Paedophile Michael Guider who killed schoolgirl Samantha Knight arrested for breach of release order

A perverted child killer responsible for one of Australia’s most notorious abductions has been arrested for breaching orders placed on him after his release. 

Michael Guider has been living in a secret location after moving out of a jail-run halfway house, and his whereabouts are not even known to his victims.

The 71-year-old, who kidnapped and killed Sydney schoolgirl Samantha Knight in 1986 and preyed upon other children across two decades, was released from prison three years ago. 

He was arrested on Wednesday night for breaching conditions relating to his extended supervision order.

The Daily Telegraph reported that during a routine check on an address at Fairfield Heights in Sydney’s south-west police discovered he had allegedly been looking up material on his phone in contravention of those conditions. 

Guider was refused bail and will appear at Fairfield Local Court on October 10 charged with two counts of failing to comply with an extended supervision order-T2 

For the first six months of his freedom, Guider was holed-up in a secure facility attached to the Long Bay prison complex along with other offenders too problematic to return to society. 

But in March 2020 the loathed paedophile was quietly moved out of the Nunyara Community Offender Support Program centre at Malabar and placed in new permanent accommodation.

Those how know Guider say he will have changed his appearance since leaving leaving Long Bay jail in September 2019 (pictured)

Michael Guider kidnapped, drugged and killed nine-year-old school girl Samantha Knight in 1986. She was snatched from near her home at Bondi and her remains have never been found 

That angered and frustrated some of Guider’s surviving victims, who said at the time authorities had refused to reveal where their tormentor was now living. 

Social media users had claimed to have spotted Guider walking around suburbs in Sydney’s south-east including La Perouse.  

‘I just saw him walking up to Little Bay – not a care in the world, he has lost a huge amount of weight and has white hair and beard,’ one wrote.

While those alleged sightings were never verified, the fact Guider’s whereabouts were a secret disturbed Chantelle Daly, who as a child was abused by him.

Michael Guider is pictured left on Christmas Day, 1986, four months after he killed Samantha. He is pictured right clutching a Kodak film packet and developed photographs in 1984, the year he began molesting Samantha

Ms Daly was six years old when Guider drugged, molested and photographed her and a friend while he was supposed to be babysitting the pair. 

‘I think the fact he’s got any right to privacy or this second chance at being an unknown man is completely ridiculous,’ she said in 2020. 

‘Ultimately that’s what they do with paedophiles – they want them to be able to just slink back into society quietly without anyone kicking up a fuss.

‘They don’t want any more attention brought to the fact that he’s now moved and we don’t know where he is.’ 

Ms Daly said she and other victims were given an opportunity to nominate suburbs where they did not want Guider to be able to go or live. 

‘That’s all well and good but if we travel we don’t actually know if we’re travelling to where he’s currently living,’ she said.

‘I could not imagine walking around, going about my daily life, and seeing him smack bang in the middle of the street. 

Lisa Giles, who was molested by Michael Guider as a child, says she was told her abuser had been moved out of a prison halfway house but not where he was now living. Ms Giles is pictured outside the Supreme Court after unsuccessfully trying to keep Guider in jail in 2019 

Chantelle Daly (left and right) was six when Guider drugged, molested and photographed her and a friend when he was supposed to babysitting the pair. ‘I think the fact he’s got any right to privacy or this second chance at being an unknown man is completely ridiculous,’ she said

‘It’s always at the back of your mind. Every corner you turn, you’re like, are they going to be there? It’s just constant and it’s exhausting. 

‘I honestly do not know how any victim could handle that. It doesn’t matter how much time has gone. It’s horrific. It should not be a possibility.’ 

Lisa Giles was preyed upon by ‘Uncle Mick’ from age five to 11 and like Ms Daly fought hard in 2019 to keep Guider in prison when his 17-year sentence for killing Samantha finished.

‘The current structure can’t possibly put the community’s minds to rest because the threat has not dissipated,’ Ms Giles said. 

‘This is an openly unrepentant criminal, and according to psychiatric reports heard in court, has not been rehabilitated, in spite of completing the full arsenal of courses available to him in jail. 

‘There has been a systemic, cumulative build-up of loopholes and leniency available to Guider, and he has been largely protected throughout his incarceration.’ 

Ms Giles, who made a powerful submission to the Supreme Court in August 2019 objecting to Guider’s release, described then how he coaxed his way into her family.

‘I was one of his conquests,’ she said. ‘Michael is the psychotic bad guy you see in the movies … narcissistic and delusional.’

