"SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN TASMANIA: THE PORT ARTHUR MASSACRE - PART 1"

0:00 Before we begin, a warning. Today's episode contains detailed descriptions of mass violence, including the deaths of children. We're covering one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history. If you need to skip this one, I understand the events we're discussing are horrific. We name the perpetrator only when historically necessary. Our focus is on the victims, the survivors, and what happened next. This is difficult content. Listener discretion is strongly advised. Calarugashark Media, Good morning, I'm read Carter, Saturday, January thirty first, twenty twenty six. Last weekend, Australians celebrated Australia Day, flags flying families gathering, a nation honoring its history.

0:55 But every nation has darker chapters, moments that test its character, tragedies that force hard questions about who a country really is. Last weekend we explored one of those chapters. Azaria Chamberlain, a mother wrongfully convicted junk science thirty two years to get the truth on a death certificate. A story about justice failing then slowly correcting itself. This weekend we cover Port Arthur, a very different kind of Australian tragedy. One that didn't expose the justice system's failures, one that exposed the nation's gun laws, and one that showed what a country can do when it decides thirty five dead bodies are enough. April twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six a Sunday, beautiful autumn day in Tasmania, the island state off Australia's southeast coast. Clear skies, mild temperatures, perfect weather for tourists.

1:53 Port Arthur is a historic site on the Tasman Peninsula, about an hour's drive from Hobart. In the nineteenth century, it was one of the harshest convict prisons in the British Empire. Thousands of transported prisoners suffered and died there. The ruins remain preserved, a memorial to a brutal past, and now a popular tourist destination. On that Sunday, about five hundred visitors were exploring the site, families, couples, tour groups from around the world, Australians enjoying a day out. Around sixty people were having lunch in the Broad Arrow Cafe, a small restaurant at the site. Stone Walls, Wooden Beams gift shop attached the smell of coffee and grilled food.

2:39 At approximately one thirty PM, a twenty eight year old man with long blonde hair finished his meal on the outdoor deck. He'd been eating alone, smiling at passers by making small talk about the weather. Then he stood up, walked inside, reached into his sports bag and pulled out a Colt R fifteen semi automatic rifle. In the next ninety seconds, twenty people would be dead. By the time it ended eighteen hours later, thirty five people would be murdered, twenty three more wounded, children among them, families destroyed. It remains the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in modern Australian history. I'm reed, Carter. This is Celebrity Trials Today, Part one. April twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six. What happened at Port Arthur, The victims, the horror, the eighteen hour standoff Tomorrow Part two. How Australia responded twelve days that changed the nation's gun laws forever. The lesson America refuses to learn this is Port Arthur. Before we get to April twenty eighth, you need to understand something about Australia's gun laws in nineteen ninety six, so there weren't any.

3:53 Not really, not in any unified sense. Australia has six states and two territories. Each had its own firearms regulations, some stricter than others, but there was no national standard, no consistent approach. Tasmania, the island state where Port Arthur is located, had the weakest gun laws in the country. In nineteen ninety one, Tasmania passed a law requiring a license to purchase firearms. Sounds reasonable, but enforcement was limited. You could buy guns with cash, dealers didn't always check if buyers actually had licenses. The law existed on paper, but not in practice. Throughout the early nineteen nineties, police ministers from across Australia tried to create a national firearms agreement uniform laws, consistent standards, registration, licensing, restrictions on the most dangerous weapons. Tasmania blocked it. Every time a meeting of police ministers in Launceston, Tasmania, they presented a comprehensive redesign of national gun laws. Tasmania rejected it. Here's where it gets eerie. Nine years before Port Arthur, the premiere of New South Wales, Barry Unsworth was frustrated two mass shootings had just occurred in Melbourne. He wanted national gun reform.

5:10 Tasmania was resisting. Unsworth made a prediction, a warning, a prophecy that would prove horrifyingly accurate. It will take a massacre in Tasmania before we get gun reform in Australia. Nine years later, almost to the month, he was proven right. The gunman who would commit that massacre was already stockpiling weapons, using the inheritance from a dead friend, buying rifles and ammunition with cash, no license required, no questions asked. Tasmania's weak gun laws made it easy, made it possible, made it inevitable. April twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, the massacre Tasmania's resistance had been building toward. I'm going to give you some background on the perpetrator, not to humanize him, not to explain or excuse what he did, but because understanding how warning signs were missed is part of understanding how this happened. Martin Bryant was born May seventh, nineteen sixty seven, in Hobart, Tasmania, the first child of Maurice and Carlene Bryant. From early childhood, something was wrong. His mother later described him as annoying and different. He frequently broke his toys, tormented other children, showed cruelty to animals.

