Martin Bryant drove a distinctive yellow Volvo 240 sedan, often with a surfboard strapped to the roof racks. The car is one of several strange vehicles associated with the Port Arthur Massacre.
Although not in the court documents, Mike Bingham’s book Suddenly One Sunday says that an unnamed witness saw him driving south at Eaglehawk neck, "bouncing around in the drivers seat as he moved to the music on the stereo".
About 10.45am, it was seen by Chris Hammond, who served him fifteen dollars petrol at the Taranna petrol station. He noted it was strange because the blonde man didn't appear to use a wallet - he pulled the notes out of his pants pocket. After that, everything becomes very confusing.
At the trial, the prosecutors allege Bryant drove south from Taranna to Seascape, shot David & Sally Martin between 11.00am and 12.00pm, then drove south, past the Port Arthur Historic Site to Roger Larner's farm. He allegedly spoke to Roger for a few minutes, then drove away north, back to Port Arthur where he shot up the cafe, abandoned his yellow Volvo at the toll booth, stole a gold BMW, kidnapped Glenn Pears and then took refuge inside Seascape. Shortly thereafter, the police set fire to the BMW, allegedly to prevent him using it to escape, and settled in for a siege. Here's what it looks like on the map:
The problem with this is the testimony of Andrew Simmons who heard the two shots quite clearly "prior to 11am." Chris Hammond served Martin at 10.45am at Taranna Petrol Station, so the prosecution timeline is not accurate at all. He was nowhere in the area when the shots were fired.
There are two conflicting rebuttal accounts, which overlap and contradict the official version, but not each other. These are from Martin Bryant himself, in the prison interview, and "Jamie", the hostage-taker who spoke to police negotiator Terry McCarthy on the phone from inside Seascape. Both accounts take a bit of reading and arrangement, because neither witness just tells the story straight, they tend to wander off on tangents, either of their own making or prompted by the police. Let's start with Martin himself:
Read the whole
prison interview here.
Martin's conversation with the police wanders all over the place. You might need to read it through two or three times to process the sequence of events.
Martin woke up with Petra, had breakfast and a shower, before she allegedly left at 8.00am, allegedly to see her parents. Martin planned to go to Roaring Beach for a swim. He says he left about 11.00am, 'once it warmed up', however if you read the context, it appears he is talking about arriving at the beach about 11.00am. There's no way he could have been seen in so many places before 11.00am if he was still at home. What was he going to do for 3 hours, alone in the house?
In the trunk of the Volvo are his AR-15 rifle and a USAS-12 shotgun. Martin says he had never fired the shotgun, he was scared of the recoil and was afraid of a misfire. The AR15, he had fired at paper targets in the State Forest near Murdunna. He was afraid of the noise of the rifle as well, afraid the locals would call the police. There were still 8 or 9 rounds in the magazine. His third firearm, an AR10 in .308 was in Terry Hill's gun shop for repairs, because Martin had no idea what kind of ammunition it needed, and he had broken it.
The drive from New Town to Taranna is an hour and fifteen minutes, give or take. If Martin left shortly after Petra, then the timeline makes sense. Martin says he stopped for a coffee in Sorrell, so add ten minutes, round it off to an hour and a half, an hour forty-five. Say Martin started driving about or just before 9.00am (give him time to put the surfboard on the roof of the Volvo), that puts him at Taranna petrol station at 10.45am, right when Chris Hammond says he was there.
Volvo full of petrol, Martin then says he drove west to Nubeena and Roaring Beach - a 28 minute drive, arriving there about 11.15 - close enough to the time he says at the start.
It's autumn, in the Southern Ocean, so he doesn't swim for very long - the water is cold and he doesn't have a wetsuit or any swimmers - or a towel. A few minutes in the water, call it 11.30 and he is heading back to Nubeena for a toasted sandwich and a coffee at the shop near the school - 15 minutes drive back from the beach, call it 11.50am or 12.00pm and he is ordering a snack and coffee.
Ten minutes to have the food made and eaten, he is back on the road before 12.30pm. Martin says he didn't visit Roger Larner, hadn't seen him in years. He slows down as he passes the Port Arthur Historic site, good memories there of him as a kid, causing trouble, shoplifting, just kid stuff. But now things have changed, there's a toll booth and he has no money - he spent his last paper money on petrol and paid for the Nubeena food with coins from the glove box.
"I would've gone in if I didn't have to pay" he says. "But I didn't have the money." It's roughly 12.20pm, he drives past and heads north up the Arthur Highway.
Martin's testimony is a little confusing here. It's possible he stopped in to Seascape on the way north, but there was nobody home. It's also possible he drove past, only returning to Seascape in the BMW. Either way, a few minutes north of Port Arthur, he arrives at the turnoff to Fortescue Bay about 12.30pm.
