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As Dezi Freeman opened fire on police who’d arrived at his converted bus home in regional Victoria in the winter of 2025, he turned to taunt the officers he’d shot dead.
Eight others had run for cover behind sheds and cars, exchanging gunfire with Freeman, as one yelled out to his colleague, Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, who lay unmoving inside the bus, “Can you hear us, Thomo?”
“F---ing scum, die in hell, you f---ing die in f---ing hell,” Freeman yelled back as he reached down to the body of Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart and stole his police-issued gun from its holster and turned and used it to shoot Thompson a second time.
“During this time, the offender stood over both bodies and said various things, which, out of respect for the families, I will not repeat,” lawyer Lindsay Spence, the counsel assisting the state coroner, said today.
New details of the horror that occurred on the Porepunkah property on August 26, 2025 were revealed at the Coroners Court of Victoria during a directions hearing into the deaths of the two officers.
State coroner Liberty Sanger was told that 10 police officers attended the property to execute a search warrant as part of an investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse made against Freeman.
At the time, Freeman was a person of interest to an alleged sexual assault of a child aged under 16 and attempting to involve a child in the making of child abuse material.
What followed was a fatal shoot-out, after Freeman armed himself with a shotgun and opened fire, killing two officers and injuring two others, one seriously.
He later fled the scene and was last sighted running down a hill near a river. He later messaged his wife: “Beb get mile away and keep going. See u in heaven luv”.
Freeman, 56, remained on the run for seven months before he was shot dead by police following a three-hour stand-off at a makeshift campsite on a property at Thologolong on March 30.
The hideout is near the NSW border and is about 160 kilometres north-east of where Freeman fled into the bush on August 26.
Further details about Freeman’s death will be aired in court later today.
Read more:
Visual story: From mountain murders to a massive manhunt
Inside story: The bizarre final moments of Dezi Freeman
How it happened: The high-stakes tactic that cornered Freeman
The victims: The ranks of blue farewell a brother, and a family mourns a son
‘Oh my god, it’s Uncle Des’: The spiralling descent of an alleged police killer
The property: Inside the farm that put a couple in the middle of a murder probe
