Central Coast Massacre new details emerge 25 years later
IT is 25 years ago almost to the day that Malcolm Baker went on a 50 minute shotgun rampage across the Central Coast that left six people dead. Now new details have emerged.
Central Coast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Central Coast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
MALCOLM Baker was halfway up the stairs to the door when he heard his ex-girlfriend “muckin’ around” and talking with another man in the front bedroom above.
He had gone there “to talk to them and see if they’d talk, retain the friendship” after his defacto of seven years Kerry Ann Gannan broke off their relationship and moved out to her sister’s place on Barnhill Rd, Terrigal.
About four weeks earlier Baker, then 45, gave Ms Gannan a black eye and she took out a restraining order.
BACKGROUND TO THE KILLING
Gosford Court Registrar at the time John Arms recalled Ms Gannan saying Baker “wouldn’t do anything, he’s just become a bit silly”.
At 23, Ms Gannan was half his age and Baker blamed her family for interfering and driving a wedge between them.
He had just paid Ross Smith to relocate a house he had bought to “get Kerry away from Terrigal, which I promised her”.
But Mr Smith went bankrupt and the job was never finished.
“If Rossy had done the right thing by me when I paid him the money for the house it would’ve been over on my land and I would’ve had Kerry with me today,” Baker later told his friend John Thompson.
HIDDEN GUN
After Ms Gannan took out the restraining order police went around to Baker’s house and confiscated his guns.
“They’ve come and got me guns but they haven’t got them all,” Baker told his son David during an argument.
“I’ve got six guns but they only got five.”
Some say the unemployed mechanic, who was off work with a back injury, went to a Terrigal pub where he wrote a list of all the people he planned to kill.
What is undisputed is at some point after overhearing his former defacto talking to her new boyfriend Christopher Gall he went home to his Scenic Highway address and retrieved a 12 guage shotgun and cut the butt off it because it was “cumbersome”.
KILLING SPREE BEGINS
Baker, known by everyone as “Mac” because he hated Malcolm, loaded it with six shells and slung a cowboy-like fully loaded ammunition belt across his shoulder and jumped into his white Volvo sedan.
On his way back to Barnhill Rd he had a chance encounter with Ms Gannan’s younger brother Tom Gannan near Hudson Lane.
Baker wound down his window and asked Tom something about his dad and who the “other bloke” was with Ms Gannan but the young man said he didn’t know anything.
Like a lot of people Tom was scared of Baker, who was known to be violent and unpredictable.
A serial womaniser, who one ex-wife said she left because of his “wandering eye”, Baker had fathered nine children to six women before meeting Ms Gannan.
CHILLING LOVE NOTE
A couple of days earlier he had taken out a classified ad in this newspaper, which would come out the next day, addressed to the Avoca Nursing Home where Ms Gannan worked.
“Kerry Gannan. But I still love you, Mac,” the ad read.
Meanwhile Ms Gannan and her new boyfriend of three weeks Mr Gall, 22, were in her front bedroom watching television about 9.10pm when they heard a noise like a light globe smashing.
Ms Gannan opened the bedroom door but quickly shut it screaming “it’s Mac, it’s Mac, hide run”.
Her father Thomas Gannan, 43, confronted Baker in the living room where the pair struggled before Lisa Gannan, 18, — who was eight month’s pregnant — was shot in the head at close range.
Baker turned the gun on Mr Gannan before going into Kerry’s room.
“The rifle butt come through the door and I saw a bloke there and the gun was up, he ‘pumped’ the action, dropped the gun on me, and shot me,” Mr Gall would later tell police.
The blast sent him flying across the bed and tore off half his face.
COLD AND DELIBERATE
He could hear Baker who he described as “cold and deliberate” and Kerry screaming “what have you done, what are you doing?” before she was shot in the back at close range.
Mr Gannan managed to stagger outside where Baker shot him once more and he collapsed dead in the middle of the road.
Neighbours recalled hearing “screams of terror”.
Baker casually got back into his car and drove to his son David’s house at Sherwood Close, Bateau Bay.
He had formed the misguided belief his son, 27, had slept with Ms Gannan and was supplying her cannabis.
David’s girlfriend Michelle Cooper had not long got home with her toddler and they were relaxing in the lounge when a dog started barking outside.
OWN SON KILLED
“Dave got up and went out to the back yard,” Ms Cooper said in her statement.
Then she heard two quick shots and looked out the window and saw David slumped on a chair near the car port.
Meanwhile back at Terrigal Mr Gall, unable to speak, was growing frustrated trying to tell police the identity of their attacker.
As news of the Bateau Bay shooting came across the police radio Mr Gall leant down and scrawled the name “Mac” in the dirt with a bloodied finger.
Baker meanwhile had driven to Mr Smith’s house on the Pacific Highway at North Gosford.
Mr Smith’s girlfriend Leslie Read, 25, answered the door.
Baker snapped “where is he?” to which the terrified woman replied “in the bath”.
SHOT IN BATH
The crazed gunman walked into the bathroom where he shot Mr Smith, 35, in the head and again in the chest at point blank range as he lay defenceless in the tub.
As Baker left he shot Ms Read — a woman he had never met — twice in the chest but later told police he couldn’t remember doing so.
Baker got into Mr Smith’s Mazda, which had the keys still in the ignition, and drove to a service station at Doyalson where he stopped for petrol and “a cold drink”.
As he was filling up Mr Smith’s parents happened to be driving past and saw Baker with their son’s car.
They drove straight to Wyong police station.
Baker meanwhile had driven to Second Ave, Toukley, to see his friend John Thompson.
Once inside Baker told him “I got ‘em all”.
“Who?” asked Mr Thompson.
“Kerry, her sister, Tom and some bloke who was there and that c ... Ross Smith,” Baker replied.
KILLER SURRENDERS
Mr Thompson said Baker then pulled out registration papers for his Volvo and a box trailer and signed the transfer details into his name.
Baker asked for a piece of paper on which he signed over all his possession to Mr Thompson who he told to “look after my daughter Julie, no one else, they have all put shit on me”.
Mr Thompson suggested Baker hand himself in before the pair walked into Toukley police station about 11pm.
Mr Thompson spoke to the station sergeant who he asked “can we see you in private, my mate has got himself in a fair bit of trouble and wants to give himself up peacefully”.
The station sergeant asked what it was about and who was Mr Thompson’s friend.
Baker replied: “Malcolm Baker, I think you are looking for me”.