Ivan Milat
Ivan Robert Marko Milat, commonly referred to in media as the Backpacker Murderer, was an Australian serial killer who abducted, assaulted, robbed and murdered two men and five women in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992. His modus operandi was to approach backpackers along the Hume Highway under the guise of providing them transport to areas of southern New South Wales, then take his victims into the Belanglo State Forest where he would incapacitate and murder them. Milat is also suspected of having committed many other similar offences around Australia.
Early life
Ivan Milat was born on 27 December 1944, to Croatian emigrant and labourer Stjepan Marko "Steven" Milat and Margaret Elizabeth Piddleston, an Australian national. Ivan was the fifth of their 14 children.The impoverished Milat family initially lived on a rural weatherboard cottage farm in Bossley Park, 36 kilometres west of Sydney, before relocating to Liverpool, New South Wales. By all accounts, Milat's parents were conscientious in raising, educating and disciplining their children and sent them all to Catholic schools. However, family members described Milat's father as having a temper due to his alcoholism. Many of the ten Milat boys were well known to local police and were used to handling knives and firearms, spending their afternoons shooting at targets in their parents’ yard.
Siblings recalled Milat displaying antisocial and psychopathic behaviour at a young age, such as attacking animals with machetes, leading to a stint in a residential school at age 13. By age 17, he was in a juvenile detention centre for theft, and at age 19 he was involved in a shop break-in. In 1964, Milat was sentenced to 18 months for breaking and entering, and a month after release he was arrested for driving a stolen car and sentenced to two years' hard labour. In September 1967, aged 22, he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for theft.
On 7 April 1971, Milat abducted two 18-year-old female hitchhikers near Liverpool railway station with a knife. He raped one of the hitchhikers before they stopped at a petrol station café, where they managed to escape. Milat was arrested later that day and charged with one count of rape and two counts of armed robbery. While awaiting trial, Milat was involved in a string of robberies with some of his brothers before faking his suicide by leaving his shoes at The Gap, a well-known Sydney suicide site.
Authorities believe that Milat then fled to Queensland and Victoria before flying to New Zealand, where he lived for two years. However, he is suspected of having returned surreptitiously using a fake passport and lived interstate to avoid detection. Milat was rearrested in 1974 after his mother was taken to hospital suffering from a heart attack, but the robbery and kidnap cases against him failed at trial with the help of the Milats' family lawyer, John Marsden. Milat took on a job as a truck driver in 1975, and by the time of his arrest he had worked on and off for the Roads & Traffic Authority for 20 years. In 1977, Milat unsuccessfully attempted to rape and murder two women who were hitchhiking from Liverpool to Canberra, but he was never charged.
Backpacker murders
Background
By the time of the initial discoveries in the Belanglo State Forest, several backpackers had disappeared. One case involved a young Victorian couple from Frankston, Deborah Everist and James Gibson, who had been missing since leaving Sydney for ConFest, near Albury, on 30 December 1989. Related was Simone Schmidl, 21, from Germany, who had been missing since leaving Sydney for Melbourne on 20 January 1991. Similarly, a German couple, Gabor Neugebauer and Anja Habschied, had disappeared after leaving a Kings Cross hostel for Mildura on 26 December 1991. Additionally, British backpackers Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters were last seen in Kings Cross on 18 April 1992.Discovery of victims
On 19 September 1992, two runners discovered a concealed corpse while orienteering in Belanglo. The following morning, police discovered a second body from the first. Police quickly confirmed, via dental records, that the bodies were those of Clarke and Walters. Walters had been stabbed fifteen times; four times in the chest, once in the neck and nine times in the back, which would have paralysed her. Clarke had been shot ten times in the head at the burial site, and police believe she had been used as target practice. After a thorough search of the forest, investigators ruled out the possibility of further discoveries.On 5 October 1993, a local man searching for firewood discovered bones in a particularly remote section of Belanglo. He returned with police to the scene, where two bodies were quickly discovered and later identified as Gibson and Everist. Gibson's skeleton, found in a foetal position, showed eight stab wounds. A large knife had cut through his upper spine causing paralysis, and stab wounds to his back and chest would have punctured his heart and lungs. Everist had been savagely beaten; her skull was fractured in two places, her jaw was broken and there were knife marks on her forehead. She had been stabbed once in the back. The presence of Gibson's body in Belanglo puzzled investigators as his camera had previously been discovered on 31 December 1989, and his backpack later on 13 March 1990, by the side of the road at Galston Gorge, over to the north.
