McCafferty, who killed four people in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, then barricaded the door of his unit as police sealed off the street. A tense stand-off developed as police negotiators tried to persuade McCafferty to allow the boy to leave.

About 90 minutes later, he freed the child and he surrendered to police half-an-hour after that. A senior police officer told The Sun-Herald: "This guy is a psycho but fortunately he gave himself up before any lives were lost." McCafferty appeared before a sheriff - a Scottish magistrate - in private at Selkirk late on Friday charged with attempted murder, abduction, assault and breach of the peace. He made no plea and was remanded in custody to reappear in court next week.

McCafferty was branded Australia's Charles Manson in 1973 when he led a gang of thrill killers through Sydney's west on a heroin and angel dust-induced killing spree. His first victim was a newspaper seller in Canterbury who was staggering home drunk. McCafferty stabbed him seven times. It was part of an obsession with the number seven. One of McCafferty's 200 tattoos is a number seven on the back of his hand.

Two nights later, on a cold and wet evening, a 42-year-old man stopped to pick up two hitchhikers. They were members of McCafferty's gang and took him at gunpoint to meet McCafferty. "There's no need to shoot me. You can have my car. I've got seven children," he pleaded. McCafferty shot him in the back of the head. Just hours later a third man, a driving instructor, was also taken to meet McCafferty and murdered by a member of his gang. At his trial he claimed his drink and drug-fuelled killing spree was sparked by the accidental death of his seven-week-old son, Craig, who was smothered after his young mother fell asleep while breastfeeding and rolled on to him. McCafferty said his son told him in a dream that if he killed seven people he would be reincarnated. "I think, if given the chance, I will kill again for the simple reason that I have to kill seven people and I have killed only three, which means I have four to go," he said.

Three psychiatrists told the court "Mad Dog" should never be released from jail. In 1981 a further 14 years were added to his sentence after he was convicted of the manslaughter of a fellow prisoner.

A violent troublemaker behind bars, he was repeatedly moved around jails in NSW - including Long Bay in Sydney - before being released in 1997 and deported to Scotland, where he was born - despite objections from British authorities. His family had emigrated to Australia when he was 10 but he had never taken citizenship. Back in Scotland, McCafferty drifted from home to home in Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 1998, he was put on two years' probation for threatening to kill two policemen in Edinburgh.

He then fled to New Zealand, but in 2002 he was deported back to the UK for failing to declare his criminal convictions to New Zealand immigration authorities. McCafferty lived in a council house on the south coast of England before drifting back to the town of Hawick in the Borders.