The Kimberley Killer
Tuesday September 11 at 9.30pm on Channel Nine

Eerily reminiscent of the fictional hit film Wolf Creek, this week’s Crime Investigation Australia examines the murders of five innocent tourists across the Northern Territory and Western Australia in 1987.

These horrific events were to spark one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history and end in a bloody police siege at a remote outpost in Western Australia’s Kimberley region.

Hosted by Steve Liebmann, this next compelling documentary in the new series produced by FOXTEL includes detailed re-enactments, exclusive interviews with members of the West Australian Tactical Response team present at the shootout, as well information from police files which had been sealed for almost 20 years.

The gunman’s first victims were a father and son, who were shot dead while scouting for a fishing location on the banks of the isolated Victoria River in the Northern Territory.

The cold-blooded double murder sent shockwaves throughout the area but police investigations failed to uncover any motive for the killings. Roadblocks were set up across the area but the killer eluded the police dragnet and escaped across the border.

Police hoped the two murders in the Northern Territory were an isolated case but just days later their worst fears were realized when three more innocent tourists were found gunned down in chillingly similar circumstances near Kununurra, in Western Australia.

A seven man team of heavily armed police from the elite Tactical Response Group in Perth was rapidly deployed into the area. The breakthrough came when a vigilant outback helicopter pilot spotted a camouflaged vehicle in bushland near Fitzroy Crossing (in the Kimberley region), where the townsfolk were getting ready for the annual rodeo.

Police, unsure if the hidden vehicle belonged to the gunman they were looking for, approached it cautiously and decided to call on a police aircraft to fly over the site in an attempt to flush the occupant out into the open.

It was then, without warning that an armed man, naked to the waist, emerged from the bushes and began to fire at police and the police plane.

As the officers dived for cover in the low-lying scrub, the order was given to open fire on the gunman. Although wounded, the man continued to fire at police with his semi-automatic weapon.
Despite his arsenal of weapons and ammunition, the gunman was no match for the police team and when smoke from exploding grenades cleared he was found dead as the result of a fatal bullet wound to the chest.

Police later identified the gunman as a German tourist, Joseph Schwab, but to this day his motive for the random killings remains a mystery.