Brief Overview
On the night of Sunday 9th August 1987 from 9:30 pm, Julian Knight began an indiscriminate shooting spree at passing road traffic along Hoddle Street in the Melbourne suburb of Clifton Hill.
In the space of just 15 minutes, Julian Knight, a 19-year-old recently discharged Army Officer Cadet, fired a total of 114 rounds from three long-arm rifles killing seven innocent civilian strangers who were simply going about their Sunday, and also wounded a further 19 including two police officers.
After a police chase to stop and find the shooter, which took just a further 30 minutes, Knight was quickly captured and arrested by police within a kilometre away in the adjacent suburb of Fitzroy North. Knight’s 15 minute mass shooting became labelled by various media as ‘The Hoddle Street Massacre‘ and subsequently that label has become the ‘go-to’ online topic search phrase.
The then Victorian State Coroner, Mr Harold “Hal” Hallenstein characterised Knight’s shooting spree as “a significant tragedy in the history of Australia”. Later, Knight’s sentencing justice of The Supreme Court of Victoria, Justice George Hampel, referred to the shootings as “one of the worst massacres in Australian history”.
Knight was sentenced to seven consecutive terms of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years for committing the crimes.
In Julian Knight’s own words:
“Hoddle Street Shootings
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. [“killed and wounded” is Army speak]
It is my belief (based on what I was subsequently told by a number of individuals who were at RMC and in Canberra at the time), that following my commission of the Hoddle Street shootings the entire cadet body at RMC was subjected to a company-level “briefing” by the college authorities regarding my attendance at RMC. I believe that the gist of what the cadets were told was that they were not to speak to the media under any circumstances about my service at RMC and that, if anyone asked, they were to state that they did not know me and had not served with me. I further believe that the cadets were instructed that if they disobeyed these instructions, their appointment as staff cadets would be terminated.
It is also my belief that following my commission of the Hoddle Street shootings an internal investigation was undertaken into my service at RMC, with an emphasis on any “bastardization” that I had been subjected to. In an interview with ABC TV for the “Hoddle Street” documentary (see below), the then Commandant of RMC, Major-General Murray BLAKE, conceded that I had been subjected to two acts of “bastardization” whilst at RMC .”
[SOURCE: The above is an extract in a series of Julian KNIGHT’s records as part of his 97-page ‘Personal Account’ of his 6-month relentless persecution at RMC Duntroon submitted to the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce dated 26 November 2013, pp. 88-89].
Hoddle Street a ‘Shooting Spree’ yes, but not a ‘Massacre’
This website choses to use the serious criminal event title ‘Hoddle Street Shooting Spree‘ rather than the media’s oft-used ‘Hoddle Street Massacre‘ event title of that which took place on Sunday night 9th August 1987 in Melbourne’s inner northern suburb of Clifton Hill.
The ‘Hoddle Street Shooting Spree‘ was yes indeed a mass shooting that inflicted the murder of seven people, and serious injury to 19 others. This was a criminal event and committed the shooter Julian Knight who confessed to being the sole perpetrator, pled guilty to the crimes, and who has long since been convicted and sentenced for a minimum of 27 years without parole.
Irrespective of the callousness, unjust and unforgiveable nature of these crimes, and the heinous evil inflicted, Knight’s mass murder is more accurately characterised as a shooting spree, and as ‘mass murder‘. ‘Mass murder’ is generally defined as being the act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity.
Whereas a ‘massacre’ is generally defined as an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of many (hundreds/thousands) of people. But the kneejerk use of the term massacre by peacetime media is sensationalising the scale of a mass crime by radio shock jocks and tabloid news commentators. Sensationalising the news is not generally regarded as worthy of being considered professional objective journalism.
This is not to be pedantic nor seek to rationalise, nor justify nor excuse the mass murder of Hoddle Street. But it is questioning the appropriateness of the criminal label ‘massacre’ and instead arguing for the more factual scale of ‘mass murder’. It is scale comparing descriptors of ‘mass murder’ to ‘shooting spree’, to ‘serial murders’, to ‘multiple murders’ to ‘mass murders’, to ‘mass carnage’, to ‘large-scale killing’, to ‘massacre’, to ‘holocaust’, to ‘genocide’, to ‘nuclear holocaust’, etc.
Consider what real large scale massacres have occurred through human history such as the Nanking Massacre of at least 300,000 Chinese civilians committed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-1938. Any such comparison to Hoddle Street is abominable, even had Knight managed to murder all his human shooting targets [7 murdered + 46 attempted murder = 51, but not 300,000!].
