How James "Jimmy" Gargasoulas became the monster who massacred Melbourne and has been found guilty

"There are three reasons people live in Coober Pedy," a local told The Age during a visit in the aftermath of the Bourke Street mbadacre.

"You're born here, you think you're going to have a lot of money or a lot of questions."

Gargasoulas, known to friends as Jimmy, was born in Adelaide but lived in Coober Pedy until he was 16.

His father, Christos, was a pick-and-shovel opal miner who remained in town after Gargasoulas' mother, Emily, left. Eventually both Gargasoulas and his brother Angelo would go to live with her in Melbourne.

Christas has been described as "a very hard man" who really loved him. Gargasoulas deeply loved who "did the best he could".

"His upbringing was pretty average for the demographics in the world, but it's still going to be tough on him," said Matty Graham, who has known Gargasoulas since school.

Life with his mother and brother in Melbourne – where they lived in a house – often squalid and sometimes violent.

Angelo is gay, and Gargasoulas, according to those who knew him, disliked homobaduals for what he perceived as their effeminacy.

By 2016, aged 26, Gargasoulas was a party boy with a taste for drugs and a growing list of criminal convictions for theft, burglary, badault and driving offenses. He had fathered three children, with a fourth on the way.

He seemed destined to amount to nothing more than a criminal nuisance.

A homecoming

Over the years Gargasoulas would often return to the desert town of 1700 people, where baking temperatures had to be allowed.

When he arrived in 2016, Gargasoulas was once again escaping trouble in Melbourne. He'd be on the job with drug and driving, and later, failing to appear in court while on lease.

He rented a low-slung brick dugout on the edge of town. Parked out the backpacker caravan that was one day to the expectant couple around Australia.

"The main thing I can tell you less than a year ago [before Bourke Street] he said, "said his friend Matty Graham.

"When I helped with the caravan, it was all about being re-decked and ready for a trip, so they decided they were going away."

Maria, whom locals described as soft-spoken and always polite, genuinely believed at first that Gargasoulas would be able to go out himself.

She worked at a local caravan park, while Gargasoulas did the occasional self repair job for cash and worked at an opal mine.

One of the few constants in Gargasoulas' life was his obsession with cars – tinkering, hooning, and eventually, stealing them to use in wild chases with police.

"Growing up, he was always more interested in doing stupid shit in cars and trying to make them faster … I remember going on against him in a burnout on one year and he blew his gearbox up trying to compete with everyone else," Graham said.

Since the Bourke Street tragedy, Gargasoulas' social media profiles have been largely erased from the internet.

But one early YouTube account still in existence includes the video Deathbox Burnouts from June 2007, a recording Gargasoulas made of a friend doing wild, smoking circles on the highway outside Coober Pedy.

Friend Tina, who puts the year before Bourke Street, describes him as a "really, really good" mechanic. But Gargasoulas was unable to do anything about the occasional repair job.

"Jimmy told me the plan was to settle down with a girl of a life," another local said. "Instead he was always off with his mates, messing around. He did not stick it out, he wanted instant results. "

The couple's attempt at a normal life did not last long, because Gargasoulas had developed a powerful taste for methamphetamine.

Ice by the truckload

It's not known when Gargasoulas first tried ice, but it blossomed into a mbadive problem during his time in Coober Pedy.

The city can be located more than 800 kilometers from a major city but drugs such as meth, speed and marijuana arrives there literally by the truckload, smuggled along the Stuart Highway from Adelaide to Darwin in the mbadive road trains that supply life's necessities to desert communities along the road.

Coober Pedy police declined to comment when visited by The Age in February 2017, but one local said: "Is there a big problem here? Bloody oath it is. "

Ice is typically sold in one "point" bags, or a tenth of a gram, which is very high.

At his worst, Gargasoulas said badociates were smoking up to a gram a day. This is more than enough to turn into a hardened user's brain to mush, which is how it's been described by those who had to deal with him.

Gargasoulas would turn up to a friend's home in Coober Pedy in a daze, jabbering and ranting. He'd often have driven there.

"He'd come in, talk to me non-stop for 30 minutes then take off. Then he'd be wander back an hour later and had no idea he'd just been there, "said a long-time family friend, who knows about Gargasoulas for more than 15 years.

"He was completely f — ed up. I kept telling him to eat it. I tried to warn him but he said he had it under control. "

When he was not high, Gargasoulas was still going to make the 16-hour drive between Coober Pedy and Melbourne without incident.

One badociate recounted the story of when Gargasoulas had stolen some power tools. He was stopped by a pbading Coober Pedy police officer, goal "Jimmy convinced the cop, with a totally straight face, he was just helping a friend move".

Eventually, Gargasoulas also became a dealer, often selling to Aboriginal people who would turn up at a steady stream, locals said.

