Dezi Freeman, the sovereign citizen who murdered two Victorian police officers in August 2025 and led one of the largest manhunts in Australian history.
He was today shot dead by police after a standoff on a rural property in Victoria’s northeast.
Freeman, who had been on the run for 216 days, was killed after a three hour standoff on a property in Thologolong, near Benalla, Victoria, started at 5.30am this morning.
Police asked Freeman to surrender, but he did not. Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush confirmed that there was a standoff before Freeman was killed. No police officers were injured in the operation.
There was an opportunity for Freeman to turn himself in, Commissioner Bush said. Freeman, who was 56 years old, had apparently been hiding in a shipping container on the property, not far from his Porepunkah home where the murders occurred.
On August 26, 2025 Freeman opened fire on police who were there to serve a warrant related to allegations of past sexual offenses against a minor.
Senior Constable Vadim De Waart Hottart, 35 and Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59 were slain.
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After being shot in the leg, a third officer spent almost an hour hiding under a bus. Then Freeman disappeared into Mount Buffalo National Park’s untamed bushland.
Hundreds of officers from various law enforcement agencies were deployed in the area in the days that followed the murder.
A reward of $1 million was offered for information that led to the arrest of the fugitive, the largest reward in the state’s history.
The Freeman case marks the second fatal confrontation in three years between Australian law enforcement and members of the sovereign citizen movement.
In December 2022, Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train ambushed and killed two Queensland law enforcement officers and a neighbor in similar circumstances at a remote property in Wieambilla.
The sovereign citizen ideology is an ideology that has deep roots and dates back to the United States in the late 1960s.
The ideology has since spread to an estimated 26 countries around the world.
The sovereign citizen ideology gained new followers in Australia during the pandemic lockdown period.
Born Desmond Christopher Filby, Freeman left school at the age of 13 and was characterized by colleagues as not being able to follow instructions from superiors.
He had a lengthy history of antagonistic interactions with law enforcement and took on the surname Freeman, which is popular among sovereign citizens.
He once advocated for the “extermination” of politicians and once wrote on social media that the only good police officer was a deceased one.
The rise of the ideology via social media and the way it has been linked with conspiracy theories such as QAnon has made it difficult for the government to gauge when the ideology might turn violent.
For the families of Neal Thompson and Vadim De Waart Hottart, the decision on Monday might bring closure.
For the agencies that deal with the threat of domestic extremism in Australia, the case of Freeman is a reminder that the threat is not over.
