Conspiracy theorist who called police Nazis: Alleged shooter’s background revealed

The increasingly erratic behaviour of Dezi Freeman, a radicalised conspiracy theorist who repeatedly espoused hatred for police, had reached such extreme levels that his wife, Mali, had started to worry.

Less than a week after Mali confided her concerns to a neighbour, the 56-year-old is accused of ambushing police who arrived at the rural alpine property where the couple lived with their children. He allegedly shot two officers dead and wounded a third.

Freeman is said to have stolen guns from the fatally wounded officers. He remained on the run in the dense bushland of Porepunkah, about 300 kilometres north-east of Melbourne, on Tuesday night. Mali and his children have been accounted for.

The officers had arrived at the 20-hectare property to execute a search warrant. Freeman and his family were living in a bus, surrounded by thick bushland. One of the property’s owners has shared similar anti-government content on their social media.

Freeman, who was born Desmond Christopher Filby, is a self-described “sovereign citizen” and since the COVID-19 pandemic had developed a public profile within the radicalised anti-government community for his stunts.

His intense hatred for police is well documented in online posts, video footage and court documents. During a hearing last year appealing his suspended driver’s licence, Freeman told a court that “even the sight of a cop or a cop car … it’s like an Auschwitz survivor seeing a Nazi soldier”.

Locals said on Tuesday that during the coronavirus pandemic his behaviour became increasingly erratic. He had refused to wear face masks in shops, voiced his refusal to get vaccinated, and told people about his distaste for government restrictions and lockdowns.

“He was anti everything to do with it,” one local said. “He went from being just a pretty ordinary country bloke … a normal dude you’d see at the local footy club all the time to quite a strange bloke. He fell down a bit of a rabbit hole and sort of disappeared and went off the radar.

“But we could have never imagined this. I’d know him for years, and never thought he would be capable of doing this. Everyone is just in absolute shock. It is horrifying.”

During the lockdown years, Freeman appeared on podcast episodes discussing his attempt to “arrest a magistrate”, and made headlines in 2021 when he helped lead an attempted private prosecution of then premier Daniel Andrews for treason.

Freeman was arrested outside court in Myrtleford while protesting with fellow fringe anti-government demonstrators on the day the charges he filed against Andrews were due to be heard. The magistrate threw out the Andrews case.

As Freeman was taken away to the local police station, he could be heard calling the arresting officers “scumbags” and “criminal filth” who were obsessed with power.

The Border Mail reported that his arrest in Myrtleford in 2021 was over earlier sexual crime allegations.

In 2020, he also used disturbing language, describing an officer who pulled him over for speeding as a terrorist and “corrupt scum”.

Freeman has been charged with several minor driving offences, some of which were thrown out. He was also charged with breaching a personal safety intervention order in 2019. That charge was also later dropped.

He had been living at the Porepunkah property for years. In 2018, a fight with a neighbour landed him on an episode of A Current Affair.

“Sometimes you want to go Braveheart on them and wring their neck, but my camera is my machinegun and it shoots 24 frames a second,” Freeman said at the time.

He claimed on his social media to be a photographer.

Freeman went to school in the eastern Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley before moving to the Victorian border town of Wodonga in 1977 with his siblings.

“All of my school years were Hell. We moved to Wodonga in ’77 for Grade 3. I left school at 13yo and only completed Year 8,” he wrote in an online post.

A local business owner said Freeman often came into his store to pick up his mail.

He described him as a quiet, reserved man who was always polite at the store.

“I saw him about four days ago when he came to pick up mail. He seemed completely fine. He never really said much.”

Freeman’s wife, Mali, born Malia Nicolas, has worked as a music teacher and most recently in the local supermarket.

One neighbour described her as a “good soul” who had also worked at the local cafe before it was shut down a few years ago. In the A Current Affair episode, locals described Mali as the “mother of Myrtleford”.

“She was always bringing in fresh fruit and vegetables to donate,” one local said on Tuesday.

“Everyone thought she was a very nice person. She would bring in food in case anyone was in need. We would put it in a basket outside the store.”

A neighbour said Dezi Freeman was used to living off-grid, and worried he could survive a long time in the dense bushland.

“The cops will have their work cut out for them catching him. He’s got a beautiful family though, so my heart breaks for them,” the neighbour said.

A man who lived next door to the property, but who asked not to be identified, said he didn’t know Freeman or many others who seemed to frequent the isolated land that overlooked his own property.

“But there’s a lot of people living up there. It’s like a little community. You see a lot of cars driving in and out.

“They’ve got a huge gate there. You couldn’t get in. It’s like a bloody prison gate and I think it’s got a keypad on it to get in.”

With Erin Pearson