While serving a 17-year sentence in Parramatta Correctional Centre for armed robbery and shooting a police officer, McNeil began writing plays.
[1] He was released on parole 10 years early, won an Australian Writers' Guild Award and married actress and director Robyn Nevin, from whom he later separated.
He forced the hotel manager at gunpoint to empty the safe and in the ensuing escape, shot and wounded a police officer.
[5] While imprisoned at Parramatta and later, the Bathurst Correctional Complex, McNeil also wrote The Old Familiar Juice, How Does Your Garden Grow and Jack, his last play.
[2] He helped Aboriginal playwright Bob Merritt to write his 1975 play The Cake Man, which he wrote while serving time for a minor offence in Bathurst Gaol.
[10]Suffering from alcohol-related issues, McNeil returned to St Kilda in 1981, living at Ozanam House, a crisis accommodation facility for homeless men.