May 2, 2021 • 47 mins
Australia was scarred forever by the horrors at Port Arthur in 1996. 35 people died when Bryant ran amok with his arsenal of weapons at the busy tourist destination of Port Arthur in Tasmania. The appalling crime wounded many more, scarred the nation, shocked the world and changed us forever. For the first time, his lawyer, his psychiatrist and his girlfriend break their silence to reveal new insights into the criminal mind of Australia’s worst mass murderer. But even more revealing is the video of the police interrogation of Bryant. Until this episode aired, it had never been shown outside court. Mike Willesee led this special investigation for Sunday Night. This episode originally aired in 2016.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Can you remember the twenty eighth Papril Sunday twenty eighth vapul.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Is that the dispose everyone's talking about.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
The worst crime in Australia's history. It seemed that he
wanted to go out with a bang.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
This is where it all started.
Speaker 5 (00:21):
There's somebody going crazy.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
The shooting team was a disaster.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
There he is, he's over there.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
He would pull the trigger with your finger on in
the cand that.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Put out of the gun in his hands. He was
a neighbors.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Done.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
He went there to kill.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
People, massacred, slaughtered in Christ.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
What's this fellow going to be like? But by his
next victim?
Speaker 6 (00:44):
That's a nightmare, a nightmare that continues, a nightmare for Australia.
Speaker 7 (00:51):
Australia was scarred forever by the horrors at Port Arthur
twenty years ago. Tonight, for the first time, the mystery
and mythology that's developed around mass murderer Martin Bryant will
come crashing down. You'll be able to see him for
what he is as we see the killer questioned at
(01:12):
length for the very first time. Hello, I'm Melissa Doyle.
Welcome to Sunday Night. Thirty five people died when Bryant
ran amuck with his arsenal of weapons at the busy
tourist destination of Port Arthur in Tasmania. This appalling crime
wounded many more, scarred the nation, shocked the world, and
(01:35):
changed us forever. It prompted a Prime Minister to disarm Australia,
and thankfully we've not seen such bloodshed since. We've also
never seen or heard from Bryant himself, And in that vacuum,
he's become an enigma. Like many grotesque criminals, locked away
out of sight, he's become larger than life. Tonight, his lawyer,
(02:00):
his psychiatrist, and his girlfriend will break their silence to
reveal new insights into the criminal mind of Australia's worst
mass murderer. But even more revealing is the video of
the police interrogation of Bryant. It's never been shown outside court.
For some of you, this will no doubt bring back
(02:21):
painful memories. A little later tonight we will pay tribute
to the victims of the Port Arthur massacre, but we
hope tonight's program will help us all better understand one
of our darkest days. Mike Willersey leads our special investigation.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
When you practiced shooting? Did you where did you hold
the gun? So you look handed?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Happiness, Sorry, you know this mooth.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So if you held a gun, you would pull the
trigger with your finger on the other.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Cand yeh, that's right, all right?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
And uh did you ever practice shooting from the hire? No?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Never, never, h.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
H.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Welcome to the whole historical site.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
My name is Paul, and you'll go up the next
forty minutes.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And what I'm aiming to do is doud you.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Another view of the history here at what happened?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Do you remember the twenty ACTI vocal Sunday twenty ACTI
Vapors Shoot?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (03:39):
Is that the dance as everyone's talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's your gun?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It's day.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So I'm pretty sure someone's got a gun.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
No, if like everybody positive of.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
It, there's somebody going crazy the shooting people here.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh okay, that's unentitle M sure that.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Oh oh yeah, he's over there. I can't believe it.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Any idea who he was?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
No, no idea, not a log I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Think any idea.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Why, no, no idea.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It's getting into a yellow child. Nor how do you
pickle on the internet, including the play.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
And the other people as many who any Unfortunately twenty.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
That's the first ambulance. Very fine manner.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I cannot understand. He did not say one word that
he never ran. He walked everywhere, just shooting people.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
We all know the crime, the staggering scale of it,
the awful loss of life, but the person responsible is
an enigma scene but never heard. We were about to
change all that.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I thought, Christ, what's this fellow going to be?
Speaker 7 (05:41):
Like?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Is he hannibal lectorlike? Is he is he just plain evil?
Speaker 6 (05:48):
Representing Martin Bryant his new lawyer, John Avery, appointed after
Brian had pleaded not guilty six weeks ago.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And like the man who got to know him best
at the time, you'll be able to form a very
clear picture of this infamous individual. With the help of
never before seen police video, hand drawings of the murder
scene by Bryant himself, and the inside account from his lawyer,
(06:16):
we'll seek to discover how and why this horror happened
and who Martin Bryant really is. In your own words,
you went there for that first meeting with a sense
of trepidation.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah I did, I did. It was pretty soon dispelled,
I might say, when he was wheeled in in a wheelchair,
with his legs manacled and handcuffed, and with a big
grin on his face like a big schoolboy. I didn't
any longer see any connection with Hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 8 (06:56):
Funny explain any of that.
Speaker 9 (07:04):
He's what I most self.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Why are you speaking now?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
It's a way of me finally putting the Martin Bryant
saga behind me. It's it's been around in some ways
for so long that hopefully now I can bury it.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Back in the eighties, a younger Martin Bryant wandered the
streets of Hobart selling rabbits to his neighbors. At the time,
John Avery was a young lawyer and lived with his
wife around the corner from Bryant.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I didn't realize that there was any connection, but he
quickly told me, oh, do you still live in that
big house with an oak tree in the front, And
does your wife drive the whole the station wagon? And
do you drive a white Mercedes? I said, yeah, yeah,
and we got talking. I went home and I said
to my wife do we know this fella?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yes, she said, don't you remember he used to come
around as a little boy selling rabbits around the neighborhood,
and I'd never let him in the door because he'd
peer around like he wanted to see what was inside.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
That small connection would help John Avery years later when
he was called on to be Bryan's lawyer and needed
to build trust.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I thought that was the thread. I needed, that somewhat
personal contact to hold on to him through this, through
this process, and rightly or wrong when I used it.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
But didn't it frighten you to think this man has
killed more than thirty people, injured more than that.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
No, it didn't frighten me once I saw him, because
I could see that without the gun, without the weapon,
he was nothing. He was a nobody. He was a sad,
insipid little boy.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
We've got something, Agan, mister Warren. I hold them up
and we to talk about each one individually. That might
be the best way.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
But do you understand how Bryant had become a cold
blooded killer? Avery needed to get inside his head. He
hired forensic psychiatrist Professor Paul Mullen.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
All that was required to get him talking and keep
him talking was to show an interest. It was all
about him, is absolutely all about him. Bryant was a
good looking young man, blonde, blue eyed, handsome.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Childlike.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
One of the problems I think throughout Bryant's life is
that he looked an attractive kid, He looked an attractive adolescent,
He looked an attractive adult. He also looked an intelligent kid,
an intelligent adolescent, and intelligent adult.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
But he wasn't so.
