I'll start off with Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Maccascre:
Martin Bryant
Suddenly One Sunday
For the owners of the numerous shops and caf�s at the Port Arthur Historical site in Tasmania, fine weather usually meant good crowds and Sunday April 28, 1996 was no exception. Once the site of one of Australia's most brutal penal settlements, Port Arthur had become the premiere tourist attraction in Tasmania. By 1.00 pm, over five hundred visitors were at the site, enjoying the many attractions that the area had to offer.
Broad Arrow Cafe
By 1.30 pm the pace at the 'Broad Arrow' caf� had slowed after the busy lunchtime period but at least sixty people still remained, finishing meals or browsing through the gift shop. No one seems to recall seeing the young man with long blond hair enter the caf� and order a meal, but they do remember his comment when he sat down on the front balcony area to eat his lunch. "There's a lot of wasps about today," he said to no one in particular and began to eat his meal. A few minutes later, he made another remark about the lack of Japanese tourists.
He made no further comments as he finished his meal and picked up his bags and went back into the caf�. Moving towards the back of the room, he lifted a long, blue sports bag onto a vacant table and placed a video camera beside it. For several minutes he stood staring at a group of diners at an adjoining table before turning his attention to an Asian couple that were sitting near him. Before anyone had realized what was happening, he unzipped the larger bag and produced an AR15 semi-automatic rifle and shot the Asian man, Moh Yee Ng, in the neck, killing him instantly. Swinging the rifle from the hip he pointed it towards Soo Leng Chung, the man's companion, and shot her through the head. Turning his attention back to the first group he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired a shot at Mick Sargent, grazing his scalp and knocking him to the floor. Before Mick could shout a warning, the gunman fired a fourth shot that hit Mick's girlfriend in the back of the head. In a matter of seconds, the young man had claimed three victims.
The fusillade continued as the gunman selected new targets, the acrid smell of gun smoke hanging in the air as his helpless victims dodged for cover. One man at the front of the room who bravely stood to shout a belated warning, died when a bullet tore through his neck. Husbands were killed as they tried to protect their wives and families, one man receiving massive head injuries when a bullet that had passed through a previous victim hit him. Some were killed instantly but many others lay bleeding from their wounds.
Walking towards the front entrance of the caf�, the gunman fired methodically, shooting left and right as the terrified crowd scrambled for cover. Fifteen seconds later, a total of twenty people lay dead with fifteen more wounded, many of them seriously. Leaving the Broad Arrow, the gunman walked out into the parking lot where over a hundred people were milling about in confusion. Many, hearing the shots, had started walking in the general direction of the caf� in the mistaken belief that a re-enactment was in progress. Others, who had been close enough to observe the carnage, ran for cover, screaming warnings to anyone they came in contact with.
Seeing the crowd gathered in the car park, the gunman opened fire. Several tourists fell as the rest, finally aware of what was happening, screamed and ran. Walking towards a tour bus parked nearby, the gunman shot the driver and three passengers. As the latest fusillade echoed across the parking lot, several tourists who were waiting to board the bus crawled under it for safety but the gunman saw them and calmly squatted down and shot them before walking back to his car, a yellow Volvo 244GL sedan with a surfboard strapped to the roof.
The gunman then drove three hundred yards down the road, to where a young woman and her two children were walking beside the road. Pulling to a stop, he fired two quick shots killing the woman and the child she was carrying. When the older child ran away to take refuge behind a tree, the gunman followed her and killed her with one shot. Returning to his vehicle, the gunman then drove a further two hundred yards towards the entrance gate where a gold coloured BMW was parked. Three shots were fired in rapid succession and the car's three male occupants lay dead. After dragging the bodies from the car, the gunman transferred his firearms into the BMW and drove away.
A short distance up the road he saw a couple sitting in a white Toyota and stopped beside them. The female driver froze as the man approached holding a gun and ordered her male companion to get out of the car. The man obeyed, pleading with the gunman not to shoot, but the gunman ignored him and instead, ordered the man to climb into the open trunk of the BMW. The gunman then slammed the lid and returned to the front of the car and fired two shots through the driver's window killing the young woman instantly. With the man still locked in the trunk, the gunman sped away towards a local guesthouse called the Seascape Cottage where the final chapter of the deadly saga would eventually unfold.
