Rambo killing rampage

A 19-year-old former officer cadet yesterday entered no plea to one charge of murder, after he allegedly shot dead six people and injured 18 others in an inner Melbourne suburb on Sunday night.

The man, Julian Knight, a storeman, was remanded to appear again in the Melbourne Magistrate's Court next Monday. A police charge sheet indicated that Knight, of Clifton Hill, where the shooting took place, would face five other murder charges.

Deteriorating

Knight was arrested after being chased by the police. He shot at the police and was arrested only after he ran out of ammunition. Hospital sources said the death toll from the massacre could rise - the condition of a 21-year-old woman was deteriorating.

Earlier yesterday an Army spokesman said Knight had started an 18-month officer course at the Royal Military Collage Duntroon in January but had resigned in June. Defence sources said Knight's performance on the course had been below par and it had been suggested to him that he resign rather than be dismissed.

Opened Fire

Witnesses during the 40 minutes of violence said the Rambo-style attack turned Hoddle St. in Clifton Hill into a war zone. The gunman opened fire from behind bushes on motorists, pedestrians and a police helicopter. Two of his victims were woman. One woman was shot dead when she stopped her car because she thought the bodies on the road were the result of a car accident. Another woman, a passenger in a car, was killed while her husband and daughter looked on.

The daughter was injured. Another victim was a motorcyclist who crashed to the ground in the middle of the road. The police said the gunman used a high-powered rifle, a .22 calibre rifle and a pump-action shotgun.

The shooting was the bloodiest in Australia since the Milperra "bike" massacre in Sydney in September 1984, when six men and a 14-year-old girl were killed. Clifton Hill residents who know Knight said he was a quiet, reserved young man. He had just been dropped by his girlfriend.

One man who lived up the road from the Knight family home knew of the 19-year-old's collection of guns and his shame at being teased by Army colleagues for his slight build. "My son was a friend of both him and his girlfriend," said the man, who asked not to be identified. "I saw him yesterday. He was going back to his place because it was his mother's birthday and they were celebrating". "His girlfriend had just dropped him - she didn't want him anymore."

The Hoddle Street Massacre

The mass shooting which Julian Knight committed in Hoddle Street, Clifton Hill, in Melbourne, Australia, on Sunday the 9th August 1987, became known as the "Hoddle Street Massacre".

In the space of 45 minutes, Julian Knight, a 19-year-old recently discharged Army Officer Cadet, fired a total of 114 rounds from three weapons which killed 7 people and wounded a further 19, including two police officers. The trail he left extended for over two kilometres and ventured across three inner-city Melbourne suburbs; Clifton Hill, Northcote and Fitzroy North.

The Hoddle Street Massacre was described by the then Victorian State Coroner, Mr Harold "Hal" Hallenstein, as "a significant tragedy in the history of Australia". The Victorian Supreme Court judge who sentenced Knight, Mr Justice George Hampel, referred to the shootings as "one of the worst massacres in Australian history".

At 11.30am on Sunday the 9th August 1987, Julian Knight woke up in his temporary bedroom in the front room of his mother's house at number 6 Ramsden Street, Clifton Hill. It was the 16th day since his discharge from the Australian Regular Army, where he'd been an Officer Cadet at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra.

Since then he had been re-employed as a storeman/driver for a Melbourne clothing firm, Cuggi Rarity Stores Pty Ltd, but he was finding it near impossible to meet the weekly repayments on his $6,000 Defence Force Credit Union car loan. He was already two weeks behind with the repayments and he still owed over $5,800. In addition to the car loan he had around $1,200 of other debts.

The only asset Knight owned was a Holden Torana SLR5000 V8 sedan he'd purchased with the car loan in April 1987. He'd decided to sell it two weeks ago to help him pay off his debts, and he had made extensive attempts to sell it, but a buyer still hadn't eventuated. His financial problems were creating a great deal of anxiety and his daily alcohol intake was now around five times what it had been when he was in the Army.