6:32 A psychiatrist who examined him as a child told the family he would never be capable of holding down a job. His IQ was tested around sixty six. Intellectually disabled, unable to function normally in society. Neighbors remembered disturbing incidents. One recalled the day a young Bryant shot every parrot in the neighborhood. Dead animals appeared on the Bryant property with no natural explanation. He left school early, couldn't hold employed, eventually received a disability pension based on psychiatric evaluation. In nineteen eighty seven, when Bryant was twenty, he began working as a handyman for a woman named Helen Harvey. She was a lottery heiress, wealthy, lonely, living alone in a large house. Bryant and Harvey became close an unusual friendship.

7:22 She was in her fifties, he was barely an adult with the mind of a child. They traveled together, spent time together. She became, in some ways, the only real friend he ever had. October nineteen ninety two, Helen Harvey died in a car accident. Bryant was a passenger. He survived with injuries she did not. Some have speculated that Bryant caused the crash. He was known to grab the steering wheel while others were driving. He denied any wrongdoing. No charges were ever filed. But here's what matters. Helen Harvey left her entire estate to Martin Bryant, approximately five hundhundred and seventy thousand dollars in property and assets, a fortune for a young man who had never worked a real job in his life. Bryant's father, Maurice, had struggled with depression, failed business ventures. In nineteen ninety three, he committed suicide. After his father's death, Bryant began traveling extensively, visited countries around the world, and began stockpiling guns. He bought a cult Ar fifteen semi automatic rifle, a point three zero eight SLR semi automatic rifle, a Dawu twelve gage semi automatic shotgun, ammunition lots of it. He had no firearms license didn't need one. Tasmania's weak laws meant dealers could sell to anyone with cash. The weapons that would kill thirty five people were purchased legally from licensed dealers by a man who was intellectually disabled, socially isolated,

8:54 recently bereaved, and showing clear signs of deterioration. Nobody stopped him. Nobody could stop him. The system wasn't designed to stop him. By April nineteen ninety six, Bryant had the means, the weapons, the ammunition. What he didn't have and never provided, was a reason. He has never explained why he did it, never given a motive that made sense. In interviews after his arrest, he offered confused, contradictory accounts, something about his father's failed attempt to buy a property near Port Arthur years earlier, but nothing coherent, Nothing that explains why he decided to murder thirty five strangers. Some people are just evil.

9:40 The morning of April twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, Bryant drove from his home in Newtown, a suburb of Hobart, toward the Tasman Peninsula. His first stop the Seascape Cottage, a bed and breakfast near Port Arthur, owned by David Martin sixty three and his wife Noah Lene Martin sixty six. Bryant knew the Martins, or rather his father had known them. Years earlier, Maurice Bryant had tried to buy the Seascape property. The deal fell through, the Martins bought it instead. Some have theorized this was Bryant's motive, revenge for his father's disappointment. But Maurice Bryant had been dead for three years, and the Martins had done nothing wrong. They'd simply purchased a property that was for sale. Some time that morning, Bryant arrived at Seascape. What exactly happened inside isn't entirely clear, but at some point before noon he murdered David and Noaeline Martin, first victims shot dead in their own home.

