Is Black Saturday arsonist Brendan Sokaluk a misfit or monster?
SPECIAL: OUR worst mass killer appeared as a "halfwit" to some after 10 Black Saturday deaths, but others said he was the "most cunning person" they'd met.
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HE sits in front of two arson detectives as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
In green T-shirt and windcheater, the kind a gardener would wear, he stumbles and bumbles his way through questions but speaks clearly whenever reinforcing the tale that his crime was purely an accident.
The inferno he created - the one that ravaged several Victorian townships and killed 10 people on Black Saturday - was the horrible result of a casual but admittedly stupid act, he claimed.
"I was smoking while driving, a cigarette - Pall Mall or something," he told the detectives during his record of interview.
"A burned bit went on the floor with a bit of paper and I chucked it out the window - the whole lot. I was hoping that it was out, but it wasn't."
"He" is Brendan James Sokaluk, a Churchill local described as a weird "halfwit" by some and a controlling cunning man by others.
A 39-year-old with an autism spectrum disorder, possibly caused by complications at birth, Sokaluk was known within his rural hamlet for all his strange quirks and concerning idiosyncrasies well before the horrendous Churchill fire erupted on February 7, 2009.
It was a fire that would leave Sokaluk branded as the state's worst mass killer.
On that fateful Saturday, the temperature at Latrobe Valley airport hit 44C. Relative humidity was only 10 per cent. North-westerly wind gusts were between 42km/h and 64km/h.
It was a day of total fire ban.
The devil's breath was stifling.
While most residents in and around Churchill had battened down the hatches and taken refuge to escape the oppressive heat, Sokaluk was taking his pet dog Brocky for a drive along Glendonald Rd in his distinctive '74 HJ Holden.
The old car was struggling as he approached the Jelleffs Outlet intersection.
The road cut through a veritable tinderbox, with scrubland on one side and a blue gum plantation on the other.
"I spoke to Dad about how stupid it was for Brendan to go up there on that day, because they had been saying for days how dangerous the conditions were for fires," one of Sokaluk's brothers would tell police.
Sokaluk would give several different reasons for "dawdling" in his car in the area that day.
He told the arson detectives: "(To) get to my mate's place you can go bitumen road or the gravel, and the bitumen road is dangerous because of hoons.
"So I go the gravel road, and I like to take short cuts off the gravel. But then it's rough. It just shakes the car. And I was smoking …"
BRENDAN Sokaluk was a bit of a loner at school.
The kid who was bullied.
He had a "disturbed" personality, according to one of his few school pals.
"One thing that comes to my mind is Brendan had a weird fascination for things, like fires and girls," the former school friend told police.
Sokaluk harboured a very real fascination for fire, according to more than one person who knew him.
While a student, he was said to have lit a park fire with his cigarette lighter after talking about sparking spot fires.
After finishing his schooling he worked as a landscaper, and joined the Churchill Country Fire Authority (CFA) brigade.
"He loved the fire trucks and the power of being a hero," family friend Marion Newton said in her police statement.
But his firefighting career lasted less than a year.
His time with the CFA ended in March 1998.
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After that he worked as an assistant gardener at the Monash University's Gippsland campus.
It was there he showed cruel colours, jumping out of bushes or bins to scare people for a laugh.
He would revel in poking sticks at snakes and brag about tying cats' tails together.
According to Monash University's senior gardener James Slater, Sokaluk was "the most cunning person" he had met.
"I am aware that he may have a mental impairment of sorts, though he uses this to his own advantage," Mr Slater said in his police statement.
"Brendan is a smarter person than what people give him credit for."
It was a sentiment echoed by Sokaluk's brother, Nickolas, who told police Brendan was not stupid because he "did a chainsaw course when he was at Monash".
Sokaluk's barrister, Jane Dixon, SC, had her try at summing up his mental capacity during his eventual Supreme Court trial.
"He's not retarded, he's not dumb in that sense," she told the jury, "but he's certainly not - in terms of autism - he's not some Rain Man character."