Since his discharge from the Army on the 24th July 1987, Knight had also attempted to re-enlist in two Army Reserve units; the 7th Transport Squadron, and the unit he had served in during 1985-87, the 4th/19th Prince of Wales's Light Horse Regiment. On both occasions he had been rejected because of the pending criminal charges that had been laid against him.

At around 2.55am on Sunday the 31st May 1987, Knight had stabbed his Company Sergeant Major in a Canberra nightclub, the Private Bin. He had been training as an army officer at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, since the 13th January 1987.

The stabbing of his Company Sergeant Major was the direct result of continuous bastardization and victimization that he had been subjected to at the college. Immediately following the stabbing, Knight had surrendered to two Australian Federal Police officers in a nearby laneway, and he had subsequently been charged with malicious wounding, assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He was now on bail - a $5,000 self-surety - and he was due to appear in the Australian Capital Territory

Magistrates Court on the 10th November 1987. The pending charges not only prevented Knight from re-enlisting in the Regular or Reserve Army, they also prevented him from pursuing almost all of the alternative careers he had considered following. The impending criminal convictions would effectively permanently exclude him from a military career - his "reason for living".

To compound his problems with re-adjusting to civilian life, Knight's former Melbourne girlfriend wanted to have nothing to do with him, and his Canberra girlfriend had remained behind in Canberra. He had drifted apart from his local friends and, unable to afford to live by himself, he'd been forced to "camp out" in the front room of his mother's two storey terrace house.

To add to his anxiety, Knight's natural mother, who was living in the Republic of South Africa, had failed to respond to a letter sent to her by Knight's social worker. Knight had been adopted as a baby, and he always knew this, but he was disturbed by his natural mother's refusal now to communicate with him.

Between 1.10pm and 4.10pm on Sunday the 9th August 1987, Knight attended a belated birthday party for his mother at his grandmother's house in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. Whilst at the party Knight consumed two cans of full-strength beer. He left the party in his own car and drove his younger sister home before driving aimlessly around theClifton Hill area.

At about 4.50pm Knight went to see an old girlfriend in Clifton Hill in order to give her a magazine. He only stayed at her flat for about five minutes then he continued to drive aimlessly around the area. Minutes later the gearbox of his car - his only asset - jammed and stuck in second gear. He limped the car home, where he changed clothes and drank another car of beer before walking angrily around to the nearby Royal Hotel, his local pub, at around 5.30pm.

None of Knight's friends were at the Royal Hotel so he drank alone in the public bar from around 5.32pm to about 8.55pm. At around 8.50pm Knight began to feel the effects of the beer he'd been drinking and he had a "vision" of soldiers being ambushed. He felt as if it was a "call to arms" and at about 8.55pm he rushed from the hotel and ran back to his mother's house.

Arriving back at his mother's house minutes later, he spoke briefly to his sister when she met him in the hallway outside the front room. He then waited until his sister returned to the rear of the house to watch a movie on TV with their mother, before he ventured upstairs to his mother's bedroom.

Stored under her bed were his legally owned and licenced weapons: a .177 calibre Daisy BB air rifle, a .177 calibre Chinese air rifle, a .177 calibre Crosman model 766 air rifle, a .22 calibre Ruger model 10/22 semi-automatic rifle, an 12-gauge 8-shot Mossberg pump-action shotgun, and a 7.62mm calibre M14 semi-automatic military rifle.

Knight retrieved the Ruger rifle, the Mossberg shotgun and the M14 rifle from underneath the bed, then he took the Ruger and the Mossberg back downstairs to the front room. He then returned to his mother's room and collected the M14, and a steel ammunition box and a leather shotgun cartridge belt from his mother's wardrobe, before returning to the front room to load the three firearms.

