On the 23rd of June 1996 the Sunday Telegraph published a story about a gun collector in Victoria who identified the AR15 rifle used for the Port Arthur killings as one that he had handed in to police during an amnesty in February 1993. Strange that the weapon used in the killings just happened to fall off a conveyor belt on the way to the smelters.
The media created the impression that Bryant's guilt was a foregone conclusion and it was expected that he would plead guilty and fore-go a jury trial. I wondered why he would do that. Lawyers for offenders who perpetrated far more horrific crimes such as torture and dismembering before murder had pleaded similarly and to the disgust of the public had received paltry sentencing or treatment.
Imagine what would happen to our judicial system if in every horrific trial the witnesses had to be spared reliving the incidents at the expense of seeing justice done. There would be no justice at all. In order for a man to be accused there must be an accuser and no one stepped forward to identify Martin Bryant at his trial. Despite the dozens of people who could have pointed out Bryant as the assassin the only witness to testify was a questionable video recording.
My reaction was that if he was not to get a trial by jury then, being an intellectually challenged and deranged person, he would have to be judged and sentenced according to his mental condition. Well, how about temporary insanity then? No, the Australian people had been worked into such a frenzy by the press that nothing less than the maximum penalty would be tolerated for Martin Bryant regardless of his condition. God only knows where those snivel libertarians were in this instance. Isn't everyone entitled to a fair trial? And is not everyone innocent until found guilty? Apparently not in this case.
Now I am one for throwing away the key to those guilty of any violent offense. This business of insanity, temporary insanity, temporarily drugged, drunk or being very angry at the time is not an excuse for harming another human being unless in self defense in my opinion. However we can't count the number of times this kind of plea has worked to get some other scum of the earth off on crimes equally as horrific. So why wouldn't Martin Bryant, accused by every man and his dog as being a mentally deranged maniac, not be allowed to plead insanity? A psychiatrist had determined that Bryant had an IQ of 66 yet rather than this information acting as proof that he at least had diminished responsibility it was used as adequate proof that he was just over the border-line of being sane and therefore could not plead "not guilty" on those grounds. Again, another assurance that Bryant would receive the maximum penalty.
As I was to find out later, after reading what is left of Bryant's origional interview, at no time has he admitted to being at Port Arthur on that day even after extensive questioning. In fact he admitted to several other incriminating events and a full confession would have made no differance to the trouble he was already in.
Even though Bryant had not been identified in any police lineup as the gunman, outrage against this man was akin to the old wild west lynch mobs. I just couldn't forget the trouble that the media went to profile Bryant, from enhancing of his photograph to make him look like a wild-eyed Manson maniac to the innuendoes that his house was an arsenal for military weapons. All of this made finding an impartial jury almost impossible - perhaps that was the idea.
Martin Bryant's trial was not by jury but rather by media and when he pleaded 'not guilty' the commotion that this caused indicated to me that this was not what the judicial system had in mind. In fact his plea was refused.
Bryant re-emerged at another hearing and this time pleaded guilty but strangely laughed as the names of the dead were read out. Now, if this wasn't the actions of a deranged man then perhaps it was the reaction of an innocent one. Perhaps the actions of a man who had tried to plead not guilty because, despite his instructions, he knew that this was not right. Perhaps a man who was forced to change his plea in order to satisfy the lust of the public and now found only irony in the legal system that was railroading him.
The media told us that it was obvious that Bryant was the assassin and therefore it would only cause more distress to the victims of Port Arthur if a trial by jury forced them onto the stand to testify. Never mind that another man's life was at stake. The headlines told us that he could "Rot In Hell". Never mind whether he was guilty or not. Trial or no trial everyone agreed that this eccentric half wit performed the single most devastating killing spree of the century in a style and manner that defied all reasonable explanation.
Silently I agonised over my feelings about this whole thing. I was unable to talk to others about it for fear of their hatred of Bryant clouding any sensible debate but one day some pages copied from a paper that isn't owned by the multinationals fell into my lap. Someone who knew about my concerns gave me an article to read that confirmed my suspicions and eased that knot in my stomach that told me we had all been very much misinformed about Port Arthur. In my hands I finally held the pages that filled in the missing bits of the puzzle and answered most of my questions.
Was the massacre in Port Arthur a completely spontaneous act carried out by a single nut-case with unbelievable efficiency, or was it a repeat of Yvonne Fletcher's callous murder, deliberately designed to distort public perception and direct maximum hatred against a particular group of people? All of the available hard scientific evidence suggests that it was.
When investigating cases like Yvonne Fletcher's murder or the massacre at Port Arthur it is critically important to adhere to scientific proof and avoid eyewitness accounts and media hype like the Black Plague. Eyewitnesses do not lie intentionally, but as any honest psychologist will tell you the accuracy of their testimony is limited by many factors including stress, suggestive police interrogators, and peer pressure.
