The matriarch of a prominent AFL family whose properties have been twice raided by police has detailed the long friendship she shared with police killer Dezi Freeman, which included organising travel for his wife to come to Australia and later storing his guns.
In an exclusive interview with the ABC, Kay Reid, the mother of premiership players Ben and Sam Reid, said she and her husband Bruce’s deep ties with Freeman’s family dated back two decades, but denied ever helping or harbouring Freeman while he was on the run.
Ms Reid said she facilitated Freeman’s wife, Mali, coming to Australia through her travel agency.
“We were friends as the whole community were … within Porepunkah and Bright and the greater north-east,” she said.
Kay Reid says she does not condone Dezi Freeman’s shooting of the two police officers but can “understand why it happened”. (Supplied)
In a sign of their friendship, Ms Reid said they had previously stored Freeman’s registered guns at their property in a safe within a locked shed, and kept the family’s storage container on their land.
“As you do to help people out when they are stuck,” Ms Reid said.
Dezi Freeman killed two police officers in Porepunkah in the state’s north-east in August last year. He evaded police for seven months before he was shot dead by officers in a stand-off in March on a property near the NSW border.
There has been intense focus on Ms Reid and her husband Bruce’s links to the Freemans after it emerged their Buckland home was searched this week by Victoria Police officers from Taskforce Summit, who are investigating Freeman’s movements.
Police speak to Bruce Reid while searching the couple’s Buckland home on Tuesday. (Supplied)
Ms Reid spoke about the incident on a podcast she co-hosts, on which she regularly shares scepticism about vaccines and COVID-19, which she refers to as the “plandemic”.
It was not the first time the couple was raided — just hours after Freeman fled into the bush, their holiday rental house and cabins, also in Buckland, were searched.
Ms Reid told the ABC the couple was fishing in the Gulf of Carpentaria when the shooting occurred, and later received a call from police in the early hours of the following morning.
Kay Reid says her holiday cabins were damaged when police raided her Buckland property.
She claimed police caused $26,000 in damage during their search, including by shattering a glass door and burning the carpet with stun grenades, which she said the couple was compensated for.
Ms Reid said her husband informed police they had stored Freeman’s guns on their property.
“Bruce rang them and told them they better go and check,” she said.
She rejected any suggestion that the couple had ever aided Freeman,
“We had nothing to do with it … as if we’re going to do that, as if we would’ve assisted, spare me,” Ms Reid said.
“[The] shooting of a police officer or anyone of that matter is the wrong thing to do … however, why? What led him to do it, isn’t that the question we should ask to stop violence?”
In August 2025, 10 police officers went to the bus that Freeman and his family used as a home to execute a search warrant for electronic devices.
The ABC first revealed Freeman was on the verge of having his secret stash of child abuse material uncovered when he opened fire on police, who were investigating him for an alleged sexual assault of a child under 16.
He was also being investigated for allegedly attempting to involve a minor in the production of child abuse material.
There was an unprecedented manhunt for Freeman, which ended 216 days later when he was found holed up in a shipping container at Thologolong.
Investigators now believe Freeman travelled across the border into New South Wales while he was on the run and received assistance from several people.
Police arrived at Kay and Bruce Reid’s Buckland home before sunrise on Tuesday with a warrant to search the property. (Supplied)
On Tuesday, Kay and Bruce Reid’s home was among several properties police searched as part of a blitz across New South Wales and Victoria.
Police have arrested and released five people. Mr and Ms Reid were not among that group.
“We tried to help [police], we tried to help as much as we could, and they come and treat us with suspicion, spare me,” she said.
The ABC can reveal police believe those arrested and released since Freeman died are loosely linked through shared sovereign citizen beliefs.
Kay Reid says she successfully sought compensation from police after her property was damaged during a police search. (Supplied)
Investigators have been using their powers of arrest to seize electronic devices, predominantly phones, as they try to uncover any network that supported him, the ABC understands.
The focus of investigators has been on identifying who provided Freeman with material help, such as money, transportation, or accommodation.
Since Freeman’s death, no-one in his family has been arrested, and of the people already arrested and released, none have been arrested twice.
The deaths of the two police officers are now the subject of a coronial inquest, which earlier this month aired disturbing new details about their final moments, including that Freeman stood over their bodies and taunted them.
Freeman’s own death after a three-hour stand off with Victoria Police’s elite Special Operations Group will also be probed by the coroner in a second inquest.
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