Further Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_events_named_massacres
The legal and philosophical aspects of this are to be dealt with in this website’s Menu Chapter ‘Case Analysis‘. This website is by, from and about Julian Knight. It is authorised by Julian Knight, currently a prisoner in Port Phillip Prison in Victoria who is serving his sentence for his Hoddle Street Shooting Spree committed in 1987 resulting in the 7 murders and an addition 19 injured.
Legally, Knight’s sentence is not for the 7 murders and 19 injuries, but for his 7 murders and 46 counts of attempted murder.
Hoddle Street – Sunday 9th August 1987
2130 hours:
At 9:30 pm (2130 hours) at night, Knight commenced firing on every passing car with his .22 Ruger rifle from his improvised gun-pit positioned on the eastern side of Hoddle Street adjacent to the rail corridor behind a defensive boulder under the darkened cover of shrubs.
In Knight’s then deluded and intoxicated state of mind, he was acting out some defensive infantry ambush. It was as if he was at a live firing rifle range or at a carnival shooting gallery to score as many kills as he could.
Except it was targeting real people in a suburban setting; unknown random innocent civilians simply as they drove past his position.
The first opportune car that Knight opened fire on contained a married couple, Con and Rita Vitkos. Rita received minor wounds and her husband drove on before stopping at a Mobil service station about 150 metres further south down Hoddle Street.
Following the Vitkos’s was a car containing Michael Anthony and Trevor Smeelie, and a car driven by Gregory Elliott. A bullet struck Elliott’s vehicle, narrowly missing his head. Both of these cars were damaged, but none of the occupants were wounded. Following Gregory Elliott’s car was a vehicle driven by Alan Jury and containing Monica Vitelli and Dannielle Mina. Jury and Vitelli were both wounded, and they joined the others at the Mobil service station.
Knight fired rapid bursts at each car, and he reloaded with spare 10-round .22 Ruger magazines as he moved north along the nature-strip towards the nearby Clifton Hill railway station. He ensured that he fired on every south and north-bound vehicle as it passed him.
The next car he fired on contained Raewyn Creighton, Bernard Michael and Dianne Arnold, who all escaped injury. The following car was driven by Sand Wang, who received minor wounds. The next car was driven by Diane Fitzpatrick, who received a serious back wound. The next three cars to be shot at contained Michael Pearce and Jacqueline Langosch, Issac Lohman, and Reginald Dutton and Dana Sabolcki respectively, and they all escaped injury.
2135 hours:
At around 9:35 pm (2135 hours) Knight ran out of ammunition for the Ruger, so he put it down and switched to firing the Mossberg shotgun. The loud blasts of the shotgun alerted local residents to the shooting and the first calls were made to the Victoria Police’s emergency communications centre, D24.
The first car to be hit by the shotgun was driven by Sharyn Maunder, who did not receive any injuries and did not realise the front of her car had been hit. The next car to be hit was driven by Vesna Markovska, who received minor wounds, followed by a car driven by her fiancé, Zoran Trajceski, who also received minor wounds.
Both Markovska and Trajceski parked their cars by the side of the road and got out to take cover. As they did so, a car driven by Georgina Papaioannou stopped on the opposite side of the street. Knight immediately opened fire on her car, and Papaioannou was slightly wounded. Soon afterwards, a car driven by Jayne Morris, alongside Kay Edwards and Cecilie Corless, drove south through the ambush zone.
Police Response
Further south down Hoddle Street they flagged down a police divisional van containing Constables Glen Nichols and Belinda Bourchier, and informed them about the shootings. Nichols and Bourchier immediately drove to the scene with their lights and siren on as they radioed D24.
Soon after 2138 hours, the police car reached the intersection of Hoddle Street and Ramsden Street where they were shot at by Knight from his improvised gut-pit. Knight continued to change position from the gun-pit to the platform below a nearby billboard, as he fired at a procession of four single-occupant cars which, in chronological order, were driven by Mathew Morrow, Edward McShortall, Trevor Robinson and Keith Wing Shing. McShortall received minor wounds, but Wing Shing, who stopped his car opposite Knight, received serious jaw and throat wounds. Knight continued to reload and change position as he continued to fire at the passing cars.
The next car Knight fired at was a car containing Kevin Skinner, his wife Tracey and their son Adam. Tracey was killed instantly by a bullet to the face and Adam, who was on her lap below the window sill, received minor glass wounds.
