Chapter 2

Massacre on Queen Street

Tony Gioia

It took 10 typed A4 pages to describe the last 19 minutes of Frank Vitkovic’s life. In a sparse, clinical style, the pages meticulously document in chilling detail 19 minutes of utter terror, death and mayhem on a sunny, summer afternoon in Melbourne in 1987. The measured public service tone of state coroner Harold Hallenstein’s report only accentuates the horror inflicted by the deeply disturbed Vitkovic at around 4 pm on 8 December.

At the end of his murderous rampage, nine people lay dead including Vitkovic himself, his broken body splayed out on the pavement, 11 floors below where he fell from the Australia Post building in Queen Street. His bloody crusade with a semi-automatic M1 Carbine at last at an end, the employees in the Australia Post building began to wake from their nightmare just as Melburnians began to get a glimpse of it.

Mr Hallenstein described Vitkovic as ‘armed insanity’, ending the lives of eight people and changing forever the lives of the injured and the witnesses to this macabre event.

The coroner’s report leaves no doubts about what happened that day. What you struggle to understand is why.

 

Tony Gioia, an accountant and financial manager in the finance section of Australia Post, worked on the 11th floor of the Queen Street headquarters. Married with four daughters, he had a job he loved and a comfortable house in the leafy eastern suburbs that nestle in the shadow of the picturesque Dandenong ranges. Life was good. But he had worked hard for it. Like Vitkovic, Tony was the son of migrants. Coming to Australia in 1952 with his parents, as a child, his was the typical migrant success story.

Like most European migrants his parents spoke no English when they arrived but were soon in work and building a new life for themselves. Tony enjoyed the fruits of his parents’ labour and their strong family bonds. He did well at school, went on to study accountancy and qualified. His first job was at Australia Post and he had worked his way up the career ladder. Now aged 30, he was enjoying the fruits of his own endeavours.

But nothing had prepared him to face what would happen next. At 4.29 pm the lives of these two sons of migrants were about to violently intersect.

 

The story of Frank Vitkovic, 21, is the story of a deadly clash of mental illness, access to firearms, media violence and a society that struggles to balance the rights of individuals with the safety of the community at large.

It is also the story of Melbourne’s loss of innocence, the year when the city joined the world big league in violent crime. Melbourne, as a major Australian city, had had its share of big city violence. But it was no New York or Chicago where gun-wielding madmen burst into buildings or picked off people in the street as they go about their daily business.

This was in fact the second such occurrence of violent random shooting in Melbourne in just a couple of months. In August a few months earlier another young disturbed mind, Julian Knight, acted out his violent fantasy on an unsuspecting Melbourne public when he sniped on people in Hoddle Street, killing seven and injuring 17. Like Knight, Vitkovic had no trouble getting access to firearms or qualifying for the licence that allowed him to buy them. The words on Vitkovic’s application for a shooting licence in October 1997 are chilling in retrospect. ‘I desire to go hunting,’ was his explanation.

Vitkovic slipped through the net of firearm legislation and mental health experts. The signs were there if only someone could have seen the whole picture. Vitkovic had obtained a shooter’s licence and an automatic weapon after a psychologist had written a report that Vitkovic was unstable, depressed and partially psychotic. It brings into sharp focus our modern society’s dilemma of maintaining personal freedom while protecting citizens’ lives.

Frank Vitkovic was ostensibly a normal teenager. Growing up in the Melbourne northern suburb of Preston, the son of hardworking Italian and Yugoslav migrant parents, he went to a Catholic Brothers school in Preston, was a good student and a good sportsman, particularly at tennis, which he played regularly.

His marks were enough to get him into the prestigious Melbourne University Law School in 1984, aged 19. But soon after things started to go wrong for Vitkovic. A persistent knee injury seemed to get him down and he gradually withdrew from his social circle and studies. He deferred at one point in 1985 but returned again in 1986, although continuing to suffer from his knee and depression.

The signs of Vitkovic’s deteriorating mental state were seen by others well over a year before. He confided to a friend in November 1986 that he was depressed by a violent and vicious world, that he had nothing to live for and that he had considered suicide. After the shootings police discovered a diary that was an open book on Vitkovic’s mental state, and had it been discovered earlier it would have alerted people to his instability. In the diary he poured out his anguish about the world and his place in it, his inability to form relationships, particularly with women, and described his desperate unhappiness which gradually turned into violent intent.

Some of these thoughts crept into the outside world when Vitkovic sat a law exam about a year earlier. He wrote in response to one question a disturbing piece about crime, death and a violent and chaotic society. The examiner correcting the test advised him to see the university psychologist, which he did. The psychologist assessed him as deeply disturbed and urged Vitkovic to see a psychiatrist for treatment, but he refused.

