Police likely believed Dezi Freeman was dead until tip-off, former police negotiator says

Police likely believed cop killer Dezi Freeman was dead before they were led to a rural Victorian property where they engaged in a deadly standoff with the fugitive this morning, a former police negotiator says.

Freeman was shot dead on a remote Thologolong property, near the Victoria-NSW border, around 8.30am after three hours of negotiations, Victoria Police said today.

Police were reportedly tipped-off to his whereabouts by an associate.

READ MORE: Fugitive gunman Dezi Freeman shot dead by police after seven months on the run

Last month, police led a thorough five-day search for Freeman's body in dense bushland across dense bushland in Mt Buffalo National Park based on the "strong" belief the cop killer was deceased.

Rumours have since swirled that Victoria Police may have announced their search for Freeman's body as a tactic to make him believe their trail had run cold.

But former police negotiator and Macquarie University Criminology lecturer Dr Vincent Hurley believes police would not risk undermining public confidence in the investigation.

"They would not have said that if they did not believe at the time that that was a likely outcome," Hurley said.

"Regardless of whether they are police victims or not, when two people have been murdered and police from literally every state in territory in Australia has gone down to assist, they're not going to come out and say something that they don't think at the time is true.

"If it was said intentionally incorrectly, then what message does that send to the public about the police wanting further assistance in the future about any crime?

"In my 30 years in the police force and 22 years has a detective... you would never do that because of the consequences of it is just catastrophic."

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Freeman may have been surveilled for a week before shooting

Police may have been watching Dezi Freeman for as long as one week before an hours-long standoff led to his shooting death this morning, Hurley believes.

"They would want to know if anyone was helping him and they'd want to know his daily routine," Hurley revealed.

"They would not have gone in at the first sight of him, at all. It would pose too many unacceptable risks.

"It could even be that the police had modelled or done scenarios based on them finding him, not necessarily in a container, but in a house or something like that."

Bush revealed Freeman was armed and wrapped in a blanket when he "exited" a shipping container on a rural Thologolong property earlier this morning, hours after police descended on the acreage around 5.30am.

Hurley believes police would have tried to reason with the so-called sovereign citizen to apprehend him alive.

"They would've surrounded [the shipping container] and the negotiator would've said to him that 'you are surrounded, there's no chance of you escaping, we've got a cordon around the area'," Hurley said.

"Then they would've given him the options and they would've tried to negotiate some type of reason with him to give up without a fight, for example.

"Ultimately, they want to get him before the court.

"They want to get him before the court to answer to the crimes, regardless of who the victims are, so it would never have been a case of retribution. Never."

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"They would have told him clearly that he was surrounded, that the options are come out, we're not gonna hurt you, we want to get you before the courts. All the usual things to reassure him.

"But given his ideology as a sovereign citizen, he would have a somewhat distorted view of what he thought would be the appropriate outcome.

Less than three weeks ago police informed the public they would not press charges against Freeman's wife Mali and two others after they were interviewed for obstruction of police.

That too was a coincidental development in the timeline of events that led to Freeman's death.

"I don't think, in my view, that they would've had him under surveillance for that long," Hurley said when asked whether police could have outlawed charges in a bid to appeal to Freeman.

"We'll never know, but I speculate it would be more coincidental than anything else."

Fears fugitive may act as example to others

The self-described sovereign citizen's death has come as a relief to many, but Hurley fears his ability to evade capture for more than seven months may spur on others who subscribe to dangerous ideologies.

"The fact that he survived seven months or six months by himself, other people like-minded to the sovereign citizen or preppers purpose, they'll be preparing now for longer than seven months," Hurley said.

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