After loading the three firearms and stuffing his pockets with ammunition, including a "suicide" 7.62mm round which he placed in the front right hand pocket of his jeans, he placed a black combat knife down the back of his jeans. He then slung the M14 over his back and picked up the Mossberg and the Ruger in his right and left hands respectively. Immediately afterwards, at around 9.29pm, he opened the front door of the house and ran out into Ramsden Street.

After running west along Ramsden Street and crossing the nearby railway line, Knight reached the eastern side of the main four-lane arterial road known as Hoddle Street. At 9.30pm, from the nature strip on the east side of the road, Knight commenced firing on passing cars with the Ruger rifle.

The first car that Knight opened fire on contained a married couple, Con and Rita Vitkos. Rita received minor wounds and her husband drove on before stopping at a Mobil service station about 150 metres further south down Hoddle Street.

Following the Vitkos's was a car containing Michael Anthony and Trevor Smeelie, and a car driven by Gregory Elliott. Both of these cars were damaged but none of the occupants were wounded. Following Elliott's car was a car driven by Alan Jury and containing Monica Vitelli and Dannielle Mina. Jury and Vitelli were both wounded and they joined the others at the Mobil service station.

Knight fired rapid bursts at each car, and he reloaded with spare 10-round Ruger magazines as he moved north along the nature-strip towards the nearby Clifton Hill railway station. He ensured that he fired on every south and north-bound vehicle as it passed him, The next car he fired on contained Raewyn Crighton, Bernd Micheel and Dianne Arnold, who all escaped injury.

The following car was driven by Sand Wang, who received minor wounds. The next car was driven by Diane Fitzpatrick, who received a serious back wound. The next three cars to be shot at contained Michael Pearce and Jacqueline Langosch, Issac Lohman, and Reginald Dutton and Dana Sabolcki respectively, and they were all fortunate to escape injury.

At around 9.35pm Knight ran out of ammunition for the Ruger, so he dropped it on the nature-strip and commenced firing with the Mossberg shotgun. The loud blasts of the shotgun alerted local residents to the shooting and the first calls were made to the Victoria Police's emergency communications centre, D24.

The first car to be fired at with the shotgun contained Sharyn Maunder, who did not receive any wound and who did not realize the front of her car had been hit. The next car to be hit was driven by Vesna Markovska, who received minor wounds, followed by a car driven by her fiance, Zoran Trajceski, who also received minor wounds. Both Markovska and Trajceski parked their cars by the side of the road and got out to take cover. As they did so a car driven by Georgina "Gina"

Papaioannou stopped on the opposite side of the street. Knight immediately fired on the car and Gina was slightly wounded. Soon afterwards a car driven by Jayne Morris, and also containing Kay Edwards and Cecily Caulis, drove south through the ambush zone.

Further south down Hoddle Street they flagged down a police divisional van containing Constable Glen Nichols and Constable Belinda Bourchier, and informed them about the shootings. Nichols and Bourchier immediately drove to the scene with their lights and siren on as they radioed D24. Soon after 9.38pm they reached the intersection of Hoddle Street and Ramsden Street and they were shot at by Knight.

Knight continued to change position as he fired at a procession of four single occupant cars which, in chronological order, were driven by Mathew Morrow, Edward McShortall, Trevor Robinson and Keith Wing Shing. McShortall received minor wounds but Wing Shing, who stopped his car opposite Knight, received serious jaw and throat wounds.

Knight continued to reload and change position as he continued to fire at the passing cars. The next car Knight fired at was a car containing Kevin Skinner, his wife Tracey and their son Adam. Tracey was killed instantly by a blast to the face and Adam, who was on her lap below the window sill, received minor glass wounds.

Following this, a local resident, Peter Curmi, and a friend of his, John Muscat, approached the scene from the western side of the street. Knight fired one shot at them which fatally wounded Muscat in the head and chest, and which seriously wounded Curmi. Immediately after this the attendant at the nearby swimming pool, Steve Wight, ran to their aid and was seriously wounded by Knight's final shotgun blast.

