Michael Guider is an Australian pedophile who has been imprisoned on charges of pedophilia and manslaughter.
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Michael Guider was born on 20 October 1950, in the city of Melbourne, Victoria. He and his mother moved to Sydney in 1952. His mother had an unstable relationship with an army cook who was an alcoholic. A brother, Tim, was born in 1953.[1] The two boys spent time in institutions because their mother was unstable and unable to look after them.[1] 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.[1]
Guider had worked as a gardener[2] at the Royal North Shore Hospital, and over the years and also had developed a keen interest in Aboriginal culture and sites around Sydney. He had even earned some respect as an amateur expert on the subject[2][3] and his material had been used and acknowledged in at least one published book.[4]
Guider was arrested in late 1995 for child sex offences.[1] In September, 1996, he was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 10 years on 60 charges against 11 children.[5] His usual modus operandi had been to babysit the children of women he knew and knock them out with the sleeping drug Normasin. He would then molest and photograph them while they were asleep.[1] 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 was to be served cumulatively.
Guider eventually attracted the attention of police who were investigating the disappearance of a nine year-old girl named Samantha Knight, who had disappeared from her home in the Sydney suburb of Bondi on 19th August, 1986.[6]
She had never been found, but police had reasons to turn their attention to the convicted pedophile. After a lengthy investigation, he was arrested and charged with Samantha's murder on 22 February, 2001.[7] On 7 June 2001, he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Samantha Knight; he claimed that he had drugged her the way he had always drugged his victims, but that he had accidentally given her an overdose that killed her. On 28 August, 2002, he was sentenced to an 17 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 12 years for manslaughter, to be served cumulatively with the sentence for the child sex offences. Samantha's body has never been found; Guider showed no remorse, and said he could not remember what he did with the body.[8][9]
Guider was placed in conditions of strict protection in Goulburn prison.[10] He will not be eligible for parole until 2019, when he will be 69 years of age.