Showing no remorse for gunning down 35 people in a matter of minutes, Martin Bryant grinned and asked for a soda after a judge sentenced him Friday to life behind bars with no chance for parole.
The April 28 shooting at Port Arthur, a picturesque tourist spot in Tasmania, was Australia's worst modern-day massacre.Psychiatrists described the 29-year-old Bryant as a resentful, mixed-up loner who had the IQ of a child and who fired guns to feel powerful.
Chief Justice William Cox sentenced Bryant to 35 life terms and ordered that he never be released.
It was the harshest possible punishment, but some distraught relatives of the dead left the Tasmanian Supreme Court calling for reinstatement of the death penalty, which Australia abolished in the 1960s.
"He can rot in hell," said Carolyn Loughton, who was shot and seriously wounded and whose 15-year-old daughter, Sarah, was killed. "I think all Australians should now look at the debate on the reintroduction of capital pun
ishment for mass murder."
Others accepted that nothing more could be done.
"It was the only sentence he could have got. Just look at him. He was a rather pathetic person," said Paul Stevenson, whose brother-in-law Royce Thompson was gunned down.
Bryant often giggled and smirked through previous hearings. Friday he smiled off and on as he stood listening to Cox.
Defense lawyer John Avery later told reporters that Bryant's first reaction was to ask for a Pepsi. Avery said his client was "happy" with the sentence.
The massacre happened at the ruins of an 18th-century penal colony 60 miles south of Hobart, which is 600 miles south of Sydney. Federal and state governments reacted by banning a wide range of automatic and semiautomatic firearms.
Prosecutors said Bryant burst into a cafeteria and shot dead 20 people in a matter of a few minutes. Some died as they ate meals or drank coffee.
He then drove down a road killing indiscriminately. A mother and her two young daughters were slaughtered after they pleaded for mercy. He shot an elderly couple execution-style in their guest house.
Nineteen people were wounded, some maimed for life, in the massacre.
The judge described Bryant as a "pathetic social misfit" who had wanted understanding and pity despite his terrible actions.
"It is difficult to imagine a more chilling catalog of crimes," Cox said.
Bryant pleaded not guilty soon after his arrest on April 29, but changed his plea to guilty last month to all 72 counts against him, including 35 murder charges. The other counts ranged from attempted murder to arson.
The judge imposed sentences of 21 years imprisonment for each of the lesser crimes.
Government officials said Bryant would at first be kept in isolation for his own safety, but eventually would be introduced to a standard maximum security prison with other inmates.
On Thursday, the Tasmanian state legislature passed a law allowing about $790,000 worth of Bryant's assets to be seized for distribution to victims' families and survivors.
Bryant had inherited a large sum of money, which was put in the hands of a trustee after doctors said he was psychologically unfit to manage it.
A psychiatric report described him as a moody loner who craved attention after a disturbed childhood, but he was not insane.
Bryant told a psychiatrist before the trial, "It was just in my mind to go down and . . . kill a lot of people."