Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly by Sue Bursztynski

Margaret Pahud and Olive Cleveland. Next, a woman called Muriel Falconer was bashed over the head in her own hallway. This time, Glover left a helpful footprint in the blood around the body.
    An old woman he attacked in bed at the Greenwich Hospital pressed an alarm button. A nurse called the police, who suspected him, but hadn’t enough evidence to hold him. They decided to keep an eye on him.
    Glover tried to commit suicide. He left a suicide note for his family, saying there would be no more grannies. He survived that suicide attempt. The police found the note, but, for some reason, didn’t do anything with it.
    On 19 March, Glover decided to kill Joan Sinclair, then himself. It didn’t occur to the police watching her house that he might be planning to murder his girlfriend. After a few hours, however, they entered Joan’s home. She was dead, bashed over the head. John Glover was in the bath with Scotch and tablets, just about to slip under the water.
    He was convicted of six counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. There were six more murders which police believed he had committed, but they couldn’t be sure.
    His family never went to see him and in 1992, his wife said he would be better off dead.
    In 2005, John Glover was found dead in his prison cell, where he was thought to have killed himself. He’d finally succeeded in committing suicide.

JULIAN KNIGHT

    HODDLE STREET MASSACRE

    F rom an early age, Julian Knight, the Hoddle Street killer, was fascinated by guns and death. A schoolmate later said he brought more than 100 photos of dead bodies to school to show the other students. It was said that he enjoyed describing in detail how bullets had damaged the bodies. Graffiti he had scribbled on his textbooks showed a disturbingly racist attitude.
    In January 1987, he started officer training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, but he didn’t last long. He wasn’t very good at anything except the weapons-based subjects. When he stabbed his sergeant at a Canberra nightclub, he was asked to leave the army for good. His trial for assault and malicious wounding was supposed to take place in June, but was postponed to November.
    If he had been tried and jailed in June, perhaps the Hoddle Street tragedy would never have happened, but by November, police had a lot more to worry about than one fight in a nightclub. Julian Knight was back in Melbourne. He had killed seven people and injured nineteen more.
    What made him decide to gather all those bullets and guns on the evening of 9 August 1987, and go on a random shooting spree? And why Hoddle Street, anyway? He wasn’t after his enemies. He wasn’t trying to get revenge on anyone. The people he killed didn’t know him. They were just there.

    Years later, the policeman who had questioned him right after the crime said that Julian had been happy and excited after the killings. He had bragged about what he had just done. It was fun, for him.
    All we know is that he left home at 9.29 p.m. and that a minute later he was shooting at people.
    He shot a woman who had got out of her car – six times, till she was dead. Then he shot two people who came to help her. Three more people died in the next few minutes. He kept shooting at anyone passing on the street and then at police. He shot at a police car and then at a police helicopter, forcing it to land. Finally, after a chase through the streets of Melbourne’s suburbs, police managed to catch him in Fitzroy North, just before 10.15 p.m.
    At this time, Victorian law didn’t allow a life sentence without parole. Also, Julian was only nineteen. That meant, as a young offender, he had to have a chance to reform. He was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years. He could apply for parole in 2014.
    In jail, he was allowed to further his education. The idea was that it would make him a better person when he left. Unfortunately, the education he chose was not one that suggested he was planning to go straight when he left