Speaker 6 (10:24):
People who met him had expectations of what he'd be
able to say and do and how he'd react, which
he couldn't live up to.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
The photos we have of Bryant's childhood don't appear to
show anything out of the ordinary. He grew up in
this house with his mum and dad and a little sister.
When he was twelve, he made the local TV news
after injuring himself with fireworks.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Do you think he'd been playing with firecrackers anymore? Yes?
Don't you think you've learned a lesson from this?
Speaker 10 (10:56):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I'm still playing.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
You think this was a dim didn't look at him.
This was a kidd He who struggled in lots of
ways from a very early stage. I mean, I think
his parents almost certainly did the best they could. I mean,
he has a sister who grew up perfectly normally are
incompetent or abusive or terrible about his parenting. There was
(11:19):
nothing at all deprived or damaging about his family background.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
It was.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
The nature of this dim, irritable boy who people really
no one could manage well.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
You never around and getting into road sources.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I didn't think I do a pass. I did who paused?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
At school, he was knocked around and internal learned to
knock around.
Speaker 6 (11:55):
I'm not sure which came first. He was certainly would
get angry and frustrated and out of people at school,
and of course others children found him odd and difficult.
He was never placed in the kind of special schooling
that would have been appropriate for someone of his intellectual
(12:17):
or lack of intellectual abilities. Partly I suspect again because
his appearance he looked so good.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Brian was a loner. He struggled to fit in. He
dropped out of school before turning sixteen. He told you
all I wanted was for people to.
Speaker 6 (12:37):
Like me, and that, in a sense, was where his
rage came from. He couldn't understand why people didn't like him,
couldn't understand why people moved away from him. He believed
that this was because they were malicious had it in
for him, and it was all terribly, terribly unfair.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
But Bryant did strike up an unexpected friendship with this woman,
Helen Harvey, an heir to the Tattersal's lottery fortune. She
died in a mysterious car accident. Bryant was also in
the car and suffered a serious neck injury. She left
him two properties and more than half a million dollars.
(13:23):
She died and left him rich.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I had left him very rich.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Indeed, how did that affect him?
Speaker 6 (13:28):
I think it was a disaster. He thought with that
would come friends and become girlfriends, and become a social
life and all these things.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
But what came with.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
It, of course, was people willing to exploit him and
certainly take him on short term to get what they
could out of him.
Speaker 9 (13:49):
Said, I wasn't interested in the money. I was more
interested in what he had to offer as a person.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
In nineteen ninety five, a year before the Port, Arthur
Masseock Mary was Bryant's girlfriend. She asked us to hide
her identity. They were together for eight months and took
several holidays into state.
Speaker 9 (14:11):
I remember we were in a restaurant in Sydney and
he was looking at the age or something, and I
could tell he wasn't really reading it. I don't think
he was that smart. He was only just pretending to
try and impress me. And I remember smiling at him
and pretending and going along with it to make him
(14:32):
feel good about himself, Like you know, he could be smart.
He was smart in some ways, but in some ways
not very smart.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
On another date, Bryant took her for a boat ride.
They ran out of petrol and was stranded for hours.
Speaker 9 (14:47):
I started crying. He started crying. Yeah, he started crying.
He thought that was it. He thought we were going
to die. I was hanging on to of hope that
something we might drift somewhere.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
So in this boating mishap, Martin Bryant was crying because
he thought he might die. Yes, seems strange against all
the evidence of him going in and shooting all these
people where he he told some people that he thought
he would either die or get captured. But he did
(15:25):
it without crying.
Speaker 9 (15:29):
I think he was generally remorseful that he got me
in that situation too. Maybe he was just staring at
me and he felt guilty.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Mary was sixteen, Brian was twenty seven. Despite their age difference,
Brian was serious about the relationship. Did he ask you
to marry He did ask me to marry him.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, what did you say? I was honest with him.
I didn't think he was too smart.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Did he love you?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Was he capable of love?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah? Now this is a zero point two two three
Remington colt Ir fifteen. Can do you remember how much
you paid for that? One?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Five grand than the Scape five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
With the Scape, Bryant had been planning a massacre for
several months. Two weeks before the shootings, he went into
a department store with a new girlfriend, Petro Wilmot, and
purchased a sports bag. He measured it to make sure
it was large enough to carry his stash of weapons.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Before well, I believe I bought that in Mars. Fitzgerald
are somewhere in town and companied with a young woman.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Among the guns inside the bag was one similar to this.
This is a serious weapon, a cult Ar fifteen, a
semi automatic assault rifle. It's one of three types of
weapons that Bryant took to put Arthur that day in
the cafe, using a rifle just like this. He took
(17:10):
fifteen seconds to kill twelve people and wound ten fifteen
seconds as measured by a tape recording by a tourist,
fifteen seconds of fun and excitement for Bryant, fifteen seconds
of immeasurable tragedy for the victims and their families, and
(17:34):
there was more to come.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's a gun.
Speaker 10 (17:38):
That's a shotgun.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Day trippers, holidaymakers, and tourists young and old massacred by
a long gunmer.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
When the gunfire stopped, thirty five people were dead, twenty
three injured.
Speaker 10 (18:00):
Think about a person who has killed thirty five people.
What would you be your opinion of that person?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
That's a week been awful? Are they the sin.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
M?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And you you won't and they reckon?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Others were injured.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
There were many injured.
Speaker 10 (18:23):
There was a eternal babies killed shot. There have been
many witnesses who have given very graphic description of you
being responsible for killing those people.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's horrendous in anyone to go down there.
Speaker 8 (18:48):
And do a thing like that.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Missus cham.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Fifteen and get out jump pardon the window, can probably
jump through the window in the escape. Because of.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Martin Bryant been planning the Port Arthur attacks for months.
He even circled the twenty eighth of April on his calendar.
The night before, he spent here with his girlfriend Petra.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
You set the alarm clock that when you went to beat.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
No never usually sit in the land.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Police believed that Bryant didn't normally use his alarm clock,
but he set at for six am.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
That day.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
They got up, took a shower together, then sat down
for breakfast, had.
Speaker 8 (19:59):
Breakfast he used to do, and then I'll haven't had
a shower together and breakfast, and I said, pet I'll
see your Monday.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
His girlfriend, Petra said that she had no idea of
what he was planning, and she said she left at eight.
In the next hour or so, Bryant drank from a
bottle of sam Booker while he gathered his weapons and ammunition.