Seascape Cottage
As he drove towards the entrance to Seascape Cottage, the gunman saw another vehicle approaching and opened fire, but his bullets missed their target. Turning his attention to the next vehicle, a four-wheel-drive jeep driven by a holidaying couple from Melbourne, the young man fired two shots, one of which tore into the bonnet, the other smashing the windscreen. A second volley of shots ripped through the side windows showering the occupants with glass and hitting the female driver in the forearm. Realizing the driver was hit; the male passenger leaned over and attempted to drive the vehicle to safety but was unable to do so as the throttle cable had been severed by one of the bullets.
Seconds later, a Ford sedan with two married couples on board, drove towards the cottage and were hit by a hail of bullets that penetrated the windshield, wounding the driver. Bleeding profusely from his wounds, the driver of the Ford continued on to where the jeep was parked and managed to rescue the occupants before speeding away to the Fox and Hounds, another guesthouse further down the road. Another vehicle, approaching along the Arthur Highway, saw the man standing on the road with a gun and rapidly changed direction.
After the Ford drove away, the gunman walked back to the BMW and drove down the entrance road and parked in front of the cottage. He then removed his guns from the car before releasing the man from the trunk. After taking him inside the house and handcuffing him to a stair rail, the gunman returned to the BMW, poured petrol over it and set it alight.
Only minutes after the shooting began at Port Arthur, the first police were summoned to the scene. Hearing the emergency radio call, two young constables, Paul Hyland and Garry Whittle, drove rapidly towards the area. As Constable Hyland approached Seascape Cottage, he saw the damaged vehicles on the side of the road and stopped to investigate. Seeing smoke billowing from the car parked in front of the cottage, he drove back down the highway to set up a roadblock. By this time Constable Whittle had arrived and he also parked his vehicle across the highway on the other side of the entrance to seal off the area.
Soon after two other police arrived, the BMW exploded sending them diving for cover. As they maneuvered their vehicles into safer positions, shots were fired in their direction from the cottage. The police held their positions until members of the Special Operations Group relieved them shortly after dark. As they took up flanking positions around the guesthouse, more shots were fired from within the cottage. The operation was further hampered by poor radio reception making it almost impossible for the police to confirm each other's positions.
Martin Bryant
As the hours ticked away, information about the gunman began to seep through. The lone gunman was believed to be Martin Bryant, a twenty-eight-year-old resident of New Town, a suburb of Hobart. Bryant was described as being tall with long blond hair and pale skin, almost albino in appearance and "a little slow." Another piece of information that filtered through caused greater concern. In addition to the AR15 and FN semi-automatic rifles that Bryant was known to be carrying, he had access to several more firearms that belonged to David and Sally Martin, the owners of Seascape Cottage. Given the additional weapons, at least three hostages and the lack of suitable cover around the cottage, a direct assault was ruled out and a specialist negotiation team was summoned.
Off and on for the next six hours, the senior police negotiator, Sergeant Terry McCarthy spoke to Bryant over the phone. During the course of the negotiations, Bryant's only demand was that he be given a "ride" in an army helicopter. Eventually, contact with the cottage was lost when the batteries went flat on the cordless phone that Bryant was using. As the vigil continued, police reinforcements from as far away as Victoria and New South Wales arrived at the scene creating the largest single police action in Australia's history.
The charred ruins
The next morning, Monday, April 29, senior police met to decide the next course of action. Shortly after, smoke was seen billowing from the cottage and at 8.25 am, Martin Bryant ran from the building, his clothing ablaze. As police rushed forward to make the arrest, Bryant tore his clothes from his body and gave himself up. Later, as ambulance officers smothered his skin with ointment, Bryant asked them if it was petrol they were using. He was later conveyed to the same hospital where many of his victims were fighting for their lives. After the fire was put out, more bodies were found inside the cottage. Included in the dead were the Seascape's owners, David and Sally Martin and Glenn Pears, the man that had been locked in the car. Police would later establish that Pears had been murdered sometime during the negotiations and Bryant killed the Martins prior to his arrival at Port Arthur. In a period of just over nineteen hours, Martin Bryant, a man described by locals as being "a quiet lad and a bit of a loner," had killed thirty-five men, women and children and wounded another eighteen making him the most notorious spree killer of all time.
A Killer in Profile
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From an early age, Martin Bryant was an unusual child. His mother, Carleen, often told family and friends that she was concerned about young Martin's temperament. His father Maurice would eventually take early retirement from his job as a dockworker to look after Martin. By the time he started school, his erratic behavior distanced him from the other children. It wasn't until he reached primary school that he was found to have a below average I.Q. and put into special classes. One of his teachers at New Town High remembers him as "totally isolated in his own little world." In fact, he was more isolated than several deaf children who were in the same class. What was more intriguing was that Martin seemed to prefer it that way and was at his happiest when he didn't have to interact with anybody.
