GOVERNMENT COVER UP
AT PORT ARTHUR
Readers are
cautioned that this report contains explicit details of
injuries suffered by the victims in the Broad Arrow Cafe.
In the
aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre, government went to
great lengths to ignore or suppress all evidence
suggesting that the official story of the day was
unsubstantiated rubbish. Nowhere
is this more evident than in the case of Wendy Scurr and
husband Graeme, residents of the Tasman Peninsula, who
with others fought to bring very serious distortions of
the massacre to the attention of government and media,
but were ignored. This report includes information Wendy,
Graeme, and several of their colleagues are determined
that all Australians should know about: Critical
information the Tasmanian Government,and several
bureaucrats, are equally determined will never see the
light of day.
Wendy Scurr
is a forthright lady with a sound track record of helping
others at the "sharp end" of paramedic
operations. During her twenty years voluntary service
with the St Johns Ambulance, and ten years voluntary
service with the Tasman Ambulance Service, Wendy has seen
and done just about everything, attending accidents and
incidents so gruesome most people would prefer not to be
given full details. As one of the first Port Arthur staff
members to enter the Broad Arrow Cafe after the massacre,
the carnage came as a shock, but Wendy's extensive prior
ambulance experience enabled her to cope admirably with
the injured and the dead.
Wendy Scurr
also thinks and reacts like lightning. Within
minutes of hearing the shooting start in the Broad Arrow
Cafe, she rushed into the nearby information office and
placed a call to the police at their headquarters in
Hobart.
Not amused by police
reluctance to believe she was telling the truth, Wendy
simply shoved the telephone outside the doorway and told
the police to listen to the shots for themselves. Her call was logged
by police at 1.32 pm, a point of considerable importance
later in this report.
It is
obvious that anyone with the ability to react so quickly
and pass information so accurately would be a prime asset
to the police who swarmed over Port Arthur later in the
day. Knowing that Wendy made that first critical
telephone call and then entered the Broad Arrow Cafe to
help the injured should have drawn the police to her like
a magnet, but curiously did not do so.She offered the
police additional information about the sequence of
events but says her interview was abruptly terminated. On
15th October 1996 Wendy received a letter from the
Director of Public Prosecutions stating she would not be
required to give evidence at the trial of Martin Bryant,
though it is hard to imagine anyone better placed to
provide an accurate account of events that day.
It was the
start of a long frustrating battle to get some of the
more controversial aspects of the massacre out into the
open, a battle Wendy, Graeme, and several others
initially lost because of government determination to
adhere to the "official line" agreed with the
media. That official line included the gunman being
inside the Broad Arrow Cafe for 90 seconds rather than
the four to five minutes Wendy and her colleagues
counted, but excluded the fact that several people were
shot dead behind a door that would not open. The official
line also excluded the fact that the only two policemen
on the Tasman Peninsula were decoyed to a remote location
just before the massacre started. And what about the
startling news that out of the 20 fatalities in the Broad
Arrow Cafe, 19 died from the effects of a shot to the
head, fired from the gunman's right hip without benefit
of a laser sight? Excluded of course, because the
government would be unable to stop the avalanche of
public comment on this impossible performance by an
untrained left-handed novice like Martin Bryant.
The only
personnel available to stop or interrupt the slaughter
were two policemen, one stationed in Nubeena 11
kilometres from the Port Arthur site, and the other at
Dunalley, a small town to the north with a swing bridge
capable of isolating the Tasman Peninsula from the rest
of Tasmania. Shortly before the massacre both policemen
were sent to the coal mines near Saltwater River, an
isolated location on the extreme western side of the
Tasman Peninsula, in response to an anonymous caller
reporting a large stash of heroin. On arrival they found
only glass jars full of soap powder, and reported this
via the police radio net.
A harmless
time consuming prank perhaps? No. Reliable sources in
Hobart state that this was the only drugs decoy ever
attempted on the Tasman Peninsula since police records
began, and meaningfully point out that leaving glass jars
of fresh soap powder was a very professional touch that
backfired. Why would anyone assume the soap powder was
heroin and place an emergency call to the police without
checking the contents first? And why did the caller
insist on anonymity? Graeme Scurr makes the valid point
that it would be hard to select a more suitable remote
location if specifically decoying the two policemen away
from the Port Arthur historic site and Dunalley. A single
glance at a map of the Tasman Peninsula proves his
observation to be absolutely correct.
