Martin Bryant: Video of police interviews with Australias worst mass murderer

WARNING: Distressing details.

AUSTRALIA’s worst serial killer Martin Bryant sketched his evil deeds at Port Arthur in a crayon confession extracted by a Hobart lawyer who used the murderer’s childlike IQ against him.

Using red stick figures to mark out where he shot dead his 35 victims and black marks to plot the 23 others he stalked and seriously maimed on April 28, 1996, Bryant finally admitted he was guilty after months of taunting police in taped interviews, aired on Seven’s Sunday Night.

Bryant’s lawyer John Avery revealed he manipulated Bryant’s embarrassment at being seen as “simple Martin” in court to shame him into pleading guilty to all 72 charges against him — sparing his victims and their families the agony of a trial.

Denying the charges in the early days after he turned his crazed fury and three semiautomatic weapons on tourists, staff and locals around the Port Arthur convict site, he had told frustrated police the person responsible for the killing was “wicked, awful and horrendous.”

In recorded police video interviews, Bryant is seen giggling and smiling at detectives as he plays dumb over the crimes, distancing himself from all responsibility.

Despite witness footage and statements identifying him as the shooter, at one point in the police video when Bryant was asked if he was “positive” about his not guilty plea, he laughed and gave them the thumbs up.

Avery said the mass killer was thrilled by his international notoriety and actively tried to prolong it, stating: “He was enjoying the fact that he was not only the talk of Tasmania, but the nation.”

But the loner who was mocked by school friends and isolated because of his “borderline subnormal” intelligence finally gave in to his guilt after his lawyer told him he’d be mocked “as stupid” for trying to deny the “weight of overwhelming evidence” against him.

Rather than the thrill kill or evil glory he hoped to gain from his infamous act, the shamed Bryant wrote out his full confession, complete with basic spelling mistakes and returned it to Avery on October 24, 1996 — almost six months to the day after his crimes.

His conviction was marked in an equally childish way, with the lawyer revealing he shared a can of Pepsi cola with his murderous client, currently serving 1035 years without parole in a maximum security unit of Tasmania’s Risdon Prison.

The police interview tapes, never seen in public before, exposed Bryant as a bizarre character, who clearly drew pleasure from his killings, which forced Australia’s then Prime Minister John Howard to fast track a national gun buyback and legislation making access to the weapons used by Bryant and others like the semiautomatic cache he used illegal to own or sell.

Handcuffed to a wheelchair while police document the irrefutable proof against him, Bryant can be seen barely flinching as shocking photos of the bodies of those he shot and killed are put before him.

His victims ranged in age from 72-years-old to the most innocent, three-year-old Madeline Mikac who was shot along with her mother Nanette and sister, Alannah, who had run to hide behind a tree but chased by her savage assassin and shot dead.

Paul Mullen, the forensic psychiatrist hired to assess Bryant before his trial, rejected any suggestion the then 28-year-old was suffering a mental illness or suffered any childhood trauma to explain his evil acts — planned methodically in the weeks before the massacre.

Mullen told reporter Michael Willessee: “There was nothing depraved or dysfunctional about his family ... just a dim irritable boy who nobody could manage well.”

On the day of his executions, he had set his alarm clock for 6am, showered with his girlfriend Petra Wilmott, shared breakfast with her before she left and he packed his surfboard and a bag full of firearms into his car and set out for Port Arthur.

In a sports bag purchased with Wilmott some weeks prior, he carried three guns, including a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic weapon for which he told police he’d paid $5000.

His first victims, David and Sally Martin, owned a bed and breakfast guesthouse Bryant’s father had wanted to buy, which his son — cashed up from a $500,000 inheritance left to him by one of his few adult friends — had repeatedly tried to also acquire.

Frustrated by his failure to get the property he wanted, his lawyer believes Bryant killed the Martins then “realised he would be killed himself (by police) or go to jail, so he may as well go out in a big way.”

LAWYER: ‘BRYANT, I WON’T LET YOU BEAT ME’

Meanwhile, Avery claimed the case has traumatised him for 20 years, but hoped his TV tell-all was a way to purge Australia’s worst serial killer from his life.

The convicted fraudster, who served almost four years for stealing $500,000 from the law firm which previously employed him, said befriending the Port Arthur massacre gunman had ultimately derailed his career and jeopardised his marriage as the once high-profile lawyer struggled to deal with the psychological baggage he argues Bryant left behind.

Reading from a diary he kept in the years after Bryant was sentenced to life in prison, Avery told Seven’s Sunday Night he was apparently plagued with fears about the mental damage working on the case had done to him, writing: “Martin Bryant, I won’t let you beat me, I won’t become your next victim.”

Avery blamed Bryant in part for his acts of fraud, which saw him jailed in 2008 for stealing from his clients and former law firm in order to fund his lavish lifestyle and “addiction” to buying expensive artwork and luxury watches.

His victims included those who had won personal injury or workers’ compensation claims and a survivor of the 1964 HMAS Voyager disaster. He served time in prison and was disbarred from practising law.

But before his jailing, Avery had argued in one 2006 newspaper interview that he should be freed of the burden of client privilege in the case of Bryant, who never gave a courtroom explanation for his evil acts.

Avery and psychologist Paul Mullen, who also appeared on Sunday Night, wanted to be able to release the contents of case files, including the childlike drawings by Bryant of his Port Arthur crime scene and 20 hours of interview tapes which Seven may have used in its report by veteran Mike Willessee.

While Willessee tried to spin Avery’s TV admissions as “courageous” they were seen by many on social media as the ultimate betrayal of client and lawyer privilege.

Email: holly.byrnes@news.com.au

Twitter:@byrnesh

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