As he got older his "strange detachment," became more apparent, even when confronted with traumatic and sometimes dangerous situations. On one occasion, when he and a girlfriend were marooned in a dinghy in heavy seas off Bass Strait, Martin showed "a complete lack of emotion" when the couple were rescued by a fisherman. He showed a similar detachment when his father supposedly committed suicide by drowning himself in a dam on the family's property. When he was asked to help find his father's body, Martin seemed to be enjoying himself immensely and showed no sign of concern over his father's death. According to an ambulance officer at the scene, Martin knew more about the death of his father than he was telling. Although Maurice Bryant was found in the bottom of a dam with a weighted diver's belt wrapped tightly around his throat, police treated the matter as a suicide when they found a suicide note and an amount ofcash in a car on the property.
Because of his strange behavior, Martin was often bullied and on one occasion was almost drowned by a group of children he was tormenting. As he grew, Martin's behavior became more cruel and bizarre. In one incident, while skin diving with a friend, Martin jabbed a hand spear into the head of his companion while he was surfacing. Neighbors describe how, as a child, Martin would constantly torment them by throwing rocks at their children, cutting down trees, untying boats from their moorings and destroying fruit trees and vegetable gardens.
"A quiet lad and a bit of a loner."
After leaving school, Martin did not need to look for work as he qualified for a pension because his I.Q. was twenty to thirty points below average. Sometime later however, he took a job that would change his life forever. Helen Harvey, the rich, middle-aged eccentric heiress to the Tattersalls Lottery fortune, asked Martin to work for her as a handyman. From that time on, Martin formed a bond with Harvey that was seen by many as more than a working relationship. Harvey lavished attention on Martin and often took him on shopping expeditions, sometimes spending thousands of dollars on him at a time. She was known in the area for weaving strange tales about her life and for squandering large amounts of money needlessly. During one particular year, she purchased a new car every month but never drove any of them. Jewelry was also a passion but she never wore any. Eventually, Martin moved in to her mansion which was around the corner from his parent's home. The house was a menagerie with scores of dogs, cats and birds living in and around the house. On one occasion, the living conditions in the home had become so squalid that the RSPCA animal welfare association forced Harvey to clean up the property to comply with health regulations. After the job was completed, seven dumpsters full of rubbish were taken from inside the house alone. Later, when the bins were emptied, apart from rubbish, they were found to contain several television sets in working order, cash and other valuables. Eventually, Bryant and Harvey moved to the country.
After moving to the small rural town of Copping, Martin's behavior became increasingly erratic. When he was kicked off a bus for harassing a young schoolgirl, he hailed a cab and chased the bus to abuse the driver. Not long after moving to the new area, his neighbors began to complain about Martin prowling around their properties late at night. He was later reported for threatening a neighbor with a rifle and became increasingly obsessed with firearms. One family friend remembers him constantly "showing off" with his guns and bragging about taking "pot shots" at the tourists who stopped at the apple stand near the property's front gate.
Regardless of the numerous complaints about his behavior, Martin spent some of the happiest years of his life in Harvey's company. This was all to come to a tragic end when Harvey was killed in a traffic accident, which some believed was caused by Martin tugging at the steering wheel while Harvey was driving, a dangerous prank that Bryant was known for. The police later investigated the matter but cleared him of any involvement. With the two most influential figures in his life dead, Martin was left largely on his own. Named as the sole beneficiary of Harvey's estate, Martin now had a mansion in Hobart and cash in excess of $500,000 to spend any way he wanted.
Following Harvey's funeral, Martin moved back to the house in Hobart but became restless. With a virtually endless stream of income, he was free to choose any lifestyle he wanted. He soon discovered overseas travel and made thirty trips within a three-year period. During this time he made few friends, his only social contacts were whoever sat beside him on the aircraft and shop owners and caf� proprietors, many of whom remember him for the many outrageous outfits he wore. His relationships with women were just as bizarre with Bryant making approaches to any female regardless of age, often making lewd comments about their appearance and his sexual preferences, which seemed to include bestiality. Unable to build a normal relationship, Bryant indulged his physical needs by hiring prostitutes to come to his house. Several who visited him at the mansion refused to go back as they found him and his surroundings "creepy."