He said, his house security alarm at nine forty seven.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
What did you do?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Wait, sir, sir sir.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Though Bryant took his surfboard, he did not go to
a beach. He'd loaded two semi automatic guns and a
shotgun in his yellow Volvo. He headed towards Port Arthur,
stop anywhere.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
On the way.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
He has stopped doing matter cappuccinos at Surround.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
In fact, Bryant made four stops on the way here,
at Midway point to buy a cigarette lighter, he got
a coffee in force It, petrol at Tarana, and in
Sorell he bought tomato sauce.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Buying tomato sauce in the way then, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
This was part of a bizarre game Bryant was playing
with police, admitting to only small parts of the truth
at first. He also lied to his lawyer John Avery,
claiming he didn't go to Port Arthur.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
How I said, look, Martin, that's just bullshit. That doesn't
sit with anything that we know. I think his response
was he laughed his head off and then pretty much
gave me a complete confession that was consistent with the
evidence as I knew it.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Laughing as a recurring theme. Many people would think, well,
he's nuts, he's insane.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, Like I never thought of it like that. It
was a girlish giggle. It was at times uncontrollable. It
was a mannerism that maybe he was getting pleasure out
of what he was relating.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Bryant also took strange pleasure in drawing the horror he
had unleashed. Is he the figure in black shooting?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
He's the figure in black shooting, and the victims are
those in red. It paints a pretty chilling version of
events from which it's impossible to escape the conclusion that
he's certainly admitting full responsibility for what happened.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
So he was happy about all this.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
When they were handed to me, I said gleefully. I
think it was an element of bragging in handing them
over and showing what he'd done.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
The drawings are a step by step account of how
the murders went down. He parked his Volvo and de
se escape guesthouse. He confronted David and Sally Martin, killing
the couple and leaving them on their bed. Bryant had
wanted to buy another property they owned nearby on Lighthouse Road.
(23:33):
Avery learned that this was what triggered the massacre that day.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
He had a long grudge against them, but he told me,
and I'll just quote his own words, I tried to
buy the farm off them before, and offered them a
lot of money, but missus Martin would say to me,
I'm never going to sell it. It doesn't matter how
much money you offer me, Martin, So I shot them
(23:59):
in the head.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
So true or false? He had some sort of a
reason for shooting the Martins. Killing the Martins, but why
the other people?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Well, I think he realized or thought that he would
either be killed himself or at least go to jail
for a very long time, and he thought, I might
as well go out in a big way, kill as
many as I can.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Bryant's most detailed sketch was of the Broad Arrow Cafe.
He made it clear that he started by sitting around here,
and then maybe while he was sitting, he killed probably
two people at the next table. Then he walked across here.
(24:53):
It's quite chilling to be here seeing his sketch, and
I ain't what he did. Come over here and kill
two people, came back and then he saw a bunch
of tables, one to maybe eight tables. He killed three
at one table. Three here. Then he makes it quite
(25:16):
clear specifically he takes only short steps and he kills
another six people. And the word that keeps coming back
to me is have cold and completely lacking in compassion.
It's hard to get your mind around that. He then
heads towards the exit. He's about to leave, but he
(25:39):
sees somebody else, so he shoots and kills that person,
and then he leaves the Broad Arrow cafeteria. The crayon
drawings from Bryant illustrate his next move, the people he
(26:01):
killed in and around the buses in the car park.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
There's somebody going crazy shooting people here. There he is,
He's over there. I can't believe it.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Then came the cold blood at killing Nanette Mikak and
her children, Lana and Madeline. They approached Bryant's car on
this stretch of road, not knowing he was the killer.
Nanette pleaded for the lives of her children.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Similar rights.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
And the mother saying please don't hurt my children, and.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Almost as if to spider, he kills them both. One
runs behind the tree as if to escape him, but
all in vain.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
He chases her, chases her, and kills her.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
It's pretty chilling.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
He's driven up to the up to the entrance gape.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
This sketch illustrates where Bryant went next, stopping his car
at a toll booth where he killed four people in
a BMW. He then stole the car and drove to
a service station where he killed a woman and forced
her boyfriend, Glenn Pears, into the boot of the BMW.
(27:42):
The kidnapping was the only crime, Bryant admitted to police.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Saw this car right by killing up the person in
the kidnapped? Kidnapped?
Speaker 1 (27:58):
How did this guy get to get in the boot?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I put him in the books? Had begun?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Which gun did you have had?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Mister? See, if people didn't do this, unfortunately, you guys
would never job.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Well, there's a lot of truth in that man.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well, yes, that was the mind. This is the one
that's a sweet that I'm gone.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
He was so light.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
How can you remember what you said to him? That fine?
Can you get out of how your can't? Please? Haven't
take your car? Then you had this point at him,
did you?
Speaker 5 (28:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
I had a pointed at him and moving backwards and
forward to this quiet chart.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Bryant's final act was to drive Glenn Pears to the
Seascape guesthouse, where, during an all night siege with police,
he shot him his thirty fifth murder. You've ridden that.
When he unloaded and finally told you the truth about
what he'd done, he was thrilled.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I asked him whether there was any excitement He evidenced
to me that it was as thrilling as driving a
car at high speed or a speedboat. So there was
certainly that aspect of thrill seeking that he appears to
(29:33):
have achieved in this horrible day.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
In the police interview, there was one moment where Bryant
dropped his guard. He thought they'd stopped recordings.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
I don't fans state on.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Record.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I still recorded this per stage.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
When Martin Bryant first appeared here in the Supreme Court
of Tasmania, he had long blond hair. Bizarrely, he pleaded not.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Guilty, fires not a repleasant.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Police had tried over a period of months to convince
Briant to tell the truth. In July nineteen ninety six,
Bryant was even shown images of the crime scenes at
Port Arthur.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Cape.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Okay, we can see a couple of people ing there.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
He was shown photographs of each of thirty five victims.
The investigators hoped seeing the horror he had caused might
elicit compassion, even a confession, and.
Speaker 7 (31:11):
You've written on.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
It did not. Sooner was he scared about his situation. No,
was he enjoying it?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Oh? Absolutely on the head people, where does it say.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
What he wanted what he wanted to silent.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
What he saying, people will killing.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Caught out America.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Where does it say, so you people were kill him.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
He was absolutely interested in the fact that he was
not only the talk of Hobart and Tasmania, but at
least for a short time, national interest, and he enjoyed that.
I gather I think he reveled in it.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, convinced that people dead.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I know that you weren't pressuring him, but it was
a big thing in what you were trying to do
was to get him to plead guilty to all charges.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
It seemed to me from day one that the evidence
was so overwhelming and the outcome of a trial would
have been so obvious that I was trying to avoid
a show trial, a circus, a pantomime, call it what
you like, because that would have been an absolute stupidity.