And that is where the matter lay. Apparently for reasons of client confidentiality the psychologist took no further action. The coroner was later to find that the system of reporting and referral of dangerously mentally ill people was inadequate. He recommended that the system ensure psychiatrically disturbed people like Vitkovic were identified as early as possible and officially assessed and treated.

In 1987 he dropped out of university again and in March acted on his obsession with firearms by taking instruction with the university’s rifle club. In October he obtained a shooter’s licence and a few days later bought his gun. The same day he got his shooter’s licence he found himself outside the Church of Scientology in Melbourne. Curious about the free personality tests the church offered he went in and did one.

The results revealed his dire state which, the coroner was later to report, was consistent with the psychologist’s report. He added that the fact Vitkovic was given this assessment without proper support and counselling had been dangerous.

The psychiatrist’s assessment for the coroner was chilling in its bluntness Vitkovic was a paranoid psychotic, probably schizophrenic, totally out of touch with reality, and insane. Whatever Vitkovic’s true mental state, it was not communicated to anyone in authority or to his family, who may have been able to intervene.

There seems no particular reason for Vitkovic to have chosen 8 December for his deadly escapade. No doubt the voices in his head told him it was time. That morning Vitkovic packed his newly purchased rifle in a maroon kit bag and headed off to the university. He told someone he had a job to do at the post office. The months of pent-up anger were being focused on one person a friend, Con Margelis, who for reasons only known to Vitkovic had come to be the focus of his anger. Con worked for the Telecom Credit Union at 191 Queen Street, which is how Vitkovic came to be there.

Sometime just before 4 pm he went into the building and headed for the 5th floor where Con worked at the teller counter. At 4.15 he fronted the counter and asked to see Con. As he appeared, Vitkovic pulled the M1 from his bag, pointed it at Margelis, and fired. Nothing happened. Unknown to Vitkovic the gun he had bought had a faulty firing mechanism, which meant it kept jamming and had to be freed manually. As Vitkovic fiddled, Margelis and two other tellers fled. The mechanism at last ready, Vitkovic vaulted the counter and took off in pursuit, firing the gun as he went. Ultimately Margelis, Vitkovic’s original target, escaped, but the rest of his colleagues weren’t so lucky.

Vitkovic’s first victim was Judith Morris, who had sought refuge behind the teller’s counter. After returning from his chase he saw her crouched there, climbed onto the counter and, without hesitating, shot her in the back. Like a scene from one of the violent videos he watched often, Vitkovic laughed, his eyes large, dilated and glazed.

He moved on to the 12th floor where a staff member, John Dryac, unwittingly let him in through a security door. Vitkovic shot Dryac, then bent over him smiling and said, ‘Are you dead yet? You will be soon.’ He then fired another round into Dryac’s body. Miraculously he survived. He moved on randomly and rapidly through the office, shooting three others Julie McBean, Nancy Avignone and Warren Spencer. At one point with the gun still jamming he cursed, ‘How do they expect me to kill people with this gun?’

Down on the 11th floor, Tony and his nine colleagues occupied an open plan office in one corner of the building. They had been going about their work oblivious to the events unfolding above them. Their first inkling that something was amiss was the crack of Vitkovic’s gun, which sounded like a car backfiring, Tony said. Vitkovic then descended to the 11th floor after making his way from the carnage on the floor above.

‘We heard some screaming from the lift lobby and we turned around and there was this guy shouting and shooting. It took a while to register what was happening. There was a sense of disbelief, that this couldn’t really be happening,’ Tony said.

This was Melbourne after all and wild gunmen don’t figure in your mental calculations of what could be happening. For Tony and his colleagues nothing could have been further from their experience. These were accountants, administration staff and clerks. They worked in an office but now they were involved in a war. Having heard the mêlée, the nine people in the area, terror rising, tried to find cover like they were playing some grim game of hide and seek. As others scrambled under desks or behind flimsy partitions, Tony pulled open the steel door of a two-metre tall metal cabinet and ducked behind it.

Vitkovic came into the office and paced up and down between the desks, shooting the gun into the air and the windows and yelling at the top of his voice like a madman. ‘I’m going to die and a few of you bastards are going to die with me.’

Tony, barely believing what he was seeing, saw Vitkovic swing his rifle and turn his deadly aim to Donald McElroy crouching near the window. Donald fell, breaking the window as he did, making noises at which Vitkovic spat, ‘You’re giving me a lot of trouble, fat man.’

He then turned his gun on Marianne Van Ewk hiding under a desk. He shot her in the head, firing a number of other shots before saying to her, ‘I might as well put you out of your misery,’ shooting her again in the head from a distance of about a metre.

