WARNING SHOT

MASSACRE

Terror Hits Abortion Industry

A fanatical anti-abortionist yesterday became Australia’s worst mass murderer, killing dozens of people inside the country’s most famous abortion clinic.

Up to 41 people are believed to have burnt to death, trapped inside an inferno at the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne.

Several fire trucks raced to the blaze at the historic building just after 11am yesterday, but by the time they had doused the flames, the building was completely destroyed.

Then firefighters made a gruesome discovery – piles of incinerated bodies.

The victims had no hope of escaping excruciating deaths – they had been tied up and gagged and the clinic’s doors had been jammed shut with specially adapted metal tubes.

It’s believed several had also been shot.

The massacre comes five years after the killing of 35 people at Port Arthur – the world’s worst single-episode murder-by-shooting spree in peacetime.

Not far from the smouldering clinic in Wellington Parade, police yesterday found a chilling message made out of letters circled in a newspaper article. It was:

Anyone who protects sewerage is sewage and will get treated like sewage and the same goes for anyone who works on or with patronised sewerage. By the time I get through, there will not be an abortionist in Melbourne left deathless. We will now see if the Vic Police are in the same class as the Nazi Gestapo and try to protect these slaughters.

In scratchy handwriting, firefighters found another spine-chilling note taped to the clinic’s front door:

We regret to advise that as a result of a fatal accident involving some members of staff, we have been forced at short notice to cancel all appointments today.

Among the clinic’s ruins the semi-charred remnants of another note in the same handwriting was found:

Please wait in the waiting room (an arrow pointing the way). There could be a 10- to 15-minute delay today.

Investigators say kerosene was sprinkled through the building and set alight with blazing sticks.

Set up in the face of mass anti-abortion demonstrations in 1972 by pioneering abortion rights campaigner Bertram Wainer, the clinic was the first in Australia to openly provide abortions. Since it started, anti-abortion campaigners have kept up an almost daily protest outside its front gate.

All over Australia, abortion doctors fear their clinics could be the next victim.

Police have no clues as to who committed this massacre.

• • •

If things had gone the way Peter James Knight had fantasised – and planned – for months, this is the kind of newspaper article he would have been reading on Tuesday 17 July 2001. While the rest of Australia would have been reeling from the news, Knight would have been gleefully reading an article like this while sitting hidden in his camp in dense bush in Candlebark Park, not far from the ‘Mcmansions’ of Templestowe in Melbourne’s east. The 47-year-old would have been congratulating himself on single-handedly dealing a killer blow to Australia’s abortion industry.

• • •

Knight had started thinking of taking on the abortion industry many months earlier while sitting in the ramshackle tin-and-logs humpy he called home deep in the Killabutta State Forest, Gumble, in central New South Wales – about 800km north of Melbourne. The nearest town – Molong – was about 15km away. Molong was about 35km north of Orange and about 90km north of Bathurst – where Knight was born on New Year’s Day 1954.

The youngest of six children, Knight was four when his farming family moved to Molong. About seven years later they moved to Orange. It was then, at the age of 11, that Knight lost interest in studying at his Catholic school. As he put it later, he became a ‘TV addict’. He did not have any friends at school and left at the age of 16, after finishing Year 10. Knight and his four older sisters and older brother were closer to their devoutly Catholic mother than their father. He later said his childhood was ‘not one of the greatest, but not bad either’. He had got on well with his mother and siblings but not so well with his father, believing he drank too much alcohol. He later said that while his father had been domineering, he had not been violent. By his early 20s, Knight had developed extreme views. One sister remembered him calling his father a ‘murderer’ because he wasn’t opposed to the sale of cigarettes.

When he was 22, Knight went travelling. For two years he moved around, occasionally getting jobs picking fruit. Then, for about 15 years, he lived in Brisbane working as a factory hand. He became more and more reclusive. One of his sisters remembered his flat was infested with cockroaches. Finally, he left Brisbane because it got ‘too big’ and had become ‘a different place to what it used to be’. He returned to central New South Wales and set up a camp in the Killabutta State Forest because it ‘was as good a place as any’.

Because he believed the Bible forbade the taking of oaths, Knight decided not to work, pay taxes or collect the dole. Around his humpy, he planted fruit trees, grapevines and vegetables and dug a metre-deep dam, but the trees bore little fruit and he mainly lived off flour discarded from a nearby flour mill. At first he trapped rabbits, but stopped because he found it a ‘disturbing and vicious practice’.

Locals dubbed him ‘the Yowie’, but considered him a harmless eccentric – intelligent and polite but painfully shy and odd. Occasionally the heavily bearded Knight would cycle into Molong but he would mostly walk with his head down and seldom spoke to anybody. He didn’t completely cut ties with society, however, regularly cycling 50km to Orange to see his elderly father and sister.

‘Several kids used to go out there and eat his fruit; he’d never take money or anything,’ John Farr, a former Molong mayor, told the Age. ‘I understand he used to get very mad about people who sold cigarettes to children.’ Neighbour Bill Evans said: ‘He seemed like a bit of a sad sort of bloke, but I thought he was just harmless.’ Shirley McLaughlin remembered her son, Adam, getting on well with Knight, even helping him trap rabbits. ‘He seemed harmless. We never had any trouble with him. He kept to himself. A lot of young fellas used to go out there and throw rotten eggs in his water and harass him but he never retaliated in any way,’ Ms McLaughlin told the Herald Sun.

One anecdote elderly neighbour Bob Evans (Bill Evans’s father) told the Herald Sun seemed to shed some light on Knight’s odd character. In 1997 Knight’s sister asked police to look for him. She was worried because he had not visited their elderly father for his birthday. Before a search party could even be gathered, however, Knight resurfaced. For Mr Evans that was strange enough, but what happened next was just bizarre: ‘He knocked on the front door, poked a $20 note at me and said he was sorry to have caused so much trouble – this from a bloke who’d hardly spoken to me in 10 years.’

By late 2000, Knight was no longer satisfied with being a hermit; with not causing anyone any trouble. He had had lots of time to think of what was wrong with the world. Now it was time to act.

His first plan to make a difference was triggered, on a visit to Melbourne, when he looked through the Yellow Pages for a printer. A couple of pages before ‘printers’ he found ads for ‘pregnancy termination services’. That revelation of the availability of abortion helped him choose his crusade: he would force the telecommunications giant Telstra to remove all ads for abortion clinics from the Yellow Pages. Without any Yellow Pages ads, Knight thought, thousands of unborn babies’ lives would be saved. Knight decided to enlist the help of anti-abortion groups to start a boycott of Telstra.

