TASMANIA'S SECOND PATSY:
GUN DEALER TERRY HILL
Copyright Joe Vialls 17/04/97 45 Merlin Drive Carine, WA 6020 All
Rights Reserved
Official documents supporting this report in full are held by the
author, but certain names have been suppressed on legal advice.
Exclusive to The Strategy
Two days after the massacre at Port Arthur in April 1996, gun dealer Terry
Hill of New Town, Tasmania, saw a photo of a man on the front page of his
local newspaper, reportedly connected with the mass murder. Hill recognised
the man as ``Martin RYAN'' who had earlier visited his dealership, and swiftly
contacted police.
Unfortunately for him, Terry Hill was unaware that the Tasmanian Government
had thirty five corpses, one possible suspect, but no supplier of the weapons
allegedly used in the massacre. It was one of the biggest holes in the
Government's impossible case against Martin Bryant, but a hole that could be
filled in very neatly by sacrificing Terry Hill on the altar of political
expediency.On 27 March 1996 Terry Hill and assistant Greg Peck were working at
``Guns and Ammo'' in New Town, Tasmania, when the door opened and a tall man
with long blonde hair walked in carrying a package wrapped in a towel.
HOW DID THIS MAN GET A LICENCE?
Known to Terry Hill only as Martin, the man muttered that ``something was
wrong with it'' and promptly handed the package muzzle-first across the
counter. When Terry Hill unwrapped the towel he found that `it' was an AR10
assault rifle fitted with a clip containing 15 live rounds of high velocity
.308 (7.62-mm NATO) ammunition. Horrified, Hill removed the clip and worked
the action, at which point another live round ejected from the breech.
``Martin'' had calmly walked into the store with a fully-loaded and unsafe
assault weapon, blissfully unaware he had done anything wrong. His actions
that morning demonstrated with chilling clarity that ``Martin'' had absolutely
no idea how to load, cock, aim, fire, or unload, assault weapons of any kind.
Despite this staggering lack of knowledge, thirty two days later the Tasmanian
Government tried to convince the world that ``Martin'' had entered the Broad
Arrow cafe at Port Arthur, and with the panache usually reserved for top
special forces combat shooters, shot 32 victims, 20 of them dead, in less than
90 seconds with a Colt AR15 Commando. After that, the clumsy inept Martin is
alleged to have left the cafe, deftly changed weapons to a heavier Belgian FN
FAL with completely different loading and cocking mechanisms, and used it to
kill or wound another 25 people. Both weapons were so well maintained and
tuned that neither one faltered or jammed during the entire 14.5 minute
operation at Port Arthur. As proved scientifically in ``Was Martin Bryant
Really a Lone Nut Assassin?'' parts one and two, written by this author,
whoever prepared and fired those weapons was not Martin Bryant at all, but an
expert combat shooter with special forces counter-terrorist experience.
Back at ``Guns and Ammo'' in New Town during late March this was still in the
future, as a shaken Terry Hill stared aghast at the neat pile of high velocity
rounds on his counter. Did Martin have a licence? Yes he did, one of the newer
photographic licences, endorsed for prohibited and automatic firearms. In a
statement to police, Hill confirmed the first name was Martin, and so far as
he could remember, the surname was RYAN. Under the gun laws existing before
the massacre Hill was not required to write down licence details unless
selling a weapon, and thus did not do so, but he has sworn statements from
other witnesses that Martin produced this licence in their presence. The Dutch
AR10, serial number 001590, was in very poor condition and Hill wanted to
retain it at the shop for safety. Receiving no instructions for repairs, Terry
Hill asked Martin to return after Easter.
BUILDING A LEGEND
Over the next month Martin made several visits to Guns and Ammo, purchasing
items that did not require details of his licence to be recorded. These
purchases included several gun cases and finally, on 24 April 1996, four days
before the massacre, three boxes of Winchester XX 1 1/2 oz shotgun shells,
code number X12XC. But at no time before or since did Terry Hill sell Martin
any weapons, or ammunition of .223 Remington or .308 Winchester calibres, as
used in the mass murder on 28 April 1996. Martin had lived in the New Town
area for many years but was not a regular customer at Guns and Ammo, so why
did he suddenly start purchasing multiple innocuous goods from Terry Hill in
the month immediately preceding the massacre at Port Arthur?
The most likely answer in intelligence parlance is that someone asked Martin
to go and buy the various items mentioned in order to build a `legend,'
designed to ensure that after the massacre a direct association would be made
between Martin Bryant and a recognised gun-dealer as the `supplier' of the
weapons used at Port Arthur. There is other evidence indicating this was the
case. Long before the massacre took place, Martin Bryant's unaccompanied
baggage was searched on entry to Australia and two pornographic videos seized.