‘None of you are going to leave here alive, then I’m going to shoot myself!’ he shouted. He fired more shots at a group of people between and under the two desks, injuring Erica Johnson and Catherine Dowling. Vitkovic’s blood-curdling running commentary continued: ‘Fuck the police. Fuck me. Where are the police? Why don’t they come? The police are going to kill me so none of you bastards are going to stay alive.’

He then focused on Catherine, by now badly injured, and shot her in the head, then Rosemarie Spiteri. Vitkovic’s gun jammed again, during which time Carmody rose to jump on Vitkovic.

But it was too late and the gunman lifted the gun toward Carmody, who dived. He took a shot in the back, slumping onto Dowling. Vitkovic moved to another desk, shooting Rodney Brown at point blank range in the head.

During this time Tony was listening and watching with mounting terror from behind his flimsy shield. Jumbled thoughts of what he could do, and of his wife and four young daughters at home raced through his head. Tony said while it was difficult to pinpoint feelings at the time, in the background was a sense of his family and what would happen to them if he died.

Vitkovic had his back to him and had not yet discovered he was there, although with his feet sticking out from beneath the door he knew he would be spotted soon enough. His mind raced. ‘What could I do? I knew I was about to die. I had nothing to lose by trying something.’

Tony saw his chance when Vitkovic, with his back to him, was about to take aim and shoot again after shooting and killing Rodney Brown. The thought in Tony’s mind was that Vitkovic was about to turn around and he would be seen, so inadequately was the door hiding him from view.

As Vitkovic loaded a new magazine into the breech Tony exploded from behind the door, diving on Vitkovic from the back, in a way a child might jump on the back of a parent, both arms locking around his upper body yelling for someone else to help.

The pair staggered, crashing onto a desk and rolling off onto the top of Johnson.

Carmody, injured and bleeding but still able to walk, got up and went to Tony’s aid, ripping the gun from Vitkovic’s grasp as Tony held him down. Clare Chalkley, followed by the injured McElroy, came to help, jumping on top of Vitkovic and sitting

on him.

Issama Nixon joined in, taking the gun from Carmody and running with it out into the kitchen area and hiding it in the staff refrigerator. Vitkovic meanwhile screamed and struggled like captured prey. He broke free and dived for the window, now broken by the shots and McElroy after he fell against it.

Tony and Donald McElroy continued to hold him but Vitkovic pulled them with him as he inched towards the window on his stomach. He reached it and smashed it further with his head, opening up gaping wounds, dragging himself along to get through it and onto the small balcony outside.

Tony’s grasp on his legs began to loosen, gradually slipping to his ankles as Vitkovic dangled himself over the balcony. At 165 centimetres and a slight 55 kilograms, Tony was no match for Vitkovic’s bulkier frame. Tony was yelling ‘don’t jump, don’t do it,’ but Vitkovic’s weight was too much and, with McElroy holding on to Tony, yelled at Tony to let go.

With a final kick Vitkovic launched himself over the edge, plunging to the Queen Street footpath 11 floors below. ‘That will teach you’ were his final words, as if his demons had finally been satisfied. At 4.34 pm Vitkovic lay crumpled and broken, a spent force on the footpath below. It was finally all over.

Tony remembers picking up the phone to call for help and within a few minutes the special police squad was in the office. Still confused about what they were dealing with, they ordered Tony out of the office thinking he was one of possibly two gunmen. But soon calm returned. Shocked and shaken to the core, Tony and the others who were not injured spent the next few hours trying to recover and providing statements to the police.

Tony returned home later that evening to his shaken but relieved wife and daughters. His wife Marina recalls that night how he had vowed he would never set foot in that place again.

Often the trauma of such a violent event can have a lasting legacy one only has to see the devastating impact of war and its associated atrocities on the lives of war veterans. But Tony said he recovered well from the experience thanks to good counselling and a supportive family. He believes there have been no lasting scars, only a strong sense of protectiveness towards his family.

Marina said she and the children found it very difficult to deal with and believes counselling for the families in these sorts of events is essential. Tony’s vow did not last long and with Marina’s encouragement he went back to work some weeks later. He threw himself into work, feeling he had to get on with life. She laughs, saying she regrets it now because he had become a workaholic.

For a while after that he did try to ignore what had happened and did the strong macho thing. But the nightmare was not over yet. Tony and all the Australia Post staff in the building that day had to face it all again a year later at the coronial inquest. For everyone, and Tony in particular, it was a traumatic time, reliving the whole tragedy shot by terrible shot.

