Examine Ivan Milat (1944-2019) again. He was one of 14 children born to an impoverished migrant family, rural, isolated and gun obsessed. He’d shown psychopathic behaviour at a young age eg hacking animals with machetes, sending him to a care-home at 13. At 17, he was in a youth detention centre for theft & at 19 for shop break-ins. In 1964 he received to 18 months for breaking & entering, and a month after release he was arrested for driving a stolen car. In Sept 1967 at 22, he got 3 years' gaol for theft. Despite showing psychopathic tendencies from his early teen years and an active criminal record as an adult, it took a long time to identify Ivan as a suspect for rape or murder.
60 Minutes
In Apr 1971, Ivan Milat abducted 2 teenage female hitch-hikers at Liverpool Station with a knife. He raped one of the girls before they escaped. Milat was arrested that day, charged with rape and armed robbery. While awaiting trial, he was involved in a string of robberies with his brothers before faking his suicide at The Gap. Milat drove a truck in 1975, and by the time of his arrest he’d worked for the Roads & Traffic Authority for 20 years. In 1977, Milat apparently attempted to rape and murder two women hitchhiking to Canberra, but failed .
So all this evidence made no difference. It WAS very hard to detect who did The Backpacker Murders in the Belanglo State Forest NSW, an hour from Sydney. This spate of serial killings started in Jan 1990 and may have been carried out by 1-2 people. In case Milat did not have to appear in court (robbery & weapon charges) until May 1994!
As reported, the bodies of 7 missing young adults were eventually discovered partly buried in the state forest in 1992-3. 5 of the victims were touring European backpackers; the others were Australian backpackers from the southern states. 300+ police officers were assigned to the case!!
Even when Ivan was doing time in minimum security for robbery, his mum Margaret loyally visited her son in prison. Milat met a teen in 1983 who was pregnant by his cousin. They married in 1984 and had one daughter of their own. However she left Milat in 1987 due to domestic violence and divorced in Oct 1989. At trial, she described Milat as gun-obsessed, shooting wildly while in Belanglo State Forest.
Detectives take suspected backpacker killer Ivan Milat into custody in 1994.
Allthatsinteresting
Following endless police investigations, Milat was finally charged with the murders of the 7 back packers. In Mar 1996 the trials opened and he was eventually convicted. He had to serve 7 consecutive life sentences, without ever admitting guilt. So why is this horrid case of interest now?
The best rock-solid evidence was provided by a British backpacker survivor, Paul Onions. He was ex-Navy man who’d backpacked around Australia, telling investigators that a man had tried to kill him during his travels; that the same man could be responsible for the other backpacker murders.
Milat had long confessed his crimes to his mother Margaret and his loved young sister Shirley. Yet in 1996, days before Ivan’s guilty verdict in the Belanglo murders, Margaret still insisted Ivan was innocent, as were his brothers who Ivan had blamed in his defence case. Margaret testified “the boys were living here when those murders were meant to happen. I did all their washing, there was no blood. They’re good boys.” Ivan was her favourite.
I am assuming the police would have in any case doubted the confessions because his mother greatly loved Ivan and because sister Shirley had a very close sexual relationship with Ivan. Shirley and Ivan were even sharing a house in Eagle Vale when he was arrested in Feb 1994.
news.com
Serving 7 life sentences for Australia’s most infamous serial murders, 56-year-old Ivan’s regular attempts to escape had earned him a cell in the new escape-proof prison. In fact the last time Margaret visited Ivan he had moved into the newly opened High Risk Management Unit in Sept 2001. By then Ivan’s brutal slayings and reputation in prison as a cold, callous psychopath suggested no respect for life. But where were the psychiatric reports and treatments?
When Milat (74) in May 2019, he was diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer and, after hospital treatment, was gaoled at Long Bay where detectives unsuccessfully visited him to extract a confession. When Ivan’s cancer seemed in remission, the race to get him to confess to the Belanglo backpacker murders etc became urgent.
Clive Small was the commanding officer of Task Force Air that charged Ivan when the 7 young backpackers’ bodies were found at Belanglo. In Milat, Inside Australia’s Biggest Manhunt, Small said Ivan’s brother George pulled the information from his mother Margaret. After Margaret returned from visiting Ivan, Small said she had lunch with George who noticed something strange. George asked “Mum, did he tell you something?” Margaret said he’d admitted he was guilty. Only after Margaret died in Oct 2001, was Shirley and Ivan’s home found to be filled with items from the Belanglo victims.
At that time, the house was strewn with camping gear and possessions of the backpackers whose murders were as yet unsolved, and gun parts were secreted in the walls and ceilings. After Ivan’s arrest, Shirley removed an unlicensed .45 calibre pistol hidden in a waterproof bucket in the backyard and gave it to brother Walter and told him to get rid of it. Six months after her big brother received 7 life sentences, Shirley was fined $1000, dying in 2003.
too late to protect Milat's victims
Sydney Morning Herald
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22 comments:
This is a gruesome story about Ivan and the family that brought him up. It was not far from the time I settled in Australia. Scary.
Where were the psychiatric reports, just like you said. Why was Milat not put in a psychiatric hospital each time, instead of all those prison sentences?
It's hard to imagine in a civilized Australia such a psychopat! Yet, there he is.
Mothers everywhere keep saying : 'a good boy'. We know the ritual too well - mother covering up her son's atrocities.
Sometimes, too many times, such psychopaths slip through the net and the response is always that lessons will be learnt - but somehow they never are.