Following this, a local resident, Peter Curmi, and a friend of his, John Muscat, approached the scene from the western side of the street. Knight fired one shot at them which fatally wounded Muscat in the head and chest, and which seriously wounded Curmi. Immediately after this, the attendant at the nearby swimming pool, Steve Wight, ran to their aid and was seriously wounded by Knight’s final shotgun blast.
It was now just 9:39pm (2139 hours) and numerous police units were rushing to the scene of the shooting.
When Knight ran out of cartridges for his Mossberg shotgun.
So Knight placed it down, to take up his remaining trusted M14 assault rifle in a prone firing position.
At this point, Vesna Markovska broke cover from behind her car and made for the footpath on the eastern side of Hoddle Street. As she stepped on to the footpath she was spotted by Knight who fired a shot which seriously wounded her. When she fell back onto the roadway Knight fired two further shots which killed her.
2140 hours:
It was now 9:40 pm (2140 hours) and D24 notified the Police Air Wing that one of their Aerospatiale Dauphin police helicopters was needed to assist the police at the scene. Moments later, in a break in the firing, one of the police officers on the western side of Hoddle Street fired a shot at Knight, which missed him by a couple of metres. Immediately following this shot Robert Mitchell, who had driven through the ambush zone unscathed and parked his car further down Hoddle Street, ran up the eastern side of the street in an attempt to render assistance to the fallen Markovska. As he reached her and came to a halt, Knight quickly fired a shot at him which hit him in the right side of the head and killed him instantly.
At 21:41, as three police units took up positions in Mayors Park on the western side of Hoddle Street and other police units took up positions in the surrounding area, Knight opened fire on a car driven by Jacqueline Turner and on Papaioannou as she walked from her car to help Markovska and Mitchell. Turner’s car was not hit, but Papaioannou was fatally wounded in the left side as she reached Markovska.
Following this, Knight fired on a car driven by John Finn who received minor wounds. The next car Knight shot at was driven by Andrew Hack who was seriously wounded in the left side. Following Hack was a car driven by Dusan Flajnik which Knight fired at. Flajnik was hit in the left side and bled to death in his car.
At 9:43 pm (2143 hours) Constable Bourchier requested another ambulance from D24 and nominated the Mobil service station as a safe rendezvous point for ambulances as two more police units arrived there.
The next car to be shot at contained Michael Smith and Jacqueline Megens. Smith received minor wounds while Megens was seriously wounded in the shoulder. As they were fired upon the first two ambulances arrived at the scene; one at the Mobil service station and one at Mayors Park. It was now 21:44, and the next car to be shot at was driven by Steven Mihailidis who escaped unscathed.
Immediately afterwards Knight fired at the rider of a motorcycle, Kenneth “Shane” Stanton, who was hit in the left leg and fell onto the roadway. As he lay there Knight shot him a further two times and he eventually died.
Soon afterwards, at 9:45pm (2145 hours) a car containing Dimitrios Collyvas, Renata Coldebella, Danny Coldebella and Danny De Luca, followed Stanton down Hoddle Street. Knight, who was by this time beside the southern end of the Clifton Hill railway station buildings, fired a shot at the front of the car. The car stopped and as it reversed back up the street Knight fired two more shots at it before it crashed into a police car, driven by Constable Dominic Cannizzaro, which had just arrived at the scene.
The first shot that Knight had fired into the car had slightly wounded Renata, and the second shot he fired had seriously wounded Danny Coldebella. As Collyvas’s car was reversing a motorcycle being ridden by Wayne Timms and Jayne Timbury, followed by a car containing Alexandra Stamatopoulos, Steven Stamatopoulos, Irene Fountis, Vicki Fountis and Panagioti Fountis, drove into the ambush zone and stopped opposite Collyvas’s car.
2145 hours:
At this point Knight, who was surrounded by at least 40 armed police officers, decided to withdraw from the area and began “hunting” police officers. It was just after 21:45, and he’d expended 40 rounds of .22 calibre bullets, 25 rounds of 12-gauge buckshot and 32 rounds of 7.62mm calibre bullets in the preceding 15 minutes. Five people lay dead, two were fatally wounded and a further 17 had been wounded.
In addition to the expended ammunition, Knight had lost his “suicide” bullet and another 7.62mm bullet as he had moved up the nature-strip. In all the excitement, Knight had also lost his knife on the nature-strip. Having already discarded his other two firearms due to runing outr of ammunication for them, he only had his M14 assault rifle with his last magazine with just 17 rounds of ammunition left.
