A convicted killer who escaped jail and was recaptured after going on a bank-robbery spree has been granted a small step of freedom.

The Parole Board of Canada says George Vincent Gyuricza has earned unescorted temporary absences to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to “develop a pro-social support network,” the board wrote in its Oct. 17 decision.

Gyuricza, 45, is serving a life sentence for killing 96-year-old Margaret Machon with his bare hands on Oct. 10, 1986.

He was high and intoxicated when he sneaked into the elderly widow’s second-storey downtown Calgary suite through an open balcony door and stole $60. He choked her and stabbed her twice in the throat with the handle of her hairbrush.

He is also serving extra time for escaping custody.

On Dec. 11, 2003, Gyuricza and fellow prisoner Robert Walter Sango slipped away from Drumheller Institution’s minimum-security townhouses.

The pair drove off in a pickup truck and robbed at least three Calgary banks while on the loose. They tasted two weeks of freedom before being captured in a bus shelter near Chinook Centre on Christmas Eve 2003.

Gyuricza was transferred into maximum security, where he was noted as being disruptive — lighting fires and throwing debris from his cell.

But it seems time is mellowing the inmate.

His last run-in with staff was in 2006, when he was caught smoking his cell.

“Recent reports state you continue to demonstrate positive behaviour around the institutional setting, you seem to be approaching staff better than ever and trust others more on a frequent basis,” the board wrote.

Gyuricza’s case management team says he is a low risk to reoffend while out on his own attending sobriety meetings.

He is working toward a day parole release.

“You appear to be making steady progress in your gradual reintegration into the community,” the parole board wrote.

An investigation into Gyuricza’s 2003 escape found he should not have been placed in minimum security.

Gyuricza claims to have started using alcohol at the age of seven, marijuana at age eight and cocaine when he was 14. He says he suffered sexual and physical abuse and neglect at the hands of family in his youth.