‘Sov Cit’ Killer Meets His Predictable End

The months-long hunt for murderous ‘sovereign citizen’ Dezi Freeman is finally over. Seven months ago, in August 2025, Freeman gunned down three police, killing two, in an ambush shooting as they attempted to execute a search warrant related to historical sexual offences. It was the culmination of a long descent into irrationality and increasing criminality from the self-proclaimed ‘sov cit’.

Freeman subsequently disappeared into the dense bush of Victoria’s rugged high country. The resulting manhunt was one of the most intense in Victorian history.

It ended exactly as you’d expect.

Fugitive Dezi Freeman was gunned down by heavily armed police after a shoot out on a property in northeast Victoria where he had been hiding in a structure that has been described as a cross between a shipping container and a caravan.

Freeman, wanted over the double shooting murders of two police officers in Porepunkah last August, came out of his hiding spot wrapped in a blanket, before exposing a weapon.

It is believed that the firearm was one of the handguns Freeman stole from the dying police, in the August shoot out.

Victoria’s top cop, Mike Bush, revealed on Monday that a 216-day manhunt for the accused cop killer had come to an end when police shot Freeman dead at a property in the northeast town of Walwa.

Special Operations Group police led the raid on the property. “Everything I know at this point tells me that this shooting was justified,’’ he said. Mr Bush said the police operation was conducted by professionals.

“There was an appeal to encourage the person to come out … it did result from a standoff. He then exited the building. There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully, which he did not. We strongly believe he was armed,” Mr Bush said.

Freeman, according to a report in the Herald Sun, was shot dead after he emerged firing a hand gun taken from one of the police he is suspecting of killing in Porepunkah. The Herald Sun has revealed the SOG surrounded the property overnight and threw stun grenades before the shootout.

The shootout erupted after a three-hour standoff.

It’s believed that Freeman was being harboured by other sovereign citizens.

He was shot about 150km northeast of Porepunkah in the Mt Lawson State Park, near the NSW and Victorian border. No police officers were injured during the incident.

The area – which is basically inhabited except for small outstations, scattered homes, farms and campsites – is situated on the banks of the Murray River near the small rural Victorian region of Burrowye and around 15 to 20 minutes from the small township of Walwa.

The town of Walwa had a population of just under 200 in the 2021 census.

Freeman’s life on the run was apparently brought to an end partly by what insurers would call an ‘Act of God’ – a bushfire sparked by lightning in January. There has been a growing police presence in the area and Freeman was apparently found close to where the fire originated.

Unsurprisingly, his fellow sov cit nutbars are calling him a ‘hero’.

The hunt for Freeman – who some have compared to Ned Kelly – galvanised conspiracy theorists in the fringe sovereign citizen movement, which broadly uses legal-sounding concepts to falsely assert that government authority and laws do not apply to them.

The comparison to Kelly is more ironically apt than these loons recognise. Kelly was also a petty criminal with a big mouth and a persecution complex who murdered police unprovoked in an ambush attack. What most of the nongs who get their bogan ‘Such is Life’ tattoos also don’t realise is that Kelly considered himself an Irishman, fighting an Irishman’s grievances, rather than Australian ones. The same people who rage against Muslims for importing foreign grievances and violent terrorism, hero-worship a violent terrorist who imported foreign grievances to Australia.

Freeman was also a blatant hypocrite: rejecting the authority of the government and its institutions, including the legal system, police and taxation authorities – yet perfectly willing to scarf up the bennies those taxes paid for.

A disability pensioner who was born Desmond Filby, Freeman also tried to arrest a magistrate and was linked to an attempt to have former premier Daniel Andrews tried for treason.

One former friend told the ABC that Freeman had worked on an organic farm but had long received unemployment benefits because of an inability to take orders.

At the time, Freeman was about 25 years old and living in his car.
“He was unemployable,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified.

In other words, the mirror image of socialist grifter Bernie Sanders, surely the only man ever kicked out of a hippy commune for being too lazy, and never holding down a job outside the politics, which has made him a multimillionaire. Still, at least Sanders hasn’t actually shot anyone.