Freak car crash at Rio beach unearths double life of pedophile John Gott

Australian John Gott is in a coma in Rio as police try to piece together the story of how this man lived two secret lives.

The car that smashed into Copacabana Beach, leaving Australian John Gott in a coma. Picture: AP

At 4pm each day, fugitive Australian pedophile Christopher John Gott would walk from his house to the famed Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, order a cocktail and watch the world go by.

It was a good life for a man who had been on the run from Australian authorities for 22 years.

Now he is in a coma in a Rio hospital as authorities in Brazil and Australia try to piece together how this wanted man lived two secret lives on opposite sides of the world.

His story would never have come to light if not for a freak ­accident in January, when a driver lost control of his car, smashing into the crowd at Copacabana, killing an eight-month-old baby and injuring 17 others, including Gott.

As Gott, 63, lay on the ground, blood ebbing from a serious head injury, an Australian passport in his pocket identified him as a 68-year-old Melbourne man named Daniel Marcos Phillips. Except he wasn’t.

With each passing day, more is being discovered about the secrets and lies Gott wove to evade the Australian Federal Police and keep his dark past hidden from his new life in Brazil.

An investigation by The Australian, which broke the story last month, and by Brazil’s largest TV network, Rede Globo TV, ­reveal Gott kept more than one passport and assumed multiple identities as he tried to keep one step ahead of Interpol.

Long before his life spun out of control, Gott grew up in Melbourne as a loved member in a family that was described by Gott’s sentencing judge as “close and happy”.

Born on May 31, 1954, he was the second eldest of five children. Gott gained a diploma, became a teacher, got married and had a son.

But in 1983, when he was 29, there was an indecent assault at the Fitzroy primary school where he taught. No charges were ever laid but Victoria Police still says it wants to question Gott over the ­incident.

Gott’s marriage collapsed and he drifted north, taking a job at St Paul’s Catholic Primary School in Darwin in the early 1990s.

Between January 1992 and April 1994, his sexual obsession with underage boys intensified. He would invite boys between 12 and 15 — two of whom were former students he had taught — back to his house. There they would watch X-rated videos or play video games before he would sexually molest them. He once booked a room at the Atrium hotel on the esplanade where he took three boys aged under 14, gave them alcohol and marijuana before molesting them.

When he was finally caught and found guilty in November 1994 on 17 counts of carnal knowledge, he was sentenced to six years in jail with two years’ non-parole.

Gott was released from prison in April 1996, subject to strict parole conditions. He told authorities he was moving back to Melbourne to live with his parents, but he never arrived. Gott caught a bus across the desert to Adelaide, where he vanished. For the AFP and others, it was as if Gott had fallen off the face of the earth.

There was no record of him leaving the country, dying or living under a false identity. Nothing.

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It is early evening on January 18 this year and Gott is sitting in a chair on the foreshore of Copacabana Beach. The man Brazilians call Daniel is a well-known figure on the beach, where he sometimes gives English lessons to the locals.

“Everyday at 4pm he used to come and sit around here,” Euclides Bittencourt, the local sand sculptor, tells Globo TV.

The beach cocktail barman Tiago da Silva recalls: “He came here to have caipirinhas with me. Little ice, little sugar and a lot of cachaca.”

On that fateful evening, Gott was sitting on the beach promenade as Antonio de Almeira drove his black Hyundai down the beachfront road.

Almeira, 41, suffered a sudden seizure behind the wheel, and his car swerved wildly off the road, thumping into the crowded promenade. It crashed through tables and chairs and sent people flying. With 17 injured and one dead, the accident made world news.

The car narrowly missed Gott but a piece of debris smashed into his head, changing his life forever.

Gott was rushed to Miguel Couto Hospital where police ­retrieved his passport and tried to track down his loved ones.

Two people went to the hospital to identify Gott, who was already on life support. They confirmed he was Daniel Phillips, an English teacher from Copacabana who had lived in Brazil for many years.

When the authorities checked their records, they could find no record of someone called Daniel Marcos Phillips entering or leaving Brazil.

“After the incident, we notified the (Brazil) federal police and verified that this person had no entry record,” police officer Claudio ­Ascoli told Globo TV’s Fantastico program. “Then we checked with the Australian feds who said that person did not exist in their records. That raised a yellow light: who was he then?”

Authorities guessed that injured man in the hospital must have entered Brazil through its ­porous land border many years ago or else under a different name.

Rio police contacted Interpol and it was decided to take a fingerprint of Gott, who was still in a coma. Interpol sent the fingerprint to Australia and several other countries.

While other countries drew blanks, the AFP’s computer screen lit up. The mystery man in the Rio hospital was Christopher John Gott, the man who had ­vanished in Adelaide a generation earlier.

Australian authorities told their Brazilian counterparts that he was wanted in Australia for breaking parole conditions.

Brazilian authorities made further checks on Gott’s background and learned he was an English teacher who worked, probably on a freelance basis, with an inter­national school in Rio.

When The Australian broke the story in March, Brazilian media took a strong interest, with Globo TV sending Sydney-based reporter Andre Rosa to Darwin to find out more about Gott’s story.

When police made further ­inquiries in Rio, they were told that Gott had lived in Copacabana with an Australian woman called Diana, whom he said was his wife. She returned to Australia several years ago after being diagnosed with cancer.

“We spoke to the super (of Gott’s apartment), the landlord and the doorman of his building and they all said he led a quiet life, never showing any behaviour that would damage his reputation as a nice man,” Officer Ascoli said.

Then they discovered that Gott had three foster children in Rio. One of them was called Daniel, the same as his false identity.

Daniel, now 32, told Globo that he had lived with Gott and the other two boys for six years and that they all considered him a ­father figure. He said none of them was abused by Gott.

Daniel said he was 14 or 15 when he first met Gott and Diana while he was handing out flyers in the street. He eventually agreed to move in with them.

Daniel said he was stunned to learn of his father’s real identity.

“Who isn’t sickened by these types of allegations?” he said. “That’s why this is so difficult on all of us. It’s complicated. We’re all shaken up, you know?”

Daniel has since got in touch with Gott’s adult son in Australia.

Police have so far found no evidence that Gott molested other children while in Brazil, but they have found that Gott was careful not to leave a paper trail while ­living there.

He did not keep bills in his own name and police discovered that he had a second false passport on him. He had videos he took of his foster children at birthday parties and sporting events but was careful never to be filmed or photographed himself.

With the Australian still in a coma and unlikely to recover, it seems unlikely that Brazilian authorities will devote much time to investigating more about the double life of Christopher John Gott.

“Only a miracle can help him,” Officer Ascoli said. “He suffered severe brain damage and his fate is either death or a vegetative state.’

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.