Fired with a zealot’s enthusiasm, Knight took his plan to Right to Life. Unused to society’s niceties, he turned up unannounced at its Melbourne headquarters during the Christmas holidays in January 2001. Luckily for him, the organisation’s president, Margaret Tighe, was catching up with some paperwork. Ms Tighe thought he was ‘a bit scruffy looking, but there was an attempt to be neat’. She said he was ‘very intense and unsmiling’ while asking her to help him boycott Telstra because it allowed telephone directory ads for abortion clinics. Knight wasn’t put off when Ms Tighe told him Right to Life wasn’t big enough to organise such a boycott and, anyway, it also advertised in the Yellow Pages. He wouldn’t stop talking, so Ms Tighe fobbed him off by asking him to write his plan down for consideration by a committee.

Ms Tighe said Knight returned soon afterwards with his ‘well-written’ proposal, ‘closely written on a scrappy-looking piece of paper’, but she said it was signed ‘Peter Sweeney’. He returned a couple of times but even Ms Tighe, who is known for her forceful opposition to abortion, found Knight too intense. Once, she asked her assistant: ‘Go and get rid of him please.’

Knight also had little support for his idea from the regular protesters outside the Wellington Parade clinic. Richard Grant of The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants told Knight he didn’t think Telstra was responsible for what went into the Yellow Pages. Like Ms Tighe, Mr Grant also found Knight ‘very intense’, remembering that he ‘spoke only a few inches from your face every time’.

Disappointed at his failure, Knight travelled to a 12 March anti-abortion protest outside Sydney’s 2UE and then retreated to his forest humpy. His failed mission had confirmed his misanthropy: people were stupid and cowardly. He decided to go it alone.

He started gathering twine and metal brackets and other bits and pieces to use in a lone assault on the abortion industry. Like an Australian version of the Unabomber, this recluse was determined to make his mark on the world.

A couple of months later, Knight snared the most important things he needed – a Winchester rifle and some ammunition. To get these, he rode about 60km west to Parkes and broke into a sports shooting store. Presumably, to placate a God unhappy with those breaking his Commandments, Knight left the shop owner a letter:

Sorry mate but I had to do it. Keep the bill for the items and remember the price of the rifles. It may take a year or a bit more, but I’ll pay you back when I can with interest.

Knight then made his way back to Melbourne. By June 2001 he had set himself up in a well-hidden camp in Candlebark Park – a perfect base from which to launch his assault.

On 4 June 2001, Knight broke into his enemy’s camp. He didn’t take or destroy anything in the Wellington Parade clinic; he just checked the lay of the land. He also mingled with protesters, paying particular attention to the security guard, noting that they – first a woman and then a man – left just after 10am.

In the days before Monday 16 July 2001, in his little hideaway, Knight meticulously prepared. On a newspaper, he painstakingly circled individual letters to make his ‘no abortionist in Melbourne left deathless’ threat. He bought two four-litre and four two-litre plastic containers and filled these with kerosene. For each of these he got a second lid in which he punctured holes – so he could sprinkle kerosene all over the clinic. He also filed and drilled blue metal tubes so they could jam doors – to stop abortionists trying to flee the inferno. To start that inferno, Knight wrapped foam over the tops of some sticks and bought three cigarette lighters – not for lighting cigarettes.

He wanted to turn that clinic into the hell he believed abortionists deserved to be in.

Knight figured with the security guard gone and his Winchester, he should be able to persuade those in the clinic to bind and gag themselves. People were, after all, stupid and cowardly. He sewed pieces of cloth as gags and made sure he had plenty of twine.

Also to give himself time, Knight wrote a couple of polite and official-sounding notes to stop anyone stumbling inopportunely into his scheme.

The most careful preparation went into the Winchester. He adapted it so that he could fire it from inside a hessian bag.

On the morning of Monday 16 July 2001, Knight – wearing a rolled-up balaclava, shabby desert boots, jeans, a flannelette shirt and dirty white gloves and sporting a longish greying goatee beard – rode his bicycle laden with paraphernalia for a massacre to the East Melbourne clinic. He hid the bike nearby in a rubbish bin enclave and waited till 10.20am – until the protesters and, he thought, the security guard, had left. With his high-power rifle hidden in the hessian bag and carrying a large plastic bag, Knight walked through the clinic’s front door. Already inside were 41 people, including about 26 members of the public. Some were there for abortions, but many just wanted fertility control advice or various other female health services.

Moments after quietly walking in, Knight’s plans for a horrific crusade began to fall apart.

His first problem was that the unarmed security guard – 44-year-old Steven Rogers – had not yet left for the day. He had been having a smoke outside with a partner of one of the clinic’s patients – carpenter Tim Anderson. On his way home, Mr Rogers made the fatal mistake of asking an odd-looking man what he had in his big bags.

A four-months-pregnant law student, Lillian Kitanov, was just a couple of metres away from Knight (‘a male with scraggy clothes’) and Mr Rogers when they met. She was at the reception counter organising an appointment with a doctor (it wasn’t for an abortion) and remembered it was a ‘calm’ conversation, but then…

Ms Kitanov: I remember the male actually showed him [the security guard] what he had in his Hessian bag … and I had seen the gun … The security guard was taken aback but not really stressing out or worrying … [The gunman said] ‘I’ve got a gun here … It’s for real,’ and the security guard goes: ‘Are you serious?’ and the gunman said: ‘Yeah man, I’m serious.’ I realised the situation I was in and the security guard has taken a step back.

The law student said that just at that dangerously awkward moment, her construction-worker boyfriend, Sandro De Maria, who had gone to get her Medicare card from the car, tried to get into the clinic. Knight was blocking the door but moved aside, telling Mr De Maria: ‘You’re right, mate. Come in.’

Ms Kitanov: The gunman had the gun pointed at the security guard … Nothing was said at all. The whole room was calm. We were just watching. I was just watching because I couldn’t believe it … Then the gun goes off … and the gunman actually shot the security guard and I saw him shoot. It went to his left shoulder and then he just went up against the cabinets, the filing cabinets and then I saw the gunman had turned the gun towards me. I just saw him look around. The only people that were in the room at that stage were myself and Sandro. I don’t know where the receptionist went after the security guard had got shot…

After he shot the security guard, I just saw the gun within seconds come to be pointed at my stomach. I was about 30cm away…

I was basically just waiting to get shot; the way he had shot the security guard – just so cool and calm. I could just see that he was looking for somebody else and when he came to point the gun at me, I was so scared.

