Julian Knight shot dead seven people in a forty-five minute
shooting spree at the Clifton Hill end of Hoddle Street, Melbourne, Victoria,
on Sunday, the 9th of August, 1987, between 9.30pm and 10.15pm. This was not a
disaster that just happened to occur because it was isolated from any other
contributing factor. As is portrayed in the TV documentary series Seconds from
Disaster, disasters do not just happen; a chain of critical events that lead up
to that fatal moment triggers them.
Knight spent over three hours from around 5.30pm to nearly
9.00pm drinking in a local hotel before going to his mother’s house and loading
up his weaponry: a .22 calibre Ruger semi-automatic rifle, a twelve-gauge
Mossberg pump-action shotgun, and an M14 rifle. He then headed to nearby Hoddle
Street, where he shot dead seven people and wounded some twenty people,
including a police officer in the helicopter that was searching for him.
Official investigations into what may have caused Knight to
snap that day have pieced together critical events leading up to his actions.
Julian Knight was an adopted child. His father was a military man. Knight
attempted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He had performed poorly
academically and had been failing his courses at military school, from which he
had been dishonorably discharged for assaulting an army officer. He was
estranged from his father. His stepmother had rented out his bedroom and he was
now camping out on the balcony of her Victorian two-storey terrace house. He
had not heard from his birth mother, whom he had recently sent a letter. He had
a busted relationship with his girlfriend. He was out of work. He was behind on
the repayments of his Defence Force loan for his car and credit card. His car broke down on the very day he killed
his victims. He had been drinking heavily. That Sunday night he went to the
hotel bar where he often drank, but not one of his friends was there. Isolated,
he drank alone for three and a half hours before having visions of killing
people and getting some justice for the bastardization[i] [i]and
bullying he had experienced when at military school.
When people make decisions to do something that causes them
to rise out of their normal behavioral mode and take actions that will change
their lives, there is usually more involved than a spur of the moment decision.
For instance, it is rare for people suddenly to become a hero in a situation
without them having the inner fortitude to produce the courage required for the
circumstances at hand.
For instance, Bill
was walking down the street and he saw two large men over six foot beat up a
man much smaller than themselves. He ran towards them with his arms flying
about, yelling and screaming as if he was a madman who had just escaped from
the lockup. The two men ran away.
Bill is six-foot himself and has arms on him that are huge.
He reminds one of the cartoon character Popeye, who has massive forearms. He also has a voice that booms like a jet
engine preparing for takeoff. Furthermore, he is a person who has a strong
belief in upholding justice and gets incensed at wrongdoing. If you were to ask
him why he did decide to rescue the victim, he would claim that it was just a
decision made on the spur of the moment. Whereas, a five-foot man, slightly
built, who possesses a squeaky voice, probably would be laughed at by the men
who bashed up the victim, and he would be threatened himself, if not bashed and
bruised for sticking his nose into other people’s affairs. By the same token,
even taller men, would have not had second thoughts about keeping their noses
clean by saying nothing. If they had no sense of justice, they would walk on
by.
The statement, “As a man thinketh, so he is,” is a quotation
taken out of the book of Proverbs from the King James Bible. We are what we
think. What we think leads us towards holding a particular view, which
transforms into how we start to see the world around us. This is our worldview,
which becomes the basis upon which our interpretation of events sculpture our
attitude towards what happens in life and people in general. Attitudes create
behavioral responses to situations that, when reinforced, start to mold our
personality. Character is formed in us from enduring circumstances that require
us to hold fast to our determination to survive, in order for us to outlast any
suffering inflicted upon us against our will. However, there are varying
degrees of character, as well as that which is referred to as weak or strong,
or good or evil. Some people develop strong character in some areas of life,
but crumble in others. For instance, a man or woman can show integrity when it
comes to being an excellent employee or employer, but fall down when it comes
to alcohol.
A person of weak character is somebody who is not prepared
to suffer any pain or loss, and someone who is not willing to assume
responsibility. Instead of being disciplined by events, the person will cave in
and look for easier ways out, or simply rebel against the force that is causing
the pain. In other words, if a person is being bullied in the armed forces:
usually, he will resign. On the other hand, if a recruit’s underlying desire to
succeed in accomplishing his goal is truly a wholehearted determination, he
will persevere and survive, and develop strong character.
However, sometimes a person is subjected to regulations and
requirements that he does not like, because it is contrary to his upbringing.
It is very difficult for a person to comply with orders when they are used to
doing their own thing and not used to meeting other people’s expectations, or
being told what to do. If a person grows up without parental discipline, then
that child will react negatively to restrictions being imposed on him, or being
ordered around.
