Every day it gets worse. The debacle that is the case of Phillip John Smith - murderer, paedophile, extortionist and now fugitive - is a horror show of incompetence and bungling.
Such is the string of events they would stretch the credibility of a novel or TV programme.
What makes it so serious is the narcissist behind the failures; a runaway who has escaped to freedom in Brazil or, who knows, somewhere else.
Phillip Smith - the name by which he is known to police and Corrections, although it appears Traynor remains his official surname - was as recently as two years ago described by the Parole Board as ''violent, callous and manipulative''.
Yet, he was on three-day release without electronic monitoring and supposedly under the supervision of a family member who fell down on the job. With Smith's history, the arrangements were totally unsuitable.
Yet, although he skipped the country last Thursday, Corrections did not find he was missing until Saturday afternoon.
Yet, it took another 24 hours before the family hurt by his most heinous crimes was informed, even though he harassed his victims from jail. No wonder they are retraumatised and disillusioned.
Yet, not only had the parole board expressed severe doubts about Smith, it appears he offended in prison.
Corrections Department chief executive Ray Smith in 2011 said he had been made aware of ''serious allegations'' surrounding Smith's prison behaviour.
Smith might have not have received the indefinite sentence used these days, but one wonders if he could have been given extra jail time for those possible offences or, at the very least, for continued harassment of the victims.
Yet, somehow he got together tens of thousands of dollars, enough to help him flee, and with more than $10,000 cash. How?
Yet, Smith obtained a passport while in prison, which is forbidden, under the name Traynor. He was also able to arrange police checks to ensure Phillip Traynor was clean.
Yet, Smith was reportedly able to run an importing business from prison, later closed by authorities. Just how much access to computers, phones and the internet did he have? How lax was his supervision?
It was reported in 2011 that prisoners could only run a business with the approval of the prison manager, which appeared not to have happened in Smith's case.
Now, Smith has sent encrypted emails to Radio New Zealand about his escape and promises a full media release today.
He is, in effect, taunting the authorities and glorying in infamy. It might have been beneficial to deny him the oxygen of publicity were it not for the fact the issues raised are so serious and need to be exposed.
Clearly, the review being promised is required, although scepticism about any conclusions will be widespread.
How much will actually be followed up and put into practice? Are underlying Government department cultural and human nature issues more to the fore than just systems failures?
How come someone, somewhere, did not raise questions about Smith's supposed improved behaviour in the past 18 months?
Why did the police in the first instance just accept the name Smith? Why wasn't there appropriate information sharing between departments?
After all, it was only a few years ago that child sex offender Te Rito Henry Miki escaped while under prison release. Using fake identification, he worked for years as a teacher.
An inquiry, reporting only two years ago, was told Corrections was developing GPS tracking for such cases and sharing information between departments would help prevent these conmen succeeding.
And now another clever and plausible criminal fools authorities at every turn.
The debacle is even harder to believe given Ray Smith's comments in 2011: ''We have been tracking this prisoner's activities for a number of years. This has included monitoring his telephone calls, direct staff observation and reporting to prison management, and monitoring of his prison trust account.''
Really?
