Samantha Knight’s mum leads rally against release of Michael Guider
The mother of Samantha Knight, who was nine years old when she was abducted from Bondi Beach in 1996, today led a rally to protest against the release of serial paedophile Michael Guider, who was given a 17-year prison manslaughter sentence. He is set to be released on parole in less than two weeks.
- Samantha Knight decades on: How inmate helped catch killer
- Four teens quizzed over 18-year-old’s party brawl death
It has been 33 years since Samantha Knight, a nine-year-old girl with straw-coloured hair, was abducted from the streets of Bondi Beach by a serial paedophile.
Now, Samantha’s mother Tess, accompanied by her daughter’s childhood friends and dozens of locals, rallied together in protest at the imminent release of her predator, Michael Guider.
His maximum sentence of 17 years is due to expire on June 6, meaning without legal intervention the authorities will be forced to release him into the community.
“Samantha was born and bred on Sydney’s beaches,” Tess Knight said outside North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club, where supporters corralled before marching along the promenade.
She paused between sentences and spoke slowly, her eyes welling with tears.
“While we know some of what happened to Samantha, we don’t know everything,” she said softly.
Ms Knight was referring to the fact her daughter’s body has never been recovered after she was abducted after school on August 19, 1986.
MORE NEWS:
YOUR GUIDE TO THE SYDNEY METRO
Guider has refused to reveal precisely where she is buried, receiving a downgraded manslaughter sentence in 2001 after striking a plea deal with prosecutors to avoid a murder conviction, which would have attracted a higher penalty.
Labelled a “compulsive paedophile” by the sentencing judge, Guider had been questioned repeatedly by police but persistently denied having anything to do with Samantha’s disappearance. He eventually revealed enough detail to a prison inmate when he was jailed for separate child sexual assault offences in the mid-1990s.
That inmate later co-operated with authorities and relayed the conversation to police. Guider had said that he’d given Samantha Coca-Cola laced with the sedative Normison, a modus operandi he’d used to drug nearly a dozen other victims, all of whom he either assaulted or photographed.
“I must have put too much Normison in her coke and she wouldn’t wake up,” he told the inmate.
Bearing placards with the words ‘Knights Law’ and ‘Protect Our Kids’, supporters chanted from North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club to the skate ramp on the other side of the promenade, receiving encouragement and applause from onlookers on the way.
In front of the rippling ocean and a cloudless sky, demands were cried out by the small but determined group who turned up for the demonstration.
Chief among these demands was that killers should not be released if they refuse to reveal the location of their victim’s body — a policy more widely known as a No Body, No Parole, which is in force in NSW but cannot be apply to Guider because his sentence is due to expire, and therefore he won’t be released on parole.
“I’m concerned that he remains a danger to the community,” Ms Knight said.
“Let’s make this very clear — nothing makes this better. On such a day as this,” she said, pointing to the picturesque conditions, “she should be here with us, with her friends and their children.”
Chantelle Daly, one of Guider’s other victims, also spoke to waiting media, telling journalists that she felt angry and let down by the justice system.
“As a child I thought bad guys go to jail and don’t get let out,” she said.
“I fear for any child that he’s going to come across.”
The NSW Attorney-General is understood to be making a submission to the Supreme Court in a bid to continue Guider’s imprisonment.
The NSW Supreme Court will hear an application on Monday from the Attorney-General to keep Guider in prison for another 12 months.
If granted, this could be followed by an Extended Supervision Order that could seem him jailed for another five years.
“It would be inappropriate to provide further comment while the matter remains before the court,” the Attorney-General, Mark Speakman, said.
‘Out of control’: Teen allegedly attacked with axe, kidnapped
A Northern Rivers woman stands accused of kidnapping a teenage girl and robbing her before she escaped from a car in an alleged wild episode on a busy roadway.
Mayor’s political rival to join ranks of southwest Sydney council
A controversial former councillor who distributed a fake Islamophobic flyer about his rival’s wife and MP will return to a southwest Sydney council after scoring a win at the ballot box.