I was looking at the barrel of the gun, where the bullet comes out. I was waiting for the bullet to come. I was clenching my hands … I was just waiting for the impact.

Then all of a sudden, I just remember seeing two hands grab the barrel of the gun and push it away from me and up into the ceiling and I saw Sandro. It was Sandro that actually grabbed the gun off the gunman … Sandro had the gun pointed at the ceiling and the gun was going all over the place … They were coming back over to me … I was screaming and hysterical and Sandro was just wrestling with him.

… As Sandro was scuffling with him and Sandro had him round the chest, I heard Sandro say something like: ‘Help me,’ or ‘Get him,’ and there was another guy [Tim Anderson] had actually come and grabbed the man with the gun from behind his neck and shoulders.

Sandro was trying to keep it in the air in a stable position and the gunman was trying to get Sandro’s hands off the gun. I saw Sandro try to get the gun off the gunman. He actually punched him in the face to try to get him to let go of the gun … Three times I saw him [Sandro] punch him…

I thought of going around to the reception desk and ringing the police but I was too nervous and scared so I ran out of the entrance of the clinic and started yelling out if anybody had a mobile phone to ring the police…

I ended up running back into the clinic to see if I could do anything … Sandro was scuffling with the gunman … close to the door … I couldn’t get to walk in because they were right in front of me.

Mr De Maria said that he first realised something was up when in the periphery of his vision he saw ‘something going up’.

Mr De Maria: When I turned I saw what looked like a hessian bag and a split second later I heard a shot being fired … I saw the gunman recoil … I was just standing there in shock. I didn’t actually see the security guard being shot … I just had my eye on him [Knight] … He was holding [the gun] to his shoulder and his left arm would be holding it under the stock as in the firing position…

After that, he lowered the rifle down to about waist level. He kind of looked a little bit to his right and then to his left around the room … Then he saw Lillian standing to the left near the door and he pointed the gun around her stomach area … I was looking at him in the face, at his eyes and the way he looked around the room … I could just see he was looking for his next person to shoot and when he’d seen Lillian and pointed the gun, he had locked on. I believe he was ready to shoot by the look in his eyes…

At that point when he was pointing the gun at Lillian, I kind of lunged at him – at the gun.

I grabbed the barrel and lifted it up, so it pointed up. He had kind of moved back and with that another shot had gone off, which must have hit the ceiling because the rifle was pointed up. I have pushed him back against the wall, still holding the rifle up and holding him … I actually kicked him in the groin … I don’t know if I connected or not in the struggle of it all.

He was trying to pull the gun away from me and I still had a hold of it.

I knew not to let go of this gun.

A big guy [Tim Anderson] grabbed him from around the shoulders. I then got the opportunity when I could just hold it [the gun] with my left hand and I remember hitting him in the face a couple of times. At that point, he had kind of released the firearm and someone from behind me – I didn’t know who – had grabbed the firearm out of my hand.

He was crouching low … because Tim was holding him from behind and I punched him again and he fell to the ground. After he had fallen to the ground, the guy that was helping me had grabbed him by the back of the hair and he was trying to pull him to the ground…

I then grabbed his arm and I pinned his elbow to the ground and bent his wrist backwards so he didn’t move … He just said: ‘You’re hurting my wrist. Let me go.’ Which, obviously, I refused to do and a couple of times he was just moaning because it was hurting, or whatever.

During the struggle at one point, when we were near the back waiting room, I saw the security guard. He was leaning up against the cabinet and he had blood coming out of his mouth. His eyes had rolled back. [Mr De Maria wipes away a tear.] … I then saw him again later on – a few minutes – and he was on the ground … I saw blood, a pool of blood everywhere…

When the police came … I remember telling them: ‘It’s all right, the guy, he’s unarmed.’

I saw someone had ripped open his [Mr Rogers’] shirt and I saw where the actual shot hit his chest. [Mr De Maria breaks down in tears] I saw the bullet wound. His chest was all black from the shot. I saw the blood.

Tim Anderson remembered Steve Rogers borrowing a cigarette from him and the two of them having a smoke and a ‘bit of a chat’ before Mr Rogers went back inside to pick up his keys and head home.

Mr Anderson: Maybe five, 10 minutes later, I was reading a book and I heard … a loud bang … It startled me. I looked up from my book. From where I was sitting, I could just see into the reception area. I could see some smoke and fibre floating in the air … I suppose from curiosity, I leant forward on my chair and noticed two people wrestling … I got off my chair and went into the waiting room … Just to stop them wrestling and making a noise … to get them out of the reception area…

As I came in, where they were sort of moving around and as they spun around, an object came in front of me. It was in a plastic bag … inside the bag I could see a long metal tube … things just clicked together and then I realised it was a gun. I grabbed, I suppose, both men … with the intention of making that gun mine…

We sort of wrestled in a group back towards the reception area … The gun was in front of me … I grabbed the gun and moved it away from the other two people and as I did that someone else [Brett Cassar] came from behind me … the momentum took it towards him and I asked him to grab it and take it out of the room.

Mr Anderson said it took him a while to work out which of the wrestlers was the gunman.

Mr Anderson: I stood back and from, I suppose, reactions and the way people look it became apparent to me who had previously had control of the gun.

He didn’t let up after Mr Cassar took the gun out of the clinic.

Mr Anderson: I suppose I panicked a bit. I didn’t know if he had anything else … so I punched him in the back of the head … but the punches weren’t seeming to do anything. The person [Mr De Maria] from the other side was also punching him and he didn’t seem to falter … I lifted my knee into his thigh a couple of times and then dragged him to the ground … We had him pinned down. He expressed a bit of discomfort … He was asking if he could be turned over because his back was hurting … I just said, you know: ‘Stay there. Don’t fight us and you won’t actually get hurt.’ I remember asking him: ‘What have you done?’ but there was not really a response.

Mr Anderson said that when he and Mr De Maria finally had Knight subdued, he heard a woman saying she had called the police.

Mr Anderson: As I turned to look where the voice was coming from … I noticed a man slumped against the cabinet. [Mr Anderson pauses, choking back tears.] I recognised it was Steve, the security guard. I said to the people who told me they had called the police: ‘Get an ambulance! Get an ambulance! He’s been shot!’ … Then I thought: ‘We’re in a clinic.’ So I yelled: ‘Get a doctor! Can someone get a doctor!’ Then I looked at Steve. I told him to ‘Hang on’.

Brett Cassar said that after hearing a bang, he looked in the waiting room and saw three men struggling. When he moved towards them to try to break it up, one yelled out: ‘Grab the gun.’ He did that, ran out of the clinic, down the road, dumped the rifle at a nearby florist and returned.

