ear, cheek, forearm and hand.
Following the attack Murphy fled the country and went to Spain.
Spanish police arrested Murphy on a European Arrest Warrant near Benidorm, more than six months later, on June 5, and he was extradited on July 12.
Final picture shows pilot dad flying into sunset one minute before tragedy struck
Florida
Cannabis dealer Alan Young spent five years hiding on a pig farm in Florida.
The 52-year-old was booted out of America and handed over to Merseyside Police after a tip-off about his whereabouts led to extradition proceedings.
The drug dealer was hiding out on a girlfriend’s pig and chicken farm in Mims, Florida and admitted growing a “commercial scale” cannabis farm in 2012.
But, after sentencing was adjourned, he boarded a one-way flight to the US and disappeared off the radar of police.
Young boarded the flight and only returned to the UK after being arrested by police in Mims and put on a flight back to Heathrow Airport.
Young, formerly of Westminster Road, in Kirkdale, was jailed for three years and eight months at Liverpool Crown Court for the cultivation of cannabis, possession of the drug with intent to supply and failing to attend court.
Elderly couple died in suicide pact because they couldn't live without each other
Madrid
Cannabis addict John Peverall is believed to have hid in Amsterdam during three years on the run before his capture in Spain.
John Peverall was one of Merseyside's most wanted men due to his links with a gang behind cocaine, heroin and cannabis plots.
But the then 33-year-old fled the UK after police raided his parents' home, where he lived in Chelwood Avenue, Childwall, in November 2015.
And he wasn't apprehended until August last year, when he was intercepted at Madrid airport and extradited on a European Arrest Warrant.
Peverall admitting conspiracy to produce cannabis, but denied conspiracy to supply heroin.
The court heard he was linked to crooks who sold super strength cocaine and a kilo of high purity heroin to undercover police officers.
Jailing Peverall for three years, Recorder Peter Wright, QC, accepted he was previously of good character and had made progress in prison.
Police called after woman tries to stop BT staff from working on 'threatening' pole
Kiev
One of the ringleaders of a gang who sold £9m of cocaine was caught going to see Liverpool FC play in the Champions League.
Peter Atherton went on the run to Spain after Merseyside Police detectives rumbled a massive cross-country Class A drugs conspiracy.
His fingerprints and handwriting were found on ledgers which revealed the Wirral-based group moved up to 303kg of cocaine in just five months.
But the brazen crook couldn’t resist the temptation of watching Jurgen Klopp’s men firing the Reds towards European Cup glory in Kiev.
Liverpool Crown Court heard the 43-year-old criminal was arrested in Spain on a European Arrest Warrant on November 21, 2017.
And police confirmed to the ECHO the drug dealer was captured in Seville, at the 3-3 group stage draw between Sevilla and Liverpool.
He was then arrested and brought back to the UK in December 2017 to face justice.
Atherton pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs in England and Wales and was jailed for 18 years and nine months.
Pregnant robber begs judge to delay sentencing so baby isn't born in jail
Malaga
A former nightclub owner who raped a little girl escaped justice for 22 years after being granted bail and fleeing abroad - TWICE.
Alan Hollis carried out the sickening abuse against the child in Merseyside in the 1970s and was arrested near his Leeds home in 1996.
Police bailed him to appear at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court on the condition he surrender his passport, but he still fled the country.
The violent paedophile was caught at Gatwick Airport as he attempted to fly to Florida in November 2007 and dragged back to Liverpool.
Unbelievably, bungling magistrates again granted him bail, on the same condition that he surrender his passport and provide a surety.
He obtained a fake passport and escaped to Spain, where Merseyside Police detectives discovered he was living under a false name in Malaga.
Spanish police captured him in March 2017 on a European Arrest Warrant and he was extradited back to the UK to finally face justice.
The then 70-year-old was jailed for 15 years and nine months, after admitting seven counts of sexual abuse at Liverpool Crown Court in March last year.
Stroke survivor tipped onto his head because "wheelchair wasn't tied down"
Spain
Mark Forster was tracked down to his Spanish hideout after police unearthed his location while hunting for missing murderer Sean Walmsley.
The drug dealer was locked up alongside 18 accomplices after a massive investigation busted the vicious Anfield crime gang he played a significant role in.
Forster became one of Merseyside’s most wanted when he fled to Spain as detectives working on Operation Scarva struck at his gang.
A European Arrest Warrant was issued for the crook, of Briar Street in Kirkdale.
He is now serving a six year, eight month sentence after Liverpool Crown Court heard the gang he was part of ruled with fear and violence from their Anfield heartland, supplying drugs in the streets around their base, Walton and beyond the boundaries of Merseyside.