(32:55):
But it also involved having all these witnesses, damaged people
come to court and have to give evidence where the
outcome was always inevitable.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I told you what.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
Have I.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And injured several others.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Bryant got to a stage early on in my dealings
with him that he was going to plead guilty to
the murders. But we had a uniquely unusual situation where
he wanted to plead not guilty to the attempted murders.
(33:38):
Why well, I mean, there's no legal rationale for that. No,
but the stupidity of it was. I think that what
he wanted was the people who.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Hid so.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Grievously maimed. He wanted them to come to court and
say it was him. He wanted to be the scene
for of attention.
Speaker 6 (34:03):
He wanted to be seen as powerful and evil. Some
of the early news coverage which portrayed him as demonic,
it was exactly what he wanted delighted him.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So was he crazy?
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Mad?
Speaker 6 (34:21):
He's mad in the everyday sense of the word. He
did something that none of us can almost none of
us can even get our heads around imagining Litt alone doing.
But no, he did not have a serious mental illness.
He did not have schizophrenia. He was a very low IQ.
He was borderline to subnormal. His IQ was lower than
(34:44):
nine over ninety eight percent of the general population.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
So he's a very didn't mad.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Bryant was very sensitive to suggestions he had a low IQ,
and Avery realized he might be able to use this
sensitivity to encourage him to plead guilty. It was the
killers Achilles heel.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I said, mate, you're going to be made look stupid.
And I'll say, simple Martin, simple fellow. This is a
nonsense running this type of trial where you just want
people to stand and point to you and say, yes,
this is the man who shot ass Us.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
The next time I saw him, he changed his mind.
He said I'll plead guilty to everything.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
He also decided to write a confession. Avery has kept
it for all these years. This is the first time
it has ever been shown. So he wrote it this size. Absolutely,
I'm Martin Bryant. Wish to plead guilty to all charges
seventy two. I wish my lawyer to tell the court
(35:56):
that I want to change my plea from not guilty
to guilty.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Well there it is dated and signed historic document. Sad. Yeah,
the seventy two charges were read one by one and
he pleaded guilty seventy two times.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Well, I held my breath, I've got to say till
every one of those seventy two charges were read and
the plea entered.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
When he came back for sentencing, he had changed again.
His hair was cut short, and so was his freedom forever.
Bryant was ordered to serve thirty five life sentences one
(36:51):
and thirty five years with that parole.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
What was the first thing he said to you? Up?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
And said John, He said he'd like to have another
can of PEPSI really and did?
Speaker 8 (37:01):
He could?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
He and I shared it with him.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Avery had finished his job, but now carried with him
an overwhelming burden. He'd got too close to a mass murderer.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
I said to myself, and I his next victim. Have
I been drawn into his web? Is he playing with
my mind while I'm trying to get inside his?
Speaker 10 (37:36):
I should be Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Should be out tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
I reason it should be because it's not fair our money.
I mean, I know I've done the wrong thing, but
surely they can train a new months in what I've done.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Now. So there's a constant theme here of Bryant wanting notoriety.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Notoriety and ring master in the circus. He wanted to
be the fellow who had committed the worst crime in
Australia's history and top of the class.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
By pleading guilty to seventy two charges, including thirty five murders,
Martin Bryant accomplished his sick goal. He even appeared to
take pleasure in his multiple life sentences.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
In his usual way, he said something probably quite inappropriate.
He said he was happy with the sentence, but I
think he meant it was appropriate.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
For John Avery. Defending Bryant had been a punishing experience.
At five a m. The day after the sentencing, he
sat alone in his office with the lights off, and
recorded his thoughts.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
I thought I could easily walk away and get on
with life, but I think perhaps I have been touched
by him like his victims. Why am I so caught
up in this whole matter? Why can't I get him
out of my mind? And why do I continue to
feel guilty that I can't feel that I hate him?
Why do I feel sorry for him? Has he made
(39:36):
me famous? Or am I really just basking in his
fame and nothing more than his alter ego. Why did
I step away from the question of whether I was
his friend and say I was his lawyer when indeed
I know I have become his friend and the lawyer
part has been little. I'm crying and I don't know why.
(39:59):
How could a I do this to me? How could
someone rob me of myself, Martin Bryant, I won't let
you beat me. I won't become yourn ex victim. Yeah
that's how I felt, and twenty years later it's yeah,
(40:28):
that's probably still how I feel. You haven't shaken him off.
Let's hope I can after this.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Though he makes no excuses now, defending Bryant may well
have contributed to the path John Avery took. Next, he
embezzled half a million dollars from his law firm to
buy art and passion that became in ad he said,
four years in jail and was disbarred as a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
I've come out the other end. It's been a struggle
at times, but you get on with life. You take
the knox and you move on.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
It's been very courageous of you to be so honest.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Oh I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
I think.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
As I said those four years in jail. At times
I hated myself. I'd been on a course of self
destruct I put my legal career in jeopardy. I'd put
my marriage in jeopardy. I totally fucked up. Fortunately, I've
(41:45):
got what's best and still got it. So I don't
think it's courageous. It's probably just at last wanting to
do the right thing.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Hardly day goes by when Avery doesn't think about Bryant,
how bad it was and how much worse it could
have been. Did he express any views about wanting to
kill more people?
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Yeah, Regrettably he did, yeah on a few occasions. So
not only no remorse, but he wished he'd killed more.
I don't think he understood the concept of remorse. I mean,
if I said to him, as I did a couple
of occasions, look, you really should be sorry for what
(42:36):
you did, his response would be, oh, well, I'm sorry, then,
aren't I.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
And Bryant wasn't even sorry about spending the rest of
his life behind bars, So the overall idea of prison
didn't deter him or frighten him at all. He just
wanted to be with the big boys.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I think he thought he'd be lauded by them. I mean,
that was exactly the opposite of what would have happened
in my view, But he continued to protest, No, they'll
like me, they'll get.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
On with me.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Bryant was wrong. He is an outcast inside, just as
he was on the outside. Last year, these press photographs
emerged Martin Bryant, who has been locked up here in
risd In prison for twenty lonely years, protected from other
prisoners and protected from himself after suicide attempts. He's overweight
(43:48):
and lost. Martin Bryant wanted to die, but not as
slowly and as miserably as this.
Speaker 7 (44:07):
Mike Willacy reporting, Mick O'Donnell and Debbie Marshall were the producers.
Tonight's special edition of Sunday Night has generated a great
deal of debate online. The port Arthur atrocity still commands
significant public interest. Playing the interview in court at the time,
the prosecution argued at demonstrated Brian was capable of fielding
(44:29):
questions and that quote his responses and demeanor showed complete
lack of remorse. As we approach the twentieth anniversary, we
believe it's time the Australian public should also witness Bryant's
only interview about his appalling crimes. The enormity of Martin
Bryant's crimes and not something that words can adequately describe.
