March 4, 1968 - Julian Knight
The Hoddle Street massacre unfolded over roughly half an hour on a Sunday evening, leaving seven dead and nineteen wounded along a stretch of suburban Melbourne road — a scale of violence that had no precedent in modern Australian history at the time. Knight was nineteen years old and had recently been dismissed from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, weeks before the attack. The case eventually prompted the Victorian government to pass legislation specifically preventing his release, a measure he challenged unsuccessfully all the way to the High Court.
From Wikipedia
Julian Knight (born 4 March 1968) is an Australian mass murderer. On 9 August 1987, he shot seven people dead and injured 19 during a shooting spree in Clifton Hill, an inner eastern suburb of Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia, in what became known as the Hoddle Street massacre.
On 10 November 1988, Knight pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced by Justice George Hampel in the Supreme Court of Victoria to seven concurrent sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years, due to expire on 8 May 2014. In his sentence remarks, J Hampel commented that there were "…a number of significant mitigatory factors…" and "…the fixing of a minimum term in this case is appropriate because of your age and your prospects of rehabilitation." The Crown prosecutor, Joe Dickson , "…did not contend that a minimum term should not be fixed."
It was claimed that the motive for Knight's actions was military heroism, while impaired judgement due to the consumption of alcohol on the day of the massacre, social exclusion, and financial instability were also influencing factors.
Incarcerated initially in the maximum-security Pentridge, Barwon, and Port Phillip prisons, he was moved to the medium-security Loddon Prison in 2025 as a result of prison closures.
Knight was eligible for parole in May 2014. However, approximately six weeks earlier, the Victorian Government, in response to community pressure, enacted legislation that was specifically designed "…to protect the community from Julian Knight by keeping him in jail until he can pose no threat…" The provisions allowed for release if Knight is in immediate danger of dying, or is so incapacitated that he no longer poses a danger to others.
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