The more controversial the case the higher the need for absolute scientific proof, because if the investigation reaches a conclusion which conflicts with the officially accepted story, the media will attempt to trash the credibility of the investigator himself, who in these two cases happens to be me. For four years while investigating the murder of Yvonne Fletcher I was gently harassed, visited by members of British Intelligence from London, cordially invited to sign the Official Secrets Act, then threatened when I refused to comply.
Some readers might wonder why I am including so much detail about a murder in London when this story is supposed to be about Port Arthur. Well, it is about Port Arthur, but there are a number of disturbing similarities between the two cases, especially in terms of media behavior at the time of each atrocity, and the use of faked video footage to reinforce the official story of the day. So please bear with me for a few paragraphs.
In 1992 when I first decided to investigate WPC Fletcher's murder, the most serious obstacle I encountered was the British media, who for nearly a decade had knowingly nurtured a lie so horrific that it almost defeats the imagination. Yvonne Fletcher, they claimed, was murdered by a low velocity bullet fired from the Libyan Embassy located behind her on her left-hand side, with the gunman firing downwards from a first floor window at an angle of fifteen degrees. As any amateur can confirm, that means the bullet entered the left side of WPC Fletcher's back at a shallow angle of fifteen degrees and then continued through her body tissue towards the right- hand side of her body. Right? Wrong... The bullet entered WPC Fletcher's upper right back at sixty degrees then sliced down through her rib cage, turning her vital organs into a bloody pulp before exiting her body below the left rib cage.
With Yvonne Fletcher's exact position recorded by a television camera when the shots were fired there was no room for doubt. It was an absolute scientific impossibility for that shot to have been fired from the Libyan Embassy, and the steep angle of entry of the bullet limited the firing point to one floor of only one building: the top floor of Enserch House, an American multinational building staffed by personnel with documented links to the American CIA. Without the critical video footage from the television camera I would never have been able to prove how she was killed or by who, but fortunately for me the footage still existed in 1992, and television cameras are inanimate objects incapable of lying. If proof appears to exist on video there are only two possibilities: the scientific truth, or deliberately faked video footage shown to the public for special effects or in an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
Interestingly and with profound implications for Port Arthur, fake video footage was put to air by the BBC "for the first time ever" many months after Yvonne Fletcher's murder, in what appeared to be an attempt to cement the lies and calculated deceptions about her death forever in the minds of the British public. The public failed to ask why this apparently critical footage had not been presented at the coronial inquest into Yvonne Fletcher's death: which it was not, but fell hook, line and sinker for the blurred images and sound track, which apparently recorded eleven sub-machine gun shots being fired from the Libyan Embassy. The amateur footage run by the BBC in 1985 was given to one of its reporters by a member of the Metropolitan police force.
During 1995 I used the immutable laws of astronomy and physics to prove the amateur footage a total fake. Analysis of the angle and position of the sun's shadow falling across the front of the Libyan Embassy was checked using astro-navigation techniques and direct reference to the Greenwich Observatory, Britain's foremost authority on times and dates derived from the sun- line, a technique used for centuries to tell the time with great accuracy using garden sun-dials. Unfortunately for the BBC who broadcast the amateur footage "for the first time ever", absolute science proved the sun-line on the amateur footage incorrect for 10.19 am on the 17th April 1984, the time and date on which Yvonne Fletcher was murdered. Indeed, the scientific evaluation proved the amateur footage was not even filmed on the same day Yvonne Fletcher was shot. Those who created that fake footage and then broadcast it were not engaged in a mere media re-interpretation of events, but were accessories after the fact to the murder of an unarmed English policewoman doing her duty on a London street.
After four long years of research and investigation designed to expose the real truth of what happened that day, and after as consultant to the responsible film-maker, Britain's Channel Four aired part of my scientific proof in a special edition of "Dispatches" , its flagship current affairs program, on the 10th April 1996. Unfortunately, three months earlier the film-maker became incredibly agitated about my absolute scientific proof from Greenwich that the amateur footage was faked, removed me from the production process of a film based on my own copyright story, barred me from the film credits and then incorporated the fake footage as a legitimate part of the film, minus the incriminating sun-line, which proved in absolute scientific terms that what British television was putting to air for a second time since 1985 was totally false and deliberately misleading!
It became swiftly apparent, that although the media was prepared to throw tiny scraps of truth to the public, gross deceptions, especially those generated by erstwhile colleagues in the form of fake video footage designed to manipulate public opinion, were strictly off limits. So it is on the subject of fake video footage and its potential for incredible impact on the viewing public that we finally turn to Port Arthur. Some readers may by now be shifting uneasily in their seats, racking their brains and wondering exactly when and where it was that they were also suddenly shown amateur footage "for the first time ever" on television in Australia. It was on a Wednesday in October 1996, the night before Martin Bryant was due to be sentenced for his alleged role in the Port Arthur massacre.
