Insight editor Keith Moor reconstructs the terrible events of the Hoddle St massacre

SPECIAL: KEITH Moor reconstructs the 1987 Hoddle St killings, partly based on Julian Knight's own words. Some graphic content

IN 1987, army reject and troubled gun-nut Julian Knight made Hoddle St infamous for more than just traffic jams.

This is a reconstruction of what happened on that dreadful day and night, some of it from Knight's own mouth, and was first published on the 25th anniversary in 2012.

Warning: some graphic content

Carpark attendant Kevin Skinner left the birthday party celebration at his mother's Northcote home at 9.30pm on August 9, 1987.

With him in his Datsun 180B coupe were his wife, Tracey Marie, and 18-month-old son, Adam. She had the toddler sitting on her lap in the front passenger seat.

Unfortunately, their route home to Richmond took them down Hoddle St during the time the then 19-year-old Julian Knight was shooting randomly at motorists and pedestrians.

Mr Skinner saw four bodies on the roadway in the gutter. Seconds later the car door seemed to explode.

"I yelled out to Tracey to get down. I felt her head hit my knee, and I thought that she had done as I said,'' he later told police.

"The first shot was followed by about four or five more. After I heard the first shot I tried to accelerate, but the car coughed and spluttered and nearly stalled.

"I realised there were other bodies on the road and I had to put my head up to avoid hitting anyone . . . it was then I realised that Tracey had been killed.

"She had no face left. Adam was sitting against the door just staring at her.''

PART TWO: Melbourne's night of terror

GALLERY: Melbourne shocked by slaughter

THE HEROES: First responders remember a 'warzone'

COP NIGHTMARE: 'The lights went out in my heart'

Multiply that horror a hundredfold and some idea is gained of the terror that reigned the night a former Army officer cadet "declared war'' on the public at large and fulfilled a long-held ambition to "feel what it would be like to kill someone''.

Most people find it difficult to imagine being involved in a gangland feud.

Nor do they imagine being involved in an armed robbery and gunned down by police.

CHILLING CONFESSION: I am responsible for more deaths - Knight

THE VICTIM: Witness to slaughter

THE INVESTIGATOR: Interview with a killer

But people imagined themselves in Hoddle St that night. Driving and walking the streets of Melbourne would never be the same again.

Amazingly, our sensibilities were to be shattered still further within a few short months. Another lonely, misguided, gun-loving youth was to further ram home the message that Melburnians were no longer safe going about their daily business.

Frank Vitkovic, 22, strode into the Australia Post building on December 8, 1987, and threw himself out of an 11th floor window 17 minutes later. In that 17 minutes he killed eight people, wounded others and terrified many more.

Knight, born in the Royal Women's Hospital on March 4, 1968, reckons his act was nothing like that committed by Vitkovic.

"He was mad and I'm not,'' Knight told me in 1988 during a series of exclusive interviews conducted behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge.

"His was a premeditated act. Mine was spontaneous.''

This subtle difference between Melbourne's two mass murderers does nothing to lessen the horror of either atrocity.

Nor does it offer any consolation to grieving friends and relatives of those who died in Hoddle and Queen Sts.

Knight blames the Army for the deaths of the seven people he killed and the 19 he injured during his wild shooting spree in Hoddle St. He blames himself as well - but he blames the Army more.

"They trained me to kill and I killed,'' Knight told me.

THE VICTIMS: A grim roll call of who died

Knight was always destined to join the Army. He was adopted by an Army officer and his wife while still in nappies and spent the best part of his life living at or near military establishments around the world.

He only found out about his real parents when he was 18.

The postings of his adoptive father, Major Ralph Knight, took Knight to Malacca in Malaysia for 18 months, Singapore for 18 months, Puckapunyal and North Laverton in Victoria for two years and Hong Kong for two years.

Knight began kindergarten in 1972 while living at the Puckapunyal Army base and started his primary school education at Fort Stanley Army base in Hong Kong.

In 1980, Pamela Anne Knight separated from Major Knight and Knight stayed with his adoptive mother.

He idolised Major Knight though, and was devastated when his adoptive parents were divorced in 1981.

Major Knight re-married and moved to Townsville, but kept in regular contact with Knight and was delighted when he chose an army career.

Knight had received his first firearm, an air rifle, for his 12th birthday and he was only 14 when he joined the Norwood High School Army cadet unit.

He graduated to the Australian Army Reserve in November, 1985, joining the 4th/19th Prince of Wales Light Horse Regiment, and stayed an active member until being accepted for officer cadet training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra on January, 13, 1987.

Intelligence tests have placed Knight in the top 3 per cent of the population and he was an Arts student at La Trobe University before getting into Duntroon.

"I was proficient in the use of arms before I was 14. I first trained on the M16 rifle in August, 1982,'' Knight told me.

"I was first trained on the M60 machinegun at the age of 16.

"I also had done a survival training course and been trained in ambush and counter ambush situations before my 17th birthday.

"Among the other weapons I trained, shot and qualified on were an F1 sub-machinegun, M79 grenade launcher, M26 hand-grenade, M14 and M16 mines, 84 mm medium range anti-armour weapon, L1A2 automatic rifle and 9 mm pistol.

"I did assault courses, survival courses and terrorist exercises. I was able to kill and wound so many in Hoddle St because the Army had trained me so well.

"Something snapped. I went into automatic pilot mode. I was in an intense state of paranoia.

"Everyone bar me was the enemy that night, and you kill the enemy. I was trained, target up, fire, shoot to kill. Duck, weave, take cover. See a target, shoot to kill, don't hurt, shoot to kill.

