Porepunkah, Victoria – For seven months, the Australian Alps held their breath.
Yesterday, in a rural property near Walwa, the longest manhunt in Victorian history ended the only way it could: with gunfire.
Fifty-six-year-old Dezi Bird Freeman, the self-styled sovereign citizen who allegedly ambushed and killed two police officers before vanishing into the bush, was shot dead by officers after hours of negotiation.
No police were hurt.
A $1 million reward, the largest in state history, and more than 1 700 tips had finally led searchers to him.
The town of barely 1 000 people, better known for its wineries and ski runs, had been living with a ghost.
Last year, on 26 August, 10 officers arrived at Freeman’s ramshackle compound, Four Gully Farm, to execute a warrant linked to a child-sex-abuse investigation.
What happened next was captured in a chilling family video: Detective Leading Senior Constable 59-year-old Neal Thompson, a 38-year veteran just days from retirement who knew Freeman personally, stepped through a window. Two shots rang out.
Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart, 35, a Belgian-born father who had only recently transferred to the High Country, lay dead.
A third detective was shot in the leg. Freeman, heavily armed and dressed for the wild, slipped alone into the dense bushland of Mount Buffalo National Park – terrain he had hiked since he was 16 and called his “second home.”
Freeman had been known as Desmond Christopher Filby before he reinvented himself.
A disability pensioner, freelance photographer, and part-time organic farmer, he was known locally as both helpful – he once raised money for the rural fire brigade – and volatile.
Friends remembered a man who “couldn’t hold down a job” because he refused to take orders.
Over the years, his anger hardened into sovereign-citizen ideology. Social media posts declared “the only good cop is a dead cop.”
He tried to “arrest” a magistrate, joined protests against lockdowns, and lost his firearms licence after court battles he dismissed as “malicious prosecution.”
One former mate called him a “modern-day Rambo” who kept military-grade rifles and practised in the bush.
Another said the movement “loaded the guns” – Freeman simply pulled the trigger.
The manhunt that followed was unprecedented.
Nearly 500 officers from across Australia and New Zealand combed caves, mineshafts, gorges, and snow-dusted ridges.
Roads were blocked, the national park closed, schools locked down. Businesses in Porepunkah lost tourists and staff.
Locals spoke of numbness giving way to anger, then exhaustion.
Marcus Warner, president of the local chamber of commerce and a search-and-rescue veteran, watched his town’s recovery stall every time fresh police convoys rolled through.
“It’d be nice for us to just be able to put it behind us,” Alpine Shire Deputy Mayor Sarah Nicholas told reporters.
Yet the community also rallied – street parties, markets, quiet acts of kindness – determined not to let one man define them.
For the families of the dead officers, the wait was crueller still.
Thompson’s colleagues remembered a gentle detective who loved the High Country he policed.
De Waart-Hottart’s friends spoke of a multilingual officer full of life. Their funerals at the Victoria Police Academy drew a prime minister, a premier, and more than a thousand mourners.
Blue-lit landmarks and half-mast flags across the state became daily reminders that two fathers, husbands, and colleagues were gone.
Yesterday’s ending was neither triumphant nor cinematic. Police say a tip-off brought them to Freeman.
Negotiations failed.
Shots were fired.
The man who had survived winter in the bush on his wits and weapons was dead.
His wife, Amalia, who had publicly urged him to surrender, and his children now face a future without him.
Porepunkah, meanwhile, is already planning its next community market.
In the end, the story is not about ideology or wilderness survival.
It is about two families who will never see their husbands and fathers walk through the door again, a small town that lost its innocence, and a man whose rage consumed him and everyone around him.
The bush has given up its ghost.
For those left behind, the long, slow work of healing can finally begin.
Disclaimer: This feature article was compiled with the use of the AI tool Grok on X. It may contain inaccuracies
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