It was now 9.39pm and numerous police units were rushing to the scene. Knight dropped the empty Mossberg shotgun on the ground and took up a prone firing position with his M14 rifle. At this point Vesna Markovska broke cover from behind her car and made for the footpath on the eastern side of Hoddle Street. As she stepped onto the footpath she was spotted by Knight who fired a shot which seriously wounded her. When she fell back onto the roadway Knight fired two further shots which killed her.

It was now 9.40pm and D24 notified the Police Air Wing that one of their Aerospatiale Dauphin police helicopters was needed to assist the police at the scene. Moments later, in a break in the firing, one of the police officers on the western side of Hoddle Street fired a shot at Knight, which missed him by only a couple of metres.

Immediately following this shot Robert Mitchell, who had driven through the ambush zone unscathed and parked his car further down Hoddle Street, ran up the eastern side of the street in an attempt to renderassistance to the fallen Markovska. As he reached her and came to a halt, Knight quickly fired a shot at him which hit him in the right side of the head and killed him instantly.

At 9.41pm, as three police units took up positions in Mayors Park on the western side of Hoddle Street and other police units took up positions in the surrounding area, Knight opened fire on a car driven by Jacqueline Turner and on Gina Papaioannou as she walked from her car to help Markovska and Mitchell. Turner's car was not hit but Papaioannou was fatally wounded in the left side as she reached Markovska.

Following this, Knight fired on a car driven by John Finn who received minor wounds. The next car Knight shot at was driven by Andrew Hack who was seriously wounded in the left side. Following Hack was a car driven by Dusan Flajnik which Knight fired at. Flajnik was hit in the left side and bled to death in his car.

At 9.43pm Constable Bourchier requested another ambulance from D24 and nominated the Mobil service station as a safe rendevous point for ambulances as two more police units arrived there.

The next car to be shot at contained Michael Smith and Jacqueline Megens. Smith received minor wounds while Megens was seriously wounded in the shoulder. As they were fired upon the first two ambulances arrived at the scene; one at the Mobil service station and one at Mayors Park.

It was now 9.44pm and the next car to be shot at was driven by Steven Mihailidis who escaped unscathed. Immediately afterwards Knight fired at the rider of a motorcycle, Kenneth "Shane" Stanton, who was hit in the left leg and fell onto the roadway. As he lay there Knight shot him a further two times and he eventually died.

Soon afterwards, at 9.45pm, a car containing Dimitrios Collyvas, Renata Coldebella, Danny Coldebella and Danny De Luca, followed Staton down Hoddle Street. Knight, who was by this time beside the southern end of the Clifton Hill railway station buildings, fired a shot at the front of the car.

The car stopped and as it reversed back up the street Knight fired two more shots at into it before it crashed into a police car, driven by Constable Dominic Cannizzaro, which had just arrived at the scene.

The first shot that Knight had fired into the car had slightly wounded Renata, and the second shot he fired had seriously wounded Danny Coldebella. As Collyvas's car was reversing a motorcycle being ridden by Wayne Timms and Jayne Timbury, followed by a car containing Alexandra Stamatopoulos, Steven Stamatopoulos, Irene Fountis, Vicki Fountis and Panagioti Fountis, drove into the ambush zone and stopped opposite Collyvas's car.

At this point Knight, who was surrounded by at least 40 armed police officers, decided to withdraw from the area and begin "hunting" police officers. It was just after 9.45pm and he'd expended 40 rounds of .22 calibre bullets, 25 rounds of 12-gauge Buckshot and 32 rounds of 7.62mm calibre bullets in the preceding 15 minutes. Five people lay

dead, two were fatally wounded and a further 17 had been wounded. In addition to the expended ammunition, Knight had lost his "suicide" bullet and another 7.62mm bullet as he had moved up the nature-strip. Knight had also lost his knife on the nature-strip. He now retained only his M14 rifle and 17 rounds of ammunition.

