~ this article is written by an invited contributing author holding close personal insight.
This is the only official website authorised by Mr Julian Knight.
Julian is a former Army Officer Cadet at Royal Military College at Duntroon in Australia’s national capital city, Canberra.
The content of this website is drawn from the personal accounts from his support base (we term ourselves ‘The Knighthood’) and includes considerable research garnered from Freedom of Information and other sources.
This website remains an ongoing work-in-progress.
Note, that we consider a ‘Soldier’ to be a well-deserved professional job/career title, warranted from the very moment one signs up to enlist in one’s country’s Army. The title goes with the self-sacrifice act of dedication. Few citizens take that solemn oath.
“I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia, Her heirs and successors according to law, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Australia and fulfil my duties as an Australian citizen, whose laws I will uphold and obey.”
[SOURCE: Julian Knight’s Certificate of Service in The Australian Army]
However, what changed everything for Julian (and many other worthy officer cadets) was Duntroon’s institutionalised Bastardisation culture dished out by senior cadets since RMC’s inception as an Army Officer training academy in 1911. Only the bastards graduate.
During RMC’s new first 6-month training semester (junior ‘3rd Class) of the 18 month Army Officer course at Duntroon, Julian was targeted by senior cadets and subject to bastardisation by a number. [Note: Pre-1986 the RMC officer training course was a 4 year duration since it included a university degree course.]
Full vivid details of this abusive treatment are elaborated on this website. The violence that Julian endured culminated on 30th May 1987, when fearing for his personal welfare Julian retaliated against his prime tormentor, senior cadet Philip Reed by stabbing him at a nearby Canberra nightclub at 3 am in a drunken attack by Julian.
[Note: ‘Tormentor’? Is a person who inflicts severe mental or physical suffering on someone.]
This was just 4 1/2 months into Julian’s training, but this incident was to instantly seal his fate at Duntroon and his career ambitions with the Army. It had put Duntroon into disrepute. The Duntroon Command forced Julian to resign from Duntroon on 24 July 1987 and they kicked him out of the Army for life.
Julian, being absolutely expelled from not just Duntroon but from the Australian Army for life, was depressed and returned to his home city of Melbourne. He was broke, aimless, lonely, vengeful, dark on society, Julian on Sunday night 9th August 1987 became drunk, deluded, psychotic at a local pub near his mother ‘s home in Melbourne’s inner suburb of Clifton Hill where he was staying. He then walked back to his mother place collected his cache of three long-arm weapons and ammunition in a carry bag that he kept there, then walked just 60 metres to the nearby busy Hoddle Street and began shooting at passersby indiscriminately. Within an hour he had shot seven civilians dead and injured 19 during his shooting spree before running out of ammunition on the run on foot and surrendering to police. The media labelled the mass shooting as the ‘Hoddle Street Massacre’.
Julian Knight is serving seven concurrent sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years. The judge who in 1988 sentenced him, Justice George Hampel, stated that there were “a number of significant mitigatory factors” and “the fixing of a minimum term in this case is appropriate because of your age and your prospects of rehabilitation.”[2] The Crown prosecutor, Joe Dickson QC, “did not contend that a minimum term should not be fixed.” It was a plea bargain agreed with Julian offered to Julian by the Prosecution.
Knight is current incarcerated in the maximum security Port Phillip Prison in Truganina near Melbourne. He would have been eligible for parole in 2014 except that the Victorian government passed and approved of legislation which ensures that he is kept in jail until he dies, is in immediate danger of dying, or is so incapacitated that he no longer poses a danger to others. Knight has challenged the validity of the legislation many times, but lost his final appeal to the High Court in August 2017.
WHY Knight’s Hoddle Street Shooting Spree – back in 1987?
This causation remains unanswered truthfully in the media.
So a key justification and intention of this website dedicated to Julian Knight, is to explore, analyse and answer this question in detail, throughout this website, to contest and critique media presumptions and innuendo and bias and cowardliness not to consider his backstory, and immorally excuse Duntroon Bastardisation.