This remote, wind-swept intersection is an easy landmark. Waiting for him here was a gold BMW, containing a man, his wife and a baby girl. The
BMW belongs to Sidney Kenneth Nixon, but Nixon wasn't driving it. He had loaned the car to a friend, Jim Pollard. Jim was holidaying in Tasmania with an "old army buddy", Robert Salzmann and his wife, Helene.
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| Helene and Robert Salzmann |
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| Jim Pollard |
As Martin describes it, he decides to steal the BMW. He stops the Volvo, opens the boot and takes out the AR-15. He tells the man in the BMW, "I like your car, I want to take it", and gets all three out of the car, standing on the road. He bundles the man into the boot of the BMW, gets behind the wheel and drives in the direction it is pointing, south, back toward Seascape. He remembers skidding on some grass, getting out of the BMW to knock on the door of Seascape, but nobody was home. His next memory is "a vast explosion" and a fire which burned him badly. He was arrested by the police, tells Malcolm Scott that Petra was in the house, is operated on in hospital and then interviewed in prison. End of story. Either way, he has admitted to shooting nobody, and there is no evidence that he did.
When questioned by the police, Martin has no recollection of the cafe, the toll booth, the white corolla, where Glenn Pears was kidnapped and Zoe Hall killed.
Talking to police negotiator Terry McCarthy, "Jamie" tells a similar story, with added detail. The man's name is Rick, but Jamie persistently refuses to tell Terry what Rick's surname is, or that of his wife and child. Rick is 34, a lawyer from Melbourne, whose parents live in Tasmania. His wife is "high up in intelligence, higher than (Terry), university qualified." One interpretation of these phrases is that Rick's wife is a Government Intelligence officer, higher ranking than Terry. Another is that she is highly intelligent, smarter than Terry. It's difficult to know because Jamie seems intent on playing complex games with Terry, refusing to give straight answers and deliberately changing the subject, asking about the time or ending the conversation with promises to phone back.
Jamie says that the wife put the child in the yellow Volvo, and was last seen driving AWAY, toward Fortescue Bay.
Note the times all this was happening - between 12.00 and 1.00pm. In the prison interview, Martin knows the BMW caught fire and assumes he lit it, because he was the only one there. He has no idea that the BMW didn't catch fire until just before 2.00pm, and the fire which caused his burns didn't start until 7.30am the next morning. He has a gap that spans eighteen hours - hours which include someone who looks like him speaking to Roger Larner (who did not recognise him as Martin), shooting up the Broad Arrow Cafe (where eyewitnesses Michael Sargent and Graham Collyer describe the shooter as having "a squashed nose, like a boxer" and "a lot of acne, a pitted face." The shooter then killed more people in the car park, drove to the toll booth, killed Robert and Helene Salzmann, Rose Nixon and Jim Pollard, took the BMW they were in and drove to Seascape where the BMW was set alight by Sargeant Fogarty (allegedly to deny the shooter transport if he tried to escape, but also conveniently erasing any DNA evidence left in the seats or on the steering wheel).
In the photos, note how far away from Seascape the BMW is burned out. Martin says he skidded on some grass, but that he also got out and knocked on the door about. If he parked the car all the way down there, it's a VERY long skid.
This begs the question. If Martin left his Volvo with Rick's wife at the Fortescue Bay turnoff about 12.30pm, how did it get to Port Arthur, eventually abandoned at the Toll Booth? How did the BMW get from Seascape to to Toll Booth, carrying Jim Pollard, Rose Nixon and the Salzmanns?
Interestingly enough, Martin answers that question in his interview.
Q. Once again, lots of people are saying they saw you in the Broad Arrow Cafe on Sunday the 28th of April.
A. Mmm, that's untrue.
WARREN
Q. It's untrue is it?
A. Mmm.
Q. And why do you say that Martin?
A. Because I didn't, I drove straight past.
Q. So how do you account for the car being there?
A. That lady could've drove it down there. That one, the wife or girlfriend of the chap I took hostage 'cos I said to get into my, the Volvo.
WARREN
Q. Martin.
A. Mmm. Like I was telling you before, it's, it's true.
Okay, let's take a step back for context.
People who assume that Martin planned and executed the whole thing on his own, must admit that the police at Nubeena were decoyed away at the perfect time, by a fake drug stash tipoff at Saltwater River. When they arrived, Constables Hyland and Whittle found a jar of soap powder.
So, if Martin planned the whole thing on his own, he must have planted it there shortly before the massacre. A few days at most, to make sure no tourists stumbled across it and moved the decoy.
But Petra Wilmott says clearly that she was with Martin for the week before the massacre, including ANZAC Day. So either she was lying, or she was in on it. You can't have it both ways.
