In an interview with Inspectors Warren and Paine, Martin relates how his father took him diving and fishing. He bought a Zodiac inflatable boat which he eventually sold to buy two weapons only a few months before the massacre. One was a Colt AR15 more commonly called an Armalite which was identified by a Victorian gun collector who recognized it as one that he had handed in at a previous amnesty and was paid $1700 for. He told police that a mark on the barrel of the Port Arthur weapon described to him by Inspector Maxwell, matched a mark on his rifle made by his gunsmith. "My rifle also had a collapsible stock and a Colt sight, just as the massacre weapon has," he said. "I did the right thing and handed the weapon in and if the police put it back into the Australian community I would be disgusted. "They told me it would be sent overseas and used for military purposes." See STORY OF A RIFLE USED IN A MASSACRE There are conflicting identifications of the weapons used that I will not go into because its very in depth but suffice to say that there were far too many guns floating around that day which could only have been planted to muddy the waters. There are other sites which delve deeper into this subject and my links refer to these experts for more information on this matter. However be prepared to discover the irrefutable and almost unbelievable proof of evidence interference at the crime scenes. Martin didn't grow up with guns and rifles. His parents would not have approved. He was 23 when he bought a Daewoo 12 gauge shotgun but he was so afraid of it's recoil that he never even fired it. "A. I never, the funny thing is, I never umm, got round to using it. Even though I bought it, but it scared me the thought of it not working, and probably ricocheting out." He was afraid of the recoil. The parlance used by Bryant when he talks about guns clearly shows that he is not very familiar with weaponry terms. It also shows that he was a bit of a wimp when it came to handling guns because although he enjoyed the feeling of owning one, as many people do, I think they scared the hell out of him. Only months before the Port Arthur massacre Martin acquired two more rifles including the AR15 and for the first time in his life took weapons out into the forest near Mundunna to practice. He had purchased another rifle six years earlier but had never fired it because he couldn't get it to work. A gunsmith told him that he was using the wrong ammo and he had to be shown how to use this weapon. However he still couldn't get the knack of it so it remained at the gunsmiths. WARREN Q. You went, you used to go down in that area a fair bit then? A. Mmm. Q. Would it be fair to say you go down there mare than ahh, you know other parts of the State? A. With the guns? Q. Mmm. A. That's the only place I used to take the guns. Q. Right. A. Nowhere else and it's only been the past six, seven months that I've actually used the guns. Before that I'd never used them, before in my life. *************** A. That's, it's only been seven months that I've been firing 'em. Mmm *************** PAINE Q. Did you think that, did you think it was safe to have the ahh, firearms loaded in your car? A. Umm, well they've got a safety catch thing. A safety catch thing? Thank God for that. Six or seven months practice on his own shooting cans and cardboard in the bush and he becomes one of the most impressive shots in the world who describes a part of his weapon as "a safety catch thing". ***************** It should be noted that during the interview with Martin and Inspectors Warren and Paine, Bryant's legal representative at the time gave permission for him to be interrogated without counsel being present. There are several pages and portions missing in the transcript especially after Martin talks about the hostage and the BMW. Did he say something that might have incriminated an accomplice? Most investigators agree that besides the Martins and the hostage handcuffed to the staircase there was at least one other person in the Inn during the siege. Did Martin say something that could have given up the plan? There was no way Martin wanted to plead guilty because in his simple mind he insisted that he had not even been to the Port Arthur historical site on that day and why should he plead guilty to something that he didn't do? At his hospital bed he was charged with only one murder that being of Kate Scott. He was confused and denied the charges. However in a strange twist, during the interview with Paine and Warren, he believed that he had used a gun to stop a Gold BMW at the corner of Fortesque Bay and Palmers Lookout. He said he wanted to go for a joy ride in the car and told the woman and a child to get into his yellow Volvo and the male driver to get into the boot of the BMW. He said he needed a hostage in case he got into trouble for not having a driver's license and he was worried about the man driving off in his car and going to the police. Then he said he drove to the Seascape Inn visit the Martins because he missed them when he visited them earlier in the day. However his knock on the door was unanswered yet again. For some reason, he says he can't explain, he said he took petrol out of the BMW (that he kept in his Volvo because the gauge didn't work) and he poured the petrol all over the BMW. He said he wasn't sure whether he set the car on fire or not but there was a huge explosion and that's how he thinks he got burnt. He said that he thought the reason he was being charged with murder was because of the man in the boot of the BMW who must have died in there, and he thought he was responsible for this man's death. First chopper in and a mysterious black van disappears despite lock-down Now here's what really happened. No one died in the boot of the car. It was the real gunman who stopped the BMW at the toll-booth of the Port Arthur convict site (kms away from Palmers Lookout) as he was exiting the site and he shot the four occupants in the car. Then he dragged out their bodies and drove off in their Gold BMW. When he came upon the white Carolla he slowed down and shot the woman driver and kidnapped the male passenger putting him in the boot of the BMW and then drove on to the Seascape Inn. When he got there he took the hostage out of the boot and into the Inn where he handcuffed him to the staircase rail and that's where he was burnt to death in the house fire and not in the car. The gunman might have tried to relate this story to Bryant and, perhaps because of his mental capacity, he got it all wrong because he didn't have a clue about what really happened or what he was supposed to say. Why would Bryant make up this story of taking the BMW for a joy ride and burning his hostage in the car fire where he believes he also got burnt? If he gave himself up for what he thought was a murder, then why didn't he admit to other murders? Or at the very least tell some equally fanciful story about that part of the day? He couldn't have been in any more trouble. However, no matter how hard they tried to get him to say something about Port Arthur he adamantly insisted that he was never at the convict settlement on that day. He said he only had $15 and couldn't afford it. When asked how his Yellow Volvo got there he said that he didn't know and that perhaps the woman he let go from the BMW must have drove it there. He showed genuine remorse for what happened to the man in the boot of the BMW but he also thought that this was the reason he had been arrested and was facing jail. He was clearly very worried about this incident. Far more than any of the accusations against him for the murder of another 35 people because he believed he had killed his hostage in the boot of the car and would go to jail for it. However all of the other instances were non events to him because, as he said, "I didn't shoot anyone". Isle of the Dead where it is thought was the original site for the massacre There were other occasions when he was said to have uttered strange things that would have incriminated him but if he did say any of the horrible things that his lawyer John Avery told the press he had, then it is obvious to any reasonable person who knows anyone like Martin that he would say anything to keep a conversation going. He was a lonely person and an attention seeker. After months of solitary confinement it's more than likely that Martin would have said anything at all just to keep someone interested in him enough to keep him company. He could also have used this childish ploy to be aggravating and annoying. He was obviously being pressured into admitting to something that he didn't do and could have lashed out with things that he thought Avery wanted to hear. The shock value would have been entertainment for him as prison confinement would not have been easy for him to endure without psychiatric help.