CHAPTER 9

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF SAMANTHA KNIGHT

It was one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries and saw the face of Samantha Knight become deeply etched in the memories of Sydneysiders who lived through that terrible time. And then it turned out, as is so often the case when children come to harm, Samantha’s killer was there all the time, just a heartbeat away – a trusted friend of the family.

But it took many years to catch the beast, and during that time he assaulted countless other children before he was finally locked in a cell in protective custody, away from the other prisoners who would have gladly torn him to shreds.

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At 4.30 p.m. on the Tuesday afternoon of 19 August 1986, nine-year-old Samantha Knight left her Bondi flat, where she lived with her mother Tess and their black cat Midnight, to go to the shops in nearby Bondi Road to buy some lollies and a pencil. Samantha made her purchases and soon after was positively sighted, by a neighbour, walking alone along Bondi Road. Three other witnesses said that they may have seen Samantha walking – perhaps hand-in-hand, but not for certain – with a man that afternoon, but it couldn’t be confirmed. Apart from that, the pretty little girl in the urchin’s cap had simply vanished.

Samantha’s disappearance triggered off one of the biggest investigations in Sydney’s history. The search saw her face on posters throughout Sydney and suburbs, and as far away as Newcastle. They asked the question: ‘Have you seen this girl?’ But no one had. There were countless alleged sightings, the majority from well-meaning citizens, the rest from cruel hoaxers, but none offered the slightest positive clue as to what may have become of Samantha Knight.

Despite relentless campaigning by Samantha’s family to keep the case in the public awareness, a $50,000 reward offered by the New South Wales government for any information and the press running stories at the slightest opportunity, it wasn’t for another 14 years that investigators revealed that at last they had a definite suspect.

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On 11 February 2000, convicted Sydney paedophile Michael Anthony Guider, 49, who was four years through a 10-year sentence for 60 counts of drugging and molesting 11 children aged two to 16 and possessing thousands of pornographic pictures of children that he had taken, was convicted of further sex offences against two five-year-olds between 1982 and 1985.

Although found guilty, Guider wasn’t given any additional jail time on top of his existing sentence. ‘There is little point in my imposing an additional term – he’s already looking at six more years which in my opinion is long enough to deal with any problems that he has,’ Judge O’Reilly told the court.

Apparently shortly after Michael Guider was initially sent to Lithgow Jail for 10 years in 1996, he was questioned by detectives about the disappearance of Samantha Knight. He was also questioned about the matter again in 1999. And he was questioned again before, and after, his 2000 conviction. A year later, on 21 February 2001, Michael Guider stood before the court at his committal hearing charged with the murder of Samantha Knight, more than 14 years earlier. Those who had known him gasped as he was brought into the court.

He was dressed in prison greens, his bespectacled face was almost completely covered in a prison-grown bushy grey beard, and long unkempt hair hung down over his face and shoulders. Guider was unrecognisable. He had grown the ultimate disguise.

Documents presented to the court stated that Guider, a former North Shore landscaper and gardener, had admitted to witnesses that he had drugged Samantha to take naked pictures of her, but he gave her too many sleeping pills and she accidentally died. Documents also said that Guider had admitted to molesting and taking pornographic pictures of many children over the previous 20 years. Two of the victims were Samantha’s young friends.

The documents said that Guider was a friend of Samantha’s family, who had initially endeared himself to Samantha and two of her young friends as a babysitter when she was five years old and living in Manly. When Samantha moved to Bondi at the age of seven, she would regularly visit her friends, often for sleepovers. During the following years, Michael Guider occasionally babysat Samantha and her two friends, drugging them with sleeping pills in soft drink and taking obscene pictures of them while they slept. Medical records verified that Guider regularly bought the prescription drug Normison, a sleeping pill that could undoubtedly cause toxic overdose, especially in a nine-year-old child, if too many were taken. Michael Guider had purchased Normison in the month leading up to Samantha’s disappearance.

Samantha’s mother Tess and father Peter O’Meagher, who had separated before their daughter went missing, sat intently through the proceedings. They listened as one by one, three prisoners who had been in jail with Michael Guider told of his confessions to them. One told the court that Guider had told him that he had given Samantha too much Normison and that if police had looked under bushes in nearby Cooper Park they would have found her.

Another said that Guider had told him that he was the man the three witnesses thought they saw Samantha with and that he had taken her to a cave in North Sydney. There he drugged her and photographed her and when he came back she was dead. He buried her in a park but dug her body up and put it in the garbage, from where it was taken away never to be found.

Michael Guider was committed for trial where he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter and not the murder of Samantha Knight after arriving at a deal with the Crown, with the approval of Samantha’s family. It carried a maximum of 25 years in jail. Guider received 17 years with a minimum of 12 to be served concurrently with the term he was already serving. This means that all he really got for killing Samantha Knight was eight years. That’s if he’s a good boy. But then again, there aren’t any little girls in jail, are there?

It turned out that one of the three prisoners who gave evidence against Michael Guider was his own brother Tim, who was serving a 10-year-sentence for matters relating to an armed robbery. Given that it was alleged that it was Tim’s information against his brother in the first place that brought about the conviction, Tim was given a pardon and released from jail.

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Here’s a scary thought. Michael Guider will be eligible for parole in 2014. He will be 63. At the very worst they can only keep him in jail until 2019 when he is 68. No one knows what he looks like without a beard, long hair and glasses. Just a nice, cuddly old man with some Normison. That’s unless someone puts him in the mainstream of the prison by mistake.