For seven months, Dezi Freeman was Australia's most wanted man. Now, the full story of the extraordinary manhunt that followed is being told in a brand-new podcast series, Dezi Freeman: The Hunt, launching Sunday 3rd May.
Hosted by 7NEWS Chief Network Anchor Michael Usher and 7NEWS Melbourne Crime Editor Cassie Zervos, the series reconstructs the investigation from the final 24 hours leading to Freeman's capture, before exploring his life, his radicalisation, and the growing threat of the sovereign citizen movement.
The Final Hours
The first episode details Freeman's final hours — holed up inside a shipping container on a remote property near the NSW border, surrounded by Victoria Police's elite Special Operations Group. After a tense standoff, Freeman emerged wrapped in a doona, holding a stolen police firearm. He fired twice. Officers fired back.
Cassie Zervos described the scene: "He became so volatile that morning. He defended what he did on August 26 last year, because he felt in his mind, based on his beliefs as a sovereign citizen, that the police were in the wrong. And when he refused to cooperate, that's when things really took the turn that we have now seen the result of — which was them killing Dezi Freeman."
A Network of Support
Michael Usher said the details of Freeman's final hideout were not what he expected. "I might've expected him to be living in a cave in a very, very remote area — true bushman style. But he had shelter, he was on a property, and clearly himself resourceful but being resourced and helped by other people," he said.
Zervos revealed Freeman was protected and moved around by a network of close, like-minded supporters throughout his 216 days on the run — people who shared his anti-government, anti-police beliefs and deliberately fed false information to investigators to throw them off the scent. "He had beer. He was living - it was like a makeshift home, sitting on his porch outside the container. Cooking utensils, a doona, even a solar panel rigged up. He wanted warmth. He wanted shelter."
Emotional Aftermath
The episode also captures the emotional weight of the moment Freeman was finally found - and what it meant for the officers who had spent seven months searching for him. "It was an incredible moment as a reporter, but also as someone who's covered this case from the start and has a lot of police officer friends who I know have been sacrificing their own lives to find and deliver justice to these two fallen Victoria Police officers," Zervos said.
She broke the news on air after receiving a tip through an encrypted messaging app from a contact on the task force - two words that ended one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history. "All it said was — DF found. DF dead."
"Knowing what I know about Dezi Freeman, it was always going to end the way that it did," Zervos said. "He went out the way he started it."
Episode 1 of Dezi Freeman: The Hunt is available now on 7plus, LiSTNR, and wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday and Thursday.
