Justice For Samantha

Serial paedophile Michael Guider has come to the end of a 17-year jail sentence for the manslaughter of nine-year-old Bondi girl Samantha Knight. But Samantha’s longsuffering mother, Tess Knight, and a band of dedicated supporters are fighting to keep him locked away. Michael Sheather reports.

If Samantha Knight was still alive, she would be 42 years old. She might be married with a couple of kids of her own. She might be living overseas, pursing a career in the arts or academia, or living on a farm somewhere in rural NSW. She was a little girl whose life and vitality promised so much.

But Samantha Knight is not alive. That hopeful future never came to be. Instead, Samantha will forever remain the blonde, green-eyed, nine-year-old child depicted in her family’s photographs, a little girl frozen in time and place, a little girl whose innocence and life were stolen by a monster.

Samantha – Sam as she was known to family and friends – disappeared from a Bondi street close to her home on the afternoon of August 19, 1986. She had popped out to go to the local shops, but never returned – a little girl who vanished and left behind one of Sydney’s longest running and most confronting mysteries.

Michael Guider is a serial paedophile, a man convicted of Samantha Knight’s manslaughter and another 75 child abuse charges. He currently languishes in a NSW high-security jail, where he has been a prisoner for the past 17 years. He is about to complete that sentence, raising the chilling prospect that he may soon be released back into the community.

In all the years since Samantha Knight died, Guider, who had once been Samantha’s babysitter, has never recounted the full story of what really happened to her. His refusals to divulge what he did to her and where he hid her body lie at the heart of this disturbing story. Those stubborn refusals, and the cruelty they represent for her family and friends, are also among the reasons so many people, including Samantha’s mother Tess Knight, believe that Guider remains a dangerous predator who should stay in jail, where he has no chance to offend again.