It was just 15 minutes since Knight had first commenced his shooting spree at Hoddle Street at 21:30 hrs. With police present and returning fire, he was now seeking to evade police capture.
Police Give Chase:
With many police starting to encircle his improvised gun-pit position, Knight decided he would head to a refuge at his old girlfriend’s flat in McKean Street in Fiztroy North in order to avoid imminent capture.
McKean Street was about half a kilometre away from his current location. So Knight’s tactic was to first to head northward via the railway corridor, then westerward through the darkened Merri Creek bushland reserve and then revert southerly along the darkened tree-lined reserve of the northern end of McKean Street.
So Knight turned around and climbed onto the western platform of the Clifton Hill railway station. He ran north along the platform and then continued moving north along the railway line. He reached a fork in the tracks at around 21:46, and decided to follow the left fork. He spotted a police car in the northern end of Hoddle Street and fired three shots at it. The police car contained Sergeant Graham Larchin and Senior Constable Betty Roberts, who were not injured by the gunfire but who abandoned the car after Knight ceased firing.
After firing at Larchin and Roberts’s police car Knight moved into a nearby cluster of trees, sat down and smoked a cigarette.
Within minutes, police helicopter, a Aerospatiale Dauphin helicopter registraton VH-PVA (call sign ‘Air 495’) arrived over the Clifton Hill area and began searching for Knight with its a powerful searchlight.
A minute later D24 ordered the Victoria Police’s elite Special Operations Group (SOG) to attend the scene.
Knight finished his cigarette and continued moving in a north-west direction towards Northcote. He crossed over the Merri Creek, which bordered Clifton Hill and Northcote, and took up a position at the end of a road bridge which spanned the creek.
2200 hours:
Just before 10 pm (22:00 hours, Knight fired a shot at a passing police officer Constable Colin Chambers who was slightly wounded in the right side. After shooting Chambers, Knight moved back across Merri Creek in the cover of darkness into the adjoining suburb of Fitzroy North.
The police helicopter found Knight in its powerful searchlight and was following him. Knight felt the beam and so ran into a line of trees beside the railway line in an attempt to avoid the searchlight. At 22:05 Knight broke cover onto the railway line, knelt down and fired three shots at the aircraft as it circled over him. The police helicopter, containing Senior Constable Trevor Wilson, Senior Constable Daryl Jones, Constable Keith Stewart, and Ambulance Officer Alan Scott, was hit by the first shot which pierced its right main fuel tank and forced it to make an emergency landing on a nearby sports field.
(further content pending)
References:
[1] ‘Hoddle Street masssacre‘, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoddle_Street_massacre
[2] ‘Julian Knight (murderer)‘, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Knight_(murderer)
[3] ‘Hoddle Street Massacre‘, Aug 1987, ‘The 7.30 Report’ presenter David Turnbull, ABC, reproduced as a video on Google YouTube by Malcolm Farnsworth, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_g8yYipiE0&rco=1
[4] ‘Massacre in Hoddle Street‘,(video), 1987, Nine (TV) Network, archived by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, (NFSA ID 48637), https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/asset/98630-massacre-hoddle-street
[5] ‘Hoddle Street Massacre [Julian Knight shooter]‘, 12th September 2021, by Countess Caroline Jean Leitenmaier (an clearly a highfalutin pseudonym),
https://www.tooraktimesgeelong.com.au/hoddle-street-massacre-julian-knight-shooter-2/
[6] ‘Hoddle Street Massacre: How it all unfolded‘, 9th August, 2017, Nine News, https://www.9news.com.au/videos/hoddle-street-massacre-how-it-all-unfolded/cj64dj30j007j0hqyak9x8kmx
[7] ‘Tess Lawrence on Julian Knight and Hoddle Street massacre‘, (audio), 9th August 2007, presenter Fran Kelly interviews Tess Lawrence on ABC Radio National ‘Breakfast’ programme, https://youtu.be/ZeTf2gtRpFU
[8] ‘Hoddle Street Massacre‘, Wiki Audio, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfsNkma8YuQ
[9] ‘Hoddle Street Massacre Locations‘, by Mark Window, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UKT7thdBKw
[10] ‘Crime Documentary – The Hoddle Street massacre‘, SBS TV presenter Stan Grant hosts a video, Dailymotion.com (a French online video sharing platform owned by Vivendi), https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5h3tyn
[11] ‘Hoddle Street Massacre happened 35 years ago‘, 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@listnrau/video/7129446775240314113?lang=en