Within
minutes of the two policemen reporting their position at
the coal mines, the shooting began in the Broad Arrow
Cafe. Wendy Scurr made her call to police headquarters at
1.32 pm, and there was then a short but understandable
time lag before the police comprehended the sheer
magnitude of the situation at Port Arthur and ordered
their Tasman colleagues to proceed to the crime scene. It
is unlikely they left the coal mines before 1.36 pm and
were then faced with a 30 minute drive to Port Arthur. By
the time the officers arrived the operation was over, and
both men were then pinned down by erratic gunfire from
Seascape.
There was
another sound operational reason for the decoy. Wendy
Scurr is familiar with the emergency plan for the area
and says that in the event of a major incident, the swing
bridge at Dunalley would be closed to traffic, to prevent
more vehicles straying onto the Peninsula and causing
complications. It is a sensible plan, and the command to
operate the swing bridge and isolate the Peninsula would
normally first be directed through the police officer at
Dunalley. But once the bridge was closed to traffic, it
would also prevent anyone leaving the Peninsula,
including those involved in executing the massacre at
Port Arthur. However, with the Dunalley policeman pinned
down by erratic gunfire at Seascape, the bridge remained
open to traffic after the massacre, and several people
are known to have left Port Arthur and escaped across
that swing bridge before the police could stop them. To
this day their identities remain a mystery.
One of the
most serious disputes centred on how long the gunman
stayed in the Broad Arrow Cafe. Wendy Scurr and several
colleagues were the best placed to make an accurate time
estimate but they were repeatedly rebuffed. Why? Would it
really matter if the gunman was there for four or five
minutes rather than 90 seconds? Well, yes it would if
trying to reinforce the absurd "official line"
that an intellectually-impaired invalid with a tested IQ
of 66 and severely limited cognitive functions was the
man on the trigger. People with intellectual disabilities
are not known for their tactical skills,tending instead
to move from one task to the next in an unbroken
sequence. Only a professional would wait until the coast
was clear before leaving the Cafe.
About the
last thing that any professional would do is risk being
tripped over outside the Broad Arrow Cafe by a large
crowd of nervous tourists blocking his escape route. We
know that the gunman was travelling light with only two
30-round magazines for the Colt AR15. He had already
fired 29 rounds in the Broad Arrow Cafe, leaving only 31,
far too few rounds to reliably carve a path through a
large undisciplined mob of unpredictable panic-stricken
tourists. A professional gunman would also calculate that
if he left the cafe too soon, he might accidentally be
filmed by one of the many amateur video cameras in use at
Port Arthur that day.
The risks
were too high and so the gunman waited for the right
moment to leave the cafe, with the Tasmanian Government
and media later helping to cover up this embarrassing
time lag by repeatedly ignoring Wendy Scurr and her
colleagues, and by deciding they were not required to
appear in the Supreme Court as witnesses.
Was Wendy
Scurr taking a wild stab in the dark with her time
estimate? No she was not. Everything at Port Arthur ran
like clockwork, especially the guided tours. The staff
were punctual to the point of obsession and never left
the assembly point outside the information office and
cafe after the precise departure time. When the shooting
started there were about 70 tourists still waiting for
their tour, which made the time 1.29 pm at the latest.
Wendy's call to the police was logged three minutes later
at 1.32 pm. Then she went outside to look for cover in
the bush behind the buildings. This took at least another
minute, giving a minimum total elapsed time of four
minutes,and more likely five.As several other colleagues
present on the day also attest, the elapsed time was much
longer than the "official" 90 seconds.
It was not
until most of the milling tourists had dispersed from the
area that the gunman emerged from the cafe, firing snap
shots to keep the few remaining tourist's heads (and
video cameras) down while he ran towards his next targets
in the coach park. The gunman's professional tactics
worked exactly as intended, and the only amateur video
claiming to show "Bryant" at Port Arthur that
day, has been scientifically proven a deliberate forgery.
Unfortunately
Wendy and her colleagues' determined stance did not sit
well with the official line being promoted by the
Tasmanian Government and media, and steps were taken to
include the matter in: " An Inquiry by the Director
of Public Prosecutions into The Door at the Broad Arrow
Cafe and Related Matters." Where the critical
elapsed time is concerned the DPP addresses the time the
gunman was in the cafe shooting [based on amateur video
audio], but does not address the possibility that the
gunman may have lingered for other reasons.Though part of
Wendy's claims in particular are included verbatim in the
body of the report, she is not mentioned by name,
although other witnesses favouring the official line are.