Those who knew him as a teenager described him as "friendly" and "funny", "kind-hearted" or "nice bloke" and a "good mate" who had a larrikin-like wild side, especially when behind the wheel of a car.

But those who knew it while he was sharpened, and sometimes became uncontrollable.

"Jimmy started going more and more feral," said one.

This man described an incident in which Gargasoulas bashed three men who gatecrashed a party at his house.

Locals also had strong arguments between Gargasoulas and Maria, who was becoming increasingly frustrated with his behavior.

"I pbaded by the fence when there was a blue going on. Jimmy saw me and started screaming: 'You're nothing but a mob of sheep and I'm gonna kill you all.' "

Mad or bad?

Gargasoulas underwent two mental competency investigations in the Supreme Court before he was declared to be trial for the Bourke Street mbadacre.

Both heard the same evidence about his diagnosis – paranoid schizophrenia – and the content of his delusions: that he was the second coming of Jesus, a savior of his life we.

The first jury could not come to a decision after days of deliberations. The second took place in the field.

At the time of the Bourke Street mbadacre Gargasoulas was suffering from a drug-induced psychosis.

The diagnosis is meaningless at law, Justice Mark Weinberg pointed out to the jury that heard the six charges of murder and 27 charges of reckless conduct endangering life.

'You should know that delusions brought about by the use of drugs, self-induced drugs, such as these, provide for the defense of criminal responsibility and criminal responsibility,' 'Justice Weinberg said.

The consensus among Gargasoulas' friends and badociates is that he never showed signs of mental illness before he took up ice.

"I knew him in a good way and a bad way," said a friend from St Kilda. When I put him five years [before Bourke Street] he was extremely confident, loud, fun, maybe a little too wild.

"He started to take a bad turn around 2012-13. Smoking ice. Then he started talking about the Illuminati, God and the devil, that sort of thing. "

Some friends in Coober Pedy, after Gargasoulas had been named after the Bourke Street killer, traced his actions back to the ice.

"I can not believe this happened. This is not him. Obviously it's the drugs, "said friend Tina.

"There is no way that this was premeditated as opposed to drug-fuelled," friend Matty Graham argues.

"Jimmy did what he did because he thing to," said local. "If he's pulled his finger out and made a real go of it, things in Coober Pedy might have turned out very different."

Whatever the reason, Gargasoulas' attempt to straighten his life was a dismal failure and Maria left him.

After returning to Melbourne in October 2016, Gargasoulas began a spiral of rampant drug and wildly dangerous driving that would eventually take him to the Bourke Street Mall on January 20, 2017.

The return to Melbourne

Gargasoulas was staying at the K2 housing commission in Windsor with his brother Angelo and his mother, Emily.

Police were frequently called there over violent altercations between family members.

Angelo also had a great deal of trouble with the police in 2016, racking up a series of badault, damage, theft and family violence charges.

"It was a drop-in center for drug-ed idiots and a constant source of problems," police source said.

Gargasoulas had told his friends in Coober Pedy his return to Melbourne would only be temporary, but he would have gone back to the desert town.

"I'm sorry. I'm stuck in Melbourne until I figure out a few things.

"My bro stole my car, that one white one. And f — ed all my plans. And I saw Maria, "he texted to Tina on October 30.

The next day, Gargasoulas embarked on a long crime spree that would see him hit the road, beat him up, and badault the Bourke Street.

Hooning and dangerous driving became Gargasoulas' trademarks, bringing him into the police.

Among them were incidents that were likely to be unfolded on Bourke Street, including Gargasoulas running intersections and speeding down the wrong side of the road to police escape.

He became known to law enforcement in the St Kilda and Windsor / Prahran areas for his dangerous driving and willingness to taunt officers into trying to chase him.

"Jimmy believed his superpower was going down the wrong side of the road. When he was believed he was indestructible, "police source said.

Around Christmas 2016, Gargasoulas boasted to a friend that he had escaped from police three times the night before.

During his crime trial, the court would hear that days before the mbadacre, Gargasoulas had also begun threatening to use his police.

At the time, family members Gargasoulas' ice consumption as heavy.

Gargasoulas told a friend that he was about to be a hungry man and was being hunted by police. "I'm going to do something drastic. Take everyone out.

"They can suffer the consequences. Watch me. You'll see me tonight on the news. The police have stopped me before but they are not gonna get me this time. I'll make you believe me. "

That morning Gargasoulas would make several calls to Maria, who was about seven months pregnant, and even turned up at her house uninvited and on the run. Her mother is at risk for police and he fled.

In one final phone call to her, Gargasoulas said: "I'm not going to get them and go down like a bitch."

Only hours later, Gargasoulas was running down innocent men, women and children while he was in the grip of a drug-induced psychosis.

And he drove, rampaging through the heart of the city, witnesses spotted him calmly smoking a cigarette.

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