"All that is drummed into you during Army training. I reacted without thinking.

"I performed exactly as my Army superiors would have expected me to perform in a combat situation.

"They trained me to kill and I killed by the text-book.

"In other circumstances I would have got a medal for what I did. I didn't think of those people as civilians. It was war and they were the enemy.''

Knight had been obsessed with South Africa and the possibility of contacting his real mother there. He tried to get to the country on a student exchange program but failed.

One of his Duntroon instructors noticed in Knight a particular interest in becoming a mercenary soldier in a war zone.

"He expressed unusual interest towards combat and participation in combat,'' the weapons trainer said.

"He spoke of operating in the trouble spots of the world. He asked me at different times about the Army's attitude towards officers going to trouble spots of the world to work in their own time.

"I could see with Knight that this was going to be an ongoing problem. I spoke to Knight and counselled him about his attitude and interests as he expressed them.

"My assessment of him was recorded officially and passed on through the chain of command.''

The officer said Knight had performed above average in all aspects of weapon training, but had difficulty fitting in with the rest of the group and being accepted by his peers.

One of Knight's girlfriends, the then 19-year-old Renee Cross, of McKean St, North Fitzroy, told police in 1987 that Knight was fanatical about guns.

"I know he had three guns, I saw them in his room and when we went target shooting,'' she said.

"Julian at first always seemed to be talking about being a mercenary, and had written to the South African Embassy making inquiries.

"His reason was that he hated black people and was supportive of apartheid. He also seemed to be not only strongly anti-black, but seemed to love whites.

"From the time I met Julian, he always drank a lot. He used to get drunk on Wednesday nights after he had been to his Army Reserve meetings and come home and vomit.

"Sometimes when he got drunk, he was very witty, and on other occasions he became very upset and cried.

"He cried a lot, more than any other male I know.

"Often on those occasions he would go on about being adopted and that he wasn't breast fed.

"On other occasions when he was drunk, Julian would get violent. It was usually a spontaneous act, and he would strike out.

"His wall was covered with Army posters and that sort of thing.

"Posters of tanks, soldiers with guns, but also photos of South Africa showing dead people on the road.

"I was frightened of him as he didn't appear to be stable . . . it was a gut feeling that I had about him, but he seemed really strange.

"Even when I was going out with him I thought he needed psychiatric treatment and told him so.''

Renee's 17-month relationship with Knight ended when he was admitted to Duntroon and moved to Canberra in January, 1987.

Knight claims he was a victim of various acts of bastardisation while at Duntroon.

He says that an older member felt the breasts of his girlfriend in front of him and that he had been confined to barracks and bullied on a number of occasions.

Duntroon officers, although impressed with Knight's weapons skills, were disappointed with his overall performance.

It was noted on his record on June 5, 1987, that he was below standard in all 15 assessed leadership and personal qualities, that he had been charged on eight occasions with various military offences and that he had failed two examinations since arriving at Duntroon five months earlier.

Knight had also been involved in a stabbing incident at a Canberra nightclub on May 30, 1987. Police alleged Knight had stabbed his cadet company's Sergeant Major, Phil Reed, whose nickname was "Mango''.

Knight told the officers who arrested him outside the Private Bin nightclub that his Sergeant Major had ordered him to stay in the barracks and had become angry on finding Knight at the nightclub.

"I walked up to him and stopped about a face away, hesitated, then I took the knife out of my pocket, opened it and stabbed Mango twice in the right hand side of his face,'' Knight said in a statement to police.

He then fled, giving himself up to two police officers sitting in a patrol car outside.

Knight's Army superiors invited Knight to either resign or be suspended, pending the stabbing court case. He was warned that after the court case he would have to "show cause'' as to why he should not be dismissed from the Army.

Knight chose to resign and his employment was terminated on July 24, 1987.

He came back to Melbourne and moved back in with his adoptive mother, brother and sister.

Knight managed to get a job as a storeman/driver with Cuggi Rarity in South Yarra and attempted to re-enlist in the Army Reserve, but was barred due to the pending assault charge.

Sunday, August 9, 1987, began ordinarily enough for Knight. He'd had a skinful of beer the night before and had slept in at his Ramsden St, Clifton Hill, home until 11.30 am. There was a family lunch at his grandmother's home in Hawthorn, in honour of his mother, Pamela, whose birthday it was. He lunched with about a dozen family members.

Knight got into his pride and joy, a racy yellow SLR 5000 Torana, about 4 pm to drive his younger sister home.

He popped into his local, the Royal Hotel in nearby Spensley St, for a quick beer before dropping off a Choice magazine at friend Lisa Ellison's Clifton Hill flat. She remembers Knight being in a "remarkably happy mood''.

It was on his way home from her flat that the SLR's gearbox blew up.

Knight was well and truly narked. He was having to sell the car to pay off a $7000 debt and had a buyer lined up.

Knight didn't have the money to fix the gearbox. He decided to walk back to the Royal Hotel in the hope of seeing a couple of friends and cheering himself up with a few beers.

While in the Royal he attempted to chat up two of the barmaids, failing each time - showing what good taste they had. The gearbox blowing up and the failed pick-up ploys further depressed the already disturbed Knight.

He drank solidly in the Royal for several hours.

Those he mixed with say there were no outward signs of him being especially depressed.
Inside, Knight had reached boiling point and was about to erupt.

Keith Moor is the Herald Sun's Insight Editor

PART TWO: Knight's deadly mission unfolds PLUS he confesses his part in other mass deaths