Following his decision to withdraw, Knight turned around and climbed onto the western platform of the Clifton Hill railway station. He ran north along the platform and then continued moving north beside the railway line. He reached a fork in the tracks at around 9.46pm and decided to follow the left fork.

He spotted a police car in the northern end of Hoddle Street and fired three shots at it. The police car contained Sergeant Graham Larchin and Senior Constable Betty Roberts, who were not injured by the gunfire but who abandoned the car after Knight ceased firing.

After firing at Larchin and Roberts's police car Knight moved into a nearby cluster of trees, sat down and smoked a cigarette. Minutes later, at 9.48pm, Police Helicopter VH-PVA - callsign "Air 495" - arrived over the Clifton Hill area and began searching for Knight with a powerful Nitesun searchlight. A minute later D24 ordered the Victoria Police's elite Special Operations Group (SOG) to attend the scene.

Knight finished his cigarette and continued moving in a north-west direction towards Northcote. He crossed over the Merri Creek, which bordered Clifton Hill and Northcote, and took up a position at the end of a road bridge which spanned the creek. Just before 10pm he fired a shot at a passing police officer, Constable Colin Chambers, who was slightly wounded in the right side.

After shooting Chambers, Knight moved back across Merri Creek into the adjoining suburb of Fitzroy North. At this point he was chased by Police Helicopter "Air 495" and he ran into a line of trees beside the railway line. He tried to avoid the searchlight for a few minutes but then, at 10.05pm, he broke cover onto the railway line, knelt down and fired three shots at the helicopter as it circled over him.

The Police Helicopter, an Aerospatiale Dauphin containing Senior Constable Trevor Wilson, Senior Constable Daryl Jones, Constable Keith Stewart and Ambulance Officer Alan Scott, was hit by the first shot which pierced it right main fuel tank and forced it to land on a nearby sports field.

Knight continued on into Fitzroy North and headed down McKean Street in an attempt to reach his ex-girlfriend's house. It was now 10.13pm and Knight was spotted by two police officers, Constable John Delahunty and Constable Ralph Lockman, who gave chase in their police car, callsign "Fitzroy 213".

As they bore down on him Knight ducked into a laneway, turned around and fired his last ten rounds at the police car as it stopped in the middle of the road facing the laneway. Constable Delahunty, who was driving the police car, received minor shrapnel wounds to the face and left hand as he and Lockman tumbled out of the car with their revolvers drawn.

The police car's headlights were on high beam facing the entrance to the laneway, which was also lit up by a nearby street light. As Delahunty and Lockman took up positions behind their police car and called upon Knight to surrender, Knight squatted down beside a low brick wall and searched his pockets vainly for his "suicide" bullet.

When he realized that he had lost it he leaned out into the headlight beams and dropped the empty M14 on the ground. He then slowly stood up with his hands in the air. When he was fully upright Constable Delahunty stepped out from behind the rear of the police car and fired a shot at him.

Knight was not hit but he ducked back down behind the low brick wall. As Delahunty and Lockman again called on him to surrender he yelled back "Don't shoot! I'm coming out!" He again rose up with his hands in the air before walking out onto the street where he was arrested by Delahunty and Lockman.

Numerous other police officers arrived at the arrest scene, and after a short, initially violent, interrogation, Knight was driven in an unmarked police car to the St Kilda Road Police Complex by Detective Senior Constable Richard McIntosh, Detective Senior Constable Kim Cox and Constable Robert Kovacs.

At the St Kilda Road Police Complex Knight was interrogated extensively by McIntosh and Cox, briefly by the then head of the Homicide Squad, Detective Chief Inspector Brendon Cole, then extensively by Homicide Squad detectives Detective Senior Sergeant Brian McCarthy and Detective Senior Constable Graham Kent.

Knight also took part in a night-time crime re-enactment and a daytime crime re-enactment, both of which were videoed, and he was interrogated until he was eventually charged with the murder of John Muscat at 12.20pm on Monday the 10th August 1987.