(44:53):
So we'll leave you tonight with the faces and names
of those whose lives were senselessly cut short twenty five years.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Agord b b b b b
Speaker 5 (45:37):
B boo
Can you remember the twenty eighth Papril Sunday twenty eighth vapul.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Is that the dispose everyone's talking about.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
The worst crime in Australia's history. It seemed that he
wanted to go out with a bang.
Speaker 4 (00:20):
This is where it all started.
Speaker 5 (00:21):
There's somebody going crazy.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
The shooting team was a disaster.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
There he is, he's over there.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
He would pull the trigger with your finger on in
the cand that.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Put out of the gun in his hands. He was
a neighbors.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Done.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
He went there to kill.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
People, massacred, slaughtered in Christ.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
What's this fellow going to be like? But by his
next victim?
Speaker 6 (00:44):
That's a nightmare, a nightmare that continues, a nightmare for Australia.
Speaker 7 (00:51):
Australia was scarred forever by the horrors at Port Arthur
twenty years ago. Tonight, for the first time, the mystery
and mythology that's developed around mass murderer Martin Bryant will
come crashing down. You'll be able to see him for
what he is as we see the killer questioned at
(01:12):
length for the very first time. Hello, I'm Melissa Doyle.
Welcome to Sunday Night. Thirty five people died when Bryant
ran amuck with his arsenal of weapons at the busy
tourist destination of Port Arthur in Tasmania. This appalling crime
wounded many more, scarred the nation, shocked the world, and
(01:35):
changed us forever. It prompted a Prime Minister to disarm Australia,
and thankfully we've not seen such bloodshed since. We've also
never seen or heard from Bryant himself, And in that vacuum,
he's become an enigma. Like many grotesque criminals, locked away
out of sight, he's become larger than life. Tonight, his lawyer,
(02:00):
his psychiatrist, and his girlfriend will break their silence to
reveal new insights into the criminal mind of Australia's worst
mass murderer. But even more revealing is the video of
the police interrogation of Bryant. It's never been shown outside court.
For some of you, this will no doubt bring back
(02:21):
painful memories. A little later tonight we will pay tribute
to the victims of the Port Arthur massacre, but we
hope tonight's program will help us all better understand one
of our darkest days. Mike Willersey leads our special investigation.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
When you practiced shooting? Did you where did you hold
the gun? So you look handed?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Happiness, Sorry, you know this mooth.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So if you held a gun, you would pull the
trigger with your finger on the other.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Cand yeh, that's right, all right?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
And uh did you ever practice shooting from the hire? No?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Never, never, h.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
H.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Welcome to the whole historical site.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
My name is Paul, and you'll go up the next
forty minutes.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
And what I'm aiming to do is doud you.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Another view of the history here at what happened?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Do you remember the twenty ACTI vocal Sunday twenty ACTI
Vapors Shoot?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (03:39):
Is that the dance as everyone's talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's your gun?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It's day.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So I'm pretty sure someone's got a gun.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
No, if like everybody positive of.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
It, there's somebody going crazy the shooting people here.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh okay, that's unentitle M sure that.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
Oh oh yeah, he's over there. I can't believe it.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Any idea who he was?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
No, no idea, not a log I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Think any idea.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Why, no, no idea.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It's getting into a yellow child. Nor how do you
pickle on the internet, including the play.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
And the other people as many who any Unfortunately twenty.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
That's the first ambulance. Very fine manner.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I cannot understand. He did not say one word that
he never ran. He walked everywhere, just shooting people.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
We all know the crime, the staggering scale of it,
the awful loss of life, but the person responsible is
an enigma scene but never heard. We were about to
change all that.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I thought, Christ, what's this fellow going to be?
Speaker 7 (05:41):
Like?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Is he hannibal lectorlike? Is he is he just plain evil?
Speaker 6 (05:48):
Representing Martin Bryant his new lawyer, John Avery, appointed after
Brian had pleaded not guilty six weeks ago.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
And like the man who got to know him best
at the time, you'll be able to form a very
clear picture of this infamous individual. With the help of
never before seen police video, hand drawings of the murder
scene by Bryant himself, and the inside account from his lawyer,
(06:16):
we'll seek to discover how and why this horror happened
and who Martin Bryant really is. In your own words,
you went there for that first meeting with a sense
of trepidation.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah I did, I did. It was pretty soon dispelled,
I might say, when he was wheeled in in a wheelchair,
with his legs manacled and handcuffed, and with a big
grin on his face like a big schoolboy. I didn't
any longer see any connection with Hannibal Lecter.
Speaker 8 (06:56):
Funny explain any of that.
Speaker 9 (07:04):
He's what I most self.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Why are you speaking now?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
It's a way of me finally putting the Martin Bryant
saga behind me. It's it's been around in some ways
for so long that hopefully now I can bury it.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Back in the eighties, a younger Martin Bryant wandered the
streets of Hobart selling rabbits to his neighbors. At the time,
John Avery was a young lawyer and lived with his
wife around the corner from Bryant.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I didn't realize that there was any connection, but he
quickly told me, oh, do you still live in that
big house with an oak tree in the front, And
does your wife drive the whole the station wagon? And
do you drive a white Mercedes? I said, yeah, yeah,
and we got talking. I went home and I said
to my wife do we know this fella?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yes, she said, don't you remember he used to come
around as a little boy selling rabbits around the neighborhood,
and I'd never let him in the door because he'd
peer around like he wanted to see what was inside.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
That small connection would help John Avery years later when
he was called on to be Bryan's lawyer and needed
to build trust.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I thought that was the thread. I needed, that somewhat
personal contact to hold on to him through this, through
this process, and rightly or wrong when I used it.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
But didn't it frighten you to think this man has
killed more than thirty people, injured more than that.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
No, it didn't frighten me once I saw him, because
I could see that without the gun, without the weapon,
he was nothing. He was a nobody. He was a sad,
insipid little boy.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
We've got something, Agan, mister Warren. I hold them up
and we to talk about each one individually. That might
be the best way.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
But do you understand how Bryant had become a cold
blooded killer? Avery needed to get inside his head. He
hired forensic psychiatrist Professor Paul Mullen.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
All that was required to get him talking and keep
him talking was to show an interest. It was all
about him, is absolutely all about him. Bryant was a
good looking young man, blonde, blue eyed, handsome.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Childlike.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
One of the problems I think throughout Bryant's life is
that he looked an attractive kid, He looked an attractive adolescent,
He looked an attractive adult. He also looked an intelligent kid,
an intelligent adolescent, and intelligent adult.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
But he wasn't so.
