The former lawyer has served 11 years in jail for contempt of court in a civil case because he will not tell his ex-wife what happened to the money in their divorce.

Chadwick, 68, from Philadelphia, appeared in court again on Tuesday in shackles, but he is still refusing to say what happened to $2.5 million (£1.4 million) he allegedly hid in offshore bank accounts.

He has served more than the maximum seven-year sentence he could have received if he had just stolen the money outright.

His lawyer, Michael Malloy, said that Chadwick, who could walk free any time he decided to co-operate, was neither mentally ill nor particularly eccentric.

He said it was a tragedy that his client had spent so long behind bars, noting that he had two sons from his first marriage who were ready to take him in.

“The whole issue is, ‘What the hell are you doing in here for contempt for ten years?’,” Mr Malloy said. “It’s almost like a Monty Python sketch.”

Chadwick’s second wife, Barbara Jean “Bobbie” Chadwick, who is 18 years his junior, has described their lifestyle as “extravagant by almost everyone else’s understanding of what life is like”.

She said theirs was once a lifestyle of luxurious homes, manicured lawns, 5 o’clock cocktail hours, full-course dinners by candlelight and classical music. She has also called him a control freak who kept her on an allowance of $600 a month and made her clean the swimming pool and mow the 3½-acre lawn at their palatial home.

“I ended up making all my clothing. I lived what looked like an opulent life, but I did it on a very tiny little budget,” she said.

She said they had sex according to a strict schedule on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7.30, with no variation. The final straw in their 20-year marriage came when he demanded that she ration her use of lavatory paper to six sheets a visit.

Mrs Chadwick, an artist, is now living in Maine under another name and did not attend the hearing. “She’s pleased that she’s not married to him any more,” her lawyer said. “She’s getting tired of it [the case], but watching it.”

Chadwick went on the run after a divorce hearing in November 1994, but was captured when a dental assistant recognised him from a magazine article and told police.

He was arrested by two plainclothes officers in the dentist’s chair on April 5, 1995, as he kept a 7am cleaning appointment. But he put up a fight and had to be restrained.

He has spent the past 11 years in the Delaware County Prison, where he runs the law library, but is sometimes locked in his cell for 22 hours a day. An investigation has shown that Chadwick transferred the missing money through a company in Gibraltar. An expert witness testified that the $2.5 million would be worth more than $8 million today. But Mr Chadwick insists that he lost it all in a European property venture.

Last year a court-appointed official strongly recommended that Chadwick be released after the authorities had failed to find the money.

Soon afterwards, however, prison officials discovered a letter to Chadwick from a lawyer friend offering help in “starting up your numbered account in the Caymans”.

Explore Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Law Reports

• Student Law

Times Recommends

• The best legal yarns this Christmas
• Legal school 'earned £1m by exploiting bar course'
• Axe may fall on 5,000 more City lawyers