warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

originally aired on the 13th of August 2017

9 : 30 PM . sunday the 9th of august 1987,that’s when the carnage,the coldblooded massacre began .

19-year-old Julian Knight open fired in Melbourne’s  Hoddle Street and methodically shot over 20 people.one after another.

now after  30 years.we’ve been given exlusive access to Knight’s private Diares which reveal exactly what was going on in his tortured mind that night.

they are some of the most chilling words,even more so, when you realize Knight has served his sentence and could be eligible for parole.

behind these walls one of our best  forensic psychologists is delving  into the mind into the mind of one of our worst massmurderers.

” it is  very rare for a massmurderer to create mayhem and then live to tell the  the tale. so in that  sense Knight’s really a rarity.”/ Tim  Watson Monroe.

the killer , is Julian Knight.

his psychologist is Tim Watson-Munro.

for three decades Tim has been visting the man responsible for the Hoddle Street massacre.

exploring the mind of a massmurderer….

and  unexpectedly on the 30th anniversary of the  shooting Knight is revealing more than ever about what he was thinking and why  he did it.

“these was very evil deeds, but i don’t  believe Knight is the most evil person i’ve met,he was just in my view at that time a very ,mixed up and angry late adolescent kid who’ committed the worst crime in Australian history”/Tim.W.M.

the angry 19 year old became a  mass murderer on a sunday night in August 1987,armed with three guns.Julian Knight  fired at cars,motorbikes and pedestrians on  Hoddle Street  in the Melbourne suburb of Clifton Hill.

during 45 minutes of madness,Knight killed four men and three women. 

19 others were wounded.

” his behavior  was unquestionably insane but he wasn’t legally insane and indeed he wasn’t medically  insane,he wasn’t suffering a disease of the mind where he might have heard voices for example.or had delusions

or might have been told by God or Allah or somebody to go out and do this and believed it”/Tim W.M.

but answers to why  Knight  snapped can now be found in the words of  the killer himself.letters from Knight,meticulously handwritten.

“these notes were written  after i’d mentally gone over that night and  psych’d myself  back into that frame of  mind.”/ J.Knight.

they record his thoughts on life and provide a chilling account of what he was thinking as  he opened fire on  Hoddle Street .

” something snapped within  him and he wanted to to out to war and he did very effectively.”/Tim W.M.

it’s Knight’s manifesto of murder which  has never been made public until now.

” it’ s a report that was sent to me by Julian outlining everything that’s relevant in his life . his name  where he was born, his hight ,his weight,his religion.”//Tim W.M.

“issues i have strong opinions on ,the apartheid , the armed forces,civil unrest and martial law ,sounds i like to hear.gunfire,helicopters,explosions,people i dislike. Americans, Turks,Arabs , pretentious people, arrogant people , snobs, reporters,bullies,nagging women”/ Julian Knight.

” he was being  honest about what  was going on at the time and he had a clear memory of it,he was being a team player he was giving us all that he could recall .”/ Tim W.M.

in what Knight describes as his initial report he lists important dates and activities in his life. the loschools he went to,his grades, taking up smoking at the age of 12 ,loosing his virginity  at 13. it’s like a CV.

sporting , interest , he liked shooting ,hunting ,driving ,snooker, reading, cinema,cycling.

knight also wrote about the jobs  he was interested  in ,his father was a capten in the army and Knight plan to pursue a similar career.

and then we go to occupations of interest  ,army soldier, soldier mercenary, security guard,policeman,especially Riot,security guard.

Knight  joined the army Cadets at school on weekends  he served in the Army reserve.

Dez McArthur was in the army with reserve with Knight.

the two became  mates.

In januar  1987 Julian Knight was  accepted into the the prestigious Royal military college.Duntroon .his army career was underway…

his  entire focusof hislife had been the military as child he would reenact famous War battles with Tin soldiers. he liked the structure of the military and he could see that as a vehicle for a future.-future as an officer.

but tat ambition was  shortlived.Knight soon found himself the victim of a culture of rampant bullying at the military college.

so ,he was persecuted from day one and it’s well documented that there’s being bastardy and bulling a Duntroon for decades and decades,this was no different.

some of the things he had to do was crawl over furnitures in the rooms with a plate  of peanut butter sandwiches in his mouth to give to another officer.

he was held down on another occassion and they shaved off his sideburns because they were seen as a sign of a working class boy ,not a priviliged boy.and eventually it got to him.

6 months  after being accepted into Duntroon, Knight snapped. at this  nightclub inCanberra, he pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed a senior cadet in the neck.

” to me that’s  the act of a highly troubled individual,that could have been a murder”/ Tim.W.M.

his career  in the army was over before it began.

