“Listen mate, get here straight away. All hell has broken loose,” the voice on the phone said.

The former NSW police minister wasn’t on duty at the time. “None of us were. It was just a normal night during the week,” he said.

“I remember going to bed and hearing sirens, but I didn’t think too much about it because it wasn’t uncommon.”

Police officers across the Central Coast had just started to receive initial briefings on the shooting spree unfolding in their region. It would be one of the worst mass killings in Australian history, one that generated international headlines.

“It wasn’t until we all got in and found out the specifics, the enormity of it, it hit hard. It was complete horror,” says Gallacher.

Phil Walker was chief of detectives at The Entrance Police Station. He said it was his wife who remembers the call that night.
“She heard me say, ‘How many? HOW many? I was in total disbelief, I thought I heard incorrectly,” he said.

“I was told six or seven people had been shot and many were dead and there was someone driving around the Coast shooting everybody.”

Terrified residents who had heard gun fire and screaming jammed the radio stations with calls, crashing the station’s switchboard.

“Most people wanted to know whether they should stay in their homes,” a spokesman from local radio station 2GO said.

“People were scared,” says Walker. “It was something never seen before in the region, and never since.

“It affected a lot of people over the coming months and years, to hear about it, that a man was running around killing people. They were asking us ‘Are we OK? Are we going to be OK?’

THE TRAIL OF TERROR

It was just before 9.00pm when Malcolm Baker grabbed his sawn-off shotgun and headed to the home where his ex-partner, Kerry Anne Gannan, was living.

Using the stock handle of the weapon, Baker, 45, broke the front window of the house.

Kerry, 23, had moved into the Terrigal home with her sister, Lisa May Gannan, 18, only five weeks earlier, when her relationship with Baker had ended.

Kerry had taken out a restraining order against her former boyfriend, who she had known for five years.

“It’s Mac, it’s Mac! Hide! Run!,” Kerry yelled to her boyfriend of three weeks, Christopher Gall. The sound of glass smashing had alerted the pair, who were watching television in her room.

“The rifle came through the door and I saw this bloke there and the gun was up close,” Mr Gall said in his statement to police.

“He pumped the action, dropped the gun on me and shot me. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move, only hear.

“All I could pick up was Kerry saying, ‘What have you done? What are you doing?’

Then Baker said, ‘I told you it wouldn’t stop me. I told you I’d do it.’

“I heard Kerry say, ‘Just kill me’.

According to Mr Gall, Baker spoke to Kerry, ‘Do you want to die?’ and Kerry again said, ‘Just kill me’. And as soon as she said that, I heard a loud bang and something hit the floor.

“He was very calm, even when he was breaking down the door. He knew what he was doing. There was no expression. When he spoke his voice was calm, soft, no yelling. It just seemed like he was in control, he did not shake with anger or anything. He was just cold and deliberate.”

After shooting Kerry and Christopher, Baker strode through the house where he found Lisa sitting in the lounge room. He shot her point blank.

Lisa was eight months pregnant. She and her unborn child died instantly.

Baker then shot Kerry and Lisa’s father, Thomas Gannan, in the stomach. Gannan, 43, had driven up from Sydney to visit his girls.

The killer then jumped into his white Volvo and sped away from the scene.

‘I’VE SEEN INJURIES BUT NOTHING AS EXTENSIVE AS THIS’

“Everything was quiet, then I heard the screams,” said Bert Clark who lived on Barnhill Road, Terrigal. “The screams were followed by gun shots.”

Clark left his house to find out what out what on earth was happening, when he saw two bodies lying on the road. He quickly retreated, switched off his lights and crawled to the phone to call the police.

Ambulance officers arrived at the house at 9.12pm. “It was the worst I’ve ever seen in 20 years,” said Mick Mulqueeny, who was the first on the scene.

“As an ambulance officer you are trained to deal with these things, but this is quite shattering, “ Mulqueeny said at the time.

“I have seen injuries and death of this nature, but never anything as extensive as this”.

The police found Mr Gall, who had been shot in the face, lying next to Mr Gannan, on the road outside the house.

“I tried to tell her (the policewoman), writing things on a bit of paper that they were shoving at me, scratching things in the dirt saying ‘it was Mac, it was Mac’,” Mr Gall said in his police statement.

As Mr Gall was being rushed to Gosford hospital, Baker had arrived at a house at Sherwood Close in Bateau Bay, 10 kilometres away.

It was the home of Baker’s 27-year old son, David.

As Baker broke into his son’s backyard, David’s cattle dog began to bark incessantly.

Going outside to check on the commotion, David was confronted by his father.

For reasons only known to him, Baker opened fire on his son.

David Baker died instantly from point blank gunshot wounds to the back of his head.

Baker then jumped into a white Mitsubishi Colt that was parked in the driveway and drove up the Pacific Highway towards Wyong.

