For seven months, Dezi Freeman appeared to have vanished like a puff of smoke into Victoria’s remote high country, and in all likelihood he could have remained hidden for years.
That is, until January.
That was when the tiny town of Walwa, which he had previously singled out for its isolation, became the focus of a national emergency when devastating bushfires tore through the area.
An out-of-control blaze burned through more than 100,000 hectares. It destroyed 14 homes and 70 structures, and required more than 350 firefighters and aerial support to contain over the course of a month.
A neighbour told Daily Mail the fire began just metres from the abandoned shipping container where Freeman was hiding.
Given he had no communication with emergency services or warning alerts, it was little short of a miracle that he did not perish in the raging inferno.
But the very thing that likely saved Freeman from the flames ultimately cost him his life. Daily Mail has been told Freeman began backburning around the abandoned property in a desperate bid to protect himself as the fire front closed in.
In the aftermath of the fire, teams were deployed to assess the damage and check the welfare of residents. It was during that emergency operation that suspicious activity was detected on the supposedly abandoned property.
A neighbour of the property where fugitive Dezi Freeman was shot dead by cops said a bushfire broke out not far away in January, which brought attention to the site
Freeman has been hiding in a shipping container compound (pictured) on a supposedly abandoned farm at the small town of Walwa in Victoria’s north east.
Two large shipping containers sit on the Walwa property among a number of smaller sheds
Many locals had been evacuated, but because the owner of the property, Rick Sutherland, was interstate at the time, the farm had been marked as ‘unoccupied’.
‘Dezi is a bushman and he is experienced in back burning,’ a close friend said.
‘He would have done that if the fire was that close.’
‘So when the firefighters came in to do that themselves that would have been noted as suspicious, especially as that farm was marked as unoccupied.’
From there, recovery teams quietly began monitoring the area. Once movement was detected, the property was placed under covert police surveillance.
It was still more than a month before police moved in, but Daily Mail has been told they were using the time to ascertain if Freeman was being aided by any of his close associates.
It’s understood during that period, police had tracked the car of someone known to Freeman, which repeatedly made the almost 200km trip between where he used to live in Porepunkah and Walwa.
On Monday morning an elite specialist police team was deployed and after a three-hour standoff, in which he refused to surrender, Freeman was gassed and shot dead in a hail of bullets.
During the standoff on Monday, Freeman is understood to have pointed a gun at officers which he took from their dead colleague months earlier
A January 6, 2026 photo from Forest Fire Management Victoria shows a bushfire burning in the Mount Lawson State Park, 25 kilometres west of Walwa. Firefighters warned of ‘catastrophic’ bushfire dangers on January 8 as they battled multiple blazes stoked by a heatwave
Freeman gunned down two Victoria Police officers before fleeing into the bush
Graffiti is seen on a sign on Murray River Rd in Thologolong near Walwa
Many locals were shocked to find out they were living in such close proximity to the double killer and wanted fugitive.
He had been on the run for seven months after he gunned down senior constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart and detective leading senior constable Neal Thompson when they were part of a team who raided his bus-turned-house in Porepunkah in August.
One neighbour told Daily Mail she had called the landowner when the fires first broke out.
‘That fire was right there on the edge of the property,’ Rebecca told Daily Mail.
‘I called Rick to check he wasn’t down there and he told me he was in Tasmania, so no one would have been concerned about it.’
The extraordinary twist also explains why no one is expected to claim the $1million reward offered for information leading to Freeman’s capture.
Victoria Police had offered the record bounty, the largest ever put up in the state for the capture of a fugitive, in the hope someone within his network would finally come forward.
But rather than a single tip-off, it appears it was the bushfire emergency and the suspicious activity that followed which had, in the end, finally exposed his secret lair.
The coroner is leading an independent investigation into the saga
Freeman was described by those who knew him as an experienced bushman who knew the Victorian high country like the back of his hand
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15696963/Dezi-Freeman-reward-Victoria-Police.html