Knight returned to Melbourn but not to the life he was  expecting.

he felt humiliated,he was facing serious criminal charges ,his friends had abandoned him,many of them, he was displaced and the final thing was his bedroom  had been turned into a bedsitter.

because his mother thought he was going to be in Duntroon and then off  in the army for the rest of his life.

soon, after returning home , Knight  learned his girlfriend  had dumped him. then a few days later the gearbox on  the car he planned to sell to pay off debts packed it in.

it was sunday ,august 9,1987….

the car breaking down  in many ways it was a metaphor for his  broken down life it was the final humiliation trivial as it may  seem to others, not even his car works,it’s playing up on him and he has to kangaroo hop all the way home.

that evening,Knight began drinking at his local  hotel,drowning his sorrow  and  obsessing on his problems.he had been denied his career in the military.

and toughest of all,denied the chance ofv combat.But in Knight’s mind, there was another way.

he was about to create his own battleground.

angry  at life in the world Julian Knight came home,raced upstairs and from  underneath his mother’s bed he grabbed his weapons.

2 semi-automatic  rifles and  a 12 gauge pump action shotgun  and  more than 100  rounds of ammunition.

at 9:30 PM he came out his front gates and headed  towards   Hoddle Street where he took his private  war to the streets of melbourne.

Julian Knight was angry at his girlfriend for dumping him,humiliated by his expulsion  from  Duntroon  and frustraded that his car had broken down.

the 19 year old  was about to wage war on Melbourne.

in  Knight ‘s handwritten manifesto revealed here for the first time  de details what he was thinking as he entered his home to collect his guns.

it was 9 :30 pm.knight was armed with 2 semi-automatic rifles ,a pump action shotgun  and 100 rounds of ammunition. he claims to have saved one bullet to use  on  himself.

in less  then a minute Knight arrived  at Hoddle street and took aim at passing cars…

school teacher Matthew Morrow was driving along Hoddle street after working a second job  at a local pub.

“…then getting  out of the car  and hearing a volant shots ,it..it was like a movie you think this can’t be happening , this  is Melbourne.”/Matthew M.

Knight moved further along the road,firing at cars,one of the bullets struck a 24 year old university student.she stopped her car and stumbled onto the road another motorist went to her aid,Knight shot and killed them both.

in the chaos Matthew Marrw abandoned his bullet riddled car and ran to a nearby service station.

on Hoddle street , Knight was still firing at anything that moved…

he shot and killed two more motorists, then he took aim at 19 year old andrew hack  and fired a volley of  shots. andrew was hit 4 times.

Kyle Brown was 15 and lived  in an apartment overlooking Hoodle street.

“the targets were people , not vehicles  and once that commenced it was inevitable, it would continue until he was either killed ,he killed himself or he ran out of  ammunition. it was a private war.”/Tim.W.M.

as police closed in Knight ran from Hoddle street onto a path near a creek.

he was spotted by a police helicopter.the helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing Knight was now running towards his ex-girlfriend Renee’s house with police in  pursuit.

Knight surrended ,his private war on the innocent had lasted  45 terrifying minutes,seven peole were dead , 19 wounded.

Australia would never be the same.

the day after  the Hoodle street massacre Julian Knight took police on a guided tour of his mass murder.he’s handcuffed  and escorted by senior sergeant  Brian McCarthy and senior Constable Graham Kent.

Graham Kent is now  a superintendent  with Victoria police.

“i think it’s really compelling because it really shows a lot about him,detached from emotion,detached from feeling reflection  by no means dtached from reality though, absolutely,uhm ..it was real to him.”/SUPT Graham .K.

hours earlier Knight  had sat through a formal interview with the same two officers.his  demeanor just as detached and matter of fact.

he was in fact very clinical in how he described what he did. and to him they were just   sort of combatants.

“it’s chilling ,it’s cold ,it’s dissociated and youcould be forgiven for thinking he has no remorse at all” Tim.W.M.

Julian Knight leads down Hoddle street, the crime scene untouched, cars still scattered.

he was very explicit in the interviews, talking about wanting to be engaged in combat and wanting to kill, wantingto know what it was to kill.

24 year old Vesna Markovska died a short time later.

psychologist Tim Watson Munro, who began a sessing night a week after the massacre believes  he actually enjoyed taking police around the crime scene.

“hes enjoying occupying center stage,that this is his moment, the whle city is shut down ,Hoddle street’s  cordoned off.

postal worker Shane Stanton was just 21.

” his  pointing out and describing how he shot that person and then put a couple of extra shots into them to finish them off.very clinical, when i look back now …

it’s chilling.it’s chilling to think that a 19 year old could do that , that  anyone could do that.really , uhm,in such a calculated cold way.”/SUPT Graham .K.

so why didn’t kill himself?