Many months after the massacre took place, but only hours
before the Tasmanian judge was due to make a decision that would effect
Martin Bryant for the rest of his life, an Australian TV network suddenly
presented the public (and of course the judge) with dramatic amateur video
footage shown "for the first time ever". The reporter told us
the man on the video was Martin Bryant on the day of the massacre, going
about his business of slaughtering the good people of Tasmania, caught
on camera by interested amateur photographers who seemed unmoved by the
dangers of high-velocity bullets. Unlike most of the other survivors, these
folk did not run away, but hunkered down like battle-hardened war correspondents
coverings the end of World War II from an unprotected thoroughfare in the
middle of Berlin. They were also very discreet the day after the massacre,
when the world's tabloid media descended on Port Arthur like a pack of
ravenous dogs, snapping and growling for any picture they could get hold
of in order to meet their respective deadlines in London and New York.
At that point in time the "amateur footage" was worth half a million bucks no questions asked, for this was a world media event and no-one had any pictures. Perhaps the amateur photographers had no need for huge amounts of cash, or perhaps at that early stage their footage had not yet been fully prepared, which was certainly the case after Yvonne Fletcher's murder in London. The amateur footage run by the Australian network in October 1996 was given to one of its reporters by a member of the Tasmanian police force.
There are so many irregularities on this supposedly genuine video footage, which was accepted as evidence against Martin Bryant in the Tasmanian court, that only a few of the more obvious will be included in this story to help drive the message home. The rest have been carefully collated, and it will give me considerable pleasure to detail each and every one of them personally before a properly convened Royal Commission. If a Royal Commission is not called to fully investigate the methodology used in the massacre, and if Martin Bryant is not called to give evidence, then the people of Australia had best get used to the fact that what little remains of our representative democracy died with the thirty five innocent civilians who were ruthlessly and needlessly murdered at Port Arthur on 28 April 1996.
Most readers will remember that at the time of the massacre there were a few clouds in the sky but the sun was shining and casting shadows on the buildings, as shown by the footage from some of the genuine video cameras recording at the correct time, indicated by the timing clocks displayed in the corner of the video footage itself. One or two of these genuine amateur video cameras recorded the sounds of several shots, complete with multiple echoes, proving that the shots in question were being fired outside rather than in an enclosed space such as the Broad Arrow Cafe. But the video footage allegedly showing Martin Bryant running down the road was filmed under an overcast sky, which was the first indicator that something was terribly wrong with this so-called evidence. Who the hell changed the weather at point-blank notice?
Because he is running directly away from the Broad Arrow Cafe with a bulky package under his arm the assumption is that the package contains a Colt AR15, the weapon known to have killed 20 victims in the cafe at a rate of one every five seconds. Problem! Scaled against the man's height and surrounding objects the package he is carrying is a maximum of 22inches long, a full ten inches too short for the Colt AR15 which measures 32 inches with its butt fully retracted, and more than ten inches too short for either of the other two weapons claimed to have been found in his car; a Belgian FN 7.62-mm Paratrooper and a combat shotgun. So who is this man running down the road, and why is he not carrying any of the weapons allegedly used in the massacre?
At this stage it would be nice to be able to determine whether or not the man really is Bryant, by comparing an accurate right hand profile of Bryant with the video itself. Unfortunately Bryant is the least photographed man in the world today and all attempts to get hold of a photograph of him have failed. For a while I toyed with the idea of asking Martin Bryant's lawyer to get one for me, but then he too had his camera and film confiscated by prison officials. One wonders why the Australian authorities are so anxious that no pictures of Bryant be allowed outside (or even in) the prison. They would do no obvious harm, whether the man is Bryant or not, a few frames on this sequence make a mockery of any suggestion the prized footage presented to the Tasmanian court was meaningful evidence against Martin Bryant. What they show is a blonde man still running down the road towards the coach park clutching his package, while in the upper left corner of the same frames three men can be clearly seen standing directly outside the entrance of the Broad Arrow Cafe, out of which the blonde man has just run after murdering 20 citizens. One man is standing to the left of the entrance casually leaning on the balustrade with one hand; the second is standing casually on the right smoking a cigarette, and the third is standing directly in front of the door filming the running blonde man with a video camera. To suggest this in any way incriminates Bryant is not only ridiculous, but also quite impossible with the blonde man allegedly in the middle of a massive killing spree.
Just these points alone prove in scientific terms one of two entirely critical scenarios. If the blonde man is Martin Bryant but unarmed, what is he doing role-playing with three men directly in front of the Broad Arrow Cafe?
