The suspected Porepunkah gunman had a criminal record stretching more than 30 years, but had not been convicted of any serious offences, court extracts show.
Dezi Freeman, 56, made a series of threats against police, and had his firearms licence cancelled, in the years before allegedly killing two police officers at a remote property in north-eastern Victoria on Tuesday. Victoria police is now investigating whether its risk assessment before the incident was adequate.
His court record, however, shows no history of violence or firearms-related offending.
Victorian magistrates court extracts, released to Guardian Australia, show Freeman, formerly known as Desmond Filby, had matters dating back to September 1990, when he was fined in Sydney as a 21-year-old.
Freeman, then known as Filby, was fined several times in the early 1990s in the city, though the court records do not say what for.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Because these fines of only a few hundred dollars were unpaid, NSW authorities issued a warrant for his arrest that would have resulted in him spending time in prison “in default of payment” for up to two days for each of the six fines.
The court records show his first conviction related to exceeding the speed limit in Violet Town, in Victoria’s north-east, in October 1991.
He also failed to pay this $155 fine, and in 1993 he was ordered to do eight hours of community work.
It appears he had no further interaction with the courts until 2018, when he appeared before the Myrtleford magistrates’ court and a 2013 traffic camera infringement was revoked.
By this time, his name was recorded as Dezi Bird Freeman in the court system.
In February 2021, a charge of breaching a personal safety intervention order dating back to June 2019 was withdrawn. Guardian Australia reported on Thursday that this matter is believed to relate to a neighbour, Loretta Quinn.
Freeman appeared in court again in June 2022 and was found guilty of using a mobile phone while driving on the Great Alpine Road in September 2020 and refusing to provide a saliva sample for police. He applied for a judicial review in the supreme court, which was resolved last November.
In documents filed as part of that supreme court bid, Freeman said his family, including his wife and three children including a one-year-old, were homeless, and “living in a van and gazebo”.
He said they had always lived in the Alpine shire, and the family’s only source of income was a Centrelink payment.
Freeman referred to “seven years of harassment and persecution by malicious police”, despite the court extract showing that over this period he only faced one charge, and had it withdrawn, and also succeeded in having a speeding fine withdrawn.
“Given the dire situation that we are in, it only takes a straw to break the camels back. The loss of license is more like a tree trunk than a straw,” he wrote.
“The curtailing of my right to travel extends directly to my family and manifests itself as a form of child abuse by the State in so many ways.
“Whatever happens to me affects my family. The stress, hardships, injustice, misery and poverty exacerbated by not being able to drive affects us all.”
Freeman said in his submissions he had his “firearms licenses cancelled and lost my club membership” as a result of the driving matter, also claiming “we endured 4 acts of criminal trespass and harassment on our home by police and I have been dragged through 4 years of court hearings”.
He said he had to pay more than $2,300 to have his wife’s van returned after it was “stolen” by police, a likely reference to the vehicle being impounded.
Freeman, whose bid for the supreme court review of his driving convictions failed, wrote towards the end of his submissions: “I hope I didn’t get too off track or be abrasive but I’m just doing the best that I can under extreme duress with what sanity I have left.”
He had been granted permission to drive while his appeal was outstanding, and the court records show he was convicted and fined in December 2023 for driving at 71km/h in a 60km/h zone in June that year.
He was fined $450 with $90 costs. The magistrate in the case was Peter Dunn, who Freeman previously attempted to arrest.