No doubt such a pointed omission is quite legal, but it
nonetheless seems most discourteous.
The locked
door behind which many people died is the main topic of
the report, which fails to reach any convincing
conclusions due to an overwhelming mass of conflicting
data. On the balance of probability it seems likely the
door failed to open because it was in poor condition, but
unfortunately no-one can prove in absolute scientific
terms that the door was not deliberately tampered with on
the day of the massacre. The expert locksmith employed by
the Inquiry to examine the door lock was unable to do so
with the lock correctly in place, because someone
unfortunately ordered the partial demolition of the Broad
Arrow Cafe, including removal of the suspect door, before
the Inquiry commenced.
There is
one ambiguity in the report where the DPP states: "I
was briefed by the police about the status of the doorway
on the afternoon of the 28th April 1996 and informed that
the door was locked for security purposes against petty
theft." This sentence either means that the DPP was
briefed by the police during the afternoon of the
massacre itself, or that the DPP received a briefing at a
later date referring to events on the 28th April. In an
attempt to exclude the possibility of direct political
contact with the police on the afternoon of the massacre,
I called the office of the DPP at 11.05 am on 13 November
1997 and asked for clarification of this single point.His
staff said the DPP was out to lunch,repeated my telephone
number back to me, and promised to pass my request to him
when he got back. For whatever reason, the Director of
Public Prosecutions did not return my call.
A copy of
his report was forwarded to Wendy and Graeme Scurr with a
covering letter including the request:"It would be
appreciated if you would treat the report as
confidential." Why? The Inquiry was conducted in
order to clarify matters for anyone concerned about
events at Port Arthur. Much the same thing happened to
the court transcripts of Bryant's pre-sentencing hearing
in the Tasmanian Supreme Court, which are extremely hard
to obtain.
Despite
Federal Members assuring their constituents that the
information is freely available in Hobart, that is not
the case. New South Wales farmer David Barton wrote to
the Tasmanian Supreme Court asking for a copy of the
transcripts,and was told in part:- "The information
provided to you by Mr Truss [A Federal MP] is not correct
... a transcript may only be provided to a person who,
not being a party, has `sufficient interest'. Should you
wish to correspond further I ask you to explain to me why
you contend you have `sufficient interest'... "
This is not
encouraging for those who wish to know what happened at
Bryant's pre-sentencing hearing in November 1996. The
events at Port Arthur had a run-on effect on the injured,
on relatives of the dead, and on hundreds of thousands of
sporting shooters, most of whom would much prefer full
disclosure.
As a direct
result of this excessive secrecy there are very few
Australians aware of the awesome performance demonstrated
by the gunman in the Broad Arrow Cafe, with the normal
excuse being the politically-correct line that disclosing
full details would lead to more distress on the part of
the relatives of the dead. Unfortunately this is also an
extremely effective way of silencing dissent on the part
of those who might take a very different view of events
in the Broad Arrow Cafe. All Australians have the right
to know what happened that day, and a brief summary
follows.It is a very unpleasant matter,and those readers
with aweak stomach or a nervous disposition are advised
not to read beyond this point.
The gunman
rose from his chair at one of the tables in the Broad
Arrow Cafe,removed the AR15 and spare magazine from a
sports bag, immediately killing Mr Yee Ng with a shot to
the upper neck,and Miss Chung with a shot to the head.
Swivelling on the spot and firing from the right hip, the
gunman fired at Mr Sargent who was wounded in the head,
then killed Miss Scott with a shot to the head. The
gunman continued through the Broad Arrow, next killing Mr
Nightingale with a shot to the upper neck and Mr Bennet
with a shot to the upper neck, with the latter bullet
passing straight through and hitting Mr Ray Sharpe in the
head with fatal results. Next Mr Kevin Sharpe was killed
by a shot to the head and was also hit in the arm, with
shrapnel and bone fragments from the second
intermediatestrike on Mr Kevin Sharpe then apparently
wounding Mr Broome, and possibly Mr and Mrs Fidler.
