Below are some findings by other authors and experts, including the police themselves, which upon reading may cause you some concern.
Firstly some questions that have been asked:
1. On the Sunday morning, two hours before the murders, ten of the senior managers of Port Arthur were taken to safety many miles away up the east coast, for a two day seminar with a vague agenda and no visiting speakers.
Was the timing of this trip a mere coincidence?
2. Also just before the shootings the only two policemen in the region were called away on a wild goose chase. They were sent to the Coal Mine at Salt Water River, to investigate a heroin drug stash which turned out to be soap powder.
This was too far for them to get to the Broad Arrow Cafe in time to be of any use. Had the policeman remained at Dunalley he would have closed the swing bridge to prevent the killer(s) from escaping from the peninsula.
Did Bryant, IQ 66, organise this decoy?
3. Big Mortuary Truck. Before the massacre, a specially-built 22 person capacity mortuary truck was built. It attracted some derision at the time, but its effective use at Port Arthur was unquestioned.
After the massacre it was advertised, unsuccessfully, for sale via the internet, then converted for another purpose.
Without the foresight of Port Arthur, why build it? When it had proven its worth, why get rid of it? Another coincidence?
4. Martin Bryant has never been properly identified as the gunman.
A young woman who ate her lunch near the gunman just before 1.30 said he had a freckled face. Graham Collyer, the wounded ex-soldier, who had the best opportunity to observe the killer, said he had a pock-marked or acned face. Neither description fits Bryant who has a beautifully smooth complexion. Graham Collyer says that it was not Bryant who shot him in the neck.
5. Illegal Photo. On 30th April the Hobart Mercury printed an old photo of Martin Bryant on the front page. This was illegal because at that stage some of the witnesses had not yet been asked to identify the killer, and the photo would have become fixed in the minds of the witnesses. When one witness was asked to describe the clothing worn by the gunman, she described the clothing on the old photo instead of what the gunman had worn. The Mercury newspaper was not prosecuted for breaking the law.
6. Mrs Wendy Scurr, nurse, tour guide and Ambulance Officer, rang the police at 1.32 pm to report the shooting. She and other medics then cared for the injured and the dead without any police protection for six and a half hours. Who ordered the armed police to stop at Tarana where they had a barbecue? Even the police who arrived by boats and were a stone’s throw away from the main crime scene in the cafe, also failed to come in to see what was going on. Was this lack of protection meant to increase the trauma of the survivors?
7. Three more shots were fired at Port Arthur at 6.30 while Bryant was at Seascape. Who fired those shots?
8. Same Question – Different Answer. At a recent Forensics Seminar in Queensland where Tasmanian Police forensic gun inspector, Gerard Dutton, gave a lecture, the first question came from Mr Ian McNiven. He asked if there was any empirical evidence to link Martin Bryant to the Broad Arrow Cafe. Sargent Dutton immediately closed the 15 minute question time and would not reply. When McNiven managed to say “I have here Graham Collyer’s police statement…”, Sgt Dutton threatened him with arrest and called for security agents to escort McNiven out of the building. When Dutton was asked the same question in America by a Doctor at a seminar, he replied truthfully – “There is no empirical evidence to link Bryant to the cafe”.
9. Yet a police video tape exists which proves that the police had an excellent opportunity to get DNA samples and finger prints of the gunman. The video briefly shows the blue sports bag on a cafe table. The gunman had carried his 3 rifles in this bag and left it right next to his drinking glass, his Solo soft drink can, knife, fork, plate, etc. Why did the police fail to take DNA samples and finger prints?
10. According to the official story, Bryant first killed David and Sally Martin at Seascape Cottage in the morning, then went on to Port Arthur. Yet two policemen have reported seeing a naked woman with black hair, screaming and running from one building to another at Seascape well into the afternoon. If Sally Martin was dead, who was this woman?
11. Proof of other gunmen in Seascape Cottage. While Bryant was calmly talking to police by telephone in the cottage during the ‘siege’ and the conversation was recorded, someone else fired an SKK rifle 20 times. In the transcript the gunfire is recorded as ‘coughs’ but an electronic analysis of one of the ‘coughs’ shows that it was an SKK shot.
12. Two More Very Handy Seminars. On the Sunday morning, some 25 specialist doctors (Royal Australian College of Surgeons) from all over Australia had attended a training course in Hobart, and their last lecture was on Terrorist Attack and Gunshot Wounds. They stayed on to take care of the wounded victims.
13. Also, more than 700 reporters from 17 nations came to a seminar in Hobart. They were asked to arrive during the week-end as the seminar was due to begin early on Monday morning. How handy to have 700 scribblers on the spot, churning out their anti-gun and disarmament propaganda to the whole world!
14. “There will never be uniform Gun Laws in Australia until we see a massacre somewhere in Tasmania”, said Barry Unsworth, NSW Premier, December, 1987 at a conference in Hobart. Prophecy or Planning?
15. “If we don’t get it right this time (gun laws) next time there is a massacre, and there will be, then they’ll take all our guns off us”, said the deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer in May 1996. Who is the “THEY” who would order the removal of our guns? Did Fischer let slip that gun confiscation has been ordered by someone other than our own leaders?
16. No Respect for the Law. Our law demands that a Coronial Inquiry must take place (a) when foreign nationals are killed (b) when anyone dies in a fire. At Port Arthur several foreigners were killed and three people died in the fire at Seascape.
17. It is evident that the massacre was planned to happen on the ferry which sailed to the Isle of the Dead every day. The victims were to be eighty elderly American tourists who had come in two coaches. But the plan went awry because the sailing time of the ferry had changed from 1.30 to 2.00 pm.