This serious mass crime with its particular circumstances and backstory is unique in Australian history. It occurred in living memory. Many victims, victims’ families and friends, first responders, witnesses, investigators and affected others are still living. The dead of course are not.
Of course it needed not have happened. And this author feels, in hindsight still to this day, that he could have prevented it altogether. He was my allocated buddy at Duntroon. By March 1987, I realised that Duntroon was so substandard as to not for me. I could not trust the command nor the senior cadets. I should have reached out to Julian to have him join me. That was just 2 months before Knight’s stabbing of his main tormentor of Kokoda Company at 3am at a Canberra nightclub on 30th May 1987. That was just 4 months before Knight’s subsequent forced resignation by Duntroon Command on 30 June 1987.
KNIGHT’s AFFIDAVIT:
“On Friday 24 July 1987, I was discharged from the ARA (Australian Regular Army) in absentia. My final discharge administration was completed at the Defence Department in Canberra, at the Discharge Cell at Watsonia, and at the Central Army Records Office (CARO) in Melbourne.
On Tuesday 28 July 1987, I attempted to re-enlist in the Army Reserve at the 7th Transport Squadron in Broadmeadows, but I was prevented from doing so because of the charges pending in the ACT Magistrates Court.
On Wednesday 29 July 1987 and Wednesday 5 August 1987, I attempted to re-enlist in the Army Reserve at my old regiment, the 4th/19th Prince of Wales’s Light Horse Regiment in Carlton, but I was prevented from doing so because of the charges pending in the ACT Magistrates Court.
On Sunday 9 August 1987, 16 days after my discharge, I committed the Hoddle Street shootings in Clifton Hill, Melbourne. As a result of my actions 7 people were killed and 19’were wounded.”
This website serves not to excuse or pardon but to answer why?
It also exists to hold institutionalised ‘Duntroon Bastardisation‘ that targeted Julian Knight, culpable and to account, as well as the Australian Defence Force, its lawyers, identified politicians and media – each influentially involved in this case since 1987.
The victims and the public (mainly Victorian) still have no official answers. Instead, both can only rely upon media opinionated ‘commentary’ – various ‘fake news’; but so disappointingly, rarely to true journalism – print, radio, TV and online. Media commentators keep either guessing or stepping into an unqualified prosecutor or psychiatrist role. They have no idea, or choose to censor, Julian Knight’s immediate prelude of abuse at Duntroon, just weeks before Hoddle Street – his sustained torment, criminal physical abuse, bullying, intimidation – aka ‘Duntroon Bastardisation‘.
The media ignorantly have failed, and continue to fail, to investigate the truth causation of his state of mind to have committed ‘Hoddle Street’. Political influence and pressure has been the hallmark of the reporting about Julian Knight since 9th August 1987. His case has become ‘politically incorrect’ to analyse the why, the truth and back story.
We present the following initial back story about Julian Knight’s selection into Australia’s Royal Military College at Duntroon, in Canberra.
The testing is rigorous. One doesn’t get selected into Duntroon to be trained as an Army Officer, if one is not up to the rigorous standards befitting an Army leader.
The training is intended to produce junior Army officers initially graduating as 2nd Lieutenant, and intending that each advance in an Army lifetime career to lead many soldiers in battle and promoted accordingly on merit to take on greater responsibilities in Army leadership ranks.
Well, what are the the rigorous standards befitting an Army leader as part of RMC Duntroon’s selection process?
Well, each candidate to be successful for selection, must during from professional testing for entry, show to be in the top percentile for:
- good character and personality
- intelligence/IQ
- academically inclined
- mature personality (for one’s age)
- displaying and demonstrating leadership traits
- military aptitude
- self-discipline
- obedient,
- law abiding
- personally organisated
- fitness
- physical strength
- perfect physical health
- standard of presentation (personal grooming/dress/kit/quarters)
- emotional stability (confident, rational, grounded, astute)
- sociable
- problem solving,
- etc…. i.e; ‘officer material’.
It also helped if the candidate had graduated from a reputable private (ideally a ‘grammar’) school with good marks (not top marks, just good marks), but moreso had volunteered in the school’s Army cadet unit and had a family history with the Army. Thus of the right Army officer cultural stuff.