‘I CAN’T BELIEVE SUCH A THING COULD HAPPEN HERE’

Horrified residents from Sherwood Close, Bateau Bay reported hearing two gunshots and a car screech up the road. “I can’t believe such a thing has happened here,” said a neighbour.

At 9.28pm, ambulance officers arrived at the Bateau Bay house.

“It was bloody scary,” said paramedic Ian Forrester. “We dashed into the house and it as pitch black and the phone was hanging off the hook. There was just silence and dark. We went through the house checking rooms, not knowing what we would find.

“Then I opened the laundry door and found this guy shot dead outside, sitting in a chair on a back balcony. He was shot in the head.”

Senior Detective Phil Walker says it was a gruesome sight. “We couldn’t get to the body because David’s cattle dog was protecting his master, and it was a vicious dog so we had to call in the ranger to control it before we could get to David, to determine what had happened.”

According to Walker, the ranger suffered emotional difficulties from that night over ensuing years about what he saw.

Then another emergency call came through at 10.02pm.

Baker had driven to an address on the Pacific Highway in North Wyong. Kicking in the front door, he shot 25-year old Leslie Joyce Read in the chest and arm before proceeding to the bathroom where he shot Ross Smith, 35 as he was taking a bath. He died instantly. Leslie was taken to Gosford Hospital where she died from her injuries less than two hours later.

It is believed Baker then drove to his friend’s house, John Thompson, who convinced Baker to hand himself in.

At approximately 11.00pm, Malcolm Baker walked into Toukley Police Station and surrendered himself.

THE AFTERMATH

“By the time we all got in, the crime scenes had been locked down and then it was a case of sending in the forensic guys and the specialist police to put together the brief,” says Gallacher.

“It was some kind of relief for everyone that Baker had spoken to a friend, who had convinced him to go with him to Toukley Police station to hand himself in.

“Then we found out that one of the victim’s, Lisa Gannon was the partner of a police officer — that just took it to a whole new level in terms of the impact it had on us all.” Lisa was due to marry Police Constable Paul Martin after the birth of their baby.

Gallacher said it felt surreal but everyone knew they had a job to do. “We had to continue on. It was an absolute shock. Everyone had to switch off their emotions and just turn to that professional side of their training to get their job done.

“I also knew Ross Smith, who was shot in Wyong. I couldn’t believe that this was happening. None of us could. It was just, it was the time that evil came to the Central Coast.”

The impact was felt by everyone — families, locals, the police and the first responders.

“Police were shocked, obviously as police officers we have been to many crimes of passion, crimes of revenge, as well as crimes where victims don’t know the offender — but they tend to be one crime, one site, one crime scene, not multi crime scenes and equally as horrific as the next. That’s the thing that’s burned into the memory of those officers on the case more than anything, that they were having to visit one crime scene after another and then knowing that had it not been for the good fortune that a friend of Baker’s had talked him down and took him to Toukley police station then there quite likely would have been more crime,” says Gallacher.

KILLER PLANNED TO HEAD TO SYDNEY

“Over the following days it dawned on us what had actually taken place. That this had happened in our community, on the sleepy Central Coast — not in some suburb in the United States, this was something we had never heard of. This was Terrigal, this was Bateau Bay, and this was Wyong.

“The realisation that Baker’s intentions were to travel to Sydney to continue to wipe out the rest of the family — which is what we were told — was chilling. He was on a path of destruction to shoot and kill anyone he thought had wronged him,” says Gallacher.

“Anyone who got on the wrong side of this guy, whether it was emotional, a crime of passion or a crime of revenge, everyone that was on the list was a target, it was clear he had a longer list,” says Gallacher.

Five days before the killing spree, Malcolm Baker had confided in his daughter Tammy Campbell. She said in a police interview that her father had planned the massacre. “He said, ‘I am going to shoot them ... when the time is right, I am going to kill them all.”

Hidden under a blanket, Baker was transferred from Toukley police station at 2.30am to Gosford police station where he was held until facing six murder charges and one count of attempted murder.

“My job as the most senior police officer was to escort Baker to court the next day,” says Gallacher. “I was standing directly next to him at Gosford courthouse, in the back room. He stared blankly ahead, like he had just been pulled over for a drink driving charge.

“He had a goatee beard and grey hair, he was this little unassuming man that had inflicted so much pain on so many people, and everyone on the Central Coast, just sitting in that courthouse, like he was waiting to be fined for a minor traffic charge. I didn’t talk to him at all, there was no conversation,” says Gallacher.

“The tension in the court was electric. There were lots of security around this guy and no one knew how it was going to play out. But in the end it was very quick.”

Baker was committed to stand trial and on August 6, 1993, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for each of the six murders.

He was one of the first six inmates of Goulburn Jail’s High Risk Management Unit upon its creation in 2001.

“Barnhill Road, Terrigal is remembered for the massacre. There is not one local who would forget what happened there,” says Gallacher. “The impact on locals cannot be underestimated, even to this day, 25 years later — people still talk about it.”