Nightmare on Hoddle Street

According to police, Knight had drunk no more than five pots of beer during the evening. According to bar staff, he drank eight. Knight himself has insisted that he put away at least thirteen. What is not disputed is the time he left the Royal Hotel (8:20 P.M.) and the time he arrived home according to both his mother and sister, nine o'clock. It takes less than ten minutes to walk from the pub to Ramsden Street.

Knight has claimed that his mind is a complete blank from the time he left the pub to the time he got home. In barely credible contrast, he can remember everything from 9:00 P.M. onwards in extraordinary detail.

He prepared and loaded his three guns. He sorted out additional ammunition. He clipped a 10-inch sheath knife onto his belt. He put a single bullet into the left pocket of his jeans and, at about 9:30 P.M., he slipped quietly out of the house. He had the Ruger rifle in his left hand, the Mossberg shotgun in his right and the M-14 slung over his shoulder.

Ramsden Street was deserted, not a soul to be seen. He headed west, at a brisk walk, towards the railway crossing. Instead of using the pedestrian gate, he slipped through a hole in the wire fence at the side of the crossing, and picked his way over the railway lines, angling off into the darkness. When he emerged, he was on a narrow strip of land that separated the railway track from a parallel-running, four lane arterial road called Hoddle Street.

The buffer strip had been landscaped with grasses, shrubs and trees to give the impression of a natural divide, cleverly hiding the ugly mechanics of the railway - and, on the night of Sunday 9 August 1987, something far uglier still - from the eyes of the suburban car drivers on Hoddle Street.

Knight knelt down by the side of a tree - or "propped," in the military jargon he would invariably employ when talking later about the events of that night - and surveyed the scene before him. The traffic along Hoddle Street was heavy and the nearest vehicles passed within about 20 feet of him. Visibility was reasonable but the cacophony of engine noise and the quality of the light - the low-glare shimmer from the overhead street lamps, and the bright cores and vaporous tracers of headlights and taillights - rendered the world strange and unreal.

Even by the usual cowardly standards of pseudo-commando killers, Knight was extraordinarily spineless. He was unable to embark upon his mission without first dealing himself every last psychological ace from the bottom of the pack. He needed to have his victims comprehensively dehumanized; so he chose the night, when darkness reduces people to mere shadows and silhouettes. He needed to jettison his inhibitions, weaken his conscience and sever completely his tenuous distinction between reality and fantasy; so he loaded himself with beer.

Finally, just to be absolutely certain he would not get too close to his victims - that they would remain anonymous, two-dimensional targets - and that the real world and his fantasy world would remain irrevocably fused, he chose, as the location for his rampage, the surreal nightscape of the urban clearway. Hardly surprising, then, that he would later tell detectives, "It was like one big dream ... It's kind of like you could have been in Beirut and you wouldn't have known the difference."

He took aim with his Ruger rifle at a shadow behind the steering wheel of a southbound car - and then squeezed the trigger. He fired again, and again, and again: "It was just sights, target, BANG, BANG, BANG." He moved north up Hoddle Street, keeping to the trees and bushes, and propped again, beneath the giant Coca-Cola billboard near the Clifton Hill Railway Station. Again he opened fire. The muzzle flash from the rifle was the only visible clue to his whereabouts.

Knight, who had been dreaming for years about seeing action in "East Timor, Irian Jaya, Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Beirut - especially wanted to go to South Africa-Central America, anywhere there was a shit fight on," but who had failed in the one legitimate career with the potential to satisfy his fantasies, created, in Clifton Hill, Melbourne, on that Sunday evening, his very own combat zone.

The following morning he would retrace his steps, in the company of detectives and a Victoria Police video team. He would be cool and detached, like a soldier being debriefed after a military operation; so much so, that some experts have concluded that he can only have been in a state of post-traumatic shock.

