Port Arthur gunman Martin Bryant’s original plan was to murder an older couple who refused to sell their bed and breakfast to his late father, but unearthed psychiatric reports reveal he decided that to “kill a few more” wouldn’t make any difference.

Bryant made the key disclosure, and many more, during an almost four-hour interview with forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen, about six days after his murderous rampage through the former convict settlement in April 1996.

The interview with Dr Mullen was one of three Bryant had with mental health experts after the shootings. Four reports were obtained by this masthead during an extensive investigation.

Bryant was 28 when Hobart Supreme Court Judge William Cox gave him 35 consecutive life sentences, one for every life taken, without the possibility of parole. Now 58, he is morbidly obese and languishing at Risdon Prison Complex.

It has long been reported that Bryant never gave a reason for the mass shooting, and even argued by conspiracy theorists that he never confessed to the crimes – he only changed his plea to guilty months after the fact on the advice of his lawyer John Avery.

However, the unearthed reports show Bryant not only confessed to the mass shooting while speaking with Dr Mullen, but he explained why he did it, why he chose Port Arthur, detailed the weeks he spent planning it, and said his biggest regret was that he himself wasn’t gunned down on the scene.

From his bed at Hobart Royal Hospital, days after the shootings, Bryant told Dr Mullen his murder plot began due to his burning hatred for Noeline ‘Sally’ Martin and her husband David who owned a property called Seascape Cottage, just north of Port Arthur.

Bryant’s father Maurice had desperately wanted to buy Seascape and occasionally sent his son on unsuccessful missions to convince the Martins to sell. In the evenings, Maurice would drink and complain to Bryant about the apparent damage the couple had done to his family.

In the years after Maurice took his own life, Bryant came to believe the Martins were vindictive and bought Seascape to stop his father from buying it. He thought their refusal to sell broke his father’s heart and led to the downfall of his family.

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He described the Martins to Dr Mullen as “very mean people” and “the worst people in my life”.

The initial plan to kill the couple was hatched about 12 months before the shootings, but the plan appeared to escalate to mass murder amid welling feelings of intense loneliness and his inability to form friendships.

He was furious at the general public for being unkind to him, telling Dr Mullen: “All I wanted was for people to like me.”

Early in the interview, Bryant tried to portray himself as a cheerful person who was only frustrated by what he perceived as the unfriendliness of others. As the conversation continued, it became apparent those issues were more than frustrations, made worse by his intellectual and personality deficits.

Bryant’s IQ was 66, his vocabulary was limited, he was painfully aware of his intense social issues. He was bullied at school and later feared that people were laughing at him behind his back, picking on him for the way he looked and dressed.

Bryant also lacked empathy and compassion, Dr Mullen said. Psychology reports from when he was a child showed he was violent and bullied younger children at school, tortured animals and took delight in tormenting his younger sister, Lindy, and yelling at her friends.

He also struggled to grasp the passage of time and would conflate events that took place decades prior with the present day. Various social injustices throughout his life appeared to be current in his mind and he held grudges.

Dr Mullen said: “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.”

By his late 20s, Bryant felt as though he had no real future and that he would always be lonely and rejected. He was plagued by sleep disturbances and nightmares and believed his house was haunted by two women who would tell him to “come here” during the night. He feared large hands would emerge from under the bed and grab him.

He went from drinking occasionally to polishing off half a bottle of Baileys, Sambuca, and a few cans of Guinness every day. Bryant gave a few reasons for his drinking – to pass the time, and because being drunk allowed him to keep company by talking to himself. He started sleeping in because he had no reason to get up.

In about 1995, he came to the conclusion life was not worth living, became increasingly preoccupied with people who he believed had wronged him in the past. He thought he would be better off dead and wondered how he could get even with those he believed had mistreated him.

Bryant told Dr Mullen he decided to end things. When asked what that meant, he told the doctor that he meant “kill [myself], get out of it all”.

He initially thought about strangling someone who was unfriendly to him, but his thoughts turned to shooting them. Dr Mullen described Bryant’s fixation on weaponry as “effusive”. With a gun in his hand, he felt powerful and in control.

Bryant told Dr Mullen: “I thought guns would be better, the more power, the better.”

While the plan to kill the Martins was fixed in his mind, Bryant wasn’t sure whether the broader Port Arthur plan came to him 12 or four weeks before the incident. But he was able to say that he chose the location because, “a lot of violence has happened there, it must be the most violent place in Australia, it seemed like the right place.”

Dr Mullen noted that Bryant had also told Mr Avery, his former lawyer, that he was intent on carrying out his plan on a Sunday. “It was set in my mind, it was just set that Sunday ... 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,” he said.

That’s what he did. On Sunday April 28, 1996, Bryant murdered the Martins and 33 others. Less than a week later, he told Dr Mullen that his real mistake was staying alive.

“He went to Port Arthur with the intention of killing, and being killed,” Dr Mullen said. “He acknowledged that he had thought about how to do it and had intended to end his life by either being shot down or by blowing himself up.”

In a further interview with psychologist Dr William Lucas, Bryant said he was so lonely that he had considered taking his own life prior to the shootings.

Referring to his current situation, locked in a prison hospital facing 35 murder charges, Bryant added: “I’m okay now.”

Dr Lucas asked what he meant by that. Bryant replied: “People are caring for me, I’m happy with the food, they talk to me and are company.”

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