10:40 A couple who had built a business together, who welcomed guests who had done nothing to deserve what happened to them. Bryant took their weapons stored at the property and locked up the building. He would return later. Around twelve thirty five p m. A couple stopped at Seascape. They wanted to look at the accommodation. Bryant met them outside told them they couldn't come in. His parents were away. His girlfriend was inside. The couple found him rude, felt uneasy. They left. Bryant got in his yellow Volvo and drove toward Port Arthur. On the way, he stopped to chat with a man whose car had overheated. Suggested the man come to the Port Arthur cafe for coffee. Later, normal interactions pleasant, even nobody suspected anything. Around one ten pm, Bryant paid the entry fee at the Port Arthur Historic Site, drove in parked near the Broad Arrow Cafe. A security manager told him to move his car. That area was reserved for camper vans. Bryant moved it, then moved it back, parked where he wanted. He walked toward the cafe, carrying a sports bag and a video camera, went inside, purchased a meal, took it out to the deck, sat down, ate lunch, smiled at people walking by, tried to make conversation about the lack of wasps, about there being fewer Japanese tourists than usual. Witnesses later described him as nervous, frequently looking back toward the car, park back toward the

12:11 cafe interior. He finished his meal, stood up, walked inside, reached into his bag, one thirty pm. Approximately sixty people inside the Broad Arrow Cafe, Families eating lunch, tour groups taking a break, locals grabbing coffee, the normal hum of a busy restaurant on a Sunday afternoon. Bryant walked in from the deck, moved toward a table near the entrance, set down his bag, pulled out the colt AAR fifteen. He fired his first shot. What happened next took approximately ninety seconds. I'm going to walk you through it because the speed and efficiency of the killing is part of what made it so devas dating and part of what made Australia decide that weapons like this should never be available to civilians. Bryant's first victim was mix sergeant's girlfriend, Kate Elizabeth Scott, twenty one years old, shot in the head.

13:13 Sergeant himself was wounded, survived. Bryant moved through the cafe methodically, not rushing, not panicking, firing at anyone in his path. He shot Mervin Howard fifty five. The bullet passed through Howard and through a window, then shot Mervin's wife Mary fifty seven. Anthony Nightingale forty four, stood up after hearing the first shots no, not here, he yelled. Bryant shot him through the neck and spine. Walter Bennett sixty six, Raymond Sharp sixty seven, Kevin Sharp sixty eight, Raymond's brother, shot in rapid succession. One bullet passed through Bennett and killed Raymond Sharp behind him. A twenty eight year old New Zealand winemaker named Jason Winter was helping the cafe staff when the shooting started. When Bryant turned toward Winter's wife, Joe Ann, and their fifteen month old son, Mitchell, Winter through a serving tray at Bryant, trying to distract him.

14:07 By time, Joanne's father pushed her and the baby to the floor under a table. They survived. Jason Winter did not. Twelve people killed in the first fifteen seconds, ten more wounded, seventeen shots fired. Bryant moved toward the gift shop area attached to the cafe. People were hiding under tables behind displays, hoping he wouldn't see them. He found them. Nicole Burgess, seventeen years old, local girl worked at the gift shop, shot in the head. Elizabeth Howard, twenty six years old, also worked at the gift shop, shot in the arm and chest, two young women starting their careers killed at their workplace. Bryant walked back toward the cafe, saw a movement near the front door, fired at a table, hit Peter Crosswell, who was hiding underneath in the buttock. Crosswell survived.

15:00 Jason Winter's body was in the gift shop, but Bryant saw movement nearby. Winter had thought Bryant had left, started to stand up, said something to others hiding with him. No, no, Winter said, just before Bryant shot him again, fatally, this time in the head. Bryant returned to the gift shop, found more people hiding. Ronald Jerry seventy one, Peter Nash thirty two, Pauline Masters forty nine, all shot dead. In total, twenty people killed inside the Broad Arrow Cafe in approximately ninety seconds. The cafe fell, silent, bodies everywhere, blood pooling on the stone floor, Survivors hiding under tables, playing dead.

15:42 Too terrified to move, Bryant walked outside. He wasn't finished. Outside the cafe, Bryant moved toward his car. He'd left another weapon there, the SLR semi automatic point three eight rifle, more powerful than the AR. Fifteen people in the car park were confused. Some had heard the shots but didn't understand what was happening, thought it might be a historical reenactment part of the tourist experience. It wasn't. Bryant shot and killed the drivers of two tour buses, Royce Thompson fifty nine, Robert Salzman fifty seven, then passengers Helene Salzman fifty others were wounded. At the gift shop exit, Elva Gaillard forty eight and Jeannette Quinn fifty tried to flee.

