Author of a tragedy.
On April 29 1996, 28 year-old Martin Bryant, tall, thin, with long fair hair and blue eyes, opened fire with an
Armalite AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, killing 35 people and wounding 20 more.
Minutes before he begun the
systematic slaughter of the patrons of a crowded cafe he spoke of "Wasps" and "
Japs" to friends and has been said that he thought he was doing
Australia a favour by shooting
Japanese tourists.
For his crimes, he is serving 35
life sentences with no chance of parole in
Hobart's Risdon Prison. He receives no visitors. Several
psychiatrists have diagnosed him as having
emotional disorders and the
IQ of an 11 year-old. He smirked and giggled as the horrific charges against him were read out in court, but he is not
schizophrenic; by all accounts the murders were carried out in a calm, calculating
fashion.