Secret life of Port Arthur mass murder Martin Bryant exposed

Before the Port Arthur massacre, Martin Bryant spent his days hitting on women, inviting himself to parties and bragging about his guns and violent porn. And that’s not all.

Exclusive: Port Arthur killer Martin Bryant wasn’t invited to parties on the Tasman Peninsula, in the years before he murdered 35 people, but he would turn up anyway and scare the local hippies by talking feverishly about guns and violent pornography.

Legalise Cannabis party member Jeremy Buckingham was in his early 20s when he found himself trying to dodge Bryant at gatherings. He’s still not sure how he found out about events because it was the mid-‘90s when there was no internet or mobile phones, so invites were via word of mouth.

It was all the more confusing because Bryant had no friends.

“He’d sort of just show up,” Mr Buckingham told this masthead. “He was an interloper, he’d turn up and try to make conversation, creep women out, and he was right into guns and pornos and stuff.”

A photo of Martin Bryant taken days prior to the massacre.

Martin Bryant on video during a police interview in 1996.

Mr Buckingham said one of his friends went to Bryant’s house once and saw “garbage bags full” of graphic videos and violent sex. At the time, pornographic videos and magazines in remote areas were largely only accessible via mail order.

Rumours about Bryant also circulated within the community. Some were relatively harmless, including one claiming he couldn’t actually surf, but told people he could. His surfboard was apparently bolted to the roof of his Volvo.

But others were alarming. Mr Buckingham recalled being told Bryant made passes at two female cafe workers. When his advances were rejected, he apparently went outside and stabbed a table.

He was also told Bryant visited the same cafe on April 28, 1996 – the day of the mass murder – looking for the women. When he couldn’t find them, he moved on to Port Arthur.

“I wouldn’t swear by it, but that’s what I was told,” Mr Buckingham said.

Residents of the Tasman Peninsula, and women in particular, sensed there was something unsettled about Bryant. He repelled people, Mr Buckingham said. But they had no way of knowing about his insidious resentment for anyone he perceived as unfriendly, or that his murder plot was, in part, a way of exacting revenge on the general public for ostracising him.

Unearthed psychiatric reports showed Bryant’s desperate attempts to make friends took him well beyond the shores of southern Tasmania – he embarked on long and expensive trips all over the world, all paid for with the fortune he inherited from eccentric Tattersall’s heiress, Helen Harvey.

Martin Bryant travelled all over the world to find friends. Picture: Supplied

Bryant and Ms Harvey struck an unlikely friendship in about 1988 when he responded to her advertisement for a gardener. She had mental health issues and took a liking to Bryant, eventually leaving her fortune to him when she died in a car accident in 1992.

Forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen, who spent almost four hours talking to Bryant just days after the mass shooting, said in his report the killer wasn’t particularly interested in seeing destinations London, Los Angeles, or Bangkok – he only went there to sit in cafes and “meet up with normal people”, and felt distressed when “it didn’t work”.

The best part of long-haul travel, in Bryant’s opinion, was that he could speak to people next to him, who were strapped to their seats for hours at a time, and had no choice but to appear friendly. Dr Mullen noted that he became emphatic when speaking about some of his more successful plane interactions.

Martin Bryant as a child with father Maurice and sister Lindsay. Picture: Supplied

Speaking with another psychologist, Bryant recalled a time he spent $5500 on tickets and accommodation to Lizard Island in Far North Queensland. He asked the receptionist at the travel agency whether she would go with him. She declined, so he started propositioning people on the street. All declined, so he ripped up his ticket, didn’t go on the trip and never sought a refund.

Eventually, Bryant felt hopeless and miserable over his utter loneliness. Dr Mullen described him as a “frightened child who felt powerless, emerged as an adult [with] the desire to assert himself through the killing and maiming of others”.

Mr Buckingham was on the peninsula on the day of the shooting, and he recalled finding out the killer was Bryant. “I thought it was shockingly violent,” he said. “The bottom line was no one was that surprised to find out he was a ticking time bomb.”

Originally published as Secret life of Port Arthur mass murder Martin Bryant exposed