It is scientifically impossible for the three men not to be involved, so this option proves beyond doubt that Martin Bryant did not act alone, but was manipulated or directed at the crime scene by others whose identities are not yet known. If the blonde man is not Martin Bryant then the only alternative is that a team of unknown men carried out the massacres and then set up a reconstruction on film using a blonde look-alike, to ensure that Martin Bryant would later be convicted. In absolute scientific terms there are no other explanations at all, no matter how much the media might wriggle and squirm in its attempts to ensure the pathetic "Lone Nut" legend remains intact.
If sufficiently panicked, the police might claim that Martin Bryant was merely helping them with a reconstruction to assist with their future inquiries, which was filmed and then accidentally released to the Australian television network. But he couldn't have, could he? Martin Bryant was badly burnt at Seascape and spent weeks afterwards heavily sedated in Hobart Hospital under armed guard. Of course he may have been induced to help with a reconstruction before the massacre started, but it seems unlikely the police would be prepared to discuss such a blood curdling possibility. Science can be frighteningly efficient at times because, believe it or believe it not, science has just proved in absolute terms right in front of your startled eyes using court evidence that Martin Bryant could not, under any circumstances have acted alone, and may possibly not have acted at all, other than in an orchestrated 'Patsy' role.
Which one is true depends on which of the two alternative scenarios detailed above are correct, but there are absolutely no other scientific life-rafts for the sinking media to grab hold of. Remember this is not unsubstantiated hearsay evidence from frightened eyewitnesses used by the media to hype up its mythical version of events. It is absolute scientific proof which cannot be questioned or refuted. Most readers like a story to have a beginning, a middle, and a coherent end. Science can and has provided an accurate outline of the first two but it cannot provide the third.
As an investigator I insist on dealing only with hard facts because it is the only way to avoid being swept along by the avalanche of compulsive lies put out by the media on a daily basis, and there are no hard facts available to answer the question "For God's sake why?" In any criminal investigation it is opportunity, motive and method. Just about anyone had the opportunity to attack those civilians in a remote spot like Port Arthur on a Sunday without fear of being caught or punished in any way. Where method is concerned any expert combat shooter could have killed 20 unarmed civilians at five second spacings and wrought havoc in the general area, although the words "expert combat shooter" should be noted with care.
Though Australia has tens of thousands of skilled sporting shooters it has very few combat veterans, and even fewer special forces personnel trained to kill large numbers of people quickly in an enclosed space like the Broad Arrow Cafe, which is roughly the same size as mock-up rooms used for practicing the rescue of hostages being held in confined spaces by armed terrorists. It is hard to kill quickly under such circumstances for a number of unpleasant reasons, including the fact that shot people tend to fall against other people, shielding the latter from subsequent bullets. Targets therefore have to be shot in a careful sequence with split-second timing to maximise kill rates. Whoever was on the trigger in Tasmania managed a kill rate well above that required of a fully trained soldier, an impossible task for a man with Martin Bryant's mid-sixties IQ and his total lack of military training, which is an interesting but largely unimportant observation because we have already proved in absolute scientific terms that Bryant could not have acted alone. That leaves us looking for the motive, which is impossible to determine with any certainty, though it is reasonable to cross link this to Yvonne Fletcher's pre-meditated murder in London purely in terms of cause and effect.
The effect of Yvonne Fletcher's savage and very public murder caused public hatred to be directed against the Libyans, who were subsequently deported en-masse from Britain despite the fact they were in no way responsible for her death. The only visible cause and effect that can be laid at the door of the Port Arthur massacre is that the effect of the obscene action caused public hatred to be directed against Australian sporting shooters, who like the Libyans were innocent of any crime at all. Directly linked to this was a massive funded campaign to disarm the Australian people in spite of significant external threats to our national security. If this was indeed the motive, Australia and its people have been violated in the worst possible way by sworn enemies of our great nation, with likely long term consequences too awesome to contemplate.
It is just not right to simply accept the status quo as it exists today in Port Arthur, because to do so implies that Australians have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat on the strength of a single savage action in our smallest State.
The only way to avenge our dead in Port Arthur is to force a Royal Commission on the matter and drag witnesses kicking and screaming into the dock, including certain members of the Tasmanian police force. Failing that, funding should be sought for an independent investigation leading in turn to a book providing the real facts about the chain of events at Port Arthur, a copy of which should be provided for every home across the land.
All Australians must be made aware of the real and shocking circumstances in which their fellow citizens died, because knowledge is the only weapon we can use to guard against future lethal charades on Australian territory. Realistically it would probably take years to find the massive sum needed for such a wide-ranging initiative but there is a positive need for action now, if only to put the Prime Minister on the back foot and convince him there is no longer any need to wear 'boron carbide body armour' when attending public meetings. Perhaps the independent Honourable Member for Oxley could find the time to ask the Prime Minister a few meaningful questions in Parliament?
The author Joe Vialls, is an independent investigator with thirty years direct experience of international military and oilfield operations.