Michael Guider was housed at the Nunyara Community Offender Support Program Centre in Sydney’s Long Bay prison complex until March 2020. Nunyara is a non-custodial facility providing interim accommodation for up to 36 recently released medium to high-risk male offenders

Regardless of how strict the conditions placed on Guider after his release, once he was back in the community ‘our children are not safe and our minds are not safe’, she said.

‘If Michael Guider is free, given an inch, he will take a mile. He will take a child’s innocence, relish it in his hands and drink it like a fine wine.’

Ms Giles was informed by NSW Corrective Services’ Victims Support Unit last year that Guider had been moved out of Nunyara but they could not tell her where he was now living. 

Michael Guider has never shown any remorse for killing Samantha Knight in 1986 

‘Maintaining the confidentiality of an offender’s location might make the supervision teams job easier, but it makes living life harder for those of us who have to live alongside our trauma,’ Ms Giles said. 

‘How can this be an equitable solution for those whose lives we are trying to restore? Enough is enough. We need more transparency from NSW Corrections.’

Ms Giles said unchecked speculation on social media about where Guider was living created further anxiety for his victims.

‘For the direct survivors this means our incoming information is always unreliable, unregulated, with no fact checking,’ she said. 

‘Negotiating this environment is exhausting. We need more information about this perpetrator’s movements than the little we have.’

Guider’s younger brother Tim has previously warned his sibling would have used his time in Nunyara preparing himself to commit sex crimes on prepubescent girls again.  

After his initial release Guider refused to receive letters, phone calls or visits from anyone, including Tim. 

‘His minders have said to me he doesn’t want contact with anybody from the outside world,’ Tim said in 2019. 

Tim Guider (pictured) predicted his brother would drastically alter his appearance before he left the halfway house he was staying in, including removing the long beard he grew in 2019. ‘He’s going to make himself look like Mr Average,’ Tim said

‘He’s trying to keep his secrets basically. He doesn’t want anyone to know where he is or what he’s doing.’ 

Tim predicted Guider would have altered his appearance before he left Nunyara, including removing the long grey beard he grew last year. 

‘He grew a kind of a bikie beard, so he could walk out looking mean,’ Tim said. ‘That’ll go and then people won’t recognise him.’

‘He’s going to make himself look like Mr Average. They don’t want people to recognise him in the community because people will want to kill him.’

Ms Daly agreed. ‘No one knows what he looks like now,’ she said. ‘When he came out of jail he had this huge thing hanging off his gut and he looked like a bushman. 

‘That’s not what he looked like when he abused us and that’s not what he’s going to look like now, I can guarantee it. 

‘Everyone’s looking for this big, scary bogeyman and that’s just not what he looks like anymore.’

Guider was held at Nunyara with other former inmates for whom it is hard to locate a suitable new home. Finding a permanent home for a serial child molester such as Guider can be harder than placing a murderer in accommodation. He is pictured leaving prison in September 2019

Tim said his brother would do whatever was necessary ‘so that he can operate again as a paedophile.’ 

‘He is worse than he was 20 years ago, not better,’ Tim said. ‘Imagine what lengths he’ll go to now.’

When Guider was filmed leaving prison his most distinctive features were the beard and a basketball-size hernia hanging from underneath his shirt which caused him to waddle when he walked. 

It was unclear whether Guider had undergone a procedure to have that unsightly growth removed before he left Nunyara and returned to the community.

Under the terms of his release Guider must seek permission to ‘significantly’ change his appearance but his brother said the public would not be alerted if he did.

‘He could shave his beard off and say, “Whoops!” What are they gonna say?’ Tim said. ‘He could shave the whole thing off and there’s nothing they can do about it.’ 

Guider was let go from the Metropolitan Special Programs Centre at Long Bay on September 5, 2019, after serving 17 years for killing Samantha and a total of 23 years in prison. 

Serial paedophile Michael Guider’s first home outside prison was a single room featuring a bed and a desk at the Nunyara facility (pictured) in the Long Bay prison complex

Samantha’s body has never been found and Guider has shown no remorse for her manslaughter, which he once claimed was accidental and most recently said he had not committed. 

Guider had previously been jailed for sexually assaulting 13 children from 1980 to 1996. Police are aware of other victims still too traumatised to come forward.

His brother believed Michael, who is 21 months into a five-year extended supervision order, would find a way to return to his old ways once he was back in the community. 