If Petra was an accomplice, then it's plausible that there were others. Martin's 66-IQ doesn't provide for the military style planning of this operation, nor the sequential head shots in the cafe, firing from the right hip when Martin is left handed. Prisoners who spent time with Martin, playing chess with him have testified that he is 'dumb, so dumb. Thinks he is all hot, but doesn't know how dumb he is.'
Given the questions above, is it too much to accept that Martin had help? By people with access to military planning, and the unpublished phone number for Nubeena Police Station? There was no internet back then, everyone relied on the Yellow Pages and White Pages, but Tasmania had recently moved to eight-digit telephone numbers, and the Nubeena station number had not yet been put into the latest edition of the White and Yellow Pages.
Here's a plausible alternative to the official version, based on the information above and the eyewitness accounts:
Martin is asked to participate in the kidnapping at Fortescue Bay. Maybe he was told he was acting in a movie, maybe he was doing something Petra asked as a favour. Either way, he takes the BMW with Rick in it to Seascape, where Petra is waiting. Rick's wife drives the Volvo, turning into the Fortescue Bay turnoff to do a 3-point-turn, but instead of driving to Fortescue Bay, she completes the U-Turn and arrives at Seascape after Martin has been drugged with something like Rohypnol or Scopolamine.
Both the BMW and the Volvo are now at Seascape, where witnesses see it and a blonde man acting rudely, encouraging them to leave in a hurry.
The blonde man then takes the Volvo, drives to Roger Larner's and chats with him about buying cattle (remember, Roger's witness statement says that Roger didn't recognise the person as Martin until they identified themselves). The blonde body double then drives to Port Arthur, pays cash to get into the site and parks near the water. At some point about now, the BMW containing Jim Pollard, Rose Nixon, Robert and Helene Salzmann arrives at the Toll Booth and does a U-Turn, parking in the "IN" lane and blocking incoming traffic.
The blonde man shoots up the cafe and car park, gets back in the Volvo and drives up to the Toll Booth where he rendevous with the BMW. Robert and Helene sit in the yellow car with the gunmna, talking to him as Nicholas Cheok and his mother arrive at the "IN" lane. Jim and Rose are in the BMW, making "shoo, shoo" motions with their hands as the blonde man and Robert get out of the yellow car and have an argument in the middle of the road. The blonde man walks around the car, takes out his rifle from the back seat (next to where Robert had been sitting), and shoots him in the chest. He then shoots Jim and Rose (in full view of Reba and Nicholas Cheok), drags Helene out of the Volvo and shoots her on the ground.
He then takes the BMW, drives out of the PAHS and onto the Arthur Highway, where Jim Laycock has stepped out of the Kodak shop at the gunshots from the toll booth area. He sees the execution of Zoe Hall and the abduction of Glenn Pears from 4 meters away. I'll let you read his
witness statement for yourself, but here's the kicker:
On this Sunday the 28th April 1996, I did not recognise the male as Martin BRYANT. The
person I saw shooting appeared to be in the low twenties about 5’10 tall, it was impossible
to determine his build, (the coat was shapeless). His hair stood out, it was blonde, I thought it
was bleached blonde and possibly a female. His hair was shoulder length. His walking
appeared to be mannish.
So, here's the summary:
Three eyewitnesses, two of whom knew Martin Bryant, did not recognise the shooter as him. Jim Laycock and Roger Larner both knew Martin, and Graham Collyer in the cafe described someone different. Lying in hospital on the floor below Martin's guarded bed, Graham offered to go up and identify the man who shot him. Police refused this request.
The media immediately and illegally published photos of Martin as the killer, embedding him image into the witnesses and overriding their memories. Weeks later, one of the witnesses gave a statement to the police, describing the clothes of the photo in the paper, which were completely different to the gunman's attire.
How did the cars get moved around, if Martin left the BMW at Seascape, and his Volvo at the Fortescue Bay turnoff? Did the police ever interview the owners of the cafe at Nubeena, to see if Martin indeed bought a toasted sandwich and a coffee there? If not, why not?
What about the other vehicles at Port Arthur that day? There are
questions around the Morgue truck, the similar yellow Volvo that was seen inside PAHS after the shootings, and the black van with government plates that parked outside the Broad Arrow Cafe for several hours, then disappeared.
This is why a Royal Commission is needed - to answer these questions and determine if a miscarriage of justice has occurred. There is reasonable doubt and zero DNA evidence that Martin Byrant was in the cafe.
The victims and their families deserve better than lies.
They deserve the truth and the closure that will follow.
***
The 2nd Empty Chair is a fiction novel, based on the witness statements and court documents. Using poetic licence, it links the facts that we know into a plausible, possible narrative that 'pokes more holes in the official story than a Pastafarian's colander.'