16:32 Both were shot dead. Gordon and Mary Nixon, tourists from Melbourne. Gordon was wounded, Mary sixty was killed. Some survivors described Bryan as calm, almost cheerful, like he was enjoying himself. He got into his Volvo, drove toward the site exit the toll booth. At the toll booth, he encountered a family. Nanette mcatch thirty two years old, walking with her two daughters, Alana six years old Madeleine three years old. Nannette saw Bryant, saw the gun, tried to shield her girls, reportedly pleaded with him, asked him to spare them. Bryant shot Nnette first, then the children Alana, six years old Madeleine, three years old, executed with their mother on the side of a road.

17:19 I want you to sit with that for a moment. A mother trying to protect her children with her own body, Children who had done nothing wrong, who were just visiting a historic site on a Sunday afternoon with their family. Some people are just evil. Some things cannot be explained, cannot be understood, can only be mourned. Near the toll booth, Bryant encountered a gold BMW, four people inside. He ordered them out, shot all four dead, Glenn Pears, Russell Piggott, Royce Thompson who had just been in the car, and others. Wait, I need to correct that. Let me be precise about the BMW. Bran stopped a BMW at the toll booth, shot and killed the occupants, Mary Rose Nixon, Royce Thompson, Gordon Francis Nixon, who was wounded but survived. He then hijacked another BMW, killed its driver and passengers, and forced Glenn Pears into the boot as a hostage. The details matter.

18:22 These were real people, real deaths. I won't blur them together. Bryant drove the stolen BMW away from Port Arthur. Glenn Pears, thirty five years old, was locked in the boot a hostage. Bryant stopped at a service station on the way back towards Seascape, shot and killed Zoe Hall, twenty eight, who was refueling her car. Then he drove to the Seascape Cottage, where the Martin's bodies still lay, where this whole nightmare had begun that morning. He went inside the standoff was about to begin. We'll be right back with the eighteen hour standoff, the fire, the capture, and the question that still haunts Australia. Could this have been prevented tomorrow? How Australia chose to act? Twelve days that changed a nation forever.

19:17 By mid afternoon on April twenty eighth, police were responding to multiple reports of shootings across the Tasman Peninsula. The scale was incomprehensible, dozens of victims, multiple crime scenes, and a gunman who had disappeared. They tracked him to the Seascape Cottage. Tasmania's Special Operations Group surrounded the building. Negotiators attempted to make contact. Bryant fired at anyone who approached. Glenn Pears was still inside a hostage alive. Presumably the hope was that negotiation might secure his release. The standoff lasted through the night through the following morning, eighteen hours of tense waiting. During that time, Bryant spoke occasionally with negotiators by phone. His comments were rambling incoherent. At times, he complained about not having food, asked about media coverage, seemed disconnected from the horror he had caused. At some point during the night, Bryant killed Glen Pears, shot him dead inside the cottage, the hostage they'd been trying to save.

20:21 Gone Pears was the thirty fifth victim, the last person Martin Bryant would murder. By dawn on April twenty ninth, smoke was rising from the Seascape Cottage. Bryant had set the building on fire. Whether deliberately or accidentally, nobody knows for certain. As the flame spread, Bryant ran outside. His clothes were burning, he was screaming. Police tackled him, subdued him, placed him under arrest. Martin Bryant was taken to Royal Hobart Hospital to be treated for burns. He was placed under heavy guard. The hospital was soon vandalized. Staff received death threats. Tasmanians wanted to get to Bryant, wanted justice, wanted revenge. Some applied for jobs as security guards specifically to get access to him. The community's rage was understandable.

21:13 Thirty five people were dead, among them children, families, elderly couples, young people at the start of their lives, and the man who killed them was alive, receiving medical treatment, protected by the police from the mob that wanted to tear him apart. That's how justice works, even for monsters. They get trials, they get lawyers, they get the protection of the law they violated so catastrophically Martin Bryant would face that justice soon enough. In the days after the massacre, Australia went into shock. This was before social media, before twenty four hour cable news, but the coverage was relentless.

21:58 Every newspaper, every Tell Division bulletin, the faces of the victims, the stories of the survivors, the images of the Broad Arrow Cafe, now a crime scene. Port Arthur had been a place of historical suffering, a convict prison where thousands had been brutalized. Now it had witnessed modern suffering on a scale Australia had never experienced the death toll. Thirty five murdered, twenty three wounded, hundreds more traumatized, families destroyed, a community shattered, and the nation asked, how did this happen? How was a man like Bryant able to acquire military style weapons, Why did Tasmania's gun laws make this possible?