But despite the pain Tony said it helped him. Each new day of the inquest helped him to some sort of understanding of the events of that day and why Vitkovic did it. And in the end it was quite simple.

‘I know why he did it. He was sick,’ Tony said, who no longer harbours any feelings of anger. The inquest particularly helped to quell any angry thoughts because he learned that Vitkovic was mentally ill.

 

There was speculation that someone should have detected Vitkovic’s state of mind and reported him. But while Tony was not happy about the fact Vitkovic went undetected he said he is philosophical about it. ‘In the end I just felt sorry for him. Being angry wasn’t going to help me or my healing process, those who died, my family or anyone.’

Such a benign attitude to someone who tried to kill you is made even more extraordinary when you add the fact Tony tried to prevent him from jumping out of the building. Tony says by then Vitkovic was no risk and it seemed the right thing to do. ‘Physically though I couldn’t stop him in the end.’

As a result of his investigations into the Vitkovic case Mr Hallenstein found Frank Vitkovic was seriously mentally ill and the system failed to deal adequately with him. He recommended changes to ensure mental health experts take all reasonable steps to ensure their disturbed clients get appropriate treatment.

Mr Hallenstein also expressed concern about the Church of Scientology tests and the fact the results were given to Vitkovic. He said there was no evidence the Church of Scientology tests contributed to his unravelling but suggested professional psychological guidance be used in that form of testing. He also found the firearms application process was obviously inadequate at the time in picking up mentally disturbed applicants.

Since then, however, firearms legislation had substantially tightened the licensing requirements and limited the availability of semi-automatic weapons. But Mr Hallenstein said while changes to the legislation would increase the chances of screening out people like Vitkovic, there was a limit to what legislation could achieve.

‘If a psychotic person desires not to disclose information then he will not disclose it particularly in a mandatory and necessarily time-restricted psychiatric interview,’ he said.

So what about the big question? What made Tony jump over that precipice, to do what we all wonder if we had the courage to do? At the end of all the analysis and the soul searching, Tony believes there was really only one motivating factor for his incredible act of courage self-preservation, pure and simple.

‘What made me do it? I had to. If I didn’t, in all likelihood I would have died. When I saw him shoot Frank [Carmody] I thought, nothing is going to stop him. So I either do something or I’m dead meat and Frank is dead as well. I did what I thought other people would do in that situation. You are in a corner; you’ve got nothing to lose. This guy had to be stopped. He was killing innocent people. And God only knows how many more people would have been killed if he had kept going,’ Tony said.

Vitkovic still had magazines loaded with ammunition and could have kept going for some time, the police said.

Tony was surprised at how he reacted to the situation. There was nothing in his background that could have prepared him for such an event. He was not a physical person in that sense, had never trained in the army or anything like that and had never been in a fight or any violent situation. ‘I abhor violence,’

Tony said.

He said he asked himself if he would do the same thing again and he believes he would react in the same way. He said he would certainly do it to protect his family.

Tony is at pains to point out he was not the only one to have helped bring the rampage to an end. As Mr Hallenstein commented, Frank Carmody played a crucial role, commending him for his bravery as the first person to attempt to tackle Vitkovic before being shot and then, despite being wounded, going to Tony’s aid after he had wrestled him to the ground.

Mr Hallenstein said both men were ‘equally the best examples one could find of human strength of spirit, firmness of resolve and courage.’

He also commended Clare Chalkley, the injured Donald McElroy and Issama Nixon, who despite being terrified, helped to restrain Vitkovic and wrestle the gun from him and hide it. It was a team effort, said Tony. All four were recognised for their bravery, Tony received the Clarke silver medal, Frank and Donald the bronze and Clare a certificate of merit.

Despite the tragedy, Tony considers himself very lucky. He came out of it alive and while losing friends and colleagues, his family was safe. In many ways it was harder for the parents who lost their children in the shootings.

Tony maintains contact with most of his colleagues, and although they get together on the anniversary date, it is to meet as friends rather than to commemorate the event. Sometimes they may not even talk about it. ‘It’s not that we have a hang up about talking about it. It is just not relevant any more. You’ve got to get on with your life. You owe it to yourself and your family.’

Tony said he did not seek public recognition of what he had done and did not particularly want it as it made him feel more vulnerable and more protective of his family. Afterwards he simply wanted to fade into the background and not attract attention.

Does he think he is brave? ‘I don’t know whether I am a brave person. I don’t know what a brave person is.’ He believed he acted more out of the overriding determination to save himself rather than any notion of bravery. But by doing that he saved other lives and that was a bonus. ‘I feel good about that.’

Tony smiles when asked if he feels proud. ‘I feel lucky. Proud? I don’t know. I think a lot of other people would have done the same thing.’