Andrew Rule: Outback killer Josef Schwab’s murders were even worse than Wolf Creek
Long before the fictional Wolf Creek, there was the real thing: a serial killer in the outback, hunting humans. He seemed average in every way — until the murders started, and didn’t stop.
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Long before the fictional Wolf Creek, there was the real thing: a serial killer in the outback, hunting humans.
Not that anyone saw anything evil about the quiet young German when he arrived in Brisbane in April 1987. He seemed average in every way, but he wasn’t normal.
Like Frank Vitkovic and Julian Knight, the two homegrown mass killers who shocked the nation a few months later in what was a terrible year. Behind the masks they held up to the world, their minds squirmed with deadly fantasies.
The brooding Vitkovic killed eight people before jumping 11 storeys to his death in Queen St that December. Maybe he copied Knight, the disturbed Duntroon military cadet who killed six and wounded many before his whimpering surrender to police at Hoddle St on August 9. But was it the German, now almost forgotten, who triggered Knight?
Only eight weeks before Knight’s massacre, the killer tourist started out shooting buffalo then switched to humans. His first two victims were campers, father and son Lance and Marcus Bullen.
If it weren’t for the skill and nerve of a group of police marksmen sent after the killer, the odds are he would have committed one of the worst mass murders ever. He was equipped to do it — and signs were that he was just getting started when they found him.
Unlike Martin Bryant, who killed 35 people at Port Arthur a decade later, the German was a skilled shooter. Unlike Bryant, he had not one but four deadly weapons, including a rapid-fire carbine with two 30-cartridge magazines taped end to end. He had thousands of rounds of ammunition, all bought for cash with the four guns in a Brisbane gun shop.
Just 24 hours after a lawman’s bullet put an end to the killer’s rampage, the annual rodeo was due to start in nearby Fitzroy Crossing. Hundreds of people were heading to town to fill the rodeo grounds. The men who stopped him are still convinced the shooter was planning a mass attack.
Former Vietnam SAS veteran Barry Lansdown, now retired in Queensland, recalls it matter-of-factly, as does the other Vietnam vet in the group, Don McPherson.
Lansdown had joined the state police to help set up a tactical response group after nearly 20 years in the SAS. He was home in suburban Duncraig on the night of June 16, 1987, when the call came about the Top End killings.
Within hours, the two veterans, five other armed tactical response officers and a forensic expert were jammed in a chartered aircraft to Kununurra. One man had to sit on the tiny toilet seat.
They landed after midnight. At dawn they flew to Home Valley Station, where three locals were missing after a camping trip to the Pentecost River.
They tracked footprints leading from a burnt-out vehicle. They found empty bullet shells and the bodies of a man and woman on the riverbank. These were the missing people: Phillip Walkemeyer and his fiance Julie Warren. They couldn’t see the other missing man, Terry Bolt.
Next day, they searched each side of the river. They spotted Bolt’s body, lodged against rocks at some rapids.
It seemed the victim had swum for his life in the crocodile-infested river and had been shot as he swam. Terror beyond belief.
They recovered the bodies, then the hunt for the hunter began. They were looking for the driver of a white Toyota 4WD that a road-train driver had seen speeding from the area.
For three days, the group had to “ambush” each vehicle that passed on the lonely roads. They had no option but to terrify innocent drivers by pulling them over at gunpoint because any one of them could have been the killer.
Late on the Friday morning, June 19, they were called back to Fitzroy Crossing. A helicopter pilot had news: while mustering horses for the rodeo he’d spotted a vehicle hidden under a tarpaulin in the bush. He sketched a map.
They drove out, then walked into the scrub towards the site. As they walked, they heard a rifle shot. Two minutes later, another. Then another, evenly spaced.
Lansdown, professional marksman, recognised the pattern. “He’s zeroing in his sights,” he said. The unknown shooter knew what he was doing, and was preparing for more shooting.
They split into two groups and advanced, with three on the ground while three moved forward an agreed distance and dropped. The seventh member stayed behind Lansdown to guard their backs.
They got within sight of the shooter’s Toyota. The police plane flew over it to do surveillance. The hidden shooter shot at the plane, which dived to make it harder for him to aim. They all thought it had been hit and would crash.
The group leader, the late Bill Matson, bravely stood twice and yelled: “This is the police, Stop shooting!” He was answered with shots. They fired canisters of capsicum gas, which started a fire.
The shooter jumped into the vehicle. Lansdown put a shot through the door. The shooter disappeared. But, seconds later, he sprayed dozens of bullets towards them. One bullet went through the sleeve of policeman Ed Trindall’s shirt as he crouched behind an ant nest.
The police fired bursts of return fire. The shooter ran from the vehicle but then staggered and fell. He was dead with a bullet through the heart.
The gunman’s name was Josef Schwab, aged 26. He was from the picturesque town of Starnberg in the Bavarian lakes district, where photographers take pictures for Christmas cards. He’d had a working holiday in South Australia a few years earlier.
At first, Schwab’s parents could not believe it. But inquiries revealed that their son, the quiet security guard, was obsessed with guns and expert with them. Friends told police he’d been a prolific thief and carried a pistol from the age of 16.
When police searched an Adelaide house he had used on his previous trip, they found three rifles he had left there. No one suspected what he was capable of until it was too late.
After five funerals and an inquest, Schwab’s ashes were sent back to Germany.
Now, 33 years on, the police who tracked him are going to be recognised. Their names were suppressed for nearly three decades — a hangover from fears that their target was a member of a secret terrorist group that might avenge him. But late last year, the six survivors were quietly asked if they would accept a bravery commendation.
When the coronavirus restrictions ease, they will go to Government House and get the badge of courage. Josef Schwab is barely recalled now. But if those police officers had not risked their lives to track him, dozens more people could have died the next day.
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