Parental discipline is evidenced when a parent or parents
place expectations upon a child and ensure that those expectations are met.
There are three ways that people do this, with a combination of the three
methods often utilized; the third method being adopted the least.
The classical conditioning method occurs when punishment or
fear is used as a means of controlling children so they will do as they are
told. This is often done by telling children that if they do not do as shown or
asked, they will be punished by being hit with a stick or locked in a room or, when very young, the
parent will buy a wolf to eat them up,
after reading the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. Often
loud noises and other abusive means are used to terrify the child if they do not
comply with their parents’ dictates. The children learn to comply and, except
in abusive cases, discover that enduring a little suffering is a part of life.
The operant conditioning method is more along the lines of
reward and punishment for achievements gained or expectations met. The child is
told that upon doing the required task they shall get a reward. If they do not
do the task they shall not be rewarded, instead they will miss out on some
treat. This is evidenced when a child is told they will get sweets if they are
quiet at the table and eat all their greens. The child does not eat greens but
has to endure watching other siblings or visitors or mom and dad eating what
they would like to eat. Eventually, the child eats the greens, since it is
sweeter to comply than suffer when denied.
The ethical conditioning method is where children are taught
to reason out the benefits of making decisions. This requires more effort than
the previous two behavioral compliance strategies. Here the child is informed
about the value of making right decisions and the disappointments and harmful
consequences that occur from making wrong choices. Initially, elements of
classical and operant conditioning may be used but they are not necessary, as
by using information to instruct the child to make right choices develops a
higher sense of self-esteem. Once the child is free to exercise their own
volition and make right choices, the parents involve themselves with the child
to encourage him to achieve whichever option chosen. This way, the child learns
that perseverance brings results when the desired goal has been achieved.
The evidence appears to be Julian Knight grew up being
undisciplined and was not subject to having been bullied at school, or if he
was, he had not learnt how to deal with it and overcome the problem. When he
went to military school, discipline and bullying (especially in the form of
bastardization) were features of life that he could not endure. His failing
academic marks were also another cause of disappointment and possible ridicule.
Feeling hard done by, Julian Knight felt that the world owed him, but
injustices were not being addressed. He had been served with a summons to
appear in court for assaulting army personnel, and he was thinking how he would
like to make amends himself. Only what tipped him over the edge?
In 1994, I was driving a Melbourne taxi. When driving taxis,
I would often find people engaging in deep and meaningful conversations with
me. I picked up a passenger one day in
his mid-fifties in Punt Street Melbourne and dropped him off in a suburb a little
out from Clifton Hill, where the shootings took place. The trip took about
twenty minutes. Punt Street becomes Hoddle St and the traffic was heavy. This
passenger told me that he had been drinking at the same bar that Julian Knight
was drinking. He was there when Knight left. Actually, he had been talking to
Julian Knight for about thirty minutes prior to Knight’s departure. He
confessed that he felt guilty for what happened that night because he could
have prevented Knight from doing what he did. I suggested that there was no
need to feel guilty about another man’s actions. My passenger said that Julian
Knight told him what he was going to do when they were drinking together at the
bar. He said that Knight was drunk but he thought what he was saying was mere
pub talk, that is, the bull and bravado of a drunken man. Anyhow, I dropped the
passenger off and reassured him that there was no need to feel guilty. He was
not the one who killed the people.
The year 2014 is now upon me, and about twenty years have
transpired since that conversation in the taxicab. I was talking to a person
about how people make decisions, and for some reason I brought up the
conversation I had had with the man in the front passenger’s seat when driving
my taxi back in 1994. Afterwards I was talking to another person about the
reasons people do things. During that conversation, we discussed what people do
when they are drinking beer sitting on a stool at a bar. It dawned on me that
the reason why the passenger I had in the taxi might have been feeling guilty
was he could well have reinforced Julian Knight’s thinking that he ought to
kill some people and show them what it is like to be bastardized. The young man I was talking to confirmed my
thinking as we further discussed various scenarios of typical bar behavior.
Later on, when I was on the computer, I did a search on the
internet to see what I could find out about Julian Knight. I was interested to
find out whether Julian Knight had been in the hotel prior to the shootings
taking place, to see if there was any merit to the story I was told by the man
in 1994. The truth is what my taxi passenger told me could very well be true.
He may have been in the hotel talking to Julian Knight and, as he claimed,
probably could have prevented a young man from killing seven people by
discouraging him rather than encouraging him. Now this could be the reason the
man in my taxi had a guilty conscience: in talking beer bravado, he probably
said that he would shoot the bastards, too.
[i]
Bastardization is the practice
of physical assault and sexual abuse with varying levels of severity including
rape by older members of the Australian Defence Force on new recruits.
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