Max Leitner, the "King of Escapes," has died at the age of 66. He died in his apartment in Merano, most likely from illness, after a life on the run and in prison, and he had only recently been released. He lived as a recluse for 27 years. Leitner, also known as the Vallanzasca of South Tyrol, was found on the ground by a friend who stopped by on occasion to check on his health. He has never been involved in any bloodshed, but he has served nearly three decades in prison. Over the years, he had escaped from five different prisons. It all started with a series of robberies in the 1980s. Arrests, convictions, and escapes followed, such as in August 1990, when he was apprehended by Austrian police during an assault on a cash van and later escaped from the Austrian prison and other Italian prisons. Leitner has been compared to Renato Vallanzasca, the protagonist of the Milanese mob of the 1970s and 1980s, who served nearly 50 years in prison.
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