In the months before the massacre, Martin visited Port Arthur several times. During this time, he bought a new sports bag. The shopkeeper who sold it to him, remembers him measuring several before deciding on which one to purchase. Although many psychologists believe that Martin Bryant's actions on that fateful day stemmed from impulsive behavior, the sports bag incident and the fact that he had visited the site numerous times in the weeks preceding the attack, suggests that the killings were planned in advance and carried out with cold, calculating precision.
Aftermath
While Martin Bryant recovered in Royal Hobart hospital under heavy guard, the families and friends of the victims attempted to come to terms with the tragedy. After the police completed their reconstruction of the massacre, they estimated that, from the time Bryant had started shooting until the time he left the historic site, only eight minutes had elapsed. In just eight short minutes, Martin Bryant had taken the lives of 11 Tasmanians, 12 Victorians, 1 South Australian, 4 from New South Wales, 4 from Great Britain, 2 Malaysians and another man from South-East Asia. Of the injured, 15 were Australians, two others a Canadian and an American.
When police later released the information that Bryant had purchased the "military style" weapons used in the attack, from a Hobart gun dealer without any form of licensing, it resulted in an uproar. Virtually overnight, large numbers of private citizens called newspapers, television stations and talk-back radio shows demanding that Australia's disparate gun laws be urgently reappraised. Within days, many politicians added their support and met to discuss a new set of national gun laws including a total ban on all semi-automatic weapons.
In response, representatives of several prominent pro-gun lobby groups protested against the sweeping changes, citing that the laws would only serve to place restrictions on decent, law-abiding citizens and not the "lunatic fringe" that procured their firearms illegally.
Although much of the blame for Port Arthur was centered on the availability of guns used in violent crimes, Australia's homicide statistics prove otherwise. Tasmania, Martin Bryant's home state, has the lowest murder rate in the country with just 0.85 murders per 100,000 population, a rate far lower than Japan which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, fists, knives and blunt instruments are the most frequently used weapons in homicides, with guns accounting for just 25%.
Despite numerous protests, Prime Minister John Howard later implemented sweeping reforms regarding gun ownership in Australia which included bans on the importation and sale of most "military style" semi-automatic weapons.
No Laughing Matter
In the weeks and months following the massacre, Bryant was subjected to four major psychological examinations but, despite theories that he may be suffering from schizophrenia and a personality disorder called Asperger Syndrome which resulted in "inappropriate mannerisms and actions," Martin Bryant was declared legally sane and fit to stand trial.
In an earlier police interview, when asked the reasons for his actions, a smiling Bryant said, "I'd really love to help you out, but I can't."
The trial began on November 7, where evidence was heard relating to the slaughter. Some of the most disturbing being when eye witnesses related the hideous injuries inflicted upon their friends and families by Bryant who was described as a "laughing, maniacal fool" during the shootings. During the entire trial, including the screening of an amateur video of part of the shooting frenzy, Bryant continued to smile and, on more than one occasion, laughed openly. He continued to smile several days later when the jury handed down a guilty verdict after which he was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.
Bryant's cell.
Martin Bryant is now housed in Hobart's Risdon prison under protective custody. His mother who, apart from his defense counsel, was Martin's only visitor during the trial, later told interviewers that she wished her son had died along with his victims. When asked how Martin was adapting to life in prison, she answered, "He's his usual self, he's smiling and laughing.
In Memoriam
In a case such as this, it is all too easy to focus on the person responsible and neglect the most important element of any crime, the victim. The following is a list of the thirty-five men, women and children that Martin Bryant senselessly murdered on April 28, 1996. May they rest in peace.
WINIFRED APLIN * WALTER BENNETT * NICOLE BURGESS * CHUNG SOO LENG * ELVA GAYLARD * ZOE HALL * MERVYN HOWARD * ELIZABETH HOWARD * RON JARY * TONY KISTEN * DENNIS LEVER * SARAH LOUGHTON * DAVID MARTIN * SALLY MARTIN * PAULINE MASTERS * NANETTE MIKAC * ALANNAH MIKAC * MADELINE MIKAC * ANDREW MILLS * GWENDA NEANDER * PETER NASH * NG MOH YEE WILLIAM * ANTHONY NIGHTINGALE * MARY NIXON * GLEN PEARS * JIM POLLARD * JANET QUINN * KATE SCOTT * HELENE SALZMAN * ROBERT SALZMAN * RAYMOND SHARP * KEVIN SHARP * ROYCE THOMPSON * JASON WINTER *
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f166/horrific-port-arthur-massacre-footage-84312/
Unable to link the videos from DR. Anyone?
Also anyone with more victim photos before and after, actual footage, etc., plz post.
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(not much in the way of pics available for this case 
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