It's good that firearms legislation has ben passed.
roentare
it is still a gruesome story now, 30 years later :( And I suspect we don't know everything eg Ivan was in an incestuous sexual relationship with his own sister, but did his mother and siblings know about it? If they did, did anyone try to save the sister?
At times we have to remind ourselves that the percentage of population who can cold bloodedly kill is so tiny. Nevertheless, it is not to our country's credit that Milat's murder spree went on for so long and I hope his mother felt great guilt and shame. You can only love and protect your children up to a point.
Train Man
Federal and state laws provide that unsoundness of mind is a defence to a criminal charge. So some persons charged with criminal offences are judged not fit to enter a plea, or are found not guilty because of mental disorder. Thankfully criminal legislation interact with mental health services through the operation of Mental Health Acts. And most jurisdictions have established special courts to assess the mental health of persons arrested or brought before the courts on criminal charges and to divert those found to have a mental illness to an institution for assessment and treatment.
But most of Ivan Milat's imprisonments came before any arrest and so noone asked for psychiatric assessment and treatment. What a tragedy.
DUTA
DECADES before he brutally killed 7 backpackers, young Ivan Milat may have committed his first violent crime. A special investigat¬ion revealed Milat’s first attempted thrill-kill in March 1962, by shooting a taxi driver in the back while he drove. Forensic psychiatrist Dr Julian Parmegiani examined the case and said he believed Milat planned to _paralyse_ his victim. That cruel intent fits with his famed later crimes, where many of his young victims were paralysed before he murdered them.
Herald Sun, April 2015
jabblog
I have written about Ivan Milat's criminal career before in this blog, hoping that the police, courts, social workers and psychiatric profession will have learned some harsh but vital lessons. But in the decades since Milat was finally gaoled for life, and since the 2015 blog post appeared, I wonder how much has changed.
Even the massively important anti-gun laws in Australia were passed because of Martin Bryant's murders in Tasmania, well _after_ Ivan Milat's murders in NSW.
Andrew
re Milat's mother, you are right. It is not easy to think that the child you birthed, raised and loved turned into a vicious killer, rapist and armed robber. Especially since Mrs Milat had had 14 births, no husband and not enough money.
But she was a mother! She only had to think of the mothers and fathers who sent their teenagers to Australia to have a great holiday, and will never see their beloved children again.
Milat was one of six prime suspects in the cases of three women who all went missing within four months of each other between 1978 and 1979. It was near Newcastle north of Sydney, near where he often worked as a road worker. In 2002 Milat was called to give evidence at a coronial inquiry into their disappearances but no charges were laid. So Milat's death left other disappearances unsolved, an unsatisfying sense of things still unresolved.
The Guardian
Sun 27 Oct 2019
Boa tarde de sábado e bom final de semana. Através do seu maravilhoso trabalho e pesquisa, aprendo sempre com seu Blogger. Obrigado pela visita e carinho.
Luiz Gomes.
viagenspelobrasilerio.blogspot.com
In a way he was a victim as well because the State failed to deal with him properly. It's also hard to place a lot of blame on the mother. Sadly there will always be men like this in a our society; we need to know how to deal with them in a better fashion.
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Guardian
thank you. I wondered why the police wanted a complete confession before Milat died. But I had heard very little about the 1997-8 tragedies near Newvastle.
Clearly the Coronial Inquiry in 2002 thought Milat was involved but again nothing came of it.
Luiz
I imagine there are evil or very sick people everywhere, but hopefully the authorities handle the guilty parties with more treatments and less mere punishments
bazza
I don't blame the mother for how Ivan turned out (although I do blame her for lying to police). His father was violent, alcoholic and taught the boys gun killing methods at 5!
Did Child Protective Services not know this, before Ivan started his many gaol sentences?
Hello Hels, It seems that so often that criminals like Milat have to be insane, especially the ones who kill random people, so psychological profiles should always be made to assist in arrest, prosecution, and we hope to prevent future such cases. But we have here also a major bungling of the evidence. If I am reading this correctly, why was his house not thoroughly searched, if he had a criminal record and was under suspicion? This kind of police negligence is like what we read about in 19th century crimes, such as the bizarre mishandling of evidence in the Lizzie Borden case.
--Jim
Parnassus
yes! Bizarre mishandling is the understatement of the century, especially when we know that 300 police officers were assigned to the case after the 7 bodies were found - more police than those put on the case when the Australian prime minister disappeared without a trace back in 1967!!
Police did not ignore Milat because he was rich, influential and well connected. So perhaps they knew how violent he was and feared for their own lives. His criminal record was already horrid, so I certainly would have feared examining Ivan's and Shirley's homes if they refused permission.
OMG what a very dysfunctional family . I would say he isn't the only Psychopath in amongst that lost . YUCK . it seems likely that he murdered many more people than even these as he was deemed to be working near sites where other people disappeared including children .
I don't know if you knew that Ivan's great nephew has been charged with murdering a young man who he lured into the Belanglo state Forrest . Just awful .
mem
I did know all about the dysfunctional family, and I did know about Ivan's criminal history in and out of gaols. But I did NOT know at all about the other people who disappeared when they were near Newcastle, near where Ivan worked for years as a road worker. Milat might have been a key suspect in those ? murders, but only the police would have known about it... at least until the 2002 coronial inquiry into their disappearances.
mem
Unbelievable :( Southern Highland News (2012) reported that Matthew Milat, the great nephew of serial killer Ivan Milat, has been sentenced to 43 years in jail with a 30-year non-parole period for the brutal murder of a 17-year-old lad. His accomplice has been sentenced to 22 years.
Genetic or acquired?
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