So to readers: what inkling or chance of jumping such military testing hurdles for Duntroon would you have?
This invited contributing author on this website, qualified for selection into Duntroon, happenstance at the same time that Julian did, and we were both from Melbourne. One knew of no cadets at one’s brief time at Duntroon whom had not graduated from a grammar school… hint, hint.
Julian, upon his application for entry into RMC Duntroon in late 1986, indeed passed all such tests for selection. Later, IQ testing of Julian when in prison resulted in his IQ score of 132. [Read More: ] An IQ level of 120 is assessed as ‘above average or bright’ on an IQ scale. The average score is 100, and 68% of all people have scores between 85 and 115.
Julian was accepted into RMC Duntroon commencing January 1987 as a (junior) 3rd Class Officer Staff Cadet. At this time, Julian was one of about 300 successful candidates of about 3000 applicants from around Australia and from trusted nations like New Zealand. So a rare successful one of the 10% of applicants.
We enclose a publicly published copy of the Australian Defence Forces current online ‘Guide to ADF Aptitude Testing’ as follows. It is free to download and print:
Reload document 
Open in new tab So reader, again how would you perform in this test, if you printed it off without notice (off the cuff), and without cheating by first read the answers?
One recalls the pass minimum in the 1986 Selection Process was for each discrete test to be 75%. There were many selection tests – written and physical. Yes, they also required a high pass in a psychometric test.
One recalls and will never forget two particular questions in that test. Each was bleeding obvious of the response they wanted. These one recalls are the essence of the two questions, since one was never permitted to take home copies of any test papers, let alone results.
Q: If you were to stand on the edge of a cliff, could you ever consider feelings of just jumping off?
Q: Are you prepared to kill in self-defence, if you or someone you see, is at imminent threat of being killed?
The answers were not open, but only three choice options I recall – ‘YES’, ‘NO’, ‘NOT SURE’.
Well, with my respective answers ‘YES’, I got in. I knew that if I didn’t, that my application would be rejected. Bleeding obvious.
Ultimately, if a candidate satisfactorily passed all these test, then there was the final interview before three or four Duntroon senior officers, including then RMC Commandant MAJGEN Murray Blake.
Of note, what the recruitment testing did not consider (neither allow nor disallow) was a personality and behavioural trait that could be characterised as having a larrikin tendency. This was a failing of the testing. From Day 1 at Duntroon, junior freshmen recruits were made crystal clear that any attempts at humour would receive severe punishment.
Julian Knight is a classic larrikin, like the best of Australian soldiers in history.
The content of this website contains mainly articles and material previously authored by Mr Julian Knight, whom since 1987, having pleading guilty on 28 October 1988 in the Supreme Court of Victoria to the Hoddle Street Shootings in Melbourne in 1987, has served more than his maximum 27-year custodial sentence.
Further background and details about Mr Julian Knight on this website will be posted in due course and explaining the hateful persecution he experienced by a culture of torment whilst at Royal Military College at Duntroon, his subsequent psychotic unleashing – his regrettable alcohol-fuelled state of depression, temporary insanity and rage that sparked the notorious Hoddle Street Shootings on the Sunday night of 9th August 1987.
The shooting rampage took place just 16 days after Knight’s honourable discharge in absentia from the Australian Regular Army, at a time of post-Duntroon systematic targeted physical and psychological abuse, persecution and bastardization over the preceding six months whilst at RMC. However, it is noted that the media at the time and since, has failed to connect this real compounded cause and its catastrophic effect. The reasons are a combination of media ignorance of psychiatry and of Duntroon and the ADF’s reactive campaign of silencing, scapegoating and misinformation to cover up its relentless bastardisation of Staff Cadet Julian Knight.
This was a tragedy that had Duntroon management been respectful of its officer cadets, it should never have happened.
The Hoddle Street Shootings are a sad indictment on Australia’s ADF – of how such hateful, sustained treatment of this intelligent, successful and disciplined Army Corporal with an exemplary record before being accepted into Duntroon, was during his officer ‘training’ and indoctrination, targeted and condemned to a psychotic state to go hatefully postal.