Sokaluk stopped working as a university gardener in 2006.
He later delivered local newspapers, pushing around a converted pram with his little dog in tow.
He also trawled the area for discarded electrical goods and scrap metal.
According to his former school mate, he had "a real geographic talent".
"This included back roads, fire access roads through the pine plantations and dirt tracks," he told police.
That description flew in the face of Ms Dixon's, who told the Supreme Court: "Frankly, Brendan Sokaluk would not be capable of calculating his way even out of a paper bag unless he had a map."
Neighbours would often hear Sokaluk tinkering with salvaged scrap in his shed while listening to Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine tapes.
He seemed odd and, at times, unnerving.
"Sometimes he would be hiding behind the fence and he wouldn't make himself known, but my dogs would let me know he was there," one neighbour, Patricia Hammond, told police.
"It got so bad that I ended up putting drapes up at the windows that face out to the back yard as he concerned me so much.
"He was not simple, just strange. He definitely knew right from wrong."
It was obvious Sokaluk had a liking for fire.
"He often lit fires in his back yard," Ms Hammond said in her police statement.
"Some of the fires were quite big."
THE inferno that was to become known as the killer Churchill fire started at the intersection of Glendonald Rd and Jelleffs Outlet in a blue gum eucalypt plantation only 3km southeast of the Churchill fire station.
"The fire started in an area in the bottom of a natural basin that was the Bennetts Creek catchment area, and it was generally an area of mixed plantations and native forest," prosecutor Ray Elston, SC, would tell the jury.
In his record of interview, Sokaluk claimed the burning tip of his cigarette fell on to the car floor.
He picked it up in a serviette and tossed it out the window, he claimed.
"I threw it out the window not thinking of it, sort of thing … It must have been alight and lit the paper," he told detectives Adam Henry and Paul Bertoncello.
He was asked what he was smoking.
"A menthol," he replied.
"I'm not really sure. I call it 'Palee Walee' … I was hoping it was out but it wasn't … I was probably too close to the trees … when I did it ... on the edge of the plantation."
(It would become the prosecution case that Sokaluk deliberately lit the fire at two separate locations along Glendonald Rd.)
As the fire took hold, Sokaluk called 000.
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His car stopped running and he had to leave it.
"It was big," he would say of the blaze. "Too big for me to put out."
Two strangers gave him and his dog a lift back to Churchill.
He briefly went home and later unsuccessfully tried to return to his car.
The blaze spread in a south-easterly direction at first, fanned by strong hot north-westerly gusts.
It moved 7km within the first 50 minutes.
Not long after 6pm, a south-westerly change swayed the fire's direction; its 15km flank became a raging front moving in on townships including Koornalla, Traralgon South, Jeeralang, Callignee and Gormandale.
Sokaluk found himself helping a homeowner as he watered down his property.
"I helped move the hose around while the guy was squirting all the stuff," Sokaluk told detectives Henry and Bertoncello.
At some point that day, Pat Hammond saw Sokaluk watching the fire from his rooftop.
He was viewing what only he knew to be his destructive creation glowing in the distance.
"I had all the doors and windows closed and the air conditioning on as it was so hot," Ms Hammond said in her statement.
"I went out my back door to see if I could see the fire and I could see the smoke - heaps of smoke near the Jeeralang Ranges … I could see it was a big fire."
The Churchill fire would go on to consume 36,000ha, 156 homes and a community hall.
It killed 10 people.
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Brothers David and Colin Gibson, both experienced firefighters, died some time around 6.15pm while defending their parents' home in Hazelwood South.
They, like others, were caught as a result of the wind change.
Annette Leatham died running from a stricken vehicle back to her daughter's Callignee home.
Alfred and Scott Frendo, a father and son, died in Callignee about 6.50pm while trying to escape the flames; Alfred in his Toyota Hilux and Scott near his own vehicle.
Martin Schultz died with his dog in his vehicle in a Callignee creek bed.
He was trying to drive to safety.