Still
firing from the hip the gunman swivelled and killed Mr
Mills and Mr Kistan with single shots to the head, with
shrapnel and skull fragments from those shots apparently
wounding Mrs Walker, Mrs Law, and Mrs Barker. Again the
gunman turned, shooting and wounding Mr Colyer in the
neck, before swivelling and killing Mr Howard with a shot
to the head. Next he shot Mrs Howard in the neck and head
with fatal effect. The gunman turned back, killing Miss
Loughton with a shot to the head, and wounding Mrs
Loughton in the back. Moving towards the rear of the
building the gunman shot Mr Elliot in the head, causing
serious injuries.
ELAPSED
TIME 15 SECONDS...
The above
sequence is the best the forensic scientists could deduce
from the crime scene and there may be small variations,
but in the final analysis they matter little. What does
matter is that at this precise juncture the gunman had
killed twelve victims and wounded a further ten in 15
seconds flat, using only 17 rounds fired from the right
hip. Such a staggering performance is on a par with the
best combat shooters in the world, and two retired
counter-terrorist marksmen ruefully admitted they would
be hard pressed to equal such awesome speed and accuracy.
Both agreed that attributing such aperformance to an
intellectually-impaired invalid with an IQ of 66 and
severely limited cognitive functions, amounts to nothing
less than certifiable insanity on the part of Bryant's
accusers. In military terms a fatal shot to the upper
neck counts as a head shot,so for all practical purposes
those who died during the first 15 seconds were killed by
head shots fired with lethal accuracy from the gunman's
hip.
Next the
very professional gunman moved towards the area of the
souvenir shop and killed Nicole Burgess with a shot to
the head, then shot Mrs Elizabeth Howard through the
chest and arm with fatal consequences.Swivelling around,
the gunman killed Mr Lever with a shot to the head, and
killed Mrs Neander with another shot to the head.
Temporarily distracted, he fired back into the cafe area
and wounded Mr Crosswell.Turning again he shot Mr Winter
twice, killing him with a shot to the head. On his way
back to the souvenir area the gunman wounded MrOlson,
then proceeded to the kill-zone near the locked door
where he killed Mr Jary, Pauline Masters, and Mr Nash,
all of them with single shots to the head.
At this
stage the gunman had killed twenty and wounded another
twelve with a total of 29 rounds. He
then stopped firing and changed magazines in a most
professional way. The magazine fitted to the AR15 held 30
rounds total, so by changing magazines after firing only
29 shots the gunman ensured that he still had a live
round in the breech in case anyone moved, enabling him to
kill that person instantly if caught unawares. Such
professionalism is well known to counter-terrorist
personnel. Critically,
the gunman then waited motionless in the Broad Arrow Cafe
with a fully loaded magazine, which brings us back to the
differential between the verified time estimate of four
to five minutes, and the inaccurate official claim of 90
seconds.
It is easy
to see why government and media continued to rebutt Wendy
Scurr and her colleagues' insistent claims about the
elapsed time and the door that refused to open.Either
or both had the potential to open a Pandora's Box with
catastrophic results, for there was no way the Tasmanian
Government could openly and honestly investigate these
matters without running the risk of
"accidentally" proving that its villain of
choice, Martin Bryant, was innocent of all charges. In addition, the
drugs decoy and the stunning accuracy of the gunman in
the Broad Arrow had to be swept under the carpet, before
informed members of the public had the chance to realize
the "lone nut" massacre was in reality a highly
planned paramilitary operation with geopolitical motives,
designed from the outset to undermine Australian national
security.
In the view
of this author, and others, the 5.56-mm Colt AR15 was
deliberately selected for three specific reasons, one of
which was its known ability to inflict horrific and
highly visual injuries at close range, caused by its
low-mass bullets travelling at extreme velocity. The
nature of those wounds caused revulsion among police,
emergency service workers and medical staff, thereby
assisting the immediate drive by anti-gun lobbyists to
have all semi-automatic weapons outlawed. As the leader
of the National Embalming Team wrote: "Approximately
90% of all deceased persons had severe head trauma. The
bullet wound was normally inflicted to the head with the
resultant smaller entry wound and larger exit wound. Some
of the deceased persons had an entry wound with no exit
wound, the result of this was an explosion of the
skull..." Despite her thirty years of ambulance
experience, Wendy Scurr still remembers being shocked
when she accidentally trod on shattered skull fragments,
before being confronted with a human brain lying in a
bowl of chips.