Hate inculcates hate.
In Mr Knight’s own words:
“On 6 June 1988, the Presentment against me was filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria at Melbourne (Case No T557 of 1988). I was formally charged with 7 counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder.
In early October 1988, following negotiations with the Office of Public Prosecutions, it was decided that I would plead guilty to all charges in the Presentment filed against me (7x counts of murder and 46x counts of attempted murder).
It is my understanding that these negotiations involved input from the Army. Part of my plea agreement with the Crown and their main condition was that no evidence of the bastardization I had experienced at Duntroon would be led during my plea hearing. In return, the Crown undertook that it would not oppose the setting of a minimum term to the Life sentence I was certain to receive.
It was made clear by the Crown that if we went back on this agreement, by raising the issue of bastardization at Duntroon, the Crown would renege on its promise not to oppose the setting of a minimum term and would treat the plea hearing as a contested proceeding.
On 28 and 31 October 1988, my plea hearing was held in the Supreme Court of Victoria at Melbourne before the Honourable Justice George HAMPEL. ..My time at Duntroon was addressed briefly during the first day of my plea hearing…but no acts of bastardization were detailed.”
[SOURCE: Extracts from Army Officer Staff Cadet Julian Knight (3204059) CSC Bo 5266, Personal Account Statutory Declaration to Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (DART), pp.89-90, whilst a prisoner, declared in Port Phillip Prison in the State of Victoria on 26 November 2013.]
Pleaded Guilty and Sentenced on a Duntroon Plea Bargain
At the 1988 hearing, Mr Julian Knight honoured his agreement with the Crown by not raising any evidence of the bastardization he had experienced at Duntroon as any form of defence or contributory causation for him committing the Hoddle Street Shootings.
Duntroon military management was clearly aware of the likely connections by the media that would arise from Staff Cadet Knight’s psychological and physical persecution during his Duntroon training experience in the immediate months (Jan-Jul 1987) leading up to the Hoddle Street Shootings psychotic outburst in August 1987. So Duntroon military management went into full survival mode.
On June 26, 1987 Warner Bros. released the Stanley Kubrick movie Full Metal Jacket – a shocking exposé about the US Marine abusive training culture. In 1987, Duntroon was copying it.
Watch trailer of Full Metal Jacket
Mr Julian Knight was sentenced in Court 4 of the Supreme Court of Victoria at Melbourne, on Thursday the 10th November 1988 by sentencing judge Mr Justice George Hampel for a minimum non-parole term of 27 years. This was coincidentally dated Mt Julian Knight’s arrest on 9th August 2014, the night of the Hoddle Street shootings, after which he was held in custody (prison), so his release date was to be 10th August 2014.
Victorian Government has since reneged on its plea bargain promise with this soldier
However, politically motivated the Victorian Government (Liberal Party on 2nd April 2014 instead reneged on prosecuting Crown’s plea bargaining agreement with Mr Julian Knight of 1988 to pass specific legislation to disallow his release by passing the following amendment legislation on 20th November 2013 specifically targeting Mr Julian Knight’s incarceration ahead of the due expiry of Mr Julian Knight’s 27-year non-parole term.
CORRECTION AMENDMENT (PAROLE) ACT 2014 (No. 18 of 2014) – SECT 3 – New Section 74AA inserted – “74AA Conditions for making a parole order to Julian Knight”.
This political usurping of the judicial system in Victoria represents not just a denial of natural justice for Mr Julian Knight, but a flagrant undermining the powers of separation which are enshrined under the Constitution of Australia 1901.
This legislation is political and unjust. It means that political interference with the Crown in Victoria makes Mr Julian Knight effectively a political prisoner in Australia for the term of his natural life. This deserves to be a matter for the High Court of Australia.
This website is former Army Trooper Julian Knight’s story, with contributions from his mates.
This website seeks to tell the truth of what really happened, warts and all.
Australian Army Reservist Trooper Julian Knight, before Duntroon
References:
- Army Careers (Australia) – Officer Training, https://www.adfcareers.gov.au/careers/joining/eligibility