Speaker 6 (10:24):
People who met him had expectations of what he'd be
able to say and do and how he'd react, which
he couldn't live up to.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
The photos we have of Bryant's childhood don't appear to
show anything out of the ordinary. He grew up in
this house with his mum and dad and a little sister.
When he was twelve, he made the local TV news
after injuring himself with fireworks.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Do you think he'd been playing with firecrackers anymore? Yes?
Don't you think you've learned a lesson from this?
Speaker 10 (10:56):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I'm still playing.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
You think this was a dim didn't look at him.
This was a kidd He who struggled in lots of
ways from a very early stage. I mean, I think
his parents almost certainly did the best they could. I mean,
he has a sister who grew up perfectly normally are
incompetent or abusive or terrible about his parenting. There was
(11:19):
nothing at all deprived or damaging about his family background.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
It was.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
The nature of this dim, irritable boy who people really
no one could manage well.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
You never around and getting into road sources.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I didn't think I do a pass. I did who paused?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
At school, he was knocked around and internal learned to
knock around.
Speaker 6 (11:55):
I'm not sure which came first. He was certainly would
get angry and frustrated and out of people at school,
and of course others children found him odd and difficult.
He was never placed in the kind of special schooling
that would have been appropriate for someone of his intellectual
(12:17):
or lack of intellectual abilities. Partly I suspect again because
his appearance he looked so good.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Brian was a loner. He struggled to fit in. He
dropped out of school before turning sixteen. He told you
all I wanted was for people to.
Speaker 6 (12:37):
Like me, and that, in a sense, was where his
rage came from. He couldn't understand why people didn't like him,
couldn't understand why people moved away from him. He believed
that this was because they were malicious had it in
for him, and it was all terribly, terribly unfair.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
But Bryant did strike up an unexpected friendship with this woman,
Helen Harvey, an heir to the Tattersal's lottery fortune. She
died in a mysterious car accident. Bryant was also in
the car and suffered a serious neck injury. She left
him two properties and more than half a million dollars.
(13:23):
She died and left him rich.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I had left him very rich.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Indeed, how did that affect him?
Speaker 6 (13:28):
I think it was a disaster. He thought with that
would come friends and become girlfriends, and become a social
life and all these things.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
But what came with.
Speaker 6 (13:38):
It, of course, was people willing to exploit him and
certainly take him on short term to get what they
could out of him.
Speaker 9 (13:49):
Said, I wasn't interested in the money. I was more
interested in what he had to offer as a person.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
In nineteen ninety five, a year before the Port, Arthur
Masseock Mary was Bryant's girlfriend. She asked us to hide
her identity. They were together for eight months and took
several holidays into state.
Speaker 9 (14:11):
I remember we were in a restaurant in Sydney and
he was looking at the age or something, and I
could tell he wasn't really reading it. I don't think
he was that smart. He was only just pretending to
try and impress me. And I remember smiling at him
and pretending and going along with it to make him
(14:32):
feel good about himself, Like you know, he could be smart.
He was smart in some ways, but in some ways
not very smart.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
On another date, Bryant took her for a boat ride.
They ran out of petrol and was stranded for hours.
Speaker 9 (14:47):
I started crying. He started crying. Yeah, he started crying.
He thought that was it. He thought we were going
to die. I was hanging on to of hope that
something we might drift somewhere.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
So in this boating mishap, Martin Bryant was crying because
he thought he might die. Yes, seems strange against all
the evidence of him going in and shooting all these
people where he he told some people that he thought
he would either die or get captured. But he did
(15:25):
it without crying.
Speaker 9 (15:29):
I think he was generally remorseful that he got me
in that situation too. Maybe he was just staring at
me and he felt guilty.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Mary was sixteen, Brian was twenty seven. Despite their age difference,
Brian was serious about the relationship. Did he ask you
to marry He did ask me to marry him.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, what did you say? I was honest with him.
I didn't think he was too smart.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Did he love you?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Was he capable of love?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah? Now this is a zero point two two three
Remington colt Ir fifteen. Can do you remember how much
you paid for that? One?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Five grand than the Scape five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
With the Scape, Bryant had been planning a massacre for
several months. Two weeks before the shootings, he went into
a department store with a new girlfriend, Petro Wilmot, and
purchased a sports bag. He measured it to make sure
it was large enough to carry his stash of weapons.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Before well, I believe I bought that in Mars. Fitzgerald
are somewhere in town and companied with a young woman.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Among the guns inside the bag was one similar to this.
This is a serious weapon, a cult Ar fifteen, a
semi automatic assault rifle. It's one of three types of
weapons that Bryant took to put Arthur that day in
the cafe, using a rifle just like this. He took
(17:10):
fifteen seconds to kill twelve people and wound ten fifteen
seconds as measured by a tape recording by a tourist,
fifteen seconds of fun and excitement for Bryant, fifteen seconds
of immeasurable tragedy for the victims and their families, and
(17:34):
there was more to come.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's a gun.
Speaker 10 (17:38):
That's a shotgun.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Day trippers, holidaymakers, and tourists young and old massacred by
a long gunmer.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
When the gunfire stopped, thirty five people were dead, twenty
three injured.
Speaker 10 (18:00):
Think about a person who has killed thirty five people.
What would you be your opinion of that person?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
That's a week been awful? Are they the sin.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
M?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And you you won't and they reckon?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Others were injured.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
There were many injured.
Speaker 10 (18:23):
There was a eternal babies killed shot. There have been
many witnesses who have given very graphic description of you
being responsible for killing those people.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's horrendous in anyone to go down there.
Speaker 8 (18:48):
And do a thing like that.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Missus cham.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Fifteen and get out jump pardon the window, can probably
jump through the window in the escape. Because of.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Martin Bryant been planning the Port Arthur attacks for months.
He even circled the twenty eighth of April on his calendar.
The night before, he spent here with his girlfriend Petra.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
You set the alarm clock that when you went to beat.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
No never usually sit in the land.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Police believed that Bryant didn't normally use his alarm clock,
but he set at for six am.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
That day.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
They got up, took a shower together, then sat down
for breakfast, had.
Speaker 8 (19:59):
Breakfast he used to do, and then I'll haven't had
a shower together and breakfast, and I said, pet I'll
see your Monday.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
His girlfriend, Petra said that she had no idea of
what he was planning, and she said she left at eight.
In the next hour or so, Bryant drank from a
bottle of sam Booker while he gathered his weapons and ammunition.