In the
medium to long term the lobbyists and international power
brokers will be unable to sustain their claim that Martin
Bryant was the villain, because there is simply too much
hard evidence proving the "official line" to be
a criminal scam. Some American video evidence submitted
to the Supreme Court has already been scientifically
proven a forgery; deliberately submitted to the court in
order to secure the conviction of Martin Bryant on all
counts, in the event that he continued to plead "Not
Guilty". Due to the seriousness of this offence,
copies of the scientific proof have been sent by
registered mail to departments which should take active
steps to have the material reviewed and struck out of
evidence,and then urgentlyimplement strategies to ensure
the future integrity of Australian national security.
If steps
are not taken, more registered mail copies will be sent
to more departments,allowing the author to compile a list
of those government departments determined not to take
steps to protect Australian national security and the
lives of Australian citizens, even when provided with
absolute scientific proof that they must do so. Details
of the scientific proof itself,and a full list of those
Government departments which refuse to take adequate
steps to secure the future defence of Australia, will be
published in full sometime during 1998. Anyone willing to
help with the expensive printing and registered mail
costs, should send a post office money order to me at 45
Merlin Drive, Carine, Western Australia 6020, made out to
"J. Vialls".
All of this
is unlikely to worry those lobbyists, public servants,
and members of the media who nowadays believe their own
propaganda that the police have literally hundreds of
eyewitnesses who will step forward in a flash to
positively identify Bryant at Port Arthur. Unfortunately
for all of the above, Wendy and Graeme Scurr have
contacted dozens of key witnesses present at Port Arthur
on the day. At the time of going to press, neither had
managed to find a single witness prepared to state that
he or she could positively identify Martin Bryant either
carrying or firing a weapon of any kind at Port Arthur on
the 28th April 1996.
Oh dear...
The only video positive identification was forged, and
all of those eyewitnesses we were told about failed to
positively identify Martin Bryant at Port Arthur after
all. How can this be? Basically
by means of the Tasmanian Government sitting on the real
evidence, while pumping vast quantities of misinformation
to an eager but thoroughly inept media.There is now also
convincing hard evidence that the gun control proposals
accepted by Police Ministers in May1996 were prepared
before the massacre, by an ideological senior bureaucrat
with United Nations connections. As
the truth about the massacre and the pre-determined gun
controls slowly but surely percolates through the
Australian community, the backlash against both Coalition
and Labor MPs will be savage. The Australian people will
not tolerate being deliberately misled by their own
elected representatives, especially on a matter of such
overwhelming importance to national security.
Detective
writer Arthur Conan-Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes
series, once wrote: "When you have ruled out the
impossible, then whatever remains, no matter how
improbable, is the truth." We know that it was
impossible for intellectually-impaired Martin Bryant to
suddenly metamorphosize into the lethal equivalent of a
highly trained counter-terrorist marksman, so we also
know that Martin Bryant was not responsible for the mass
murder at Port Arthur. Though improbable, the truth is
that a pre-meditated operation was launched at Port
Arthur with the express intent of murdering sufficient
innocent citizens to set a new world record. The motive
should be obvious, at least to anyone who has recently
watched more than $300 million of taxpayers funds being
spent on removing defensive weapons from the hands of
Australian citizens.
Footnote:
Many thanks to Graeme Scurr who used his full power of
attorney to relay Wendy's evidence and supporting
documents to me. Graeme is still striving, as he always
has, to achieve justice for the staff at Port Arthur, now
that the fickle media caravan has moved on and forgotten
them.
Tony
asks: If you find that you agree with a message
presented on this site, please print it out: photocopy it
until you run out of paper, then give a copy to each of
your friends and neighbours not yet lucky enough to have
the Internet !
Visit Tony Pitt's Freedom for
Australia home page
This
article has been published in the national interest. If
even one tenth of the evidence presented by Joe Vialls is
correct then there IS a conspiracy and it is important
that this information be sent Australia wide.
You can
also help by sending a donation to Joe Vialls, 45 Merlin
Drive, Carine, Western Australia 6020. One can be
reasonably sure the government is not going to fund his
investigation or pay his expenses.
palies5.htm
Contents
Copyright ? 17/04/97 by Joe Vialls, 45 Merlin Drive,
Carine, WA 6020
All rights reserved.
Published
by Tony Pitt ([email protected]), 79
Ferry Street, Maryborough, Queensland 4650
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