Husband and wife Alan and Miros Jacobs, their son Luke and his friend Nathan Charles perished some time around 7pm in a concrete workshop under their Koornalla house.
They all died of asphyxiation.
None of the 10 victims deserved to die that day, or perish in the manner they did.
And then there were the lucky ones, like Koornalla resident Anthony Sexton whose horse, Jeune Mark, led him through the darkness to a creek where they both sheltered for two hours as the fire front passed.
Mr Sexton says his horse saved his life.
"What commenced in Glendonald Rd was a fire that reached calamitous proportions," prosecutor Elston would say in court.
A few days after Black Saturday, Sokaluk spoke to Pat Hammond over the fence.
She suggested he would have had a good view of the fire from his roof top.
"He proceeded to tell me how people light fires," Ms Hammond later told police.
"He just volunteered this. He told me that if you lit a fire with a cigarette and you make the cigarette burn up to the fuel you want to light the fire with, then you have the time the cigarette is burning to get away."
Immediately after his arrest, Sokaluk told detectives Henry and Bertoncello he was sad about what happened.
"I haven't been able to sleep properly over this," he told them during his record of interview.
"I like the bush. I didn't want it to go up … It makes me sad …. because people died and it's my fault and I have to put up with that.
"I was stupid. That's why I always got into trouble at Monash, 'cos I was stupid all the time … I did a bad thing."
During his interview, Sokaluk played the simpleton, but was reminded of the car insurance claim he made the day after he started the fire.
He was also reminded of an anonymous email he sent to Crime Stoppers on February 10, in which he told police he saw a DSE firefighter light the blaze on the edge of the plantation.
But his "halfwit" act continued.
"What's your mum's name?" Det-Sgt Henry asked him at one point.
"Mum," he replied.
When charged with arson causing death and deliberately causing a bushfire, Sokaluk stuck to his story.
"I didn't mean for the fire and stuff," he protested.
"It was a stupid accident."
SEVERAL fire experts identified two separate starting points within proximity to Glendonald Rd.
"There's no flammable liquids involved here, no improvised ignition devices or delayed ignition devices," Ray Elston told the jury during Sokaluk's trial in early 2012.
"(One of the fire experts) said … that it would be something like a lit match or a cigarette lighter. We know about the cigarette lighter. The accused man had one with him in the car.
"All alternative means of this fire starting have been considered. Car exhausts, rubbish apparently spontaneously igniting, cigarettes carelessly tossed - all of these matters have been explored and rejected by the experts.
"When the accused man arrives at that intersection, there is no fire. No one else is suggested to be present. When he leaves it's ablaze.
"All causes save for deliberate ignition of this fire have been eliminated. There is only therefore one irresistible conclusion to draw from the totality of the material … and that is the accused man set those fires at two points."
In Sokaluk's defence, Ms Dixon said he was an "easy target".
His actions of calling 000 and giving his details were not the actions of a "deliberate arsonist", she said.
The jury found Sokaluk guilty on 10 counts of arson causing death.
"I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt, for the purposes of sentencing, that you intentionally lit the fire, intending to set fire to eucalypt plantations," Justice Paul Coghlan said when sentencing Sokaluk in April 2012.
"I am also satisfied that you lit the fire at two distinct places at or near the intersection of Jolleffs Outlet and Glendonald Rd."
Justice Coghlan said he was satisfied that Sokaluk had not set out to kill anyone.
"You had, in the past, at least some rudimentary training in the CFA and you must have known of the risk and potential damage of this fire," the judge said.
He sentenced Sokaluk to 17 years and nine months' jail with a 14-year minimum term.
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"The crime of arson always exposes emergency services personnel to risk, but this fire did so quite dramatically," Justice Coghlan said.
"The self-sacrifice and courage of all those involved in fighting the fire, but in particular the volunteers, cannot pass without comment and I acknowledge the debt owed by our community to all of you."
The Director of Public Prosecutions unsuccessfully appealed the length of Sokaluk's sentence on the basis it was manifestly inadequate.
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