The Ghost of Mount Buffalo: Why Dezi Freeman Is Almost Certainly Still Alive

On the morning of 26 August 2025, a team of police officers drove out to a property on Rayner Track in Porepunkah, a small town nestled in the foothills of Victoria's Alpine region, roughly 300 kilometres northeast of Melbourne. They were there to execute a search warrant on a man named Desmond Christopher Filby — known to most as Dezi Bird Freeman.

What happened next triggered the largest manhunt in Australian history.

Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, was just days from retirement after 38 years on the force. Senior Constable Vadim De Waart-Hottart, 35, was a Belgian-born officer on temporary assignment to the area. Both were killed. A third officer was seriously injured. Freeman, armed with multiple firearms, fled on foot into the dense bushland surrounding the property and vanished.

He hasn't been seen since.

The Manhunt

The response was immediate and unprecedented. Within days, nearly 500 officers were deployed to the Porepunkah area — Victoria Police bolstered by every interstate force in the country, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and the Australian Defence Force. Heat-detecting equipment, drones, cadaver dogs from multiple states, heavily armed tactical officers in Bearcats — the full apparatus of the state was mobilised to find one man.

Over 2,000 pieces of intelligence have been investigated. A $1 million reward — the largest ever offered in Victorian history for an arrest — remains active. And yet the result is the same every time: nothing.

No body. No weapons. No clothing. No gear. No trace whatsoever.

The Official Position

On 2 February 2026, Detective Inspector Adam Tilley of Taskforce Summit stated publicly that police "strongly believe" Freeman is deceased somewhere in the Mount Buffalo National Park. He said caves, mines, and rivers had been carefully searched, and there was no evidence to suggest Freeman was alive.

But in the same breath, Tilley acknowledged that the investigation remains open to three possibilities: Freeman is dead, he is being harboured by someone, or he has left the area and is surviving alone. He also warned that if Freeman is still out there, "he is armed and dangerous, and if you are looking after him, just be mindful that he can still cause harm to others in the community."

That's a curious warning to issue about a man you believe is dead.

The Case for Alive

Here's what we know about Dezi Freeman. Born Desmond Filby in 1968 or 1969, he grew up in Glen Waverley before his family moved to regional Wodonga. By 2003 he had adopted the Freeman surname — a common choice in the sovereign citizen movement, which rejects the authority of governments, police, and the legal system. He worked as a freelance photographer. He was married with at least one son.

And he had been hiking Mount Buffalo National Park since he was 16 years old. His son described it as his "second home."

Let that sit for a moment. Roughly 40 years of intimate familiarity with a vast, rugged alpine park filled with caves, disused mineshafts, abandoned huts, gorges, and dense eucalyptus bush. Not as a casual weekender, but as someone deeply skilled in bushcraft who knew the terrain the way most people know their own suburb.

Now layer on the ideology. From at least 2019, Freeman was posting openly hostile content about police online. In a 2024 court appearance over his cancelled driver's licence, he called officers "friggin Nazis" and "terrorist thugs." This was a man who had been radicalising for years, who saw a confrontation with authorities as inevitable, and who had the skills and the terrain knowledge to prepare for that moment.

The question isn't whether Freeman had the means and the motive to prepare a concealed position in that park. The question is whether he would have chosen not to.

Sovereign citizens as a group are often preppers. They stockpile supplies, they plan for off-grid scenarios, they prepare for what they see as the inevitable overreach of government. A man with Freeman's ideology, his bushcraft ability, and his decades of access to Mount Buffalo would have had both the motivation and the opportunity to establish a hidden cache or shelter — possibly over many years of hiking trips, invisibly, one load at a time.

The Evidence That Isn't There

Police have searched over 40 square kilometres. They've used cadaver dogs from three states. They've cleared caves and mines. They've conducted line searches through heavy terrain. They've deployed drones with thermal imaging and had ADF support.

And they have found absolutely nothing.

