Martin Bryant
From Wikinfo
Martin Bryant (born May 7 1967) was imprisoned for the murder of 35 people and injury of 37 others in the Port Arthur Massacre, a record breaking killing spree in Tasmania in 1996. He is currently serving a life sentence in Hobart's Risdon Prison. He has maintained his innocence to this crime. There was no trial, as the judge ordered for Martin Bryant to plead guilty. Martin Bryant, apparently not understanding that he did not have to plead guilty, did as he was directed.
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Childhood
Martin Bryant is the elder of two children of Maurice and Carleen Bryant. Bryant was regarded as unusual in his childhood and was diagnosed as having an IQ of 66, which is considered to indicate mental disability, in the early years of schooling and put into special education classes. He was described by teachers as unusually detached from reality and as either unemotional or as expressing inappropriate emotions. He was severely bullied by other children.
Bryant was referred for psychiatric treatment several times during his childhood. In 1984 a psychological evaluation described him as mentally retarded and stated that he had a personality disorder.
Adulthood
Descriptions of Bryant's behaviour as a young man show that he continued to be disturbed. When his father, who had taken early retirement to care for him, died in an apparent suicide, ambulance officers described Bryant as quite excited by the search and unconcerned about the death.
Bryant was eligible for a disability pension due to his low IQ and lived on a pension for some years. He took on odd jobs as a handyman and gardener. One of these odd jobs led to him meeting Helen Harvey, heiress to a share in the Tattersall's Lottery fortune. Harvey befriended Bryant, inviting him to live with her. She was reported to spend large amounts of money on him. Harvey and Bryant moved together to Copping, where they lived until her death in a traffic accident.
Bryant was named the sole beneficiary of Harvey's will and came into possession of a mansion in Hobart and other assets totalling more than half a million dollars. In 1993 his mother applied for and was granted a guardianship order placing Bryant's assets under the management of trustees. The order was based on evidence of Bryant's diminished intellectual capacity.
Bryant travelled extensively both in Australia and internationally during this period, apparently seeking social contact with other travellers, but was frustrated at people's negative reactions to him.
Bryant had few friends. One of his few ex-girlfriends described how she was horrified by Bryant's obsession with the movie trilogy Child's Play. This kind of fear held by friends and girlfriends was reported in a number of psychiatric reports throughout adulthood. After the offence, their recollections provided some indication of Bryant's mindset at the time of the Port Arthur Massacre.
See also
- Robert Edwards (serial killer), the man who confessed to the Port Arthur massacre
- Port Arthur massacre, the event that Martin Bryant was imprisoned for.
- Joe Vialls, one of the people who worked to expose the lies about Martin Bryant.
References
- Patrick Bellamy, The Port Arthur Massacre: A Killer Among Us, Court TV's Crime Library, [1]
- =Managing Martin: the Jailing of Martin Bryant, date=March 16, 1997, publisher=Radio National | http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s10603.htm
- Mike Bingham, Suddenly One Sunday (ISBN: 0732268990)
- Joe Vialls, Deadly Deception at Port Arthur
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Martin_Bryant" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bryant, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
