Ivan Milat

Ivan Robert Marko Milat (27 December 1944 – 27 October 2019), known in the press as the Backpacker Murderer, was an Australian-Croatian serial killer. He was found guilty of abducting, assaulting, robbing, and killing two men and five women in New South Wales from 1989 to 1992. His usual method was to offer rides to backpackers on the Hume Highway, claiming he would take them to southern New South Wales, then bring them into the Belanglo State Forest, where he would disable and kill them. Authorities also believe Milat may have been responsible for many similar crimes across Australia, some possibly going back to 1962.

Milat was born on 27 December 1944. His father, Stjepan Marko "Steven" Milat (1902–1983), was a Croatian emigrant and labourer; his mother, Margaret Elizabeth Piddleston (1920–2001), was Australian. Ivan was the fifth of fourteen children. The family was poor and first lived in a rural weatherboard cottage farm in Bossley Park, about 36 kilometres west of Sydney, before moving to Liverpool, New South Wales. Accounts say his parents were careful about raising, educating, and disciplining their children, sending them all to Catholic schools. Still, relatives described the father as having a temper linked to his alcoholism. Most of the ten Milat boys were known to local police and were comfortable with knives and firearms, often spending afternoons shooting targets in the yard.

Siblings said Milat showed antisocial and psychopathic behaviour early on, like attacking animals with machetes, which led to him being sent to a residential school at age 13. By 17, he was in a juvenile detention centre for theft, and at 19 he took part in a shop break-in. In 1964, he got 18 months for breaking and entering; a month after release, he was caught driving a stolen car and sentenced to two years of hard labour. In September 1967, at 22, he received three years for theft. On 7 April 1971, he used a knife to abduct two 18-year-old female hitchhikers near Liverpool railway station. He raped one of them before they stopped at a petrol station café, where they escaped. Milat was arrested that day and charged with one count of rape and two counts of armed robbery. While waiting for trial, he committed a series of robberies with some of his brothers, then faked his suicide by leaving his shoes at The Gap, a well-known suicide spot in Sydney.

Investigators think Milat then fled to Queensland and Victoria before flying to New Zealand, where he lived for two years. He is suspected of returning secretly with a fake passport and living in other states to avoid capture. He was arrested again in 1974 after his mother was hospitalized for a heart attack, but the robbery and kidnap charges against him were dismissed at trial, helped by the Milat family lawyer, John Marsden. In 1975, Milat started working as a truck driver, and by the time of his arrest, he had worked on and off for the Roads & Traffic Authority for 20 years. In 1977, he tried but failed to rape and murder two women hitchhiking from Liverpool to Canberra, though he was never charged.

By the time the first bodies were found in Belanglo State Forest, several backpackers had already vanished. One case involved a young Victorian couple from Frankston, Deborah Everist and James Gibson (both 19), who had been missing since leaving Sydney for ConFest near Albury on 30 December 1989. Other related cases included Simone Schmidl, 21, from Germany, missing since leaving Sydney for Melbourne on 20 January 1991; a German couple, Gabor Neugebauer (21) and Anja Habschied (20), who disappeared after leaving a Kings Cross hostel for Mildura on 26 December 1991; and British backpackers Caroline Clarke (21) and Joanne Walters (22), last seen in Kings Cross on 18 April 1992.

On 19 September 1992, two runners found a hidden corpse while orienteering in Belanglo. The next morning, police discovered another body 30 metres from the first. Dental records quickly confirmed they were Clarke and Walters. Walters had been stabbed fifteen times: four in the chest, once in the neck, and nine in the back, which would have paralyzed her. Clarke had been shot ten times in the head at the burial site, and police think she was used for target practice. After a thorough search of the forest, investigators ruled out more discoveries. On 5 October 1993, a local man looking for firewood found bones in a remote part of Belanglo. He returned with police, who quickly uncovered two bodies, later identified as Gibson and Everist. Gibson’s skeleton, found in a foetal position, had 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 severely beaten: her skull was fractured in two places, her jaw broken, and there were knife marks on her forehead. She had been stabbed once in the back. Gibson’s presence in Belanglo puzzled investigators because his camera had been found on 31 December 1989, and his backpack later on 13 March 1990, by the roadside at Galston Gorge, over 120 kilometres 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 identified as Schmidl, with at least eight stab wounds: two had severed her spine, and others would have pierced her heart and lungs. Clothing found at the scene did not belong to Schmidl but matched that of another victim.