A doona and a surprise tip-off: The bizarre final moments of Dezi Freeman
This was not a manhunt that ended in a high-speed chase. It was a confrontation that arrived with a quiet stealth at a rural property in the state’s northern edge - after an expected tip-off.
Wrapped in a doona and clutching a gun belonging to one of the two police officers he murdered, Dezi Freeman fired on the tactical police squad that had surrounded him.
The 56-year-old died in a volley of gunfire from heavily armed members of the Special Operations Group outside a remote property near the Victorian border on Monday, following an hours-long stand-off calling for his surrender.
The resolution to Australia’s largest and most expensive manhunt was abrupt, violent, and came after a tip-off from one of those close to the country’s most wanted man.
Four police sources, not authorised to speak publicly about the case, say a tip last week led police to the bush property in Thologolong, near Walwa, and the meticulous operation to catch Freeman – 150 kilometres from where he murdered Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart in Porepunkah last year.
Chief Commissioner Mike Bush confirmed the news of Freeman’s death and said the victims’ families were the first to be told of the deadly outcome.
“Everything I know at this moment tells me the shooting was justified,” Bush said, flanked by detectives from Taskforce Summit.
“There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully, which he did not.”
For more than 200 days, Freeman had been a ghost in the bush, eluding search teams on his local stomping ground, and leaving many in the force to believe he’d died the same day he attacked police on August 26, by his own hand.
But Freeman was his own worst enemy.
A source with direct knowledge of the operation said that a couple believed to have been helping Freeman became increasingly concerned about his erratic behaviour.
When they reached out to another Freeman associate with their concerns, those conversations gave police their first tangible intel on the man they had hunted for seven months.
Freeman was last seen in the alpine country of Mount Buffalo after murdering Waart-Hottart, 35, and Thompson, 59, when they accompanied a group of 10 officers to serve Freeman with a warrant for historical sexual offences. A third officer was also injured in the shootings.
Early on Monday morning, Freeman emerged from his hideout – a makeshift structure described as half shipping container, half caravan – cloaked in a bedding cover. When he dropped the doona, he revealed his own white-knuckle grip on a gun.
He fired in the direction of a negotiator – with the police issue Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol he had stolen from the fallen Thompson. Several snipers returned fire, hitting him multiple times.
That was about 8.30am – three hours after police first asked him to surrender, following days of surveillance at the property. No police officers were injured in the stand-off, Victoria Police said.
Paramedics were unable to revive the father-of-three and self-described sovereign citizen, whose fate had become the subject of national fascination and speculation.
Bush said he had seen footage of Freeman “presenting a firearm at our officers” and photographs that helped officers confirm his identity.
He confirmed Freeman used a police gun, but refused to detail whether the fugitive had fired on police.
The police chief also would not confirm if a tip-off from Freeman’s associates helped officers zero in on the property, instead commending the long-running investigation.
He said the focus would shift to those who assisted Freeman, his connections to the property near Walwa, how he came to be there and how long he had been staying there.
The property sits on the edge of land recently ravaged by bushfires in early January. Satellite imagery shows it studded with multiple buildings, among them two containers, a caravan and several disused trucks and cars.
“We’re very keen to learn who, if any, but I’m sure some, assisted him in getting away from Porepunkah to where he was located ... and who supported him in his escapade,” Bush said. “If anyone was complicit, they will be held to account.”
“[It is] very important for us to understand how long he’s been here and who else was complicit in getting him here, and then caring for him or providing him with food and other things to this point.”
No one else was in “the immediate vicinity” during the stand-off at the property on Monday, and no one had been charged as investigators worked with the coroner to set up a crime scene at the remote hideout.
“It would be very difficult for him to get to where he was ... without assistance,” Bush added.
Bush said police could not discount the possibility that Freeman, an avid bushman, could have spent months in Victoria’s alpine region before making his way to the NSW border.
“We don’t know at what point he left the Porepunkah area and transferred to where he was found,” he said.
Over the past six months, specialist police units scoured thousands of kilometres of the alpine country, including with cadaver dogs, in the hunt for Freeman.
Bush said more than 2000 tips from the public had flooded in, and previously there had been “a lot to suggest that Freeman had taken his own life”. Police were able to eliminate all previous reports of sightings of the fugitive.
They are now investigating whether others had been at the Thologolong property before Monday’s shoot out.
Bush said “every tactical option” to resolve the matter peacefully was deployed, but Freeman’s actions “took away any discretion our officers had to resolve this peacefully”.
Victoria Police said both the coroner and the police professional standards unit would investigate the incident, “as per standard process for a police shooting”.
De Waart-Hottart’s parents, who live in Belgium, are in Melbourne after attending a ceremony last week to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1986 Russell Street bombing, in which policewoman Angela Taylor was killed.
Bush said he spoke with them in person, and the injured officer and the family of Thompson, who were all “very happy [this] has been brought to closure”.
“Our members said they would find him. They did,” Police Association of Victoria secretary Wayne Gatt said.
Freeman’s death did not lessen the trauma or “give back the futures that were callously stolen”, Gatt said, but it represented a step forward.
“Today, we won’t reflect on the loss of a coward. We will remember the courage and bravery of our fallen members and every officer that has doggedly pursued this outcome for the community.
“Days like today offer a sobering reminder that policing happens while you sleep, when the media spotlight on an investigation dims and when everything seems lost and forgotten.”
‘Just bear in mind that to you’s [sic] my father was a cop killer, but to me that’s still my father.’A person identifying himself as Koah Freeman, Dezi Freeman’s eldest son
The news has been greeted with relief by rank and file officers. One veteran detective told this masthead: “I think today is a good day, the sun is shining and Victoria Police will continue to serve the public the way those fallen officers were trying to do.”
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said “an evil man is dead”, and that Freeman would no longer pose a threat.
Allan spoke to the families of the fallen officers: “The threat may be over, but for you, the mourning will never end.”
“I also say, too, to the community of Porepunkah and the broader north-east Victorian region, this incident has hung like a dark, dark shadow over these communities ... That shadow has been lifted somewhat, but these memories will remain, and the pain will live in these communities also.”
Peter D’Mello, a friend of De Waart-Hottart, said it was “bittersweet” that Freeman met the same fate as the two officers he killed in the line of duty.
For the town of Porepunkah and those who knew Freeman, there were mixed emotions.
A person who has identified himself online as Koah Freeman, the killer’s eldest son, denounced locals “celebrating” the death.
“I am the eldest son of the Freeman family. And I am not here to defend my father’s actions because I know what he did was wrong,” he posted.
“I hope you all realise that I am looking at everything you’s [sic] are saying, and that you all realise how that is making me feel.”
With Erin Pearson
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