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The final hours and minutes of Dezi Freeman’s life will be analysed in painstaking, forensic detail.

But for the moment, there are few independently known facts, after months of rumour and wild speculation.

How did Freeman come to be holed up on an isolated property, in what’s been described as half shipping container, half caravan, about 100km across some of Victoria’s wildest country from where he was last seen?

How had he survived for so long after shooting dead two police officers last August?

Who, if anyone, had aided and abetted him? Why? How were police ultimately tipped off to where he was? And how were they certain they had their man?

Police and coronial inquests will attempt to settle these, and the myriad questions that will flow. Right now, there are scant details.

Police had arrived at the isolated 35-hectare Murray River Road property near Thologolong about 24 hours before they confronted Freeman in the early hours of Monday morning.

They were acting on a tipoff, reportedly received last week, that Freeman had been sighted near Walwa, east of the property where he was found.

Freeman was living amid a ramshackle camp, a circle of shipping containers and portable dongas, none with running water or electricity. It’s unknown how he got there or when he arrived.

But police are anxious to understand who knew he was there, and who was helping keep him alive and out of the hands of authorities.

No other person had been at the property for at least 24 hours but “that doesn’t mean they haven’t been in the past”, said Mike Bush, the Victoria police chief commissioner.

He said it would be “very difficult” for Freeman, even with his bushcraft and experience in the mountains, to have travelled from Porepunkah to Thologolong without external assistance.

“We will track backwards from here to work out how long he’s been here, and who helped him to be here,” Bush said.

“[It is] very important for us to understand how long he’s been here and who else was complicit in getting him here, and then caring for him or providing him with food and other things to this point.

“If anyone was complicit, they will be held to account.”

For more than 200 days – since 26 August – Freeman had proved elusive in the rugged hills of highland Victoria, mountains he knew intimately, and, police feared, was well equipped to survive.

As the months dragged on, many increasingly believed that Freeman was dead, killed by his own weapon in the hours or days after he shot dead police officers Neal Thompson and Vadim De Waart-Hottart. The pair were among a group of 10 police – made up of local officers and members of the sexual offences and child abuse investigation team – serving a search warrant.

But new intelligence – a tipoff, a rumoured sighting, police have not revealed its nature or source – reanimated the long-running investigation.

Monday at 5.30am was the beginning of the end.

In the pre-dawn darkness, after a full day surveilling the property, police say they confronted Freeman, urging him to surrender peacefully.

He did not, and the ensuing standoff would last three hours.

During that time, Freeman confirmed his identity – police have not said precisely how – to officers who were encouraging him to submit to arrest.

Police say they have video of Freeman’s last moments.

He is understood, according to the police account, to have emerged from his stronghold hideout, cloaked in a blanket or doona.

Surrounded by police, he dropped the covering to reveal he was carrying a weapon – believed to be the service weapon of one of the police officers he is alleged to have shot dead in August.

Multiple officers opened fire. It is not known if Freeman fired back. No police were injured.

Freeman died at the scene.

Bush said he had seen video of Freeman’s final confrontation with police.

“It is quite clear to us now that the deceased was given every opportunity to resolve this peacefully and did not take that option. I have seen a video of the deceased leaving the building and presenting a firearm at our offices. That action took away any discretion our officers had to resolve this peacefully.

“We tried everything possible, every tactical option that we have, to encourage the deceased to end this in a safe and peaceful manner. They weren’t taken.”

Bush said officers would respect and assist the coronial process, as well as an investigation by Professional Standards, standard process for any police shooting.

“Everything I know at this moment tells me the shooting was justified,” he said. “There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully, which he did not.”

The man shot dead by police on Monday morning at a lonely property by the Murray River has not been formally identified. That will come in the next 24 to 48 hours.

But the chief commissioner believes police have, finally, got their man.

“We believe it’s Dezi.”