” he made the comment that it’s better to die on  your feet than live on you knees and it’s a good question,because in the end of all of this, he meekly surrendered to the place  hiding behind a fence,it was his last bullet,he said it was the one he’d saved for himself. but he didn’t do it.

i think he survived because there’s a lot of Julian, that’s very interested in Julian and you can’t read about yourself  in the papers the next ay  if your’re a cadaver at the morgue.”/Tim.W.M.

police claim they never shot at Knight while he was  unarmed.

so, do we think that he wanted to do what he did?

” actually , i really do think that he wanted to do what he did.i really do believe that he wanted to kill, uhm , i’ve  got to befrank i’m not sure why he chose to do it that night ,um  i don’t accept that  there was any one trigger, i think it was something that he was probably going to do at some point. because  he’d always dreamt about it , he had trained himself”/SUPT Graham .K.

” so , what explained it, i can only go back to again, someone  who’s really selfish and self-centered wanting to carry out their fantasy and get a buzz  out of it,  somehow.”/SUPT Graham .K.

EVIL?

” is he evil…i think it’s hard to  say otherwise,i mean these were evil crimes they were evil in their intent, so i think ,uh evil  is…is really probably one of the only explanations of or descriptions you can give”/SUPT Graham .K.

the morning after the Hoddle street massacre  Julian Knight was given the newspapers,hoping his reaction would help police understand the killer’s  state of mind.

” we did that quite deliberately,just to see okay ,what’s he going  ro make of this,it seem to me that this is  all about him,it’s not anything about  the victims who have been  killed or really badly injured,it reinforce that growing sense of him being  a  incredibly self- centered and selfish person.

that little bit there where he flicked through the papers and got cranky because the reporting was wrong  ,it was almost as if to say” you know,i  actually did  something pretty remarkable here ,how about someone recognizing that i was a good shot  or that i was  efficient in terms how i carried out,the sort of stuff i’ve bee  trying to do.  it was  almost like that”/SUPT Graham .K.

the theory is supported by Knight’s manifesto of murder where  he defense his actions in his crazed mind he was fighting an enemi.

15 months after the events of Hoddle street,Julian Knight pled guilty to  seven counts of murder and 46  counts of  attempted murder,the judge described  it as one of the worst  massacres in Australian history.

he sentenced Knight to life  in prison with a minimum term of 27  years.

a non -parole period that expired 3 years ago.

throughout those decades in prison  Knight has been a troublesome attention seeker,constantly taking legal action over his living condition  and other petty grievances. he even sought compensation for the bullying at Duntroon .

but Hoodler street survivors are determined he will never be set free.

“some people  say that he was young  ,he made a mistake,yeah , he was young he did make  a misstake but he killed people , he killed people who were innicently going about  their lives.in  my opinion he has forfeited his right to live in society ,so, he is where  he hould be.”/Matthew M.

 Friday, Feb. 3, 2012 file photo of Hoddle Street mass killer Julian Knight leaves the Supreme Court in Melbourne. Knight was sentenced to seven life terms in 1987 when he massacred seven people and injured 19 others as they drove along Melbourne’s Hoddle Street.

He was eligible to apply for parole in May 2014, but the Adult Parole Board of Victoria has decided he has no prospect for release in the foreseeable future, Melbourne, Thursday, July 5, 2012. (AAP Image/Julian Smith) 

and for  victims like Andrew Hack , time hasn’t yet healed,the physical and emotional wounds inflicted on that day.

” i  have good  and bad days, and it shows and i don’t show it a lot, but i do talk about it a lot now, than what i did in the first two years.i hated life,i  hated myself,it was hard. / Andrew Hack.

” there are no signs ,i think that anyone has seen of any remorse or contrition or capacity for rehabilitation that would give any of us confidence thar we could be safe if he was  released./SUPT Graham .K.

apart from Knight’s mother  psycholigist  Tim Watson Munro,is the only person who makes this drive to Victoria’s port phillip prison to see him.

” i ‘ve spent a lot of time with him three decades,not every day , but consistently ,and his an interesting guy , he’s humorous, he’s well read, if this had no occured ,he may have  been  something in the community”/ Tim.W.M.

30 years on there remain important questions Australia want’s answered:why did he do it?is he sorry? and should he ever get out?  

” he’s expressed profund remorse today and  in support of that he said that he was very sorry at the time ,he broke down in tears when he heard about  what the victims had gone through,he’s reflected upon it,he says on a daily basis for nearly 30 years now.

and i put it  to him again fairly focefully you’re sorry, you got any  idea about the victims and what they ‘ve been through and he strongly empathized with that.and  that’s the first time if i could add that he’s actually spoken in  those terms to me”/ Tim .W.M.

so , is this man changed today?

” i saw a side of him today that i’ve not seen over 30 years,i/ Tim .W.M.

Julian Knight is now now 49 in likelihood he will die in prison which is the one thing in the final moment before his capture he dreaded the most.