After hearing a bang, seeing two men struggling and the stricken Mr Rogers, one of the clinic’s nurses ran upstairs to find a doctor. When she couldn’t find one, she joined many other terrified nurses who had locked themselves in the changeroom. They only ventured out when everything was quiet.

One of the clinic’s doctors, Kathy Lewis, heard two gunshots about 10.30am. Thinking they had come from outside, she went to the window to see what was happening but when she heard ‘a lot of confusion and screaming’ she realised the shot had come from inside the clinic.

Dr Lewis: I went down the main staircase towards the gunshots to see what was going on … I saw a person on the ground being held down by two other men and he was struggling quite a lot and I said to them: ‘Where’s the gun?’ They said: ‘No, it’s gone.’ I said: ‘Do you need a hand?’ They said: ‘No, help that guy.’ They meant Steve. It was only then that I realised Steve was slumped in the corner against the filing cabinet … He was unconscious … I went across to see what I could do for him … I can’t actually remember whether he was still breathing at that time or not. I think Jamie, the clinic manager, was in the area … and I said: ‘Go get Greg Levin or one of the other doctors. Get him to bring a resuscitating machine from the theatre’…

I pulled Steve down so he was lying flat on the ground, so I could start trying to resuscitate him. I tore the clothes off the front of his chest – I could see he was bleeding from there. When I looked, there was a large gunshot wound to the right-hand side of his upper chest…

Choking back tears, Dr Lewis remembered her futile attempts to revive Mr Rogers.

Dr Lewis: I tried to do CPR with Steve and I remember the whole time saying: ‘Don’t do this to me, Steve. Don’t die.’ I tried to resuscitate him. By that time Greg had come round with the resuscitating machine, but it was too late…

The police arrived soon afterwards. They were approaching really cautiously. They didn’t know if the person had been disarmed yet. I went outside and said: ‘Get in here. Give us a hand. Get him, he’s unarmed. Handcuff him.’

Soon after that the ambulance guys arrived and confirmed that Steve had indeed passed away.

Knight’s grandly horrific plan had been ruined. He had been caught red-handed with a high-powered rifle, moments after shooting a man. He had fired two bullets, had another five loaded and another seven in his pocket. He also had obvious paraphernalia to create an inferno. But all that did not mean Knight was going to make it easy for police.

Far from it.

Soon after arresting Knight, police realised that they had a real oddball on their hands. He didn’t say much, but what he did say was very strange. For instance, he told one constable: ‘You are in a bad position there. I can turn and grab your gun and that will be the end of it.’

Knight wasn’t just odd. He was obstructive. He refused to give his name. When a magistrate pointed out that this was slowing his case, Knight replied: ‘That’s OK by me.’

For three weeks, he was known as Mr X. Police made a public appeal for anyone who knew him to identify him. Mr Rogers’ grieving mother, Shirley Rogers, joined in the national plea. Tearfully, she said her son had been a real family man – a father of five and a stepdad to two.

Ms Rogers: We need to know who did this and why.

Steve had everything to look forward to in life. He had just been told he was a grandfather for the first time and he was so happy, and then it was all taken away from him.

We have lost everything. I’ve lost my son, his wife has lost her husband and my grandchildren have lost their father.

He was shot in cold blood. He was killed for no reason. It doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s a nightmare.

Steve hated violence. He took the job at the clinic because he thought he would be safe.

At first, even Ms Tighe did not realise Knight was the ‘Peter Sweeney’ she had found so disturbingly intense six months earlier. On the day of the shooting, she had been preparing to go on holiday, when a reporter phoned and told her of the clinic shooting.

Ms Tighe: I said: ‘Oh that’s terrible.’ And then I said: ‘But nobody has been killed, have they,’ and he said: ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ and I said: ‘Oh dear God, that’s terrible.’

It was all over the newspapers and on the TV and one of my colleagues Father Eugene Ahern said: ‘Thank God we don’t know the man,’ because we didn’t recognise him. I didn’t recognise him at the time.

She said it was only weeks later, when she saw a big photo of ‘Mr X’ in a newspaper, that she recognised him and called police.

Ms Tighe: I told my secretary at the time: ‘Oh my God, Joanne, that’s the guy that came to the office.’

Finally, the mystery was solved when Molong residents identified ‘Mr X’ as their ‘Yowie’.

Knight’s identity might no longer have been a mystery, but he still would not cooperate. At his trial in Victoria’s Supreme Court in April 2002, he refused to follow normal court protocols and stand up when asked to do so or to bow when the judge entered the court. He also would not get a lawyer, cross-examine witnesses, call any witnesses in his defence, or give evidence himself. He did, however, plead not guilty to a charge of murder.

While he was waiting for his trial, Knight wrote to Ms Tighe from his jail cell arguing that young Australians had to be protected from ‘callous butchers’. He claimed that if his jurors were opposed to abortion, he would be found not guilty. Then he threatened. Knight wrote:

If that happens, since abortionists and pro-abortionists alike are a gutless lot only capable of attacking the defenceless … once I am released then there will not be an abortionist about the place prepared to remain in operation – guaranteed.

Even after prosecutor Bill Morgan-Payler QC opened his case by telling the jury: ‘But for the bravery of these men [Mr De Maria, Mr Anderson and Mr Cassar] who intervened, there would have been a tragedy of dreadful proportions’, Knight was still confident. His opening address was extraordinarily brief.

Knight: In response to the prosecutor’s opening, I will make my response both brief and to the point. Accusations are accusations. Evidence is evidence. The prosecution has many of the first, and little of the second.

Having seen the evidence they will produce through him in this trial, it is obvious to me it does not support their accusations and I am confident that when the final word is said in this trial you will be of the same opinion. I will let the evidence speak for itself.

In closing his case for the prosecution, Mr Morgan-Payler told the jury the evidence that Knight had deliberately and without lawful excuse killed Mr Rogers was ‘simply overwhelming’.

After four days of saying almost nothing – of not giving evidence, not cross-examining, not objecting – Knight chose Mr Morgan-Payler’s final address (when barristers are not normally allowed to object) to make his only objection in front of the jury.

Mr Morgan-Payler: Remember: ‘Yeah mate, it’s for real.’ He said that just before he fired the shot. ‘Yeah mate, it’s for real.’ Lillian Kitanov heard that…

Knight: I would like to interject here. The correct term was, it was insinuated, was: ‘Yeah man, it’s for real,’ not: ‘Yeah mate, it’s for real.’