More than twenty people on Hoddle Street were hit by shots from Knight's three guns. The M-14 did most of the damage. Dusan Flajnik and John Muscatt both died from enormous injuries to the chest and neck. Tracey Skinner died from a shot to the head that blew half her face away. Gina Papaioannou died in hospital, eleven days later, from a massive wound to her hip, which looked, according to one of the ambulance officers who attended her, like a shark bite.

Hoddle Street was strewn with bodies, bullet-riddled cars and shattered windscreen glass. The air was full of the sound of squealing tyres, screams and sirens. Knight slipped away into the darkness again, following the railway line north.

At the Merri Creek, close to the south end of High Street, he shot and slightly injured a police constable who was busy preventing traffic from heading into the Hoddle Street area.

A short while later, a police helicopter swept across the area, its spotlight picking out a figure, crouched in the scrub below the railway bridge. Knight let rip with his M-14. He would say later that it was like a scene from the film Apocalypse Now and that "When I shot at the helicopter, I was expecting return fire, because I thought there'd be an SOG [Special Operations Group] marksman in there. I was disappointed when nothing came except it just flew off." He had punctured one of the chopper's fuel tanks and it was forced to make an emergency landing in a nearby reserve.

According to Andreas Kapardis in They Wrought Mayhem, Knight did not want to die slowly, coughing up blood, with a regular police .38 slug in his heart, but "preferred the SOG to take his head right off." He would not get his wish. As the helicopter veered away, he took to the railway line again.

At about 10: 15 P.M., he was running west along McKean Street in North Fitzroy. By this time, he had discarded the Ruger rifle and Mossberg shotgun and had just nine rounds left in his M-14. He was apparently heading for the house of his ex-girlfriend and intended to kill her and then commit suicide or hold the house to siege, "like they do in the films."

As he ran along the street, a police car followed in his wake and he ducked into an alley. Senior Constable John Delahunty slammed on the brakes and tried to slide the car sideways to illuminate the alley with the headlights. The stunt didn't quite come off. The car screeched to a halt, but not at the angle the cop had hoped for, and the alley remained shrouded in darkness.

Cautiously, Delahunty and his partner climbed out of their vehicle. Knight, who was crouched by a wall at the alley entrance, emptied his magazine. He was firing at such a rapid rate, he said, that the muzzle flash was overwhelming and he could barely see what he was shooting at. So loud was the sound of the shots in Constable Delahunty's ears, that at first he thought he had been hit in the head: "I crawled along the ground to the back of the car, trying to find cover ... any cover at all. A blade of grass would've looked good at the time."

Knight, meanwhile, his ammunition exhausted, unclipped the magazine and reached into his pocket for the single bullet he claimed he had kept for himself. The bullet was gone - and he decided to surrender. He rose up slowly from behind the wall. Delahunty "saw his head ... and I just stood up ... away from the car, out in the open - and I shouldn't have done that, that was silly ... and [I] just took an aim at him and fired a shot."

Knight ducked back down. As he later remembered it, the police were shouting and Knight begged not to be shot. Delahunty had nothing but contempt for Knight's pleading. Quickly and entirely by the book they arrested, searched and handcuffed him. It was a neat end to the mayhem.

At 7:24 A.M., the following morning, after hours of questioning, Knight would be sitting alone in the police interview room. The video camera would still be running and it would show him drinking from a plastic cup and thumbing through the morning papers.

On hearing about the Hoddle Street massacre, a 22-year-old former law student called Frank Vitkovic would tell people he couldn't understand why anybody would do such a thing. Victoria's Minister for Police, Race Mathews, would tell people that the massacre was an aberration that should remain a one-off indefinitely.

Julian's life

Julian Knight was born in March 1968 and was adopted by an army family when he was ten days old. His adoptive father was in the education corps and taught English and maths.

For the first thirteen years of his life, Julian was never in one place for very long. The family moved frequently, both within Australia - Laverton, Melbourne and Puckapunyal - and abroad: Hong Kong and Singapore. He was apparently reasonably happy in his early childhood.