22:41 What could be done to ensure it never happened again? John Howard had been Prime Minister for only seven weeks. A Conservative leader member of the Liberal Party coalition government with the rural focused National Party, gun owners were a significant part of his political base, rural voters, armours, hunters, people who used firearms for pest control, for sport, for protection in the isolated outback. Taking on gun reform meant taking on his own supporters, risking political capital, potentially fracturing his coalition. Howard did it anyway. Within days of the massacre, he announced that Australia would have new gun laws, strict laws, national laws, the kind of laws Tasmania had blocked for years.

23:27 The National Firearms Agreement would ban semi automatic rifles, ban semi automatic shotguns, ban pump action shotguns, require licensing for all gun owners, create a national registry, impose waiting periods, launch a mandatory buyback of newly prohibited weapons. It would be the most significant gun reform in Australian history, accomplished in twelve days. But that's tomorrow's episode. Today we stay with the victims, with the community, with the weight of what happened on April twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six. The trial came later that year. Bryant initially pleaded not guilty. His lawyer John Avery eventually convinced him to change his plea November twenty second, nineteen ninety six, Hobart's Supreme Court, Martin Bryant pleaded guilty to all charges, all thirty five murders, all twenty attempted murders, wounding, arson everything. Justice William Coxe sentenced him to thirty five life terms without parole, plus one thousand, six hundred fifty two years for the other charges, all to be served. Concurrently, Bryant would never leave prison, would never be eligible for release, would die behind bars.

24:39 He's still there Risden Prison Complex in Hobart, now fifty eight years old, has attempted suicide multiple times, remains in protective custody. For his own safety. Prisoners, even in Australia, have their own hierarchy. Child killers don't fare well. He has never provided a Cohen explanation for what he did, never shown genuine remorse, never given the families the why that might bring some small measure of understanding. Some people are just evil. Some questions have no answers. Thirty five people were murdered at Port Arthur and Seascape on April twenty eighth and twenty ninth, nineteen ninety six. Thirty five lives, thirty five futures that will never be. The youngest was three, Madeline Micatch. Should have started school the next year, should have grown up, should have had a life. The oldest were in their seventies. Couples who had spent decades together ended in a cafe on a Sunday afternoon. Sarah Lawton was fifteen, a teenager still figuring out who she was, what she wanted to be. Nicole Burgess was seventeen, working at the gift shop, probably saving money for university, for travel, for all the things young people dream about. Jason Winter was twenty eight, a father. His fifteen month old son, Mitchell, was in that cafe when the shooting started. Mitchell survived, grew up without his father. These weren't statistics. They were people,

26:13 sons and daughters, husbands and wives, parents and grandparents, friends and neighbors. They went to see a historic site on a beautiful autumn day. They didn't come home. Someone has to say their names. That's part one of our Port Arthur coverage. April twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six. A gunman walked into the Broad Arrow Cafe and killed twenty people in ninety seconds, then killed fifteen more across the historic site, at the toll booth, at a service station, took a hostage, barricaded himself in a guesthouse where he'd already murdered the owners. That morning, thirty five dead, twenty three wounded, the deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history. The gunman is serving thirty five life sentences, will die in prison. Explained why tomorrow Part two. What happened next? John Howard, seven weeks into his job as Prime Minister, decided that Australia would never let this happen again. Twelve days after the massacre, Australia had new gun laws, the National Firearms Agreement a ban on semi automatic weapons, a national registry, a buyback that removed six hundred fifty thousand guns from circulation. America has had Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde, Las Vegas, Orlando, dozens more, hundreds, more thousands of dead children and shoppers and concertgoers and worshippers.

27:42 America has chosen not to act. That's the lesson of Port Arthur, not just the horror of what happened, but the proof that a nation can choose differently, can decide that thirty five deaths are enough, can change its laws, can save lives. Australia did it in twelve days. Tomorrow, I'll tell you how the thirty five who died at Port Arthur didn't die in vain. Their deaths changed their country. Forever, someone has to say their names. I'm reed, Carter, see you tomorrow for part two. This is Celebrity Trials