Attack outside Liverpool city centre bar leaves man seriously injured
Amsterdam
A Liverpool gangster masterminded an “underworld” revenge attack on an amateur boxer who knocked him out in a prison brawl.
James “Pancake” Taylor enlisted two cronies to help him carry out the vicious armed attack on Lee Siner at a city centre kebab house.
The then 34-year-old fled the UK days after the bloodshed at Kimos restaurant, in October, 2010, and remained at large until Dutch armed police swooped on him in Amsterdam.
One of his victims wounds was described by a police officer of such a size that "he was able to fit his fist, his entire hand, in it."
Taylor, of Edmonton Close, Kirkdale, arranged the reprisal attack after Siner had knocked him out in a prison visiting room brawl earlier in 2010.
Siner had been warned by detectives that he was in danger, the court was told, but had refused to leave the city or accept protection.
Rumours abounded that the dad-of-two was in the sun-drenched Canaries until intelligence emerged that he was living in an area of Amsterdam nicknamed by locals as “little Liverpool”. He had left a gym and was preparing to cycle back to his £2,500-a-month luxury apartment when a Dutch SWAT team pounced.
In his posh pad, police recovered a handgun from under a mattress, ammunition concealed in a sock and a fraudulent passport taped to the underside of a table.
Pancake consented to his extradition to Merseyside and pleaded guilty to a charge of wounding with intent.
He was jailed him for nine years and activated five months of a suspended sentence Pancake received for affray.
"Whistleblower" says she was sacked after telling bosses they may owe huge tax bill
Southern Spain
Convicted drug dealer Steven Johnson taunted police with pictures of him smoking cannabis while on the run before he was caught in Spain.
The 40-year-old used alias profiles to taunt Merseyside Police after fleeing the country when he was released on parole in 2014.
During the two years he was on the run he brazenly uploaded pictures of himself from his Simon Woods and JJ Green accounts.
In pictures Johnson, formerly of Sutherland Road, Prescot, could be seen apparently smoking a joint while posing behind a cannabis plant.
A bag of “cannabis substrate” could also be seen in a photo - a substance used to help grow cannabis more effectively.
He showed off plants with the caption ‘2 months old.’ - and even planned how he was going to share the crop with his Facebook friends.
A third picture showed him ironically posing behind a set of window bars - which look like the bars of a jail cell.
While on the run the criminal boasted online: “You will never find me! Hahaha".
But police did and he was locked up for almost seven years for his role in a huge drugs gang.
Secret beer gardens in Liverpool where you can soak up the sun
Netherlands
Scott Coleman, from Walton, went on the run for over a decade after his drug importation plot from Merseyside into Scotland was exposed.
The 41-year-old flooded £200,000 worth of the Class A drugs into Aberdeen before he was caught in 2003.
But Coleman fled a trial at Edinburgh Crown Court and went to Spain, sparking an international manhunt.
He was tracked down in 2015 by Dutch officers who discovered him lying low in the George Gershwinplein area of the city.
They became suspicious after spotting Coleman and another man immediately split up upon noticing police.
He presented a false Irish passport to them and refused to reveal his true identity.
Detectives believe he was hiding out in southern Spain for a number of years before using fake travel documents to head to Amsterdam.
The Merseysider was circulated as wanted by the National Crime Agency as part of Operation Captura - a police project to track down some of the UK’s most profile criminals, hiding abroad.
Coleman was extradited and was sentenced to four years for supplying heroin and a further 12 months for failing to appear at court.
Teenager slashed in the face and legs after gang ambush
Tenerife
Fugitive drugs lord Stephen Blundell was handed extra prison time after being brought back from his Tenerife hideaway.
Blundell, 36, vanished in 2013 when he was due to be sentenced over a £1m drug ring.
He was named as one of Britain’s most wanted fugitives and listed in the Crimestoppers’ Captura campaign to track down criminals hiding abroad.
Blundell, formerly of Leathers Lane, Halewood, is believed to have handed himself in to Spanish National Police officers in Tenerife after realising the game was up.
He was ordered to serve the nine years and eight month jail term he fled from plus another eight months for jumping bail.
Police called after shoppers trapped in HUGE traffic jam at Tesco car park
Costa del Sol
A man who masterminded a £200,000 cocaine conspiracy was caught by police while living out his dream life on the Costa del Sol with his partner and child.
David Hewson, then 31, fled the country while awaiting a lengthy sentence for masterminding a £200,000 cocaine conspiracy and thought he had evaded justice.
