Michael Anthony Guider (born 20 October 1950) is an Australian paedophile, serial child molester and manslaughterer who was imprisoned on 60 charges of child sexual abuse in 1996. He received an additional sentence in 2002 for the manslaughter of 9 year-old Sydney girl Samantha Knight, who disappeared from Bondi, New South Wales in 1986. He was released from prison on 5 September, 2019, under strict conditions and an extended supervision order.
Early life
Michael Guider was born in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He and his mother moved to Sydney in 1952. His mother had an unstable relationship with an army cook who was an alcoholic. A younger brother, Tim, was born in 1953. The two boys spent time at Melrose Boys Home because their mother was unstable and unable to look after them. Guider later told prison psychologists that he was sexually abused by his mother, and later at the boys' home.
In the 1970s, Guider was charged with various offences after setting fire to a shop owned by a woman he had had a relationship with. Guider had worked as a gardener at the Royal North Shore Hospital, and over the years had developed a keen interest in Aboriginal culture and sites around Sydney. He had earned some respect as an amateur expert on the subject and his material had been used and acknowledged in at least one published book.
Imprisonment
Guider was arrested in December 1995, after he had fondled two 7-year-old girls. One of the girls told her mother, who went to the police. In 1996, he was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of 10 years on no less than sixty charges against eleven children. His usual modus operandi had been to babysit the children of women he knew and sedate them with the sleeping drug Temazepam. He would then molest and photograph them while they were asleep. He received a fixed term of six years and six months' imprisonment in 1999 for 11 further charges against two other children, with the judge ordering that six months of the sentence be served cumulatively.
Guider was placed in conditions of strict protection in Goulburn prison. In spite of this, he was bashed savagely on two occasions. He was admitted to the prison hospital with fractures to his right leg and hand, plus numerous abrasions. One of his ears was almost torn off.
Taking time served in pre-sentence custody into account, Guider was eligible for parole in June 2014. On that occasion, his request for parole was denied, with the result that he still had approximately five years to serve.
Samantha Knight
Samantha Terese Knight was born Samantha Terese O'Meagher on the 25 March 1977. She lived at Manly with her parents, Tess Knight and Peter O'Meagher, but they divorced at an early stage. Knight then lived with her mother in Bronte. By 1986, they were living in a block of flats in Imperial Avenue, Bondi. She went missing on 19 August 1986. Despite an intensive campaign, in which posters of her were displayed all over New South Wales, she was never found.
Guider eventually attracted the attention of police who were investigating the disappearance of Knight, partly because of pressure from Denise Hofman (co-author of Forever Nine), who had worked with Guider on Aboriginal sites around Sydney. Freelance journalist Di Michel, who had introduced Hofman to Guider, had told Hofman how Guider had talked about Knight in a way that had sounded odd and obsessive, arousing her suspicions. Michel, however, was reluctant to go to the police because she felt she would be informing on a friend. Hofman, therefore, decided she would have to go to the police herself with this information. She duly passed the information on to a detective at Castle Hill police station.
Questioned by police, Guider initially told them that he had only met Knight a couple of times over the years, but it eventually turned out that he had molested her and two other girls at a house in Raglan Street, Manly, a number of times during 1984 and 1985. After a lengthy investigation, Guider was charged with Knight's murder on 22 February 2001. On 7 June 2001, he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Knight. He claimed that he had drugged her the way he had always drugged his victims, and claimed he had accidentally given her a fatal overdose, saying she regained consciousness and he then gave her a second dose because he did not want her to recognise him.
On 28 August 2002, Guider was sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment with a non-parole period of 12 years for manslaughter, to be served cumulatively with his sentence for the child sex offences. Knight's body has never been found; Guider showed no remorse, and said he could not remember what he did with her body.