He said, his house security alarm at nine forty seven.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
What did you do?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Wait, sir, sir sir.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Though Bryant took his surfboard, he did not go to
a beach. He'd loaded two semi automatic guns and a
shotgun in his yellow Volvo. He headed towards Port Arthur,
stop anywhere.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
On the way.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
He has stopped doing matter cappuccinos at Surround.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
In fact, Bryant made four stops on the way here,
at Midway point to buy a cigarette lighter, he got
a coffee in force It, petrol at Tarana, and in
Sorell he bought tomato sauce.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Buying tomato sauce in the way then, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
This was part of a bizarre game Bryant was playing
with police, admitting to only small parts of the truth
at first. He also lied to his lawyer John Avery,
claiming he didn't go to Port Arthur.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
How I said, look, Martin, that's just bullshit. That doesn't
sit with anything that we know. I think his response
was he laughed his head off and then pretty much
gave me a complete confession that was consistent with the
evidence as I knew it.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Laughing as a recurring theme. Many people would think, well,
he's nuts, he's insane.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, Like I never thought of it like that. It
was a girlish giggle. It was at times uncontrollable. It
was a mannerism that maybe he was getting pleasure out
of what he was relating.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Bryant also took strange pleasure in drawing the horror he
had unleashed. Is he the figure in black shooting?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
He's the figure in black shooting, and the victims are
those in red. It paints a pretty chilling version of
events from which it's impossible to escape the conclusion that
he's certainly admitting full responsibility for what happened.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
So he was happy about all this.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
When they were handed to me, I said gleefully. I
think it was an element of bragging in handing them
over and showing what he'd done.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
The drawings are a step by step account of how
the murders went down. He parked his Volvo and de
se escape guesthouse. He confronted David and Sally Martin, killing
the couple and leaving them on their bed. Bryant had
wanted to buy another property they owned nearby on Lighthouse Road.
(23:33):
Avery learned that this was what triggered the massacre that day.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
He had a long grudge against them, but he told me,
and I'll just quote his own words, I tried to
buy the farm off them before, and offered them a
lot of money, but missus Martin would say to me,
I'm never going to sell it. It doesn't matter how
much money you offer me, Martin, So I shot them
(23:59):
in the head.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
So true or false? He had some sort of a
reason for shooting the Martins. Killing the Martins, but why
the other people?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Well, I think he realized or thought that he would
either be killed himself or at least go to jail
for a very long time, and he thought, I might
as well go out in a big way, kill as
many as I can.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Bryant's most detailed sketch was of the Broad Arrow Cafe.
He made it clear that he started by sitting around here,
and then maybe while he was sitting, he killed probably
two people at the next table. Then he walked across here.
(24:53):
It's quite chilling to be here seeing his sketch, and
I ain't what he did. Come over here and kill
two people, came back and then he saw a bunch
of tables, one to maybe eight tables. He killed three
at one table. Three here. Then he makes it quite
(25:16):
clear specifically he takes only short steps and he kills
another six people. And the word that keeps coming back
to me is have cold and completely lacking in compassion.
It's hard to get your mind around that. He then
heads towards the exit. He's about to leave, but he
(25:39):
sees somebody else, so he shoots and kills that person,
and then he leaves the Broad Arrow cafeteria. The crayon
drawings from Bryant illustrate his next move, the people he
(26:01):
killed in and around the buses in the car park.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
There's somebody going crazy shooting people here. There he is,
He's over there. I can't believe it.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
Then came the cold blood at killing Nanette Mikak and
her children, Lana and Madeline. They approached Bryant's car on
this stretch of road, not knowing he was the killer.
Nanette pleaded for the lives of her children.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Similar rights.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
And the mother saying please don't hurt my children, and.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Almost as if to spider, he kills them both. One
runs behind the tree as if to escape him, but
all in vain.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
He chases her, chases her, and kills her.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
It's pretty chilling.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
He's driven up to the up to the entrance gape.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
This sketch illustrates where Bryant went next, stopping his car
at a toll booth where he killed four people in
a BMW. He then stole the car and drove to
a service station where he killed a woman and forced
her boyfriend, Glenn Pears, into the boot of the BMW.
(27:42):
The kidnapping was the only crime, Bryant admitted to police.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Saw this car right by killing up the person in
the kidnapped? Kidnapped?
Speaker 1 (27:58):
How did this guy get to get in the boot?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I put him in the books? Had begun?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Which gun did you have had?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Mister? See, if people didn't do this, unfortunately, you guys
would never job.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Well, there's a lot of truth in that man.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Well, yes, that was the mind. This is the one
that's a sweet that I'm gone.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
He was so light.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
How can you remember what you said to him? That fine?
Can you get out of how your can't? Please? Haven't
take your car? Then you had this point at him,
did you?
Speaker 5 (28:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
I had a pointed at him and moving backwards and
forward to this quiet chart.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Bryant's final act was to drive Glenn Pears to the
Seascape guesthouse, where, during an all night siege with police,
he shot him his thirty fifth murder. You've ridden that.
When he unloaded and finally told you the truth about
what he'd done, he was thrilled.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I asked him whether there was any excitement He evidenced
to me that it was as thrilling as driving a
car at high speed or a speedboat. So there was
certainly that aspect of thrill seeking that he appears to
(29:33):
have achieved in this horrible day.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
In the police interview, there was one moment where Bryant
dropped his guard. He thought they'd stopped recordings.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
I don't fans state on.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Record.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I still recorded this per stage.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
When Martin Bryant first appeared here in the Supreme Court
of Tasmania, he had long blond hair. Bizarrely, he pleaded not.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Guilty, fires not a repleasant.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Police had tried over a period of months to convince
Briant to tell the truth. In July nineteen ninety six,
Bryant was even shown images of the crime scenes at
Port Arthur.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Cape.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Okay, we can see a couple of people ing there.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
He was shown photographs of each of thirty five victims.
The investigators hoped seeing the horror he had caused might
elicit compassion, even a confession, and.
Speaker 7 (31:11):
You've written on.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
It did not. Sooner was he scared about his situation. No,
was he enjoying it?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Oh? Absolutely on the head people, where does it say.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
What he wanted what he wanted to silent.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
What he saying, people will killing.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Caught out America.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Where does it say, so you people were kill him.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
He was absolutely interested in the fact that he was
not only the talk of Hobart and Tasmania, but at
least for a short time, national interest, and he enjoyed that.
I gather I think he reveled in it.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah, convinced that people dead.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I know that you weren't pressuring him, but it was
a big thing in what you were trying to do
was to get him to plead guilty to all charges.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
It seemed to me from day one that the evidence
was so overwhelming and the outcome of a trial would
have been so obvious that I was trying to avoid
a show trial, a circus, a pantomime, call it what
you like, because that would have been an absolute stupidity.
(32:55):
But it also involved having all these witnesses, damaged people
come to court and have to give evidence where the
outcome was always inevitable.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I told you what.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
Have I.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
And injured several others.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Bryant got to a stage early on in my dealings
with him that he was going to plead guilty to
the murders. But we had a uniquely unusual situation where
he wanted to plead not guilty to the attempted murders.
