A former TV producer who had months of contact with accused cop killer Dezi Freeman has revealed the violent language he used towards a neighbour, saying he wanted to ‘wring their neck’.
The 56-year-old allegedly gunned down Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart in ‘cold blood’ after an arrest warrant went bad at Freeman’s bush retreat in Porepunkah on Tuesday morning.
Another wounded officer is understood to be in a stable condition after undergoing surgery.
Sources have told media that police had visited the property to execute a search warrant and speak to the father-of-three about alleged sexual offences against a child under the age of 16.
It’s understood the alleged offending had occurred in the past two years.
Ten officers converged on the property, including members of the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team.
Concerns about Freeman’s known possession of guns also prompted the heavy police presence.
He has not been seen since, but several volleys of gunfire were heard around the town on Wednesday as a massive police manhunt continued for him.
Luke Mortimer, a former producer for A Current Affair producer and now working at 7News, revealed on Wednesday that he had numerous conversations with Freeman.
‘I spent months talking to alleged police killer Dezi Freeman… when his irate email landed in A Current Affair’s inbox some time around mid-2018,’ Mortimer said.
The so-called sovereign citizen had contacted the program over a long-running row with neighbour Zar Saccutelli while living beside Victoria’s Mount Buffalo.
‘Before he emailed the program, Dezi felt he had lost his voice in the fight against his neighbours, and we were his last hope at justice,’ Mortimer said.
A former producer for A Current Affair has described the violent imagery used by alleged cop killer Dezi Freeman (pictured, right) during their numerous conversations
He quoted Freeman as allegedly saying: ‘Sometimes you want to go Braveheart on them and wring their neck, but my camera is my machine-gun and it shoots 24 frames a second.’
Freeman had provided Mortimer with a Dropbox link including footage allegedly showing Mr Sacutelli and a friend taunting Freeman and his wife Mali.
Freeman, who disliked the media and changed his name from Filby to reflect his Sovereign Citizen views, appeared on the program branding Saccutelli’s family ‘the bogans from Buffalo’.
A YouTube video of the interview has been seen hundreds of thousands of times, with the hashtag, ‘neighbours from hell’, while a voiceover describes them as ‘ferals’.
‘For years after (the story), Dezi would inundate my inbox with emails and text messages about stories that over time became nuttier,’ Mortimer said.
‘He had decided to prosecute a magistrate who hadn’t ruled in his favour; he was bringing charges against Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews; the vaccine roll-out was a sinister plot of population control.
‘Then during COVID, he felt he’d lost his voice to the state of Victoria, and I gather now, in his mind at least, he felt he had no hope.’
Describing another update from Freeman, Mortimer admitted he thought it ‘another inconsequential update to the life of Dezi Freeman’.
The 56-year-old ‘sovereign citizen’ allegedly gunned down two police officers in ‘cold blood’
‘But now, it’s perhaps the most consequential decision a Magistrate has ever made in the Wangaratta Courthouse,’ Mortimer said, referring to a message Freeman had sent him.
‘Hi Luke. Yesterday we had a victory in Wang Court. The Magistrate rejected (the) application to take my firearms… The tide is turning,’ Freeman allegedly wrote.
Freeman ranted online about the ‘extermination’ of politicians and said police should be ‘preferably incinerated’ in chilling posts.
An Instagram account with the handle @freenedi, understood to belong to Freeman, commented on another user’s post on December 1, 2023: ‘COPS ARE THE ENEMIES OF HUMANITY. ESPECIALLY HERE IN AUSFAILURE (sic) WHERE THEY HAVE DECLARED WAR ON AUSSIES. COPS ARE NEW GESTAPO. THEIR LIVES ARE DEDICATED TO INFLICTING THEIR HATE AND SUPERIORITY COMPLEXES ON OTHERS AND CAUSING AS MUCH HARM, MISERY AND DESTRUCTION AS POSSIBLE. THE ONLY GOOD COP IS A DEAD COP. PREFERABLY INCINERATED.’
He also singled out former Victorian premier Dan Andrews.
“The Filthy criminals just ignore us and do whatever they want,” he wrote under an image of then-Victorian Premier Daniel Andrew, adding, “They all need to be exterminated.”
Hours before Freeman allegedly killed two cops, he said: ‘The Global Statist enemy is deliberately importing Islamic migrants so they can create chaos, and then order out of chaos.’
The manhunt in Porepunkah for Freeman entered its third day on Thursday, with wintry conditions complicating search efforts.
The alleged gunman fled into bushland earlier this week, plunging the town of about 1000 residents in Victoria’s high country into lockdown.
On Wednesday, Daily Mail observed heavily armed members of Victoria Police’s elite Special Operations Group preparing to enter the wilderness via a military-style chopper.
Text messages from Victoria Police warning residents to stay out of the area continue to appear on the mobile phones of anyone approaching the address.
Residents in the area remain on high alert, with some reporters welcomed by residents with rifles slung around their shoulders.
Freeman’s former neighbour and imagined nemesis, Mr Saccutelli, 59, fled his local property in fear of Freeman on the run in the area, and wanted to return to the safety of his family home in Wodonga.
The attack occurred when an arrest warrant was executed unsuccessfully at Freeman’s bush retreat (pictured) in Porepunkah, Victoria, on Tuesday morning
Ex neighbour Zar Saccutelli spoke to Daily Mail, revealing he thought Freeman was a ‘nutcase’
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Saccutelli said he had always feared Freeman would one day cause tragedy – and predicted it would be fatal.
‘I said to my sister, ‘This guy is a nutcase. He is going to kill someone one day… he’ll shoot someone’,’ he revealed.
He said his family had endured living as the Freemans’ neighbours for five years before Freeman moved out around 2023.
7News’ Mortimer had visited Freeman at the home for the filming of the A Current Affair segment and on Wednesday offered insight into the man and his family.
‘There was no doubt Dezi had a few screws loose, but with that, he had an extremely gentle nature. A calm temperament,’ Mortimer said.
‘Mali, his wife, was even gentler. Locals told us she was known as ‘the Mother of Myrtleford’ – a music teacher and much-loved member of the local Filipino ex-pat community.’
Describing the former home of Freeman in the valley below Mount Buffalo, Mortimer said Mali greeted him on the verandah ‘between a row of hanging venison carcasses’.
The venison, which Mortimer said Freeman claimed to have shot, had been salted and was drying out to become food for the family.
The manhunt in Porepunkah for Freeman entered its third day on Thursday
‘The Freemans lived a little further off-the-grid than I had first expected,’ Mortimer said.
‘Despite Dezi’s beautiful family and his idyllic life… it became more obvious as I spent time with him in person that this was a man with endless gripes.
‘As we toured his home, he complained he wouldn’t be there much longer: his landlord was evicting him, and he put forward an unsubstantiated conspiracy of people he believed had convinced his landlord to remove him.
‘This is when it clicked that Dezi was a man endlessly preoccupied by a battle to protect his world, even when he had no solid proof to legitimise his fears, and he was so obsessed with protecting it, he would resort to airing his dirty laundry on national TV.’
