“I cannot comprehend how he could sacrifice being a father and husband to become Australia’s most wanted fugitive.”
Dezi Freeman’s sister is still in disbelief about the actions of her younger brother.
She told 7.30 that she was “ashamed and angry”, and said her brother was “no hero”.
“Dez has wreaked havoc and evil to so many, and for what?” she said.
“I was shocked to learn that he had weapons and was armed, and that events played out the way they did in front of his wife and children, putting them at risk, and how traumatic that would have been for them to witness.
“Literally three days before the shootings, he had sent me a couple of photos of his younger son, then three days later he murders two police officers and shot (sic) injured a third and attempted to shoot another officer.”
Siblings estranged
Dezi Freeman was shot dead on Monday at 8:30am after a three-hour stand-off with Victoria Police’s specialist operations group at an isolated property at Thologolong on the NSW-Victoria border.
The property where Freeman was shot by police. (ABC News)
In the weeks after Freeman killed two police officers in Victoria’s high country, sparking Australia’s largest manhunt in recent history, there was conjecture as to whether he was alive or dead.
Since September, 7.30 has been in touch with Freeman’s estranged sister, who has remained anonymous to protect her family’s privacy.
She has remained silent since her brother opened fire on a group of police officers in Porepunkah in late August 2025, but since his death, she has agreed to make public her statements to 7.30.
Freeman had been on the run for seven months after killing two police officers last August. (ABC News: Annie Brown)
In October, she told 7.30: “I was hoping my estranged brother would have been found or apprehended in the aftermath of the shootings and have been quite terrified and extremely anxious that he is still at large, now knowing the level of violence that he is capable of.”
Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart were killed; a third officer was also shot but survived.
Senior constables Vadim De Waart-Hottart (left) and Neal Thompson were killed by Freeman. (Supplied: Victoria Police)
“It must be extremely distressing for them, and I do not want to add to their trauma,” she said at the time about the victim’s families.
She told 7.30 she did not know her brother’s home address, and on the few occasions she was in Victoria’s high country, she did not contact him.
“We were not close.”
Before Monday’s dramatic events, she believed he had taken his own life after the incident at Porepunkah.
An aerial image of Freeman’s Porepunkah property. (Supplied: Nearmap)
Victoria Police said Freeman refused to surrender before the he was forced out of a shipping container draped in just a blanket.
Police say officers fired on Freeman after he revealed a Victorian Police-issued service pistol, which was stolen from one of the fallen officers at Porepunkah.
“To the families, colleagues and friends of Neal and Vadim, I offer my heartfelt condolences,” his sister said this week.
Dezi Freeman, whose body was formally identified on Wednesday, was born Desmond Filby but changed his last name after becoming estranged from his family.
Freeman and his sister’s parents have both passed away; their wedding anniversary coincides with the date of the Porepunkah shooting on August 26.
“My parents would have been horrified if they were still alive to witness the tragic events of the past seven months,” Freeman’s sister said.
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The police investigation since Monday’s stand-off has now turned to uncovering any of Freeman’s accomplices who assisted him during his seven months at large.
She described Freeman’s wife, Amalia, and his children as “beautiful people”, but had little to say to anyone who had helped her cop-killing younger brother.
“The police will sort them out,” she told 7.30.
“I only care about the people impacted by my brother’s hatred.
“Heroes build communities, not destroy them.”
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