Martin Bryant through the eyes of his ex-girlfriends: ‘He asked me to marry him’

THE action man who loved toy dolls: Port Arthur massacre gunman Martin Bryant through the eyes of his ex-girlfriends.

MASS murderer Martin Bryant is the epitome of the type of man most women don’t want to date.

But it’s through the eyes of Bryant’s ex-girlfriends that new insights into his disturbed mind have come to light.

According to one of Bryant’s ex-girlfriends, *Mary, who last night appeared on Channel Seven’s Sunday Night, he once cried because a boat they were travelling in ran out of petrol and he thought they were going to die.

“He started crying and thought that was it,” Mary said.

“He thought we were going to die.

“I was hanging onto some hope that we might drift somewhere.”

Mary said Bryant, who has never shown remorse for killing his Port Arthur victims, was “genuinely remorseful that he got (her) in (the boating) situation”.

“He was staring at me and felt guilty,” she said.

Mary dated Bryant for eight months and went on several interstate holidays with him one year before the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

Mary told Sunday Night she was initially interested in what Bryant had to offer as a person and wasn’t attracted to his $500k inheritance which he had acquired from one of his few adult friends.

She recalled a considerate Bryant who had tried to impress her on their first date.

“I remember we were at a restaurant in Sydney and he was looking at The Age or something and I could tell he wasn’t really reading it,” she said.

“I don’t think he was that smart.

“I could tell he was just pretending to try and impress me.”

Mary said she “remembered smiling” at Bryant and “going along with it to make him feel good about himself”.

“He was smart in some ways but in some ways not very smart,” she said.

Mary was only 16 when she dated Bryant, who was 27 at the time.

Bryant was reportedly smitten with Mary and despite their age difference, asked her to marry him.

“I was honest with him, I didn’t think he was too smart,” Mary said.

“I think (he loved me and that he was capable of love).”

In an earlier interview with the Herald Sun, Mary said Bryant was obsessed with teddy bears, dolls and violent videos, and described him as strange but “very, very nice”.

“He had long blonde hair, blue eyes. He had huge muscles and he was rich. I did like him a lot,” she said. According to Mary, Bryant shaved his chest to “look more like a woman’’ and brought back videos from Scandinavia featuring bizarre animal sex acts and bestiality.

More than 200 teddy bears and dolls were also scattered through his Clare St house.

“I thought it was really cute. Sometimes he could be so childish,’’ she said.

Mary said Bryant’s favourite film Child’s Play 2 featured an “evil’’ doll.

“He loved Chucky [the doll’s name], he used to go on about it all the time,’’ she said.

“It comes to life and it has to kill this boy so that it can be real and then it just goes around killing all these people.

“There was a phrase out of that movie that [Bryant] used to say: `Don’t f ... with the Chuck’.

“He used to get excited when he’d say that. He would think he was really cool.’’

The pair soon parted ways and it wasn’t long until Bryant set his sights on Petra Wilmott.

Ms Wilmott and Bryant had only been together for a few weeks before he committed one of Australia’s worst crimes.

Ms Wilmott was the last one to speak to Bryant — her first boyfriend — before he went on to unleash the one-man massacre, shooting 35 people dead and injuring more than 20 in the historical Tasmanian town of Port Arthur.

On the day of the executions, he had set his alarm clock for 6am, showered with Ms Wilmott, shared breakfast with her before she left and he packed his surfboard and a bag full of firearms into his car and set out for Port Arthur.

In a sports bag which he measured and purchased with an unassuming Ms Wilmott some weeks prior, he carried three guns, including a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic weapon for which he told police he’d paid $5000.

His first victims, David and Sally Martin, owned a bed and breakfast guesthouse Bryant’s father had wanted to buy, which his son had repeatedly tried to also acquire.

Frustrated by his failure to get the property he wanted, his lawyer believes Bryant killed the Martins then “realised he would be killed himself (by police) or go to jail, so he may as well go out in a big way.”

Petra Wilmott, former girlfriend of Port Arthur gunman Martin Bryant, was the last person to be with him before he killed 35 people in 1996.

Ex-Police officer Andrew McGregor previously said that Ms Wilmott made two vital statements that gave police clues into his psyche.

“One (was) that Martin wouldn’t hurt a fly, and two (was) that Martin was always looking for action,” Mr McGregor said.

“Martin once drove past a motor car accident, and drove around it a couple of times to check it out.

“Now what Petra was not aware of was the fact that Martin Bryant was not licensed to drive a motor car.

“If we compare this story with that of Angelo Kessarios from the Midway Newsagency, who knew Martin Bryant when he resided at Copping, and that Bryant used to drive in the early morning, that is prior to 6am to avoid police, but just prior to the Port Arthur massacre, Bryant had lost his fear of being caught by the police.”

Ms Wilmott’s whereabouts are currently unknown but she was last reported to be living as a recluse in a remote Tasmanian village in 2006.

Following the shooting, Ms Wilmott said she no longer loved Bryant and never wanted to see him again.

She told A Current Affair in 1996 she had visited him twice in prison to see if he was the same person she had known before the massacre or if he had changed.

“He was the same,’’ she said at the time.

“Maybe he was looking for action; he’d say that sometimes.’’

Bryant is serving life imprisonment in Rison Prison and will never be released.

*Not real name