(33:38):
Why well, I mean, there's no legal rationale for that. No,
but the stupidity of it was. I think that what
he wanted was the people who.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Hid so.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Grievously maimed. He wanted them to come to court and
say it was him. He wanted to be the scene
for of attention.
Speaker 6 (34:03):
He wanted to be seen as powerful and evil. Some
of the early news coverage which portrayed him as demonic,
it was exactly what he wanted delighted him.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So was he crazy?
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Mad?
Speaker 6 (34:21):
He's mad in the everyday sense of the word. He
did something that none of us can almost none of
us can even get our heads around imagining Litt alone doing.
But no, he did not have a serious mental illness.
He did not have schizophrenia. He was a very low IQ.
He was borderline to subnormal. His IQ was lower than
(34:44):
nine over ninety eight percent of the general population.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
So he's a very didn't mad.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Bryant was very sensitive to suggestions he had a low IQ,
and Avery realized he might be able to use this
sensitivity to encourage him to plead guilty. It was the
killers Achilles heel.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
I said, mate, you're going to be made look stupid.
And I'll say, simple Martin, simple fellow. This is a
nonsense running this type of trial where you just want
people to stand and point to you and say, yes,
this is the man who shot ass Us.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
The next time I saw him, he changed his mind.
He said I'll plead guilty to everything.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
He also decided to write a confession. Avery has kept
it for all these years. This is the first time
it has ever been shown. So he wrote it this size. Absolutely,
I'm Martin Bryant. Wish to plead guilty to all charges
seventy two. I wish my lawyer to tell the court
(35:56):
that I want to change my plea from not guilty
to guilty.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Well there it is dated and signed historic document. Sad. Yeah,
the seventy two charges were read one by one and
he pleaded guilty seventy two times.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Well, I held my breath, I've got to say till
every one of those seventy two charges were read and
the plea entered.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
When he came back for sentencing, he had changed again.
His hair was cut short, and so was his freedom forever.
Bryant was ordered to serve thirty five life sentences one
(36:51):
and thirty five years with that parole.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
What was the first thing he said to you? Up?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
And said John, He said he'd like to have another
can of PEPSI really and did?
Speaker 8 (37:01):
He could?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
He and I shared it with him.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Avery had finished his job, but now carried with him
an overwhelming burden. He'd got too close to a mass murderer.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
I said to myself, and I his next victim. Have
I been drawn into his web? Is he playing with
my mind while I'm trying to get inside his?
Speaker 10 (37:36):
I should be Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
Should be out tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
I reason it should be because it's not fair our money.
I mean, I know I've done the wrong thing, but
surely they can train a new months in what I've done.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Now. So there's a constant theme here of Bryant wanting notoriety.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Notoriety and ring master in the circus. He wanted to
be the fellow who had committed the worst crime in
Australia's history and top of the class.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
By pleading guilty to seventy two charges, including thirty five murders,
Martin Bryant accomplished his sick goal. He even appeared to
take pleasure in his multiple life sentences.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
In his usual way, he said something probably quite inappropriate.
He said he was happy with the sentence, but I
think he meant it was appropriate.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
For John Avery. Defending Bryant had been a punishing experience.
At five a m. The day after the sentencing, he
sat alone in his office with the lights off, and
recorded his thoughts.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
I thought I could easily walk away and get on
with life, but I think perhaps I have been touched
by him like his victims. Why am I so caught
up in this whole matter? Why can't I get him
out of my mind? And why do I continue to
feel guilty that I can't feel that I hate him?
Why do I feel sorry for him? Has he made
(39:36):
me famous? Or am I really just basking in his
fame and nothing more than his alter ego. Why did
I step away from the question of whether I was
his friend and say I was his lawyer when indeed
I know I have become his friend and the lawyer
part has been little. I'm crying and I don't know why.
(39:59):
How could a I do this to me? How could
someone rob me of myself, Martin Bryant, I won't let
you beat me. I won't become yourn ex victim. Yeah
that's how I felt, and twenty years later it's yeah,
(40:28):
that's probably still how I feel. You haven't shaken him off.
Let's hope I can after this.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Though he makes no excuses now, defending Bryant may well
have contributed to the path John Avery took. Next, he
embezzled half a million dollars from his law firm to
buy art and passion that became in ad he said,
four years in jail and was disbarred as a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
I've come out the other end. It's been a struggle
at times, but you get on with life. You take
the knox and you move on.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
It's been very courageous of you to be so honest.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Oh I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
I think.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
As I said those four years in jail. At times
I hated myself. I'd been on a course of self
destruct I put my legal career in jeopardy. I'd put
my marriage in jeopardy. I totally fucked up. Fortunately, I've
(41:45):
got what's best and still got it. So I don't
think it's courageous. It's probably just at last wanting to
do the right thing.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Hardly day goes by when Avery doesn't think about Bryant,
how bad it was and how much worse it could
have been. Did he express any views about wanting to
kill more people?
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Yeah, Regrettably he did, yeah on a few occasions. So
not only no remorse, but he wished he'd killed more.
I don't think he understood the concept of remorse. I mean,
if I said to him, as I did a couple
of occasions, look, you really should be sorry for what
(42:36):
you did, his response would be, oh, well, I'm sorry, then,
aren't I.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
And Bryant wasn't even sorry about spending the rest of
his life behind bars, So the overall idea of prison
didn't deter him or frighten him at all. He just
wanted to be with the big boys.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I think he thought he'd be lauded by them. I mean,
that was exactly the opposite of what would have happened
in my view, But he continued to protest, No, they'll
like me, they'll get.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
On with me.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Bryant was wrong. He is an outcast inside, just as
he was on the outside. Last year, these press photographs
emerged Martin Bryant, who has been locked up here in
risd In prison for twenty lonely years, protected from other
prisoners and protected from himself after suicide attempts. He's overweight
(43:48):
and lost. Martin Bryant wanted to die, but not as
slowly and as miserably as this.
Speaker 7 (44:07):
Mike Willacy reporting, Mick O'Donnell and Debbie Marshall were the producers.
Tonight's special edition of Sunday Night has generated a great
deal of debate online. The port Arthur atrocity still commands
significant public interest. Playing the interview in court at the time,
the prosecution argued at demonstrated Brian was capable of fielding
(44:29):
questions and that quote his responses and demeanor showed complete
lack of remorse. As we approach the twentieth anniversary, we
believe it's time the Australian public should also witness Bryant's
only interview about his appalling crimes. The enormity of Martin
Bryant's crimes and not something that words can adequately describe.
(44:53):
So we'll leave you tonight with the faces and names
of those whose lives were senselessly cut short twenty five years.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Agord b b b b b
Speaker 5 (45:37):
B boo
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.