Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [20]
The gunman ducked back down behind the bushes. A moment later a voice called out, ‘Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me.’
‘Put your gun down and come out with your arms up,’ Delahunty shouted back.
A dark silhouette rose from behind the bushes. ‘Don’t shoot me,’ said the gunman again as he walked forward with his arms high above his head. He had a small moustache, a military haircut and identified himself as 19-year-old Julian Knight.
Knight was an illegitimate child who had been adopted when he was a baby. His adoptive father was a career army officer, whom he greatly admired, and it was an emotional shock when his parents divorced when he was 12.
Although he was generally regarded as bright, his schoolwork soon began to deteriorate. His reports said he was lazy, too easily distracted and too complacent about his abilities. He always had difficulty accepting authority. Unlike other spree killers, Knight was not shy. He had girlfriends and something of a reputation as the ‘class clown’ at Fitzroy High School. But from an early age he was preoccupied with Charles Whitman and other lone snipers. Eventually he was expelled from school for his violent outbursts. Then he was accepted by the Royal Military College at Duntroon. He was almost 19 when he went to the Military College in January 1987. An army assessor described him as immature, overconfident and stubborn. He could not knuckle down to army discipline. In May he was charged with eight offences, including four counts of being absent without leave. Then, on 31 May, after a weekend confined to barracks, he slipped out and got drunk in a nightclub near Duntroon. A sergeant encountered him and ordered him out. Knight stabbed him twice in the face with a penknife. He was charged with assault and discharged from Duntroon in July 1987, after only seven months.
Back at the police station, Knight seemed calm and subdued. He described how he had started the evening by drinking a dozen glasses of beer in a local pub to alleviate a terrible feeling of depression. Since his discharge, his whole life had been turned upside down. His mother had changed his bedroom into a sitting room, so he was forced to camp in his own home (just a few yards from Hoddle Street, on the other side of the railway tracks). His girlfriend had left him. He owed the bank thousands of dollars. A car he had hoped to sell had broken down that afternoon, and something had snapped.
He had decided it was time to die – but to commit suicide offended his sense of military honour. Since his schooldays, he had fantasised about wars, particularly heroic ‘last stands’. He decided to go down fighting.
He left home that evening at 9.25 p.m., carrying a shotgun and two rifles. He crossed the railway line to the nature strip. He knelt down, took careful aim and started to shoot at the cars coming down Hoddle Street.
He kept on shooting until he had used up all his ammunition. He claimed to have hoped that a ‘battle’ might develop, but no one shot at him until Constable Delahunty fired his revolver. He groped in his pocket for the last bullet he said he had saved for himself. It had gone. So he surrendered, like a soldier who was surrounded and had run out of ammunition.
In the space of 45 minutes Knight had fired at more than 50 cars, hitting 26 people. Seven of his victims were dead, or dying in the nearest hospital. Two days later, when what he had done had sunk in, Knight had a nervous breakdown and had to be confined to a padded cell. In November 1988 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Julian Knight will not be eligible