NSW attorney general has launched a last-minute legal bid to keep Michael Anthony Guider behind bars

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A notorious paedophile due for release in 11 days now denies committing his worst crime – fatally drugging nine-year-old Samantha Knight – a Sydney court has been told.

Michael Anthony Guider, 68, pleaded guilty in 2002 to the manslaughter of the young girl, who was last seen on a Bondi street in August 1986.

The former gardener and part-time babysitter, who was already serving sentences for abusing 13 children between 1980 and 1996, has never revealed where he dumped her body.

On Monday the New South Wales supreme court, hearing a last-ditch legal bid to keep Guider behind bars, was told he had gone back on his guilty plea and now claimed he only admitted killing Samantha after pressure from police and others.

“He will deny it to his dying day,” Justice Richard Button said, quoting a recent medical report.

The court was also told Guider has been granted 20-day leaves under the supervision of a chaplain, prompting a reaction from some in the public gallery.

Guider’s barrister, Matthew Johnston, said the paedophile had been a model prisoner and should be released on an extremely strict supervision order, which would have dozens of conditions and force him to live at a halfway house next to Long Bay jail.

The prison, where Guider is now held, is 8km from where Samantha was last seen.

“He is a prisoner worthy of the next step of being tested under strict supervision,” Johnston said.

According to his sentencing judge, Guider admitted killing Samantha to two prisoners in the late 1990s, but did not plead guilty until just before he was due to go on trial for her murder.

David Kell, representing the state of NSW, said Guider’s recent backpedalling was inconsistent with what he told a psychiatrist before his sentencing in 2002.

That report also contained Guider’s admission that he drugged his victims with sleeping pills to “take happy snaps” of them for his later gratification.

Kell said the paedophile’s “chronic” history of abusing young girls and boys, often after endearing himself to their parents, presented a significant risk to the community.

“[Even after Samantha’s death] it did not cause the defendant to cease using the drug on other children,” he said.

He argued Guider should not be released until at least August, when a decision is expected on whether he should be subject to continued detention.

Samantha’s mother told reporters before Monday’s hearing the public needed to be kept safe.

“We’re not satisfied that he’s safe for release in the community,” Tess Knight said.

The hearing continues.