What could it possibly matter if the evidence was that he had said: ‘Yeah man, it’s for real’ instead of: ‘Yeah mate, it’s for real’? Was it just an obsessive man’s pointless pedantry?

To Mr Morgan-Payler it didn’t matter whether it was ‘mate’ or ‘man’, his point was that seconds before firing the shots, Knight had been ‘cool and calm’.

Mr Morgan-Payler: And the rifle? What position was it in when that shot was fired? … It was raised to his shoulder. Where was it pointed, this rifle all ready to go with the hammer cocked? Was it pointed up to the ceiling? Was it pointed down to the floor? To one side or the other? No. It was pointed straight at Steven Rogers, straight at his upper body…

Not only does the firing of … a 30/30 calibre rifle at close range into the chest of a person speak loudly of an intent to kill, but look at the planning, look at that note: ‘a fatal accident involving some members of staff’.

He went there with murder on his mind. Steve Rogers may not have been his primary target … But it does seem likely that Steven Rogers got in the way.

Mr Morgan-Payler said that Knight could not claim that he had killed to protect the lives of unborn babies.

Mr Morgan-Payler: Whether his sentiment be right or wrong, an unborn foetus as far as the law is concerned is not a person, is not a separate life and so as far as the law is concerned, one cannot act to defend that life because it is not a life.

The prosecutor told the jury not to find Knight guilty of a massacre he never carried out.

Mr Morgan-Payler: But for the intervention of Steven Rogers there might have been an appalling catastrophe, but that has nothing to do with this trial at all. The only relevance of that is that it indicated he had killing on his mind when he went into that clinic.

We invite you to convict him properly on the evidence, not out of horror at the potential disclosed by the evidence…

Protecting the lives of young Australians and discouraging people from involving themselves in abortions are lofty sentiments, but they are not, we submit to you, in any way a defence to the terrible murder that was committed in this case.

In his closing address, Knight finally revealed what his defence was: it had been an accident.

Knight: The major issue you need to resolve in this trial is whether the security guard was shot by the first bullet, which was deliberately fired, or whether he was shot by the second bullet, which was accidentally and unintentionally discharged during the course of a struggle.

It was a truly bizarre final address to a jury. Knight’s demeanour ranged from calm and methodical to shrieking and ranting.

Like all those giving final addresses, Knight was not allowed to introduce new evidence. He was only allowed to summarise the sworn evidence given in court. He couldn’t, for instance, just tell the jury that he fired the first shot in the air because that would have been giving evidence. He could only point to evidence given in the trial.

His two-hour speech included a maths lesson, a personal attack on the prosecutor and a fiery sermon against the swearing of oaths in law courts. What Knight’s extraordinary diatribe/lecture/closing address/sermon did not do, however, was explain the evidence of the planned massacre. He also did not apologise for killing Mr Rogers or even offer any sympathy to the dead man’s family. He started by venting his frustration.

Knight: At last, at long last, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. For the past four days, I have been dragged to this courtroom and been forced to listen – to endure – some of the most useless, some of the most irrelevant and some of the most stupid evidence and testimony any prosecuting barrister must ever have had the effrontery to present. But if you are amongst those who, like myself, have been forced to suffer these past four days, then forsake not all hope: I bring good news. During this address, I will not attempt to emulate the prosecution strategy of raising all the irrelevant issues they could lay their hands on. I will, instead, confine myself to those issues which are relevant and informative and which are not totally and absolutely bloody useless…

When this had been done … and you have had time enough to fully consider the implications, then – unless you are already aware of just how inept the Office of Public Prosecutions is – I think you will be quite satisfied that they should never have put me on trial, on this evidence, to answer a charge of murder.

Knight told the jury that evidence from Mr De Maria and Ms Kitanov showed there was ‘little doubt that when the first shot was fired, the gun was held at my shoulder’.

He then tried to prove mathematically – geometrically – that this first shot could not have been the one that hit Mr Rogers. He pointed out that the autopsy found that the ‘projectile’ that hit Mr Rogers near his right shoulder had entered with an ‘approximately 20 degrees upward and backward angulation’. He pointed out that Ms Kitanov had said he had been about a metre and a half from Mr Rogers when the gun was fired. Then Knight became a maths teacher.

Knight: Now if you take that angle of 20 degrees, what does that say about what level this shot was fired? Well, a metre and a half: that’s three units of half a metre, which means by the time that the bullet struck the security guard, it would have travelled slightly more than the one unit of half a metre.

So, it is clear where that bullet came from: half a metre lower down, which would make it around my waist area.

But, as the witness says, the first shot was fired from the shoulder. Now the obvious question which arises from this is: Where was the rifle positioned when the second shot was fired? If this bullet was fired from about waist level and struck the security guard, would that not explain the entry of his wound?

To back up his claim that the first shot had been a deliberate above-the-head warning shot, Knight also pointed out that a bullet hole was found in the ceiling approximately above where Mr Rogers had stood – about where someone would direct a warning shot ‘to coerce people to move’.

Knight also pointed out that Mr De Maria had said that just before the first shot from the shoulder he had seen an ‘upward motion’ of the gun.

Knight: So you can assume the rifle was raised up a split second before that first was fired. Now why was that done? If you deliberately intended to shoot that security guard and you had a rifle at your shoulder aimed at that person there [he aims an imaginary gun from his shoulder], would you not take careful aim and pull the trigger [mimics pulling the trigger]? No movement up at all.

But De Maria, of course, says there is an upwards movement, there just before that gunshot and that is what you do if you aimed to fire a warning shot over that person’s head. If they have been told to move over there and they take no notice, a warning shot would be one thing you could do.

He was so convinced of the force of his logic, Knight did not appear to appreciate how disconcerting it might be for a jury to have a gunman – even one who claimed to have shot accidentally – to aim and fire an imaginary gun at them.

Knight also explained his seemingly strange objection to the prosecutor’s final address – insisting the evidence had been that he had said: ‘Yeah man, it’s for real’, not: ‘Yeah mate, it’s for real’. The reason turned out to be that he believed it was less likely the jury would accept that he had said it at all.

Knight: I think I might say that if either of the two women on the far side were to take the witness box, they would tell you that is not my manner of speech: ‘Yeah man, it’s for real.’

As to whether he intended killing, Knight disposed of the chilling ‘there will not be an abortionist in Melbourne left deathless’ letter from words circled in a newspaper in one sentence.

Knight: The question of intention being such an important issue, it still remains to show whether or not I planned to harm the security guard. First … the newspaper with the circled letters – you can make of that what you will.

