Inside paedophile Michael Guider’s suburban flat as Samantha Knight’s killer is put again behind bars

Michael Guider seemed a harmless old loner to the other pensioners in a housing commission estate in Sydney‘s south-west where he has lived for the past two-and-a-half years. 

The 71-year-old kept largely to himself as he bought and cared for exotic plants, fed the local cats and helped put out other residents’ garbage bins.

No one else in the 14 units at Fairfield Heights knew he was the reviled paedophile who kidnapped, drugged and killed nine-year-old Bondi schoolgirl Samantha Knight in 1986.

‘He’s always been a good neighbour,’ 76-year-old Dorothy Tickner said. ‘He’s always been a nice person.

‘You never know who you’re living next to.’ 

It was only on Thursday morning when police came to take Guider away that anyone gave much thought to his quirks or realised they might have a monster in their midst.

Guider had been living secretly in a tiny unit at the back of a neat blond-brick block of apartments since about six months after he was released from prison in 2019.

His new home was 450m from Fairfield Heights Primary School, the same distance from AQUAKIDS Swim School and just 260m from Kids World Kindy in the same street.

Guider, who preyed upon children for two decades, was three years into a five-year extended supervision order (ESO) imposing strict conditions on his release.

About 8.10am on Thursday, officers from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad’s Extended Supervision Order Investigation Team came knocking and took him away .

Police will allege Guider breached his ESO by using his phone to ‘search for images that depict children’ and ‘access and view material classified as refused classification or X18+’.

The alleged offences occurred over seven months between February 23 and September 25

After a brief appearance at Fairfield Local Court the child killer was returned to prison. 

Before moving to suburbia, Guider had been living in a jail-run halfway house and his whereabouts were not even known to his victims.

Ms Tickner has lived next door to Guider since he moved into her block and the pair got on well, although she said with hindsight some of his behaviour was a bit weird.

‘When he came here he told us he would not come into our units,’ she said.

‘And we wouldn’t be invited into his.

‘We only knew him as Michael. He wouldn’t give us his surname. He wouldn’t give us his phone number.’ 

Guider never spoke of his past, did not mention any family and rarely had visitors.

Ms Tickner said a couple of men had occasionally come to the flat. 

‘He said they were his carers,’ she said.

Ms Tickner said Guider was ‘always polite’. 

‘Just a normal guy to us. It’s hard to take in,’ she said.

Her secretive neighbour would bring up her mail, water her plants and when she went on a holiday she asked him to look after her unit.

Fairfield Local Court heard on Thursday that Guider was suffering a heart condition and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

‘Now and again I’d order KFC and I’d get some for him,’ Ms Tickner said.

‘Then he told me he had diabetes and I didn’t get it anymore.’ 

When Guider arrived he had a basketball-size hernia below his waist which Ms Tickner said was removed during a month-long hospital stay in mid to late 2020.

He had also shaved off most of the bushy grey beard that was Guider’s other most recognisable feature when he was released from prison. 

‘You never saw him in anything other than track pants,’ Ms Tickner said.

‘He was always complaining he couldn’t get shoes to fit. He’s got big feet. I hope they’ve got big shoes in prison.’ 

Ms Tickner last saw Guider on Wednesday when he paid her back $20 from his pension.

‘If he borrowed anything off me I’ve always got it back again,’ she said.

He also showed her an orchid he had bought. 

‘It was a beautiful thing,’ she said. ‘He’s got some beautiful plants in there.’

Guider’s lifelong interest in horticulture was obvious at his flat on Friday. 

A bag of mulch sat outside the door near a spade. There were flowering potted plants against the walls and orchids on the window sill.

Also outside the flat was a box of cat food Guider used to feed strays he called Fluffy, Beauty, Checkout Chick, Checkout Chick’s Mother and Ginge. 

Inside, three jars of smooth peanut butter sat on a table near a can of Mortein fly spray and a stained coffee cup with a kookaburra motif.

A Sulu bin stood in the middle of the living room. Plastic containers of cat food rested on the stove with saucepans and a kettle.

Ms Tickner said Guider would often catch public transport into the city and liked libraries. He be recently begun recording the numbers of train engines.

‘He goes out quite a bit,’ she said. ‘Lately he’s been trainspotting.’

Guider was let go from the Metropolitan Special Programs Centre at Long Bay on September 5, 2019, after serving 17 years for killing Samantha. 

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. 

Ms Tickner remembers the ‘Find Our Sam’ posters that were stuck up all over Sydney, New South Wales and Australia when Samantha disappeared.

‘I remember that beautiful little girl being kidnapped,’ she said. 

‘I don’t know how someone can do that.’ 

Another neighbour who did not wish to be identified said she could not believe Guider’s history.

‘No way,’ she said.

‘He’s such a beautiful man. The world is full of surprises. I don’t know what to say.’ 

Lisa, who lives in a block next door to Guider’s, has a six-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son.

‘I’m surprised and a bit upset to be honest,’ she said upon learning of Guider’s past. 

‘Why didn’t they tell us?’ 

Lisa’s husband Jeff was just as shocked. 

‘It’s terrible,’ he said. ‘Someone could have let us know. Our kids play out there all the time. It’s good to know he’s locked up now and won’t be coming back.’ 

Bronwyn Ferguson lives in the same block of units as Guider and knew him as ‘Mick’, a mad fan of the Parramatta Eels.

The 62-year-old spoke to Guider most mornings and afternoons, mainly about football.

‘He never talked about family,’ she said. ‘I was busting my guts to know if he had a wife or kids but he was really standoffish. 

‘There was this lady who used to live here. She used to say, “There’s something about him I don’t trust but I can’t put me finger on it”. 

‘You’d invite him in but he’d never ever come inside. If we’d go to his place he wouldn’t let you in either. Now it all makes sense.’

Ms Ferguson’s partner Jeff Mahoney, who spends weekends at the Housing NSW estate, had his own concerns about Guider. 

‘I had me susses – sure did,’ the 61-year-old said. ‘I said to Bron, “There’s something about this fella – I think he’s been to jail”. 

‘Something didn’t marry up for me. There was just something about this fella.’

One day Mr Mahoney had gone to Guider’s front door, which the paedophile opened while naked. 

The pair had sometimes shared a beer – which would be in breach of Guider’s release conditions – until Guider told him he was a recovering alcoholic and Mr Mahoney called time on their drinks.

Mr Mahoney claimed one day he had been standing with Guider when a group of pre-teen schoolgirls walked down the street.

‘He said, “They’ll be nice when they’re a bit older – they’re very pretty”.’