On 1 November 1993, a skeleton was found in a clearing along a fire trail in Belanglo during a police sweep. It was later identified as that of Schmidl, and bore at least eight stab wounds: two had severed her spine and others would have punctured her heart and lungs. Clothing found at the scene was not Schmidl's, but matched that of another missing backpacker, Habschied. The bodies of Habschied and Neugebauer were then found on a nearby fire trail, on 4 November 1993, in shallow graves apart. Habschied had been decapitated, and despite an extensive search her skull was never found. Neugebauer had been shot in the head six times. There was evidence that some of the victims did not die instantly from their injuries.
Search for a serial killer
Examination of the remains showed evidence that some of the victims had been tortured. In response, on 14 October 1993, Task Force Air, containing more than twenty detectives and analysts, was set up by the New South Wales Police. On 5 November, the New South Wales government increased the reward in relation to the killings to A$500,000. After developing their profile of the killer, the police faced an enormous volume of data from numerous sources. Investigators applied link analysis technology and, as a result, the list of suspects was narrowed from a short list of 230 to an even shorter list of thirty-two. Speculation arose that the crimes were the work of several killers, given that most of the victims had been attacked while as pairs, had been killed in different ways, and buried separately.On 13 November, police were contacted by Paul Onions, 24, in the United Kingdom. A few years earlier, on 25 January 1990, Onions had been backpacking in Australia and, while hitchhiking from Liverpool station towards Mildura, had accepted a ride south out of Casula from a man known only as "Bill". South of the town of Mittagong, and less than one kilometre from Belanglo, Bill pulled out a revolver and some rope to rob Onions, at which point he managed to flee while Bill shot at him. Onions flagged down a passing motorist, Joanne Berry of Canberra, and together they described the assailant and his vehicle and registration number to the Bowral police. On 13 April 1994, detectives re-found the note regarding Onions' call. His statement was corroborated by Berry, along with the girlfriend of a man who worked with Milat.
Arrest and trial
Police surveillance of the Milat house at Cinnabar Street in commenced on 26 February 1994. Police soon learned that Milat had recently sold his silver Nissan Patrol shortly after the discovery of the bodies of Clarke and Walters. Police also confirmed that Milat had not been working on any of the days of the attacks, and acquaintances also told police about Milat's obsession with weapons. When the connection between the Belanglo murders and Onions' experience was made, Onions flew to Australia to help with the investigation. On 5 May 1994, he positively identified Milat as the man who had picked him up and attempted to shoot him.Milat was arrested at his house on 22 May on robbery and weapons charges related to the Onions attack after fifty police officers surrounded the house. The search of the residence revealed various weapons, including a.22-calibre Anschütz Model 1441/42 rifle and parts of a.22-calibre Ruger 10/22 rifle that matched the type used in the murders, a Browning pistol, and a Bowie knife. Also uncovered were items belonging to several of the victims. Homes belonging to Milat's mother and five of his brothers were also searched, uncovering several more items belonging to victims.
Milat appeared in court on 23 May, but he did not enter a plea. On 31 May, he was additionally charged with the seven backpacker murders. On 28 June, Milat sacked John Marsden, his family's lawyer, and sought legal aid to pay for his defence. Meanwhile, brothers Richard and Walter were tried in relation to weapons, drugs and stolen items found on their properties. A committal hearing for Milat regarding the murders began on 24 October and lasted until 12 December, during which over two hundred witnesses appeared. Based on the evidence, at the beginning of February 1995, Milat was remanded in custody until June that same year.
Milat's trial opened at the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney on 26 March 1996 and was prosecuted by Mark Tedeschi. Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Milat is reported as having been confident he would be found innocent. In phone recordings made for the ABC's Australian Story program in 2004, Milat stated his grounds for believing he would be found innocent at trial: "My basic defense in my trial was that it wasn't me. I don't know who did it. It was up to them to prove my guilt, not for me to prove my innocence." His defence argued that, in spite of the evidence, there was no non-circumstantial proof Milat was guilty and attempted to shift the blame to other members of his family, particularly Richard. 145 witnesses took the stand, including members of the Milat family who endeavoured to provide alibis. On 18 June, Milat gave evidence himself.
On 27 July 1996, after eighteen weeks of testimony, a jury found Milat guilty of the murders. He was given a life sentence on each count without the possibility of parole. He was also convicted of the attempted murder, false imprisonment and robbery of Onions, for which he received six years' imprisonment each.