Victoria Police vehicle in Melbourne. Image: Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
Raids widen Dezi Freeman probe as police hunt the people who kept him moving
By The Times of Australia
Police have pushed the Dezi Freeman investigation across the Victoria-NSW border, raiding seven properties and arresting two men as detectives try to answer the question that has sat over the case for months: who helped a double police killer stay hidden?
The new searches began just after 6.20am on Tuesday, with Victoria Police moving on rural properties at Buckland, Stanley and Lucyvale, while NSW Police hit addresses at Greenwich Park, Tarlo, Wombeyan Caves and Umina Beach.
By the afternoon, detectives had arrested a 64-year-old Lucyvale man in Wodonga. He was expected to be interviewed by police. A 47-year-old Wombeyan Caves man was also arrested at Greenwich Park, though police say that arrest related to separate outstanding warrants.
No Freeman-related charges had been announced by late Tuesday afternoon. Police said they were still speaking to people at the raided properties and had seized electronic devices.
The raids are part of the continuing Taskforce Summit investigation into Freeman’s movements after the Porepunkah shootings in August 2025. Freeman shot dead Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart, 35, and wounded a third officer when police attended a rural property to execute a warrant.
He then vanished into the bush, heavily armed, kicking off one of the most intense manhunts Victoria has seen. For seven months, police searched the alpine country and border districts while the trail went cold, then warm, then cold again. Freeman was finally shot dead by police on 30 March at a remote property in Thologolong, near Walwa, close to the NSW border.
Tuesday’s development matters because it shifts the story from the dead gunman to the living network around him. Police now say they believe Freeman moved between Victoria and NSW while he was on the run, and that he received help from more than one person during that time.
Detective Inspector Anthony Gasparini said the investigation did not end when Freeman was found.
“We said from the outset that if alive, Freeman would likely need significant support to leave the area and survive over the following months,” he said in comments reported by Guardian Australia. Police, he said, wanted to identify and hold to account anyone who harboured a wanted fugitive.
That is the hard edge of this case now. Freeman is dead, but investigators are still working the roads, properties, phones and relationships that may show how he stayed out of reach for so long after two officers were killed. The families of Thompson and De Waart-Hottart are left waiting for the same answer the Porepunkah community has been waiting for since last August: whether Freeman acted alone after the shooting, or whether others helped keep him in the shadows.
Police are asking anyone with information about Freeman’s movements between August 2025 and March 2026, particularly around the areas searched on Tuesday, to contact Crime Stoppers.
Sources: Guardian Australia; Wikimedia Commons image credit.
