Dezi Freeman, the man suspected of shooting and killing two police officers and injuring a third at a rural Victorian property, said he had a history of unpleasant encounters with the force, who he called “terrorist thugs”, “frigging Nazis” and “Gestapo” that wore “the satanic symbol” of an “inverted pentagram” on their uniforms, according to court records.
Freeman also has a history of association with pseudolaw and “sovereign citizen” ideas.
The Victorian police chief commissioner, Mike Bush, said the suspect was believed to be “heavily armed” and remained at large on Wednesday night. Police had been executing a search warrant on Tuesday in relation to alleged sexual offending by Freeman, who was previously known as Desmond Filby, when the shooting occurred.
Court records paint a picture of a man with a deep distrust of police and embrace of conspiracies: he once, for example, attempted to arrest a magistrate during a bizarre court hearing in Wangaratta.
Last year, a Victorian county court judge found Freeman was guilty of using a mobile phone while driving and refusing to provide a saliva sample to police in September 2020 on the Great Alpine Road.
But he lodged a legal battle after the judge cancelled Freeman’s licence and disqualified him from obtaining a licence for a period of two years from 8 April 2024.
A supreme court judgment published last November, after Freeman sought a judicial review of the county court decision, showed he tried to argue that the police radar device used to detect speed may have been influenced by power lines and transformers, or microwave transmissions, in the area.
During cross-examination in the county court, he accused an officer of arranging for one of her colleagues to cancel Freeman’s firearms licence after the incident, which she denied. Freeman said: “How was it fair that when I haven’t arrested you for the multitude of crimes you have committed and I haven’t exposed you or other police to the multitude of crimes they have committed, for the logs in their eyes, how is it fair that you go after me for the splinter in mine?”
He told the court he had a difficult childhood but had overcome disadvantage, though “had a history of unpleasant encounters with police officers”.
Freeman claimed that during the police intercept – which started while he was on the way to a local fish and chip shop with his children in the car, and ended when he sped down a dirt road in Porepunkah – he was acting in self-defence.
“I felt threatened and preyed upon … Even the sight of a cop or a cop car … it’s like an Auschwitz survivor seeing a Nazi soldier,” he said.
“What’s worse than a swastika is the inverted pentagram, the satanic symbol that they wear and they behave like it as well.”
Freeman claimed he had been subject to past unlawful conduct by officers as part of a “a lifetime of bullying and predatorial (sic) behaviour by police”.
A video of the interaction with officers, referred to in the supreme court judgment, showed Freeman calling the officers terrorists, and saying “out here with guns, guns, terrorising my kids again. I’ve been to court 15 times because of you corrupt scum. You corrupt filth.”
Justice James Gorton noted in his supreme court judgment that Freeman, who represented himself in the proceedings, and in the county court, felt “genuinely aggrieved” at losing his licence for two years, as it would “seriously interfere with his and his family’s life” and lead to “hardship”.
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Freeman is believed to have lived in the region for most of his life. He claimed on social media to have taken a photo the nearby Kiewa Valley in about 2004 that was used in tourism brochures in the area.
Other family members also live in the state north-east.
In 2019, Freeman helped fundraise for his younger brother James Filby after the shock death of his wife. She died from a bacterial infection that also left James in intensive care.
James Filby posted on Facebook this week: “My prayers are with the fallen police and their grieving familes(sic).”
In 2021, Freeman was arrested while at a protest outside Myrtleford court, over 2019 allegations of sexual-related offending, according to a Border Mail article.
In footage of him being taken into custody, the then 51-year-old man identified himself as Des Freeman when asked his name, the Border Mail reported.
The Myrtleford court protest was in response to a private prosecution brought against the then Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, accusing him of treason during Covid. But it was struck out by the magistrate because charge information had not been provided to Andrews.
In a video posted on Facebook in December 2021, Freeman told magistrate Peter Dunn that he was under arrest for “aiding and abetting” and “perverting the course of justice”.
“You are now in my custody and under arrest. You are not free to leave,” he said.
Freeman has a history of association with pseudolaw and “sovereign citizen” ideas and influencers.
“Sovereign citizens” or pseudolaw adherents often have a range of conspiratorial beliefs, including that a country’s laws have become illegitimate and the government is corrupted, leading them to reject its authority.
On a pseudolaw podcast in 2019, Freeman called himself a photographer from north-east Victoria. He described his battle with “newcomers from Melbourne” who he claimed had closed off a road “that’s been used for 120 years”.
He described his day in court, which included telling the magistrate he had “no rightful authority” and instructing police to arrest him.
“The police officers were informed that it’s their duty to make the arrest, which they refused to do. No surprises there,” he said.
“The law is the law. No one is above it. I don’t care if it’s the queen or the pope or ‘Scumo’ or whoever it is.”
A 2018 episode of A Current Affair featured Freeman and his family complaining about a neighbourly dispute at their then Mount Buffalo property.
The report said Freeman and his family complained about their neighbour’s dirt bike stunts, loud chainsaws and verbal abuse five years before the broadcast.
Freeman described the dispute as “full-out war” and said his neighbours were the “instigators” of it.
The ACA report said Freeman and his family were leaving the property where they had lived for six years.
