The serial paedophile who abducted, drugged and killed schoolgirl Samantha Knight has died in custody.
Michael Anthony Guider, 73, died at the Prince of Wales hospital on Saturday at 7.25am, a Corrective Services NSW spokeswoman confirmed.
‘As a matter of protocol, Corrective Services NSW and NSW Police investigate all deaths in custody regardless of the circumstances,’ the spokeswoman said.
Guider kidnapped Samantha Knight from near her Bondi home in 1986 before he drugged and killed her. He was later convicted of manslaughter.
Samantha’s disappearance had led to one of the largest searches for a missing person in n history and the hunt for her abductor continued for 15 years.
n parents changed the way they considered their children’s safety and hundreds of thousands of posters were distributed across the nation featuring smiling images of the blonde, green-eyed girl.
Guider had preyed upon other children across two decades and never showed any remorse for killing Samantha.
He was let out of jail in 2019 but was re-arrested in 2022 for breaching conditions relating to his five-year extended supervision order.
He was being held in Sydney’s Long Bay prison complex when he was taken to hospital suffering heart problems on Friday afternoon.
Guider has always refused to say what he did with the Samantha’s body and his death means the whereabouts of her remains may never be known.
Another of Guider’s victims, Lisa Giles, said on Saturday she was relieved to learn of her abuser’s death death.
‘This morning I got the phone call I’ve been waiting for for many years,’ Ms Giles told Daily Mail .
‘It doesn’t feel they way I thought it would… I can probably rest, but how?’
Ms Giles said she had lived in fear he would offend again when he was released from prison.
‘I had been trying to outsmart the whole system. To build documents to send to the DPP, to write my own story, to appeal to the courts to increase the intensity of his conditions.’
Ms Giles was preyed upon by ‘Uncle Mick’ from age five to 11 and fought hard in 2019 to keep Guider in prison when his 17-year sentence for killing Samantha finished.
‘The current structure can’t possibly put the community’s minds to rest because the threat has not dissipated,’ Ms Giles said.
‘This is an openly unrepentant criminal, and according to psychiatric reports heard in court, has not been rehabilitated, in spite of completing the full arsenal of courses available to him in jail.
‘There has been a systemic, cumulative build-up of loopholes and leniency available to Guider, and he has been largely protected throughout his incarceration.’
Ms Giles, who made a powerful submission to the Supreme Court in August 2019 objecting to Guider’s release, described then how he coaxed his way into her family.
‘I was one of his conquests,’ she said. ‘Michael is the psychotic bad guy you see in the movies … narcissistic and delusional.’
For the first six months of his freedom in 2019, Guider was holed-up in a secure facility attached to Long Bay along with other offenders too problematic to return to society.
But in March 2020 the loathed paedophile was quietly moved out of the Nunyara Community Offender Support Program centre at Malabar and placed in new permanent accommodation.
That angered and frustrated some of Guider’s surviving victims, who said at the time authorities had refused to reveal where their tormentor was now living.
Guider’s younger brother Tim had previously warned his sibling would have used his time in Nunyara preparing himself to commit sex crimes on prepubescent girls again.
After his initial release Guider refused to receive letters, phone calls or visits from anyone, including Tim.
‘His minders have said to me he doesn’t want contact with anybody from the outside world,’ Tim said in 2019.
‘He’s trying to keep his secrets basically. He doesn’t want anyone to know where he is or what he’s doing.’
Tim predicted Guider would have altered his appearance before he left Nunyara, including removing the long grey beard he grew in 2019.
Guider had previously been jailed for sexually assaulting 13 children from 1980 to 1996. Police are aware of other victims still too traumatised to come forward.
His brother believed Michael would find a way to return to his old ways once he was back in the community.
In September 2022, Guider was arrested again for allegedly possessing child abuse material on his mobile phone, violating the terms of his extended supervision order.
During a routine check on his home at Fairfield Heights in Sydney’s south-west police discovered Guider had been looking up material on his phone in contravention of those conditions.
He was subsequently sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison.
Samantha Knight’s 1986 disappearance from near her mother’s home at Bondi in Sydney’s eastern suburbs remained a mystery for 15 years.
Michael Guider has never publicly expressed any remorse for killing the schoolgirl and her body has never been found.
She was one of perhaps dozens of children aged two to 16 who Guider molested over many years. His usual method of offending was to drug then molest pre-pubescent girls.
Guider first molested Samantha when she was living with her mother Tess at Manly in 1984 and 1985.
He snatched Samantha from near her home in Imperial Avenue, Bondi, after school on August 19, 1986.
The honey-blonde, green-eyed girl had been seen that afternoon walking the streets in her uniform. Within days Sydney was plastered with ‘Find our Sam’ posters which described her as intelligent, outgoing and well-spoken.
Guider later claimed he had drugged Samantha with the sleeping pill Normison and she died of an overdose on his lounge while he went out to the shops.
He has since claimed he had nothing to do with her death.
Many of Guider’s victims were the daughters of mothers he had befriended and he sexually assaulted them during babysitting sessions.
Guider played a ‘game’ called statues with some victims in which he ordered them to stand still while he exposed himself and touched their genitals.
He took thousands of images of the children he violated while they were unconscious. Some of his victims have not been identified.
In 1996 Guider was sentenced to a minimum ten years and six months for 60 offences committed against 11 children between 1980 and 1986.
Four years later he was convicted of further sex offences against children but his release date was extended by only six months.
While in custody he was linked to Samantha Knight’s disappearance.
Guider was charged with Samantha’s murder in February 2001 but pleaded guilty to manslaughter under the weight of damning evidence including a confession to his brother Tim.
He was sentenced to 17 years with a non-parole period of 12 years to date from June 2002.
Efforts to keep Guider in custody beyond his original sentence failed and he was released on an extended supervision order.