According to his own testimony, he admired his father, was close to both his parents, but especially his mother, and got along well with his younger brother and sister. He also had a great affinity for the military. He assimilated the whole army ethos with unusual passion and speed, and set his heart on becoming a soldier at an early age.

In 1980, when Julian was 12, his parents separated. He gave most people the impression that he had been expecting the split - and the divorce that followed - and that he was not unduly upset.

However, a girlfriend would reveal that as late as 1986 he had still not come to terms with the divorce and would often cry about it. Knight himself would later tell a psychiatrist that he was angry because his parents had kept him completely in the dark about their intentions.

As so often with killers, there was a world inside Knight's head that was rarely glimpsed by those around him. In Knight's case, as with Wagner von Degerloch, beer-drinking bouts would occasionally result in this secret world seeping into the public arena, allowing those present a fleeting look at a psyche that was conspicuously out of harmony with its owner's public persona.

In 1982, however, when the newly divorced Mrs. Knight and her three children moved into Ramsden Street, in the Clifton Hill suburb of Melbourne, 14-year-old Julian had not yet taken to heavy beer drinking and his distress about the divorce, as well as the many other facets of his secret world - particularly the extent and the morbid nature of his obsession with the military - remained completely hidden from public view.

In school, according to one friend, Giulia Bagglo, "he was always the class clown, making jokes, entertaining everybody ... He was very funny and he was pretty smart, pretty intelligent - always had pretty good marks."

According to teachers, though, he was overconfident, and was not altogether convincing as a wisecracking extrovert. His antics earned him a certain amount of popularity with his peers, but at least one teacher felt that his extroversion was rather forced and that, basically, he was a loner.

Knight's love of the military was obvious to all, although no one found it disturbing; he just seemed very committed. He was a school cadet and he often wore army surplus jackets and bought Soldier of Fortune and other military magazines.

In 1984, he transferred from Fitzroy High School to Melbourne High School, primarily because Melbourne High had the best cadet force in the city. His commanding officer at Melbourne High described him as an enthusiastic cadet who had a good disciplinary record, but little capacity for leadership. Indeed, Knight would never rise above the rank of corporal. In his secret fantasy world, however, he was an altogether more dynamic figure.

He constructed for himself many heroic and honourable death-in-combat scenarios, which he ran and re-ran in his mind. According to psychologist Dr. Kenneth Byrne, "some of his dreams were about himself dying in combat, as the hero protecting his company, or, in other cases, it would be he fighting against overwhelming odds and this is something that provided a lot of gratification to him."

Although Knight viewed killing and being killed in very romantic terms, there was also, as psychiatrist Dr. David Sime noted, "a sort of intricate detail about this fantasy life which was very unusual - on and on and on, different baffles but actual historical situations and in factual detail." He cast himself in starring roles in the famous last stands of history. He would be, for instance, a German soldier in General Paulus's 6th Army, encircled and doomed at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Often Knight saw people around him not so much as flesh and blood but as accessories for his fantasies. According to Dr. Sime, "So vivid were his imaginings that he'd be sitting in the schoolroom, for example, and he'd look out of the window and he'd see people walking past and he'd immediately imagine this into an ambush situation and into military terms ... [It was] very vivid to him." Knight, in fact, had a fundamental lack of empathy for other people and for some, he had a burning hatred.

The ferocity of his anti-Communist, pro-Nazi and racist beliefs is revealed not just by his fantasies - in one of his most persistent and gratifying daydreams he was a South African policeman gunning down blacks in Sharpeville or Soweto - but also by graphic amendments he made to photo captions in a high school text book, World Powers in the Twentieth Century, by Harriet Ward.

He also exhibited, as many other pseudo-commando killers have, an Armageddon fixation, which he reveled in with conspicuous glee.

Photo caption: American Imperialism around 1900
Knight: Australia-Future USA State-I love USA

The Wacky World of Murder