‘He’s a hunter,’ Tim said. ‘And that’s what I think he’ll do. He’ll start out hunting. 

‘But he won’t be limping around or hunched over or looking surly. He’ll just walk around normally and he’ll talk to people. He’s a friendly, outgoing sort of guy. 

‘He’ll start to look for victims because honestly he can’t help himself.’

A Corrective Services NSW spokeswoman said Guider was only allowed to leave Nunyara when escorted by staff to essential appointments. In the meantime he would be helped into adapting to life outside prison, where Guider spent the 23 consecutive years

Tim believed his brother would remain a danger whilever he refused to reveal the extent of his offending, including what he did with Samantha’s body and how she was killed. 

‘He’s still a paedophile,’ Tim said. ‘He’s not rehabilitated at all – not one little bit – and he won’t be until he fesses up and gets it out.’ 

Tim spoke in 2019 with the management team responsible for his brother and was told they could provide no information about his circumstances after leaving prison.

Guider has no other family and his brother said there was no one else from his past likely to contact him. ‘Everybody’s offside with him,’ Tim said.

‘He’s going to be completely on his own now, a complete loner. And everyone will be out for him.’ 

Finding a permanent home for a sex monster who drugged and molested perhaps dozens of children in the 1980s and 1990s and was still considered a high risk of re-offending proved difficult. 

Long-term prisoners such as Guider end up at Nunyara, a ‘non-custodial community-based service’, because they have nowhere else to go after being released.

That could be due to a lack of family and other support networks or even simply because of a short supply of boarding house rooms.

Recently released child sex offenders are considered even harder to place in outside accommodation than killers.

Samantha’s body has never been found and Guider has shown no remorse for her manslaughter

A pariah such as Guider would also attract media attention which was unwanted by the residents and operators of even church or charity-run housing. 

At least when Guider was housed at Nunyara the community knew where he was staying. 

While some of Guider’s fellow boarders could leave Nunyara during daylight hours, he was confined to the centre until suitable accommodation was found for him. 

Guider’s freedom is subject to 56 strict court-imposed conditions overseen by a Corrective Services department supervising officer (DSO) for the next five years.

His current address – and any address thereafter for the next four years – must be approved by his DSO and he must abide by a 10pm to 6am curfew.

No other person can enter and remain, or stay overnight, at his approved address without being cleared.

Guider must wear an electronic monitoring device and provide a weekly plan called a ‘schedule of movements’ three days before it is due to start.

He cannot go to any of the following places without approval: day care centres, pre-schools and schools, amusement parlours, amusement parks and theme parks, cinemas, libraries and museums.

He cannot enter camping grounds and caravan parks, children’s playgrounds, parks and any areas with play equipment provided for children.

Guider claimed he had killed nine-year-old Samantha Knight (pictured) accidentally after he kidnapped the nine-year-old from near her Bondi home. Samantha’s body has not been found

He cannot go to pools, playing fields and sporting facilities, concerts, theatre shows, movies, events and activities intended for the entertainment of children.

And he cannot visit any residence where he knows that someone aged under 18 ordinarily lives.

Places used solely or mainly for the sale or display of sexually explicit material, or for providing sexual services or sexually explicit entertainment are also off limits.

Those conditions were not enough to satisfy Chantelle Daly or his other victims.

‘Paedophiles are given too many rights after hurting and abusing children,’ Ms Daly said. ‘It doesn’t make any sense to me. 

Michael Guider, 69, served 17 years for the manslaughter of schoolgirl Samantha Knight

‘It makes me feel physically sick that he can walk past children in the street. 

‘I’m not saying he’s going to go to a park – I don’t think he’s that dumb – but he can still go to beaches and to shopping centres.’

For the next three years Guider must not possess or use alcohol or illegal drugs and submit to testing for both.

He cannot enter any licensed premises including hotels, bars and clubs – but excluding cafes and restaurants – without approval.

Guider must not approach or have contact with anyone he knows or ‘reasonably should know’ is under 18, other than ‘incidental contact in a public place’ unless he is in the company of an approved person.

His supervisor can notify anyone Guider associates with who has children in their care of his criminal history and can stop him from seeing anyone he or she tells him not to.

If Guider wants to see a sex worker that can only be done with the approval of the supervisor, who also must be told if he starts a romantic relationship.

He will need permission to join any club or organisation and any social media network.

He cannot change his name from Michael Anthony Guider – which Daily Mail Australia has previously revealed might not even be his real name – without approval.