Name: Samantha Terese Knight
Case Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Missing Since: August 19, 1986
Location Last Seen: Bondi, New South Wales, Australia
Date of Birth: March 25, 1977
Age: 9 years old
Race: White
Gender: Female
Height: 140 cm
Weight: Unknown
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Green
Nickname/Alias: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Thin build.
Dentals: Unknown
Fingerprints: Unknown
DNA: Unknown
Clothing: A pink skirt, navy blue track suit top and blue, open-toed sandals.
Jewelry: Unknown
Additional Personal Items: Unknown
On the day she disappeared, Samantha arrived home after school at her mother's flat in Imperial Avenue, Bondi.
At 16.30 she went to Bondi shopping center and bought a pencil and lollies from the Bondi Road news-agency. At 17.30, a woman spoke to her at the corner of Bondi Road and Wellington Street. Samantha told the woman she had lost her front door key. About 18.30, Samantha bought a toothbrush from a pharmacy in Bondi Road. The last known sighting of Samantha was at 18.45 by a neighbor who saw her in Bondi Road near the intersection of Imperial Avenue. Samantha seemed to be going home. She has never been seen again.
When Samantha disappeared, concern motivated hundreds of volunteer searchers. One of them was Michael Anthony Guider, then 35 and head gardener at Royal North Shore Hospital. He has since been charged with her murder. Guider is a convicted pedophile who is currently under special protection in Lithgow Jail where he is serving a 10-year sentence for sexual abusing nine girls and two boys, aged 2 to 16 years. He first came under investigation 10 years later when two mothers accused him of sexually assaulting their young daughters. But police who did the original investigation had no idea or any evidence that he had known Samantha for two years before her disappearance. Mrs Knight did not know Guider, he met Samantha through one of her playmates.
He had been babysitting her and her friend when they spent time at the friends house. Investigators have obtained playground photographs which Guider took of Samantha and the other young victim and albums of press clippings which Guider kept on the disappearance of Samantha and other children. A female witness who knew Guider before he was arrested said he was "obsessed" with Samantha.
There is evidence that Guider met Samantha on the afternoon that she disappeared. Witnesses had seen her about 18.30 walking with a man from Wellington Street across Bondi Road.
Guider told friends that he did not mean to kill Samantha but had accidentally given her an overdose of the stupefying drug Normison
Agency Name: New South Wales Police Service
Agency Contact Person: N/A
Agency Phone Number: 1800 025 091
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: N/A
New South Wales Police
Australian Missing Persons Register
Added: Prior to 2011; Last Updated: 08-23-2021 - By: Htmlcnvtr
Questions or comments? Please contact appropriate member of the Area Team
** Listed information is from the time of disappearance.
Return Home