Death was never far behind Kevin Knowles. It was there when he and his partner, Amanda Bourke, spent the day drinking with Stephen Johnston in 2016. Johnston was savagely beaten at his home in Victoria’s south-west and left with 101 separate injuries; he died in hospital. Knowles was the main suspect.
Death was close again when Bourke drowned while swimming with Knowles at a rugged and isolated beach two years later. With her died almost any chance of Knowles being prosecuted for Johnston’s death.
But death caught up with Knowles on 22 July, when he was shot and run over on a single-lane country road near Kirkstall, north-west of Warrnambool. The suspected gunman, who is also thought to have killed another man found dead with Knowles, drove home and turned the gun on himself.
While local residents expressed shock at the carnage that unfolded in such a peaceful part of the state, no one with even a passing knowledge of Knowles was surprised he’d met such an end.
Johnston described Knowles in his diary as “the devil”. Despite these reservations, Johnston spent the final hours of his life drinking with Knowles and Bourke on 7 December 2016.
In 2020, a coroner, Simon McGregor, found that Knowles and Johnston had argued about Bourke and that Knowles caused Johnston’s injuries by assaulting him while affected by drugs.
Bourke was routinely brutalised by Knowles, McGregor found. Johnston had even written in his diary that he had twice driven Bourke to the police station so she could report Knowles for assaulting her.
Knowles would later be jailed for giving Bourke a black eye, threatening to kill her with a knife and bury her, and grabbing her around the throat while covering her mouth to try to stop her from breathing.
Handwritten letters sent by the couple while Knowles was in prison were revealed during the inquest.
The letters showed Knowles repeatedly urged Bourke not to be a “dog” by speaking to the “jacks” about his involvement in Johnston’s death.
McGregor noted at the inquest that though the case against Knowles was circumstantial, and Knowles had a right to not give evidence during the proceedings to avoid incriminating himself, he would be referring the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider charges against Knowles.
The inquest also uncovered another letter that Bourke had written to her mother. She told her Knowles had “got real nasty many times” towards her and that she had made a complaint to police.
Officers had wanted her in “witness protection”, she wrote, as they feared Knowles would kill her, but she refused as she would not be able to see her daughter.
Within months, Bourke, 44, died on a lonely stretch of beach. And Knowles was by her side.
The Cutting is a wild stretch of coast almost directly halfway between Warrnambool and Port Fairy that is rarely frequented by swimmers.
According to coronial findings, on 18 January 2018, with the temperature climbing towards 40 degrees, Knowles and Bourke decided to go swimming. Knowles said Bourke suggested the Cutting rather than other beaches so that the pair wouldn’t bump into people they did not want to see.
They went into the water in the late afternoon, and Knowles said Bourke jumped on his back. A witness at the time who was walking on the beach with his wife said he had seen a couple cuddling in the water and they “seemed to be all right”.
But Knowles said that he soon lost his footing, and then realised he could no longer touch the seafloor. He went under the water, and Bourke slipped from his back.
He said she called for him to help, he grabbed her, but the motion of the waves broke his grip and he momentarily lost sight of her.
When he saw her again, she was 20 metres away and appeared to be floating.
Knowles then yelled for help. The same witness who had seen the couple earlier came to his aid, crossing a large channel that contained a dangerous rip, before locating Bourke. She could not be revived.
Bourke and Knowles were engaged, and lived together in Kirkstall. But her family were so concerned about his history of violence towards her, and the fact that she was the only witness to Johnston’s death, that they urged a coroner to hold an inquest into Bourke’s death.
They later withdrew the request, and a coroner, Caitlin English, made findings into the death – without holding an inquest – that cleared Knowles of any involvement despite there being a number of “unusual aspects” to the drowning on “first examination”.
She was satisfied Knowles had been violent to Bourke, and that as the only witness to Johnston’s assault she could implicate Knowles in the death, but found no evidence the drowning was anything other than an accident “caused by treacherous sea conditions”.
Despite being linked to two suspicious deaths in as many years, Knowles kept on much as he had before. At the time of the Johnston inquest he had a more than 50-page criminal record, and had been due to face court again three days after he died.
But at some point on 22 July, it appears he had an altercation with another Kirkstall man, Travis Cashmore.
Knowles, 49, would walk more than an hour from Kirkstall to the larger town of Koroit most days, often with his mate Benjamin Ray, local residents told Guardian Australia.
Cashmore found them on the road between the towns that morning, and ended their lives. It may never be clear why, but police are preparing a report for the coroner.
At some point in the days after the deaths, a sign was screwed on to Cashmore’s gate.
“Free,” it read in large black block letters, “Trav! You and the Kirkstall community are now free from Kevin Knowles. RIP.”
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