Then, once again, he had those in the court squirming with some extraordinary argument. To prove he had not intended to harm the security guard, Knight detailed the terrifying lengths he had taken to prepare for his attack on the clinic.

Knight: Now if I had planned to harm this security guard or intended to harm this security guard, would I arrive at the time indicated by the witnesses there … 20 or 25 past 10 when, as other witnesses say, the security guard usually left at about 10 o’clock?

The next question follows: Was I aware of the security guard’s schedule?

Is it likely that I would have went into the premises without first having obtained a fair idea of what went on in there?

In fact, I can tell you that the person who held the position of security guard prior to the deceased was a woman who was slightly short, was very stockily built, had short dark hair, drove a maroon-coloured Mitsubishi which was commonly parked opposite – or approximately opposite – the premises and she had always left the premises and driven off by 10 past 10.

Knight’s logic to the jury seemed to be: you should clear me of the guard’s murder because I intended to kill a whole lot of others, but not him.

Knight finished his final address with an often screeched harangue against legal ‘mumbo jumbo’. For him, taking an oath to God to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ was an insult to God because God’s commandment that people should tell the truth should be enough. He didn’t mention anything about ‘Thou shalt not kill’.

Knight: I would like to explain the reasons why I did not call any witnesses for my defence and this will also explain the reasons why I did not cross-examine any prosecution witnesses … That has to do with the matter of oaths and, of course, their twin brothers are affirmations and declarations.

My response to this nonsense – as it has been in many years past – is when will people ever start to grow up? Just what purpose does this ridiculous mumbo jumbo serve?

He said most people ‘true to the nature of fools’ took oaths because they needed something more than God’s commandment to force them to tell the truth.

Knight: They say to themselves: ‘I reckon if it will get me to do what God’s advice could not get me to do and tell the truth, then that’s got to be a good thing. God’s advice, all things considered, is just not much chop but me own word, me own guarantee; now that’s BIG time and if anything at all is said about it when I am kicked upstairs I will say: “Sorry old fellow, but I needed something that had a bit more go and a bit more officiality than your word to get me to tell the truth in court.”’

If they do not think it will get you to tell them the truth in court, then give me one sensible, practical, nonchildish and nonridiculous reason why they persist and insist on it…

Anyone who thinks this enforced regulation, this done-on-cue mumbo jumbo is the way to tell God anything, has a very feeble relationship with Him. Why don’t they simply grow up and charge anyone who has given false testimony in court, but then that would be just too simple and sensible for peacocks like these…

Under no circumstances would I participate in this nonsense myself and under no circumstances would I place pressure on anyone else to do so.

For anyone to say that taking an oath makes it more important for them to tell the truth, only goes to show what little regard they have for telling the truth in the first place and what little regard they have for God’s advice.

Knight’s other explanation for not having a lawyer and not playing a more active role in the trial was his intellectual cockiness and his certainty of his innocence.

Knight: There are only two things I had need of for this trial. The first of these was a list of depositions and evidence confirming just how poor and how ridiculous the prosecution case would be. This was obligingly supplied by the Office of Public Prosecution.

The other thing I had need of was a prosecuting barrister with no brains at all, and here too – once again – the Office of Public Prosecutions has come to the fore and generously supplied the solution.

What the hell would I need a barrister for, when it was plain and obvious the prosecuting one has gotten all the evidence I needed anyway.

To close, I make a final word on the matter of oaths. It may not have cost me very much in this trial, but it is only a matter of time before this ridiculous nonsense costs some people their chance at justice.

After deliberating for almost four hours, the jury of eight men and four women declared Knight guilty of murder. As had been the case throughout the trial, Knight refused to stand up when the jury or judge entered and after the verdict he also refused to give his details. He was ‘Mr X’ again. Then, suddenly, he leapt to his feet and shouted out to the jury: ‘You’ll be made to pay the penalty.’ Later, he said he had meant that they would pay their penalty in the afterlife.

Outside the court, Shirley Rogers told Herald Sun reporter Norrie Ross: ‘I think Knight was going to go in and kill all the doctors and burn the place down but Steven foiled his plan … I think they should lock him up and throw away the key because, the way he was talking, I think he would be a dangerous person to be on the street. He more or less threatened to do it again … Tonight, I am going to say a prayer to him [Steven] and I’m going to say: “You’ve finally got your justice.”’

At his pre-sentence plea-hearing, Knight continued to refuse to have a barrister act for him. Justice Teague, however, asked barristers Roy Punshon SC and Reg Marron to be ‘friends of the court’. While not acting for Knight, they were there to try to look after his interests although this was difficult without his cooperation.

The big issue was whether Knight was mentally ill or just odd. If he was found to be mentally ill, his whole trial would have been declared a nullity – as if it had never happened. Two psychiatrists came up with very different conclusions.

After regularly interviewing Knight over eight months, Dr Don Senadipathy found that Knight had ‘chronic paranoid schizophrenia’ and had ‘committed the crime driven by his delusional interpretation of the Bible’. Dr Senadipathy said Knight was still psychotic and that he was a ‘highly dangerous man who would remain unpredictable’ and a ‘high risk’ even in jail. He said he was not optimistic that Knight could be cured and recommended he be held and treated in a ‘secure hospital setting’.

Dr Senadipathy: His delusions control his life. He has no insight to accept that he set out to commit a horrendous crime. He does not have the ability to show emotions and there is no remorse. This is in a man who believes in God and acts according to what he believes is stated in the Bible. Abnormal thoughts and beliefs drive him … He lacks motivation and drive to lead a normal life.

He noted that Knight was so obsessively opposed to smoking that in hospital he refused to speak in front of any nurses he believed were smokers. Dr Senadipathy also noted that even though he had almost nothing, Knight gave what he could to charity. He warned, however, against allowing him back into the community: ‘I agree with the comment of his sister that he is capable of an even more sinister crime.’ That sister was worried her little brother might do something serious – ‘like Martin Bryant’.

Another psychiatrist – after interviewing Knight for nearly two hours – found ‘little objective evidence of mental illness, including schizophrenia’. Dr Justin Barry-Walsh agreed that Knight was paranoid and had strongly held odd views (Knight told him he considered himself 49 years old, not 48, because he dated himself from the time of his conception, not birth) but he did not believe he was delusional.

Dr Barry-Walsh: He spoke generally freely and at length and would have been happy to continue with the interview past the point at which I terminated it … He spoke spontaneously … He showed flashes of humour and made several jokes … Generally, he seemed to be someone who was mistrustful of others, particularly those with authority…

He did not characterise himself as being a recluse. He felt a recluse was someone who doesn’t want company. He suggested he could, in fact, be happy to have company but was fussy about company. He indicated he had always been a hard judge of other people. He said that he only demanded the standards in other people that he would demand in himself. He wouldn’t tolerate people that used drugs, that wouldn’t give to charity, that were too greedy or smoked cigarettes.

