http://www.whale.to/b/wernerhoff.html
by Carl Wernerhoff, © May 2006
"mce-anchorBryant identified as the gunman?
In terms of the allegation that the witnesses have identified Bryant as the man they saw shooting at the PAHS, the most serious difficulties are raised by Jim Laycock in his statement. Laycock is of outstanding importance in this case, as he is the one and only witness who observed the gunman in the act and actually knew Bryant. In his police statement, Laycock—who, as noted earlier, got a good enough look at the man to be able to estimate his age ("low twenties")—said that he "did not recognise the male as Martin Bryant". He stated only that he saw "a blonde [sic] headed person" shoot Zoe Hall and take Glenn Pears captive.
Another witness, Yannis Kateros, said he had never seen the gunman before. Yet Kateros had lived at Port Arthur since 1991, and, according to Laycock, Bryant had visited the PAHS on about a dozen occasions in the five-year period between about 1991 and 1995.
At least two other witnesses have also stated that Bryant was not the gunman. These are PAHS Information Centre employee Wendy Scurr, who, according to one report, saw the gunman inside the centre immediately prior to the attack, and Vietnam War veteran John Godfrey, who was waiting outside the centre when the shooting commenced. Godfrey viewed the gunman twice. He saw him drive by and saw him put a bag into the boot of his car. "In my opinion the picture I saw in the newspapers was not the same person," he stated in his police statement taken on 7 June 1996. Wendy Scurr has changed her mind on the subject; she no longer believes that Bryant was the man she saw that day.
So when people tell me that everyone knows that Bryant "did it" because people saw him doing it, I tend to wonder which witnesses they can possibly be referring to. To my knowledge, the only witnesses who positively identified Bryant as the gunman were Linda White and Michael Wanders, both persons whose statements were taken a full month after the shooting, after they had been exposed to plenty of media coverage about the case."
http://members.iinet.net.au/~nedwood/Pam06.html
"But there were enough reliable witnesses to identify the real shooter, or to, at least, testify that Martin Bryant was not the shooter. Some saw the shooters acne pocked face and remembered his demeanor as he sat at the table where he ate in the cafe. Another man eyeballed him as he was shot in the neck and could have identified him, as was only wards away from Bryant in the same hospital, but the police would not allow it. This man had not seen the photo in the paper and was perhaps the most important witness of all. Yet to see Bryant and not recognise him as the shooter would have cleared him of, at least, being at Port Arthur. Mr Laycock, a previous owner of the Broad Arrow cafe, knew Martin Bryant well enough because he, and his benefactor Mrs Harvey, would often take tea in his cafe and she would buy him gifts in the store. Several statements have been made by various witnesses, and we have copies of them all, which cancel out all those who think they saw Bryant but, instead, actually saw the real gunman wearing a wig. Because Mr Laycock is now deceased I can publish his statement."
