Anyone caught harbouring accused police killer Dezi Freeman risks 20 years’ jail

Anyone found to be harbouring or assisting accused double murderer Dezi Freeman faces up to 20 years in jail, a legal expert warns, as one of Australia’s largest ever manhunts enters its fourth week.

Freeman allegedly shot and killed Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart, 35, and injured another officer during an operation to serve a warrant on the 56-year-old at a property near the town of Porepunkah on August 26, before fleeing into bushland at the foot of Mount Buffalo.

He has not been seen since.

Police have offered a record $1 million reward for any information leading to Freeman’s capture and have repeatedly said they could not rule out the possibility the alleged killer was alive and being harboured or assisted by members of the public.

Criminal law specialist Melinda Walker said that in a case such as this, any charges would fall under section 325 of the state’s Crimes Act.

This includes cases where a person has committed a serious indictable offence and another person, who knows or believes them to be guilty of this “principal offence”, acts with the purpose of assisting with their escape from authorities or impeding their apprehension, prosecution, conviction or punishment.

“Where the principal offence is the most serious offence, being life imprisonment, then that person [who assists them] could be liable to a penalty of a maximum of 20 years if they are found guilty,” Walker said.

Earlier this month, police revealed that Freeman’s wife, Amalia Freeman, was home at the time her husband allegedly opened fire and warned she could face criminal charges for allegedly obstructing the police investigation.

However, the experienced lawyer said it was not always straightforward.

Walker said that for someone to be found guilty of helping a criminal, it must be proved they had done something “absolutely positive” with the knowledge of the accused offender’s crimes.

This could include deliberately leading police down the wrong track, hiding the accused person or providing them with food, transport or money to escape, she said.

She said the area of criminal law where harbouring was most common was in child protection.

But there have been notable cases in the state’s history, including Victorian man George Elias, who was found guilty of harbouring convicted drug lord Tony Mokbel as he prepared to flee Australia and then helped him remain on the run.

Elias pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice by allowing Mokbel to hide at his property at Bonnie Doon in north-eastern Victoria while escape plans were finalised.

Elias was jailed for 11 years in 2011.

In another case in 2007 in the Victorian Supreme Court, a woman pleaded guilty to helping a man who she knew had murdered somebody dispose of a body. She then cleaned the flat where the murder had occurred.

Another senior legal source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly, said there was cascading series of possible offences a person could face, from “moderate to very, very serious”.

“If the facts suggest that with the knowledge that a very serious crime’s been committed, and you do something to assist the offender, that’s a serious indictable offence that usually attracts jail,” the seasoned criminal lawyer said.

“If you don’t have a belief that it’s a murder, the maximum is around five years.

“But if you have a belief that it is murder, you could be facing 20 years in jail. We’re talking about very serious offences that are heard in the Supreme Court.”

Freeman, who changed his surname from Philby, appeared on the Mike Holt Show podcast in 2019 to boast about how he had “arrested” a magistrate at the Wangaratta court in a civil case involving a land dispute, warning authorities had “picked the wrong person to mess with”.

In the bizarre exchange with Holt, who is also a self-declared “sovereign citizen”, Freeman erratically flipped between ranting about his disdain for police and to then saying not all officers are bad.

“The government can come in and police can come in and raid your fridge and cook your dog if you give him consent,” he said in the podcast.

He later said: “I know cops out there that seem to be decent blokes,” before adding that some had been told to do “the wrong thing by higher-ups”.

Moments later, he told the podcast police “crash tackle, handcuff and brutalise people”.

Freeman has previously labelled officers “frigging Nazis”, “Gestapo” and “terrorist thugs”.

As the hunt for Freeman continues, police have searched more than 100 homes in Victoria’s High Country. This includes a team of heavily armed tactical officers who raided a Myrtleford home late Friday afternoon.

Last week, Acting Deputy Commissioner of Regional Operations Russell Barrett revealed the hunt for Freeman was Australia’s largest ever tactical police operation, which included more than 125 specialist officers scouring dense, rugged bushland and caves.

“We consider he may still be in the area, it’s a possibility he may be harboured, or he may be dead,” Acting Deputy Commissioner Barrett said.

“We’ve had over 1100 pieces of information all up, and we’re working through that.”

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