In relation to the court process, he accepted that he had been found guilty. He felt that perhaps he could have put his case to the court somewhat better than he did.

He expanded more generally on his views about law and order … He felt the death penalty should be mandatory for ‘serious crimes’ such as armed robbery and child molestation but optional for murder.

He indicated to me that there were times when people had to take the law into their own hands. He said this did not make him an anarchist and he appreciated that one had to have government but, by way of analogy, he suggested that if he was living in the time of Adolf Hitler, it would have been appropriate to have to take the right action…

He believed he had the right to take the law into his own hands at the time of which the offence was committed … He was unwilling to talk about the harm he might have perpetrated as a result of the offending and, in particular, was resistant to the notion of relating his Christian views to the offence and its aftermath…

He likes to invent things and solve problems … [but] he was reluctant to talk to me in detail, suggesting that if he did, I might think he is a ‘nutcase’. He tells me he succeeded in designing a perpetual motion machine, but if he broadcasts this, this might have him ‘off to a mental hospital’. He also tells me he has designed a better mousetrap…

He views the government as responsible for his predicament because of their condoning the abortion law.

Dr Barry-Walsh said it was not surprising that he and Dr Senadipathy disagreed because Knight was ‘in the grey area between a person who is odd and unusual and socially deviant and a person who is clearly and frankly mentally ill’.

To try to break the psychiatric opinion deadlock, Justice Teague called for a third psychiatrist. The tie-breaker, Professor Paul Mullen, noted: ‘There is a pathway from obsessive concern through fanaticism to delusion’ and it’s ‘no easy matter in men like Mr Knight to know when they have moved from the enthusiasms of extremism to the madness of delusion’.

Prof Mullen: On occasion, when I have seen Mr Knight he has been able to discuss his views with a degree of openness and even to be able to contemplate the possibility of error. On other occasions, there has been a rigidity and grandiose claim to absolute knowledge … suggestive of delusion…

He is undoubtedly a very unusual individual who has developed a number of convictions which he holds to be absolutely true and self-evident and which he is arrogant enough to believe he has the right to impose on others. At times, given his personality and the lack of any of the usual checks and balances on extremism and hubris, Mr Knight’s fanaticism may well merge into delusion. In my opinion, however, he does not have an established and ongoing delusional disorder…

Mr Knight still believes that he was in the right on that day when he shot and killed Mr Rogers. One can only hope that eventually the awfulness of what he did to Mr Rogers, and the pain that he inflicted on the family and friends of Mr Rogers, will lead Mr Knight to some awareness of the need to moderate all views with an element of humanity and respect for others.

Mr Knight may well require psychiatric care in the future … [but] he would not, in my opinion, currently be a candidate for a hospital order.

So, it was 2–1 in favour of Knight being sane.

Then Knight had his go. In his scratchy scrawl, he attacked Dr Senadipathy’s schizophrenia diagnosis, saying it broke the law.

Knight: Section 8 (2) of the Mental Health Act states, (2) ‘A person is not to be considered to be mentally ill by reason only of any one or more the following – (b) that the person expresses or refuses or fails to express a political opinion or belief.’

My attitude, as it had been termed, in regard to oaths has as its source a religious foundation from Biblical scripture. Firstly James, chapter 5, verse 12 says: ‘My friends, above all else, don’t take an oath. You must not swear by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Yes or No is all you need to say. If you do anything more you will be condemned.’ Secondly, Matthew chapter 5 verse 33 says: ‘You know that those of old times were told, “Perform your oaths unto the Lord.” But I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne, nor by the earth, for it is his footstool. Neither shalt thou swear by your right arm or by your left or by any other oath. But let your communication be Yay or Nay, for whatsoever is more than this comes of evil.’

The 2nd of these extracts is part of what is commonly referred to as the sermon on the mount – one of the foundation stories of the Christian religion. Hardly what could be criticised as being extreme or obscure religious literature. It seems to me somebody’s adherence to Christian doctrine is hardly reason to consider them to be schizophrenic. It shouldn’t be, but if it is, that raises all sorts of new possibilities. Let me further say that I have no desire at all to see the validity of that trial brought into question…

Given that Mr Senadipathy’s diagnosis is based on invalid criteria, and given that any report forthcoming from him would be of doubtful legality, I consider that the court has before it everything it requires for a decision to be made … The trial has taken place; the witnesses have given their evidence (confused though much of it was), the jury has made their decision (and what a decision). It is now up to the judge to make his. Based not on one misguided and legally doubtful psychiatric report, but … on whatever degree of culpability, and whatever degree of responsibility he thinks I have for the charges presented to him.

I am not someone of weak faith. I know that nobody can do anything to me which has not been permitted by God, for my own eventual good.

Sincerely

P Knight

Despite Knight’s plea and the opinions of Professor Mullen and Dr Barry-Walsh, Mr Punshon and Mr Marron told Justice Teague he would be entitled to find that Knight had been delusionally schizophrenic when he killed Mr Rogers. They pointed out Dr Senadipathy had made his diagnosis after talking to Knight over eight months.

The prosecution urged Justice Teague to take the rare step of jailing Knight for the rest of his life without any hope of parole. Up until that time (August 2002) – since 1986 when Victorian judges were given the power to set minimum terms for those convicted of murder – only five murderers had been sentenced, and were serving, ‘life means life’ sentences. They were: Stanley Brian Taylor, who bombed the Russell Street police complex, killing a policewoman in a declaration of war on society; triple murderer Ashley Mervyn Coulston; the abductor and killer of six-year-old Sheree Beasley, Robert Arthur Selby Lowe; Leslie Alfred Camilleri, who abducted, raped and murdered two teenage girls near Bega in New South Wales; and Peter Dupas, who killed and sexually mutilated the body of his psychotherapist.

Mr Morgan-Payler: A murder committed with an intention to kill in the course of a campaign to effect social change must rank as one of the gravest examples of the crime of murder.

He said Knight had shown no remorse for what he had done, was not psychiatrically ill and had threatened the ‘gravest crimes if, and when, released’.

Mr Punshon and Mr Marron, however, called for Knight to be given a hope of eventual freedom. They denied that what he did amounted to a declaration of war against society and said he should only be punished for murdering Mr Rogers, not for what he might have done.

