Arsonist Gregory Allan Brown gets Supreme Court sentencing date after admitting perverting justice

A Tasmanian sexual offender, who served 19 years in a NSW jail for causing the deaths of six backpackers in a Kings Cross fire in the 1980s, will be sentenced next month for perverting justice.

Arsonist Gregory Alan Brown, charged over the 1989 Downunder Backpacker Hostel fire that killed six backpackers, explains where he set the blaze while in police custody at the Kings Cross hostel in Sydney.

A Tasmanian sexual offender, who served 19 years in a NSW jail for causing the deaths of six backpackers in a Kings Cross hostel fire in the 1980s, will be sentenced next month in Hobart for perverting justice.

Gregory Allan Brown, 62, who moved to Tasmania after being released from prison 15 years ago, was convicted in the Supreme Court of Tasmania in 2022 of attempting to involve a person under 18 years in the production of child exploitation material.

Brown was given a wholly suspended 12-month prison sentence for contacting a girl on Facebook messenger and asking her to send him intimate photos of herself, and had his name added to Tasmania’s sexual offenders’ register for a period of five years.

But after the Australian newspaper published a story in which a “trio of experts” alleged that Brown had lied during his bid to get a more lenient sentence - including claims that he’d been present when his wife died in a car crash – the arsonist was charged with one count of perverting justice, which he subsequently pleaded guilty to.

Three people told the newspaper that Brown’s claims were “bullshit”, that Brown had never been married, and that the car accident had not happened.

Brown was then charged with perverting justice between May 12 and December 2, 2022, by “providing information for use in the Supreme Court of Tasmania, knowing it to be false with the intent to secure a lenient sentence”.

On Wednesday, Brown appeared in the Supreme Court in Hobart, where Associate Justice Michael Daly committed him for sentence on 28 April.