This is the detail that cuts both ways, and which police have used to support the "he's dead" theory — the idea being that the terrain is so vast and rugged that a body could lie undiscovered indefinitely. And that's true. But it's equally true that if a man died of exposure or suicide in the bush, there would be a trace. Clothing degrades slowly. Firearms don't decompose. Boots, metal, synthetic fabric — these things persist in the environment for years. Animals may scatter remains, but they don't relocate rifles.

The total absence of any physical evidence is more consistent with a living person contained in a single concealed location than a deceased person exposed to the elements.

The Naden Precedent

There is a direct precedent for this scenario in Australian criminal history, and police are acutely aware of it.

Malcolm Naden was wanted for two murders and a sexual assault in New South Wales. He evaded capture in dense bush for nearly seven years before being apprehended in March 2012. Like Freeman, Naden was an experienced bushman with deep knowledge of his terrain. Like Freeman, he was assisted by friends and community members during his time on the run.

Criminologists have drawn a direct line between the two cases. The key difference, as one expert noted, is that Naden had a head start — police initially didn't know who they were looking for. Freeman was identified immediately. But Freeman arguably has superior terrain knowledge, and the Mount Buffalo area offers more natural concealment options than the NSW bush where Naden hid.

Another relevant case: the New Zealand hunt for Tom Phillips, a fugitive who lived off the land for five years before being shot by police. New Zealand tactical specialists who were involved in that operation were flown to Victoria to assist in the Freeman search — a telling acknowledgment that Australian police recognise this as a long-game scenario.

The Strategic Game

If Freeman is alive and concealed, the situation becomes a war of attrition and information. And both sides are playing it.

The police announcement that they believe Freeman is dead may be operationally genuine. But it may also be strategic. If Freeman or his potential supporters believe the active search is over and the heat is off, they're more likely to make a move — a resupply run, a vehicle moving at an unusual hour, a communication that can be intercepted. That's when mistakes happen.

The $1 million reward staying active despite the "he's dead" messaging is notable. You don't maintain the largest reward in Victorian history for a man you're genuinely confident is deceased. That reward exists to fracture loyalty — to put a price on silence and test whether anyone in Freeman's orbit values money more than ideology.

Meanwhile, there are strong indications the covert investigation is far more active than the public-facing messaging suggests. Taskforce Summit, led by a detective inspector from the Anti-Gangs Division, includes detectives from Crime Command and specialists from the Fugitive Squad, Armed Crime Squad, VIPER Taskforce, Special Operations Group, and Search and Rescue. That's not a cold-case staffing level. That's an active operation waiting for a break.

What Happens Next

If Freeman is alive and concealed in a prepared position, the calculus is straightforward. He can sustain himself for as long as his supplies last and his location remains undiscovered. But no cache is infinite. At some point — months, possibly years — he will need to move. He'll need to resupply, or he'll need to be extracted by someone.

That's the moment police are waiting for. Not a dramatic bush discovery, but a piece of intelligence. A phone call, a vehicle movement, a financial transaction, a tip from someone who knows something. Detectives have said openly that they believe this case will be resolved through public information, not search operations.

The alternative — that Freeman stays hidden indefinitely, never surfaces, never makes contact, never needs anything from the outside world — is possible but increasingly difficult with each passing season. Australian alpine winters are brutal. Even the most prepared bushman faces compounding challenges: food preservation, water access, medical needs, the psychological toll of total isolation.

But then, this is a man who apparently spent decades preparing for exactly this scenario. The sovereign citizen who named himself Freeman, who called police terrorists, who knew every ridge and gully of Mount Buffalo like the back of his hand.

Police say they think he's dead. They've spent six months and unprecedented resources looking for proof of that. They've found none.

Perhaps they're right, and Mount Buffalo has simply swallowed him whole — another secret held by the ancient stone and the dense, indifferent bush.

Or perhaps Dezi Freeman is exactly where he planned to be all along.