Knight was still hanging on to an impossible hope that Justice Teague would exonerate him – despite the jury’s verdict. In another letter, Knight told the judge there were ‘many factors which the sentencing act states should be considered by a judge when determining a sentence’.

Knight: But as far as I am awhere [sic] nowhere in that act, or anywhere else, does it specify how much importance should be placed on each, or any of those factors … Each case has its own unique characteristics … But in all cases, there is one factor which must always be given a lot of importance. In some cases it may be the only factor which has any importance. That factor is, the actual degree of responsibility or culpability the judge considers the defendant has, for the charge he has been convicted of.

It is obviously the first factor which should be considered, and whenever the answer is zero, as it is in this case, then it should be the only factor given any importance. No other factor has any importance here.

Knight told Justice Teague to reject as ‘inaccuracies, falsehoods and unsubstantiated opinions’ anything the three psychiatrists told him about why he shot Mr Roger.

Knight: I have refused to speak on the subject, despite their numerous attempts to elicit dialogue on the subject.

Their comments on my motives, my plans, and my intentions and on what they consider my future actions might be, are nothing better than guesswork.

Dr Senadipathy proposes that it was my intention ‘to kill the doctor or doctors working at the clinic, and perhaps set fire to the building’. Others have made a variety of suggestions (guesses), some very much different. The only thing that such a diversity of opinion shows is that none of them can confidently say what my intentions were. I am the only one who knows.

Some rather foolish people have suggested to me that I should have given my own account of things at that trial. I had, and have, no intention of doing so of course for the reason … that it usually does little good to tell people something they do not want to believe…

The other reason I have not spoken is that it could well make it more possible that I might be convicted. Not of the charge which was levelled against me here, but of other lesser charges which I have heard suggested could possibly eventuate. I considered, and still do, that if I remained silent on this matter that no OBJECTIVE jury or judge would have, or will, convict me of any charges in relation to the events of 16th of July apart possibly from one or two very minor charges. But I have not been charged here with any of those. They are irrelevant here. The only charge under consideration here is murder.

In November 2002 – almost a year and a half after Knight walked into Australia’s most famous abortion clinic with a rifle, fourteen bullets, metal doorstoppers, foam-tipped sticks, kerosene, twine, gags and cigarette lighters – he was sentenced for murdering the security guard who asked if he was serious.

Justice Teague: The murder of Steven Rogers was a very serious crime. It is to be treated more seriously because … you were a loner on a personal crusade … to effect social change. Steven Rogers was just doing his duty. He got in the way of your crusade. He was one of those who was characterised by you as being in ‘the abortion racket’…

You went to the clinic with a plan to massacre. You made Steven Rogers pay the supreme sacrifice because he got in the way…

I am not disposed to accept the diagnosis of schizophrenia. You are clearly a person who [however] … rigidly and unshakingly, adheres to certain beliefs. You are a man who is intolerant to an extreme … You exhibit a fanaticism which at times may well merge into delusion…

You have murdered one man in the context of having planned a massacre of many … You represent, now, a considerable danger to the community. In July 2001, you were able to put together a collection of items that had the potential to result in the deaths of dozens of people who were going about their normal lives in the East Melbourne clinic…

You have not shown any remorse … The closest you have come to that has been to argue that his death was just bad luck. In all the circumstances, I am satisfied that life imprisonment is called for.

The judge told Knight that with ‘significant reservations’ he had decided to fix a nonparole term, to give him a chance of eventually being released from jail. He said he had done so because this was his first criminal conviction and because his mental state ‘does border on a delusional disorder’.

Justice Teague: Mr Knight, I sentence you to imprisonment for life. I set a nonparole period of 23 years. Remove the prisoner.

• • •

Almost another year and a half later (March 2004), Knight fought another lone legal battle. This one in the Victorian Court of Appeal started with an extra bizarre twist – Knight was wheeled into court strapped upright Hannibal Lecter–style to a metal stretcher. Unlike the Silence of the Lambs villain, however, Knight was not wearing an ice hockey mask or a straitjacket. He also was not on the stretcher because of security fears, but because he was refusing to come to the appeal hearing.

His reluctance to appear was especially odd because he was asking the court to accept his appeal even though he had missed the deadline by five months. In his appeal, Knight told the three judges he should get a new trial because Justice Teague had been ‘obviously not nearly learned enough’ and ‘dimwitted’.

He also argued that he had been deprived of an impartial jury because jurors who had held strong views – for or against – abortion had been excused from sitting on the jury. Knight argued that the only people who could have given him a fair hearing would have been people opposed to abortion. He said only those opposed to abortion ‘were even-handed towards the unborn as well as the born’. Knight denied that he had agreed to excluding jurors with strong views on abortion. He said when Justice Teague asked him whether he was ‘content for me to adopt that course’ he had only said ‘Yes’ because he was ‘content to see this judge be foolish enough to give grossly improper directions to the jury pool. And, not being a complete fool myself, and being mindful that what had been promised or proposed by the judge, would constitute sure-fire grounds to get an appeal upheld, then, quite naturally, I was content to see this judge make a blunder of such magnitude.’

Once again Knight’s too-clever-by-half cockiness failed him completely. The appeal judges rejected as ‘specious’ his claim that only those opposed to abortion could have impartially judged his case. They then noted that even if they had accepted the point, Knight would not have been able to argue it because he had not tried to dissuade the judge from doing it. Barristers and accused people are not allowed to ‘store up’ appeal points without alerting the trial judge. The judges refused to grant Knight an extension of time to make a full appeal, saying he had ‘failed to show any reasonably arguable ground of appeal, let alone one that would probably succeed’. Appeal court losses don’t come any more resounding than that.

After his big loss, Knight was once again obstructive: he was a dead weight as security guards carried him out of the court.

While the justice system was struggling to deal with Knight, the bravery of the three men who stopped him committing a massacre was recognised. Mr De Maria was awarded Victoria’s second-highest bravery honour – the Star of Courage – for those who act with conspicuous courage in circumstances of great peril. Mr Anderson received a Bravery Medal; so too did the man who could not collect his – Steven Rogers. Mr De Maria said the shooting had taught him to value life more, had made him realise anything can happen: ‘I saw that with the security guard, he was just within a couple of minutes of going home and he never made it.’ When trying to explain why he did what he did, Mr De Maria looked teary-eyed at his baby daughter who had not yet been born when a fanatically anti-abortionist gunman pointed a loaded gun at her pregnant mother’s stomach.

‘I couldn’t stand there and do nothing. I look at her and I would never forgive myself for it. So, I had to do something.’