Dezi Freeman, the fugitive who fatally shot two Australian police officers in August 2025 and sparked one of the largest manhunts in the country's history, was shot dead by Victoria Police on Monday morning after refusing to surrender during a three-hour standoff.
From Sovereign Citizen to Australia's Most Wanted
Born Desmond Christopher Filby in the late 1960s, the 56-year-old had adopted the name Dezi Bird Freeman by 2003. 'Freeman' is a surname popular within the sovereign citizen movement, a fringe anti-government ideology whose followers believe they are exempt from the law.
Freeman worked as a freelance photographer and was an experienced bushman who had hiked Victoria's Mount Buffalo National Park since he was a teenager. But his hostility toward authority deepened over the years. Court documents showed he had labelled police 'terrorist thugs' and 'Nazis', once tried to arrest a magistrate, and posted content online declaring that 'the only good cop is a dead cop.'
Locals in the alpine town of Porepunkah, where he lived with his wife and children on a compound of converted buses and shipping containers, said his behaviour grew more erratic during the Covid-19 pandemic. He protested vaccines and lockdowns, and was linked to a failed private prosecution of then-Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews for treason in 2021.
The Porepunkah Shootings
On the morning of 26 August 2025, 10 Victoria Police officers arrived at Freeman's property near Porepunkah to execute a search warrant relating to alleged child sex offences. None were from the force's heavily armed Special Operations Group.
When Freeman refused to open the door of his bus, Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, entered through a window. Two gunshots followed.
Thompson, who was about a week from retirement after 38 years on the force, and Belgian-born Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart, 35, were killed. A third detective was shot in the leg and hid under the bus for close to an hour.
Freeman fled into the dense bushland of Mount Buffalo National Park, taking the slain officers' handguns with him.
216 Days on the Run
The hunt for Freeman became the largest tactical police operation in Victoria's history. Officers from every Australian state and territory, the Australian Defence Force (ADF), the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and New Zealand Police scoured more than 40 square kilometres of rugged terrain, searching caves, abandoned mineshafts, huts, and rivers. Victoria Police posted a record A$1 million reward for information.
By February 2026, investigators said they no longer believed Freeman was alive. A five-day search using cadaver dogs and drones turned up nothing. On 13 March, police dropped charges against Freeman's wife, Mali, and two others.
The Final Standoff
On Monday, acting on a tip-off, police located Freeman at a rural property in Thologolong, near Walwa, on the Victorian-New South Wales border. He was hiding inside a structure that Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush described as a cross between a shipping container and a long caravan. The property sat over a two-hour drive from Porepunkah.
The standoff began at 5:30 a.m. For roughly three hours, officers appealed to Freeman to come out. He eventually exited the building but refused to give himself up.
'There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully, which he did not,' Bush told reporters at a press conference. 'We strongly believe, yet to be confirmed, that he was armed.'
Freeman was fatally shot shortly after 8:30 a.m. No officers were injured. A formal identification process is underway, and Bush said the shooting appeared justified. Police are now investigating whether Freeman received help evading capture, with Bush noting it would have been 'very difficult' for him to reach the property alone.
The families of Thompson and De Waart-Hottart were the first to be notified.
The Police Association of Victoria said in a statement that officers would not mourn Freeman. 'Today, we won't reflect on the loss of a coward,' a spokesperson said. 'We will remember the courage and bravery of our fallen members.'
Gun-related police killings remain rare in Australia, which has enforced strict firearms laws since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people. Freeman's case has renewed calls for authorities to confront the growing sovereign citizen movement, which extremism researchers say has expanded online since the pandemic.