As the baggage was literally unaccompanied, anyone could have placed the
pornographic tapes in the suitcase and then tipped-off Customs about its
`obscene' contents. On another occasion Bryant was arrested on entry to
Australia on ``information received,'' and taken to Melbourne Hospital for an
internal examination on the suspicion of drug trafficking. He was found
innocent of any offence and released. On a third occasion there was an alleged
`incident' in Hereford, England, which was reported to the police because
Hereford is the home of the British Special Air Service (SAS). Once again
Bryant was completely innocent of any wrong doing, but by then the
international computers were building a very convincing legend indeed. By the
date of the massacre at Port Arthur through no fault of his own, a computer
search would have shown a string of warning flags indicating that Martin
Bryant was a possible drug trafficker and purveyor of pornographic materials,
and perhaps someone who had shown an unhealthy interest in the activities of
Britain's premier counter-terrorist unit. Add all of that to his frequent
visits to Guns and Ammo during March and April 1996, and the Tasmanian Police
Service would have needed to be superhuman to resist the implied legendary
`proof' that Martin Bryant was its man. Unfortunately Terry Hill was
completely unaware of these computer manipulations when he did his duty as a
responsible citizen on 30 April 1996, and reported his knowledge of Martin to
police. It was at that point that his life and the lives of his family started
to slowly come apart at the seams. Members of the police insisted that he must
have sold the weapons and ammunition to Bryant, and made similar ``off the
record'' accusations to the Tasmanian media, but Hill refused to budge. Why on
earth admit selling weapons and ammunition to Bryant when he had not done so?
ENTER COVERT POLITICS
That later sordid attacks on Hill were political initiatives is beyond
question. Terry Hill had a valid gun dealer's licence, and witnesses to the
fact that Martin had shown a valid gun licence to him. He was thus fully
entitled to sell any weapon to Martin without committing any offence at all
under Tasmanian law, and would have admitted doing so in his statement if it
were true. But it was not true, and Terry Hill was not prepared to ``help the
police'' by signing a statement that amounted to an outright lie. Things went
quiet for a while and then Hill was interviewed by police in the presence of a
lawyer on 6 June 1996. As he had always done, Hill maintained that he had not
at any time sold weapons or rifle ammunition to Martin Bryant (or Ryan) and
would not be changing his truthful stand. Unfortunately pressure seemed to be
mounting, perhaps at senior Tasmanian Government levels, to incriminate Hill
at any cost, and he immediately received a letter from the attending lawyer,
containing the following comments:
``...In a private conversation that was had between the writer and Inspector
xxxxx, Inspector xxxxx made it abundantly clear that police have very strong
evidence to suggest that you did in fact sell guns to Bryant and unless you
are prepared to in effect change your story, they will press on and try and
find sufficient evidence to charge you with some offences.
``However, it was also made abundantly clear that the Director of Public
Prosecutions is prepared to offer you an indemnity against prosecution if you
are prepared to accept that you did sell guns to Bryant...''
The letter was crude and revealing. By saying the police would ``press on and
try to find sufficient evidence to charge you with some offences,'' the writer
admitted that police had no evidence whatever against Terry Hill. If they had,
in a matter as serious as this they would have already charged him with one of
several criminal offences. But Terry Hill was never charged at all, making a
mockery of the police threats. That the offer of an indemnity was guaranteed
by the DPP is especially telling in terms of who was applying the blowtorch to
police in an attempt to coerce a false confession out of Hill. The office of
DPP is a political appointment, and agreement for the indemnity against
prosecution was thus a political decision made by government.
The legal letter delivered to Terry Hill on Friday 7 June advised that the
Tasmanian Police would be expecting an answer no later than the following
Wednesday, 12 June. There seemed no point in delaying the matter, so Hill
called his lawyer on Monday 10 June and said there would be no statement of
the sort requested by the police. Terry Hill also had other things to worry
about. His mother, Alma, was terminally ill and not expected to live for many
more days. On Thursday 13 June, Hill received a call from the hospital
requesting his immediate attendance at her bedside, and was forced to depart
Guns and Ammo immediately, leaving his wife Dorothy alone to cope with police
who simultaneously arrived at the store to carry out a ``snap inspection''.
And so it was that the police found a number of technical reasons to revoke
Terry Hill's gun dealer's licence, while he sat powerless beside his dying
mother's bedside at the local hospital. Alma finally passed away at 6.03 am
the following morning.
