August 26, 2026 — 12:01am
The police officers who went to Dezi Freeman’s remote home in Victoria’s high country to serve a warrant a year ago today say they didn’t know what they were walking into. But they knew they had two of their best officers with them.
Veteran detective Neal Thompson was on his last proper job just days away from retiring while rising star, 35-year-old Vadim de Waart-Hottart, had recently arrived from Melbourne’s Public Order Response Squad.
In the ambush that followed, Freeman shot both officers dead, and injured another, before disappearing into the wilds of Mount Buffalo in Porepunkah. The murders sparked Australia’s biggest-ever manhunt, ending in Freeman’s death in a shootout seven months later and more than 100 kilometres away at the New South Wales border, and left a community – and two police families – devastated.
On Tuesday, hundreds gathered outside the pair’s station in Wangaratta as police unveiled two memorials for Thompson and de Waart-Hottart, hewn from rock side by side. A dog fountain is coming too, for Thompson the dog-lover. And another plaque will be unveiled, further up the mountain in Bright, a year on from the killings on Wednesday.
