Dying and facing another stretch behind bars, career criminal Anthony John Hagen begged a Canberra court to release him so he could spend his remaining time with family.
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The convicted killer said liver cancer had ended his life of crime.
"I want to be with [my family] as much as I can, you know. This is it," he told Justice Richard Refshauge in May last year.
The judge sentenced Hagen to five years and nine months imprisonment, with a non-parole period to end in October last year, for trafficking methylamphetamine in 2012
But within months he was charged with being a key member of an alleged Canberra jail drug syndicate. Hagen was granted parole soon after, despite the protestations of Canberra prosecutors.
It is understood that Hagen was admitted to Clare Holland House late last week and died at the hospice facility on Wednesday morning.
He was 56.
Among those to visit his bedside was accused drug ring mastermind Thor Kristiansen, 27, who is currently bailed to a residential rehabilitation facility.
Kristiansen was on Tuesday granted permission by an ACT Supreme Court judge to visit Hagen.
Prosecutors did not oppose the application, but concerned the pair could compromise the looming trial via a secret code, insisted the police officer, Luke Napier, who helped crack the alleged network, accompany Kristiansen.
Hagen had been accused of helping Kristiansen to run a syndicate that allegedly smuggled drugs and mobile phones into the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
He pleaded not guilty and had been committed to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court early next year.
Alleged co-offenders Kristiansen, Ryan Malec, 26, Bianca Rasic, 24, and Menka Krsteska, 23, have also entered not guilty pleas.
Police claim the alleged syndicate had links to a network of convicted criminals, gang members and a Sydney-based Chinese drug cook.
It is alleged Kristiansen and Hagen – who were behind bars at the time – were supplied with contraband by a network of smugglers and couriers.
Police surveillance and raids helped smash the alleged network last year, with almost $85,000 cash and about 830 grams of drugs seized.
Hagen spent most of his adult life behind bars.
Before his death, he amassed 98 criminal convictions spanning decades, including a murder conviction in 1987 for which he was sentenced to 15 years.
In 1999, he committed an armed robbery at the Fyshwick branch of the Commonwealth Bank along with Matthew Massey, another well-known offender.
