On August 17, 1991, around 1:00PM, 33-year-old Wade Frankum went to the Strathfield Plaza, a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia. He sat in a cafe called The Coffee Pot where he drank a number of cups of coffee. At approximately 3:30PM, without provocation, Frankum pulled a large knife from an army surplus duffel bag and started stabbing two teenaged girls who were sitting next to him. Bo Armstrong, 15, died from a number of stab wounds to the chest, whilst her friend survived, albeit badly injured.

Leaving the knife buried in Bo Armstrong's body, Frankum then pulled out an assault rifle and began firing at random around the cafe. Joyce Nixon, 61, and her 37-year-old daughter Patricia Rowe were both killed by a hail of bullets. Patricia's two young sons were present but escaped unhurt.

Carole Dickinson and her young neice, Rachelle Milburn, and Carole's daughter, Belinda, were also hit by bullets. Belinda was the only one of the trio to survive. George Mavis, the owner of the cafe, was also killed.

Frankum fled the cafe into the main shopping area of the mall, where he immediately shot dead Robertson Kan Hock Joon, a 53-year-old accountant. He then ran to a car-park where he got into a car and demanded that the driver take him to Enfield, New South Wales , a nearby suburb. Before the terrified woman could start her car, the police began to arrive on the scene. Hearing the approaching sirens, Frankum told the woman "I'm sorry" before he got out the car, knelt on the ground and shot himself through the head. He died instantly.

Frankum's spree had lasted ten-minutes. He had killed seven people and injured six, none of them personally known to him.

In the apartment where Frankum lived alone, police found a large collection of violent literature and video nasties. One of his books was a well-thumbed copy of "American Psycho" and although there is no direct evidence that the controversial novel had inspired Frankum, a number of suggestions that it had done so were made in newspapers. "American Psycho" has been condemned as misogynistic because it features many gruesome murders of women, and some thought it significant that five of the seven people Frankum killed were women. Curiously, he is also said to have possessed a copy of the book The Female Eunuch by feminist author Germaine Greer.

The massacre also bought up the issue of gun control in Australia, as did the Port Arthur Massacre perpetrated by Martin Byrant five-years later. }