Martin Bryant

Martin Bryant (born May 7, 1967 ) is an Australian mass murderer who killed 35 people and injured 19 others on April 28, 1996 in a rampage in Tasmania , Australia. He is serving 35 life sentences in Risdon Prison in Hobart, Tasmania .

Life

childhood

Martin Bryant is the eldest son of Maurice and Carleen Bryant. In the early years of his school years, he was diagnosed with a low IQ of 66. He then went to a special school . The teachers described Bryant as particularly "far from reality" and either unemotional or expressing strange emotions. He was a disturbing and sometimes violent child who was massively bullied by other students. Bryant has received psychiatric treatment several times . A British psychiatrist described him as mentally disabled in 1984 and certified him with a personality disorder .

Adulthood

Bryant's demeanor as a young man continued to display dysfunctional behaviors. When his father, who retired early to take care of him, apparently died after attempting suicide , emergency doctors described the son as both excited and indifferent to death. He lived for a time on a pension to which he was entitled because of his low IQ and worked as a " girl for everything " or gardener. Through one of these jobs he came into contact with Helen Harvey, part-heiress of a lottery company, who invited him to live with her. The two lived together in the small town of Copping until Helen's death, which was caused by a car accident .

In her will, Bryant was listed as the sole beneficiary. Among other things, he came into possession of a house in Hobart. In total, he inherited more than half a million Australian dollars . In 1993, by a request from his mother, which was confirmed, the management of his property was given to a trustee because of his reduced mental abilities.

The events of April 1996

On April 28, 1996, Bryant drove to an elderly couple whose home he wanted to buy. There was probably a dispute over the purchase price, whereupon he shot the couple a short time later. He then drove to the Broad Arrow Café , shot indiscriminately into the crowd and killed twelve people. He left the café and shot another eight people in the gift shop area and later again in the café. Bryant shot another four people in a parking lot, whereupon he drove down Jetty Road to a toll booth and first shot Nanette Mikac and her two young daughters and then killed four people in a car. He shot Zoe Hall at a gas station, took Glenn Pears hostage and drove back to the older couple's house. Upon returning to the house, he holed up there for the next 18 hours before attempting to set it on fire and burning himself in the process, killing Pears. He came out of the house seriously injured and naked and was then taken to the same Hobart hospital as his victims.

Bryant, to whom an expert certified the intelligence of an eleven-year-old, was nevertheless found guilty and sentenced to 35 life imprisonment after two weeks of trial. He is currently in Risdon Prison in Hobart and is guarded around the clock. He has already made six suicide attempts there.

Twelve days after the rampage, Australian gun laws were tightened. In two large-scale buyback programs, the state bought around one million weapons from private individuals (around a third of the total) and destroyed them. The likelihood of being killed by a weapon in Australia fell by 50% over the following years and remained at that level.

Web links

• Article on Bryant's suicide attempt closely.
• Psychiatric documentation on Bryant closely.
• University of Queensland study closely. (PDF; 159 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ By Philip Alpers, Special to CNN: Gun control: Change is possible - and fast. Retrieved June 1, 2019 .