LIVELIHOOD DESTROYED
It is of course possible for any government regulatory body to find sufficient
technical reasons to close down any business at any time, provided there is
sufficient political will to do so. There is a copy of the ``Notice of
Cancellation of Gun Dealer's Licence No.54546'' on the desk beside me as I
write this report, and it must be said that it records some items which under
normal circumstances might have attracted an infringement notice calling for
action within a specified time period. But not for Hill. Instead, his licence
was revoked and his livelihood destroyed. Terry Hill would have been less than
human if he had not glanced again at the legal letter sent to him just one
week earlier, which warned quite coldly that if he did not admit to selling
weapons to Martin Bryant, the police would ``press on and try to find
sufficient evidence to charge you with some offences.''
NO CREDIBLE PROOF
More than a year later in July 1997 the situation was to worsen, but why all
the fuss, and why the continual persecution of Terry Hill, a man who had every
reason to tell the truth and none at all to lie? The answer lies in the
critical importance of proving that Martin Bryant had access to, and used, two
high velocity assault rifles which could not be backtracked to anyone on the
island of Tasmania or on the Australian mainland. The police had no credible
proof at all that Bryant fired either weapon at Port Arthur; they had no
ballistic cross-matches between the weapons in question and the bullets found
in the victims; they had no fingerprints proving an association between Martin
Bryant and the weapons, or between Martin Bryant and the Broad Arrow Cafe;
where the massacre was initiated. By any standard then, the government should
have long ago announced these harsh but accurate facts, and further announced
its intention to hunt down those who did have access to (and ownership of) the
weapons most likely to have been used in the mass murder.
At the political level such an honest move would be seen as quite
unacceptable, leaving as it would several politicians with egg all over their
faces. Admitting that you had locked up the wrong man while the guilty parties
were probably sunning themselves in the Bahamas was simply too hard and,
anyway, who gave a damn about Martin Bryant? But no matter the blast of
continuous media myth assuring us of his guilt, there was still the impossible
matter of `proving' once and for all that the two known assault weapons were
Martin Bryant's as provided by ``somebody.'' Which somebody? Terry Hill of
course, as Tasmanian Legal Aid finally decided to try and prove in an
unprecedented ``back door'' civil legal action launched on 31 July 1997, when
taxpayer funds were suddenly allocated to a plaintiff to take action against
Terry Hill, a man who has never been charged with any criminal offence. Cracks
were appearing in the official government version of events, and someone,
somewhere was determined to paper them over with taxpayer banknotes.
For any government to allow such a desperate and absurd case to proceed is a
deliberate misuse of public funds, and has the potential to create an
incredibly dangerous legal precedent. The rationale for the civil suit is that
the plaintiff was injured by a bullet fired at Port Arthur, and is suing Terry
Hill for damages for negligence and breach of statutory duty; for allegedly
selling Martin Bryant an AR15 military-style rifle, a scope, and around 250
rounds of ammunition. For doing WHAT? The Tasmanian police have already proved
via the legal letter to Terry Hill that there is absolutely no evidence to
support such a claim for, if there was, they would unquestionably have pressed
criminal charges. Even if Terry Hill had sold Martin Bryant the weapons, which
he did not, it would have been an entirely legal transaction on the valid
licence that Bryant produced, where it is the duty of the licensing authority
to judge the suitability of the applicant for the licence, and thus the right
to use those weapons. Under such circumstances, allowing this case to proceed
would be exactly the same as allowing a case to be brought against a licensed
car dealer, for selling a car to a licensed driver, who then drove off and
killed somebody in the street. Once the transaction was complete the licensed
car dealer would no longer be involved. And what about the farmer who sells
wheat to a cereal manufacturer, who makes a mistake with his production
process and kills someone with a bowl of Wheaty Bran? Do we sue the farmer for
damages and statutory negligence? Of course not, because we are clearly not as
unhinged as some members of the Tasmanian bureaucracy.
That legal aid should even be considered in this matter is beyond the pale
because Terry Hill never sold Martin Bryant any weapons, and probably lost his
livelihood because of his determination to maintain the truth and not provide
the DPP with that vital missing link in the trail of evidence. So are all of
you out there going to sit back and let this happen, funded by hard-earned
dollars screwed out of you by a government elected by the people for the
people? No. The Port Arthur cover-up has gone too far already and it is time
for government to concentrate on hard facts rather than use taxpayer funds in
an attempt to create more pulp fiction. Now is the time for every responsible
Australian to call for the dismissal of the official in The Legal Aid
Commission of Tasmania responsible for authorising this Orwellian outrage.
The author is an independent investigator with thirty years direct experience
of international military and oilfield operations.
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