Ivan Milat's chilling serial backpacker murders still haunt Australia Ivan Milat leaving court in 1997, after attempting to appeal his conviction for the backpacker murders. Photograph: Rick Rycroft/AP The road worker savagely killed seven backpackers in the Belanglo state forest in the early 1990s. His death leaves several other disappearances unsolved • Ivan Milat, Australia’s most notorious serial killer, dies aged 74 by Michael McGowan When British backpackers Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters were found brutally murdered in the Belanglo state forest in September 1992, the Sun ran the headline: “Beast of the bush: Brit girls victims of Oz serial killer.” The newspaper speculated that the killer “could be a fiend responsible for the disappearance of 20 people in the area over 20 years”. Ivan Milat, who has died of cancer aged 74, was convicted in 1996 of the murder of seven people, aged 19 to 22, who disappeared while hitchhiking south of Sydney. But his death means his suspected involvement in several other disappearances may never be resolved. The backpacker killings became the subject of intense international media scrutiny and speculation after the discovery of seven victims’ bodies in makeshift graves in 1992 and 1993. In the intervening years, Milat and the cold brutality of his crimes have held an enduring grip on the Australian psyche, and Belanglo has become a byword for horror. As the journalists Mark Whittaker and Les Kennedy wrote in their book about the case, Sins of the Brother, published in 1998, it was “a peculiarly Australian story”. The callous murders by the tanned, muscle-bound Australian with the Dennis Lillee moustache seemed to reveal something uncomfortable about the nation’s character. With his death comes an unsatisfying sense of things still unresolved. Milat was one of six prime suspects in the cases of three women – Leanne Goodall, Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson – who all went missing near Newcastle, north of Sydney, near where he often worked as a road worker, within four months of each other between 1978 and 1979. Serial backpacker murderer Ivan Milat. Photograph: AAP In 2002 Milat was called to give evidence at a coronial inquiry into their disappearances but no charges were laid. The possibility that Milat did not act alone has been the subject of endless speculation. During his trial Milat’s lawyers attempted to place blame on one his brothers, and police actively investigated the possibility of an accomplice. In his sentencing remarks, Justice David Hunt said it was clear that in at least two of the killings two people had been involved. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/27/ivan-milat-chilling-serialmurders-haunt-australia-after-death
