Martin Bryant’s hatred for an elderly couple who refused to sell his father their business was the trigger behind his murder of 35 people in the Port Arthur massacre, it has been revealed for the first time.
‘s worst mass murderer made the admission in an interview with forensic psychologist Paul Mullen in the week after he shot up the historic Tasmanian tourist town with two semi-automatic rifles in 1996.
Bryant, now 58, is serving 35 life sentences at Risdon Prison Complex.
It has long been reported that Bryant never gave a reason for his mass murder with conspiracy theorists falsely arguing he had never actually confessed to his crimes.
However, Dr Mullen’s psychiatric reports, obtained by the Daily Telegraph,
contain Bryant’s confessions and a motive for the massacre, including the killer’s admission that he wished he’d been gunned down at the scene.
Bryant told Dr Mullen at his Hobart Royal Hospital bedside days after the shootings that the murder plot was initially hatched due to his hatred for Noeline ‘Sally’ Martin and her husband David.
The pair owned a bed and breakfast called Seascape Cottage, just north of Port Arthur, a former penal settlement.
Bryant’s father Maurice was desperate to buy the business and on several occasions sent his son to try and convince the Martins to sell.
According to the psychological reports Maurice would tell his son about his disdain for the Martins.
When Maurice took his life in 1993, Bryant came to blame the Martins, and believed the couple bought the bed and breakfast to stop his father from doing so.
He told Dr Mullen the Martins were ‘the worst people in my life’.
Bryant plotted to kill the Martins about 12 months before the Port Arthur massacre, but the plan escalated to a mass killing as Bryant struggled with loneliness and his inability to make friends.
He told Dr Mullen all he had wanted was to be liked by people.
As he approached the planned date for the massacre, Bryant became resolute in his plans.
‘It was set in my mind, it was just set that Sunday,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t worried about losing my property or never seeing my girlfriend again. It was just in my mind to go down and kill the Martins and a lot of people.’
Psychology reports from Bryant’s youth showed he was violent, tortured animals, and delighted in bullying his younger sister and children at school, Dr Mullen said.
His IQ was 66 and he had a limited vocabulary. He was, however, aware of his own social issues, and bullying at school led to a pervasive fear people were laughing behind his back.
Bryant also struggled to grapple with the passing of time and would conflate historical perceived injustices with the present day, holding grudges against perpetrators.
‘He talked of the extent to which he thinks about the distress and rejections in the past. He said that he tries to live day by day, but acknowledged frequent thoughts about past rejections and what he recalls as victimisation at school by bullies intrude,’ Dr Mullen said.
Approaching the end of his 20s, Bryant began believing he had no future and feared he would remain lonely and rejected for life.
He had trouble sleeping and feared his house was haunted by two women.
His drinking increased and he became a daily drinker to pass the time, talking to himself while drunk, according to his interview with Dr Muller.
A year before the massacre, Bryant believed his life was not worth continuing and fixated on people he believed had caused him harm.
He thought he himself would be better off dead, but wanted to take revenge with those he felt had wronged him.
Bryant initially had planned on strangling someone, but his fixation on weapons led him to using firearms.
The plan for a mass shooting came to him in the weeks before the eventual massacre.
He chose Port Arthur due to its history of violence, labelling the former penitentiary as one of the most violent places in the country.
Bryant took his firearms to Port Arthur on April 28, 1996, with the intention of killing others and getting killed himself, Dr Mullen said.
The Port Arthur massacre remains one of the darkest days in ‘s history.
At the time, it was considered the world’s worst massacre, with 35 people killed and 23 injured by Bryant.
Bryant was handed 35 life sentences and more than a thousand additional years’ jail without parole.
The shooting prompted significant gun reform under then-prime minister John Howard via the 1996 National Firearms Agreement.
The laws banned rapid-fire guns from civilian ownership except under certain, restricted licences.
It also tightened requirements for firearms licensing, registration and safe storage and established a government buyback of semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns.