Coronial Enquiry
The coronial enquiry in September 1988 heard that there was chaos during and immediately after the shooting and there was uncertainty over which of the police officers present was in charge. When ambulancemen entered the building with police, the police shouted to announce their presence as lifts arrived at their destination. Police on the floor also called out and pointed their guns in the direction of the lift. According to Inspector Adrian Fyfe, the officer in charge at the scene, the first police officer on the scene, a traffic policeman, had acted appropriately. He had used his initiative to isolate the area and had made an accurate assessment of the situation. However Fyfe criticised this officer's "appalling" lack of knowledge of "police command structure" for not realising who was in charge until 5.00 pm, 40 minutes after his arrival. Fyfe said the radio call sign he used identified him as the officer in charge.
Con Margelis testified to the coronial enquiry that he and Vitkovic had been friends for several years. Margelis said after Vitkovic arrived to see him on 8 December, he pulled out his rifle, tried to pull the trigger and then aimed it at a female colleague and told her not to move. Knowing that Vitkovic could not move quickly due to a bad knee, Margelis jumped over the counter and hid in the women's toilets on the 5th floor. Margelis said he expected that Vitkovic would come after him, leaving others in the office safe. Of possible reasons for Vitkovic's actions Margelis said he had not seen Vitkovic in the months prior, adding that "I can't really explain." Margelis said Vitkovic had become depressed and embittered after injuring his leg playing tennis, followed by a failed operation to repair the damage. Margelis said he began to see little of Vitkovic due to his depression.
Another employee in the 5th floor office said that their colleague Judith Morris was shot as Margelis attempted to leap over the counter: "He was after Con and Judy was in the way." This witness described Vitkovic's eyes as being those of someone "completely insane" and his laugh as "sick" and not human, adding that he laughed after shooting Morris.
Officer worker Tony Gioia told the inquest he tackled Vitkovic having just witnessed a co-worker being shot dead at point blank range. Gioia believed he would be the next victim once Vitkovic turned around and saw him. Gioia said during the scuffle Vitkovic lunged for the window and struggled to get out, until he was hanging from the ledge with Gioia holding Vitkovic by the ankles. Despite others helping to restrain Vitkovic he struggled free and fell to the street. A woman in an adjacent office building told the inquest she believed she saw a man in a blue jumper throw the man on to the balcony, and then push him out when he moved back to the window. Under cross examination she incorrectly identified this as occurring on the building's 10th floor, not the 11th, and stated that her building was 80 metres from the Australia Post building.
The counsel assisting the coroner, Julian Leckie, judged that this witness was "honest but mistaken". He said that photographs showed Gioia was not wearing a blue sweater on the day. Evidence showed that Vitkovic tried to jump and others tried to prevent this. Leckie also concluded that Rodney Brown would have died from his wounds no matter what was done.
The psychologist in charge of the team counselling workers and their families said that the video of Vitkovic firing his gun on the 5th floor should not be made public as it would cause significant distress to those being counselled. He advised against publishing a still image of Vitkovic taken from the video. Media outlets had requested copies of the video. The coroner, Hal Hallenstein, said the material presented at the inquest was public and had to be presented in a public way.
A pathologist told the inquest that he found no legal or illegal drugs or alcohol in Vitkovic's system. He also said that Vitkovic was killed instantly from multiple injuries consistent with falling from a great height.
The contents of Vitkovic's diary were read to the inquest on its 12th day. The diary included apologies to his family for his planned actions, and a suicide note. Among his comments to his sister he wrote "It's time for me to die. Life is just not worth living." The final diary entry, written on the day of the shooting, read "Today I must do it, there is no other way out." Earlier entries catalogued his sexual problems. Vitkovic linked these to an incident when he was eight years old and was forced to undress in a school locker room and friends made fun of his uncircumcised penis. "After this nudity was a dirty word for me," Vitkovic wrote. "Since the age of 12 I knew that normal sex was not possible for me and I avoided girls completely until I was 19." In another entry he wrote "I am the odd man out there's no doubting it"; less than a month before the shooting he wrote: "As Rambo said in First Blood, once you accept a problem, it's no longer there."
At the coroner's hearing on 4 October 1988, Joe Dickson, counsel assisting the court, said that the police response was "satisfactory, and no complaints could be made about it." He said that police response was fast, and the decision not to send ambulance officers into the building until it was cleared was responsible, noting that no one died because of any delay. He said the police officer who sent people back into the building truly believed he advised them to go to the top floor, despite evidence that he did not. The hearing heard that while three of the people sent back into the building had emotional trauma, no person sent back died or was injured. Dixon conceded that the senior constable who sent people back into the building might not have taken the best course of action.
Dickson said a routine practice on the 12th floor where staff had to open a security door to talk to visitors rendered its security measures ineffective. He said the 5th floor Telecom Credit Union security measures were "adequate for all purposes except the visit of a maniac." On the 11th floor, no one could have perceived the possibility of a robbery or violence. Dickson said Vitkovic's visit to the Melbourne University counsellor in December 1986 could not be seen to have contributed to the killings. He said that Vitkovic probably brooded over the results of a Church of Scientology personality test given to him 8 October 1987.
The results of the Scientology test showed he "had hit rock bottom"; the person administrating the test did not advise Vitkovic to see a psychiatrist but to enrol in a Scientology course. Forensic psychologist Dr Alan Bartholomew told the coroner's court that Vitkovic would have been eligible at the time to be certified insane under the Mental Health Act. After studying Vitkovic's diaries Bartholomew concluded he was a paranoid schizophrenic and that there was no doubt the personality test worsened his depression and might have contributed to the decline in his mental state. Batholomew agreed that Vitkovic was criminally insane at the time of the shooting and said Vitkovic could have identified with Rambo and the Hoddle Street killings.
After hearing representations by counsel representing the building tenants directly affected, the families of those killed, and news media organisations, the coroner Hal Hallenstein refused to suppress publication of photographs taken from a 5th floor security video that showed Vitkovic. He said these images would be made public at the end of the inquest.
Read more about this topic: Queen Street Massacre