The Litherland drug lord spent 18 months on the run until his arrest – and spent much of it in a luxury villa nestled in the hills above glamorous Puerto Banus.
He even dyed his ginger hair in a bid to change his appearance and was enjoying a comfortable life among the Costa del Sol’s ex-pat community.
However his life of luxury was thwarted when Spanish police swooped and a judge ordered him to serve the 11 year, one-month drug sentence he ran from, as well as a further six months for skipping bail.
Self-confessed racist chucked Zimmer frame during street punch up with students
Costa del Sol
Drugs baron Mark ‘Fatboy’ Lilley was listed as one of the country’s most wanted fugitives when he went on the run from a 23-year jail sentence in 2000.
The 20-stone bodybuilder, 42, was tracked down when armed police found him cowering naked in the panic room of a luxury villa on Spain’s Costa del Sol.
He was flown back to the UK after 13 years at large and put behind bars and told to not expect parole for 15 years.
The crook who goes by the nicknames Fatboy, TJ, Big Vern and Mandy – was found guilty in his absence, while on the run, of conspiracy to supply cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, amphetamines, cannabis and cannabis resin, and possessing a firearm.
He had been described as one of Merseyside’s most dangerous drugs crooks.
Love Island star Sophie Gradon took her own life at her parents' home
Amsterdam/Holland
Gangsters Kirk Bradley and Anthony 'Fat Tony' Downes escaped from a prison van on their way to court.
Bradley and Downes, then 26 and from Huyton, were among the UK's most wanted men after they were sprung from a prison van in Manchester in 2012.
The pair were on their way to Liverpool Crown Court where they had been on trial for 11 weeks alongside several others accused of orchestrating a series of guns and grenade attacks on underworld rivals.
Their escape caused the trial to collapse, but they were both convicted at a retrial held in their absence and sentenced to life in prison.
Within weeks of the retrial finishing, a Dutch SWAT team tracked Anthony Downes to a holiday park close to the Holland / Belgium border and arrested him.
A month later, the authorities caught up with Kirk Bradley.
He was found smoking drugs in a penthouse apartment on the outskirts of Amsterdam, masked and armed Dutch police burst through his front door and ended his time on the run.
Dublin
A mugger who held up students in Liverpool and then fled the country after his picture appeared in the ECHO was jailed.
Justice finally caught up with Dean Reece, 35, when he was jailed for five-and-a-half years for the terrifying knifepoint robberies of two students in 2008.
On the day the ECHO carried a “wanted” appeal for him, Reece – originally from Kirkby – got on a plane to Lanzarote and stayed abroad for two years.
Liverpool crown court was told Reece used a scalpel and a Stanley knife to frighten two young men – both new students in the city – into handing over hundreds of pounds.
He was living in County Neath in Ireland at the time of his arrest.
China
A “wicked and depraved” paedophile spent eight years on the run across two continents
It took an unprecedented deal with Chinese authorities to bring David Price, then 69, back to Merseyside to face justice.
He was jailed for seven years and eight months.
Liverpool crown court heard how, during the 1990s and the early 2000s, Price travelled to Africa and the Middle East to abuse and take pictures of young girls aged between seven and their mid-teens.
Police first caught up with him in 2003, following a tip-off from an undercover officer in Colorado, USA, who had posed as a paedophile.
Price had tried to tempt him over to Dubai to join him in the sexual abuse of six young sisters whose mother he had befriended – but he skipped bail and fled the UK on a false passport.
In June, 2005, after being tracked through Kenya and Tanzania, Price turned up in China.
Merseyside police alerted the Chinese authorities about his escape and a previous conviction of gross indecency against a girl, for which he was jailed for four years in 1990.
Little is known about Price’s time in the province of Hubei, in central China, where he was employed to teach English to schoolchildren.
He was arrested in May last year and spent six months in a Chinese prison while diplomatic efforts to have him extradited took place behind the scenes. He is the first person ever to be extradited from China.
Boy put paedophile couple who abused him behind bars by speaking up
Spain
Gary Cranney fled to Spain after crashing a car into a Smithdown Lane home back in 2014.
Cranney, of Teck Street, was pursued by officers as his Lexus and another car sped at 50mph through Anfield and Kensington.
He shot through red traffic lights before smashing into the front garden of the home before ringing police and reporting his car had been stolen.
After fleeing to Spain, Cranney was finally caught in September in 2017 and extradited back to the UK to face justice.
He was jailed for 18 months after admitting dangerous driving, perverting the course of justice and failing to surrender.
