Mate was a child killer
I had to help police jail him for his evil crime
By Denise Hofman, 70, from Sydney, Australia
Tearing open the prison-issue envelope, my hands shook. This could be it,
I thought. Only, as I read the reams of poetry scrawled across lined paper, my heart sank.
It was early 1998 and, yet again, Michael Guider hadn’t admitted anything.
I sighed, flopping down into my chair, disappointed. I can’t keep doing this, I thought, rubbing my temples.
Yet I was determined to find out the truth...
I’d first met Michael Guider back in 1993. He was an amateur archaeologist, I was an environmental activist.
Every couple of months, we’d team up to map Aboriginal sites in Sydney.
He was always smart and clean-shaven. Clever, too.
We’d chat, usually about our work.
In February 1996, I tried to call Guider and arrange a meet-up.
He worked as a hospital gardener, and I’d contact him through the reception. But that day, he wasn’t there. Instead, a security guard who picked up the phone told me Guider had been arrested.
He was awaiting trial for sexual offences against 11 children aged between 2 and 16. I felt sick. Horrified, I called a friend who’d also worked with us both.
‘Did you know?’ I gasped.
‘Yes, I heard,’ she said.
‘We went walking a few weekends ago, he was acting odd,’ she admitted.
‘He was talking about Samantha Knight. Said he’d always wondered what had happened to her,’ she went on.
Samantha Knight, 9, had gone missing 10 years earlier, in August 1986.
She’d left her apartment to go to the shops and was never seen again.
Her disappearance had been headline news, hundreds of locals had joined the search. But she was never found. ‘There was something scary about the way he said it,’ my friend whispered.
And there was more. She told me how, even back in 1986, Guider had been obsessed with Samantha’s disappearance. He’d signed the search book set up by her parents, appeared in photographs taken by journalists.
The more I heard, the more my stomach churned.
I was convinced...
Guider was involved in Samantha’s disappearance.
I went down to the police station and told them what I’d discovered.
But officers weren’t interested in taking a statement.
In October 1996, Guider pleaded guilty to 60 charges of molesting children. He was jailed for 16 years.
Afterwards, police told me he wasn’t a suspect in Samantha’s disappearance. You’re wrong, I thought. Don’t ask me how, but I knew it in my bones.
But if I was going to prove it, I’d have to get the evidence.
So I started writing to Guider behind bars, arranged to visit.
Facing him in a dingy prison visiting room chilled me to the bone.
But after weeks of me gaining his trust, Guider finally started talking about his child victims.
He’d befriend their mothers while working in the hospital gardens. He’d offer to babysit to give the mums a break.
Then he’d drug the kids and molest them. Take pictures, keeping them in a scrapbook.
I tried not to react, but inside, I wanted to vomit. Guider showed no remorse. He blamed the mothers for not looking after their children properly.
Harrowing.
Over the next two years, I visited Guider 15 times.
I tried to get him to talk about Samantha. To reveal his evil secret. But he never slipped up. Instead, whenever I said Samantha’s name, he’d get
The more I heard, the more my stomach churned...
angry. Tell me never to mention that girl again.
But he’d send me drawings of a child with a distinct likeness of Samantha.
Blonde hair, green eyes, wearing the same colour clothes she’d had on.
Then there were the poems about nature, environmental disputes, a range of topics.
I kept pressuring the police, too.
But by May 1998, the stress of the visits was taking its toll.
I couldn’t sleep, became paranoid. Feeling hopeless, I gave up.
But in July 1998, a task force reinvestigating Samantha’s disappearance called.
‘We want your help,’ an officer said.
They finally agreed Guider was a suspect and they wanted me to visit him one last time.
‘The room will be bugged,’ an officer told me. I worried it’d be too stressful. But I was convinced Guider was Samantha’s killer, and I needed to know the truth. So I agreed to visit him. Yet, despite hours of questions about Samantha, how he knew her and what he remembered about her disappearance, he refused to say anything that would incriminate him.
I stormed out – hurling stones and swearing in the prison car park, in sheer frustration. The investigation continued. Eventually, on 22 February 2001, a journalist called me.
Guider had been charged with Samantha’s murder.
His own brother, in the same prison for armed robbery, and other prison informants, had managed to extract a confession.
For three hours, I cried – with relief, with horror. I’d finally got my answer. In June 2001, Michael Guider, 51, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Samantha Knight.
He claimed it was an accident. That he’d drugged Samantha, like all his victims, but accidentally gave her a fatal overdose.
He refused to reveal where he’d hidden her body.
He claimed he’d originally buried her near where she was taken, then dug her up and disposed of her remains in rubbish bins.
Guider was jailed for a further 17 years.
But he’s eligible for parole this year – and I’m terrified of what might happen if he gets out.
For myself, for the children who could be his next victims.
But I’m proud of the help I gave in getting Guilder to confess.
If I hadn’t spent years going to visit him, telling police he was a killer, they may never have focused on him.
Samantha and her family wouldn’t have got justice.
I sacrificed my health and sanity to put that monster behind bars.
That’s where he needs to stay.