Michael Guider kept chilling newspaper clippings of missing children

ONE of Australia’s worst convicted paedophiles secretly hoarded 100 scrapbooks, feeding his sickening obsession.

ONE of Australia’s worst convicted paedophiles was keeping a dark and evil secret for some time.

Michael Guider was found guilty of the manslaughter of Samantha Knight, an angelic nine-year-old who was snatched off the street in Bondi in 1986.

Denise Hofman met Guider in 1990, four years after he committed the crime but more than a decade before he would be convicted.

They began working together and she thought he was nothing short of a genius.

She’d pick him up from his Sydney home every Sunday and drop him at Parramatta train station in the afternoon. She knew nothing about the sadistic crimes he committed or what he was hiding at home.

It is believed Guider was hoarding 100 scrapbooks filled with newspaper cuttings of notorious crimes in Australia — all involving children.

The Beaumont children, who went missing from an Adelaide beach on Australia Day in the 1960s, featured in the scrapbook, as did the story of Renee Aitken, a five-year-old who went missing from her bed in 1984.

There is no suggestion Guider had anything to do with the stories he hoarded, but his torture of Samantha Knight proves he had a sick obsession.

Samantha Knight went to buy a pencil the day of her disappearance.

Samantha Knight went missing 30 years ago.

THE DAY SAMANTHA WENT MISSING

It’s been 30 years since Samantha Knight disappeared off the streets in Bondi.

She had green eyes and golden hair that wrapped her shoulders.

She was wearing a pink shirt, a navy blue track suit top and blue, open toed sandals.

Samantha finished school on August 19, 1986, just like any other day.

She bounded home to her mother’s flat in Imperial Avenue in Bondi, and swapped her Bronte Primary School uniform for her casual clothes.

About 4.30pm, Samantha went to the Bondi shopping centre and bought a pencil and some lollies from a newsagency.

About an hour later she spoke to a woman on the corner of Bondi Road and Wellington Street and said she had lost her front door key.

She was seen on the streets about 6.30pm, when she went to a pharmacy on Bondi Road and bought a toothbrush.

Samantha was last seen just 15 minutes later by a neighbour who said it looked like she was headed home.

But Samantha never made it home. Hundreds of people began searching for her, including Guider, who knew exactly where she was.

He snatched her off the street and drugged her with a sedative called Normison to sexually assault her and take photos of her.

But Samantha was accidentally given a fatal overdose and she was left with Guider standing over her body.

Normison is used to help people with sleeping problems, like insomnia.

Michael Guider was jailed for the manslaughter of Samantha Knight.

WHERE IS SAMANTHA’S BODY?

Samantha’s body has never been found. Guider says he doesn’t know where it is either.

According to Hofman, he says it ended up in a dump somewhere.

Guider, a former gardener at a hospital, said he had buried her in a park in Bellevue Hill in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, but later said he dug her up and dumped her in a tip.

In 1995, Guider was arrested for child sex offences. The next year he was sentenced to 15 years in prison with a non-parole period of 10 years.

He was jailed for 60 charges against 11 children. It was discovered he sexually assaulted young children he would babysit and would drug them with sleeping medicine.

In 1999, he received another six years and six months in jail for another 11 charges against two children.

It wasn’t until 2002 that Guider was sentenced over Samantha’s disappearance.

He was jailed for 17 years with a non-parol period of 12 years for manslaughter.

In Hofman’s book, Forever Nine: The Untold Story of Bondi’s Missing Schoolgirl, she said she thought Guider was involved in the disappearance of Renee Aitken because of what was in his scrapbook.

Police did not believe there was enough evidence to pursue the allegations.

Michael Guider behind bars.

‘I DON’T THINK HE SHOULD BE OUT OF JAIL’

Guider has unsuccessfully applied for parole before but Hofman said his time would come again in February.

She said she wasn’t necessarily afraid of him, but believed he should be behind bars forever.

“I wouldn’t like to think he was out of jail,” she told news.com.au.

Hofman gave evidence against Guider after she became aware he knew Samantha and her family.

Guider was an amateur archaeologist when he met Hofman in 1990 and they would research Aboriginal sites.

“I went out with him on a Sunday for quite a few years,” Hofman said.

“We would walk along the creek and we found a lot of important sites. What I didn’t know was he was a paedophile.”

She’d never call him a friend, but they were colleagues and Hofman always gave him a lift.

Hofman went to the police about Samantha’s disappearance when she found out Guider knew the young girl.

This was after he had been convicted over other child sex offences.

Hofman later visited him in jail, but he’d never talk about Samantha.

“I went and visited him for years to get him to talk about it, he always shifted the conversation, all day,” she said.

“He would shift it away and he never admitted to me he was involved in her disappearance.”

Frank Soonius who shared a prison ward with Michael Guider.

A MAN WITH A BRILLIANT MIND

Hofman said she knew a completely different man to the one serving time behind bars.

She knew a man dedicated to research who had a brilliant mind.

Hofman said he talked about his mother a little bit, and she gathered he had a “strange” upbringing.

It is believed his mother was in a relationship with an alcoholic.

She said his brother also served time in Long Bay Correctional Centre for armed robbery.

Hofman said Guider had a good relationship with children, always buying them lollies and Coca Cola.

He would also form trusting relationships with single mothers who were drug addicts and would buy the children things the mothers couldn’t afford, like school uniforms.

Hofman said he used to watch Samantha’s house and even paid for a girl to get guitar lessons in the same street so he could be in the vicinity.

Former prisoner Frank Soonius, who was known as Witness O during Guider’s trial, is also writing a new book about Guider’s life in prison.

Soonius told the Daily Telegraph Guider would tell him about children he had abused.

“When I was in prison in 1998, I was so sick of all the things he was telling me I was always telling him to shut up,” he said.

Hofman, who has developed a friendship with Soonius, said the former prisoner told her Guider would draw pictures of young girls while he was locked in his cell.

Soonius told her how he would draw and draw, screwing up pieces of paper and throwing them on the floor until he got the perfect sketch.

With Guider’s next parole attempt just months away, Hofman says it needs to be rejected and he should stay behind bars.

“I just don’t believe he should get out of jail,” Hofman said.