Ivan Milat (Backpacker Murders)

Case background and investigation

Seven young travellers who had set out to hitchhike from Sydney between 1989 and 1992 were found dead in the Belanglo State Forest, south-west of Sydney in New South Wales. According to ABC News, they were Deborah Everist and James Gibson, both 19, from Victoria; Simone Schmidl, 21, from Germany; Anja Habschied, 20, and Gabor Neugebauer, 21, a couple also from Germany; and Caroline Clarke, 21, and Joanne Walters, 22, from Britain. ABC News reported that all had been travelling south along the Hume Highway.

Everist and Gibson were last seen in Sydney in December 1989, SBS News reported. Schmidl disappeared in January 1991 while hitchhiking towards Melbourne, and Habschied and Neugebauer left Kings Cross in December 1991. Clarke and Walters left a Kings Cross hostel in April 1992. Their bodies were the first to be found, in September 1992. The remains of Everist and Gibson were located in October 1993, and those of Schmidl, Habschied and Neugebauer in November 1993. The Guardian reported that the bodies had been covered with branches and leaf litter. Several victims had been stabbed and two had been shot in the head.

A key witness was Paul Onions, a British backpacker. On January 25, 1990 he accepted a lift near Liverpool from a man who called himself Bill. When the driver produced a gun near the turn-off to the forest, Onions ran and was picked up by a passing motorist. He reported the attack that day. After reading about the discoveries in the forest, he contacted New South Wales police again on November 13, 1993, according to ABC News, and in 1994 he identified Ivan Milat from police photographs.

Police surrounded Milat's home at Eagle Vale, on the outskirts of Sydney, on May 22, 1994 and arrested him. Clive Small, who led the investigation, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that the search of the property had taken weeks to plan. ABC News reported that officers found clothing, camping equipment and other possessions of the victims, together with weapons and ammunition.

Milat was charged with seven counts of murder and with the abduction of Onions. After a trial lasting about four months, a jury found him guilty of all charges in July 1996. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms, plus six years for the abduction, without the possibility of parole. The sentencing judge, Justice David Hunt, said the victims had been treated with callous indifference.

Milat never admitted to the murders. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the oesophagus and stomach in May 2019 and died in the hospital wing of Long Bay jail at 4.07am on October 27, 2019, aged 74, according to Corrective Services NSW. Former detectives told ABC News they suspected him of other killings, but he was not charged with any further murders.