Ivan Milat

Ivan Robert Marko Milat (27 December 1944 – 27 October 2019 ), 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 and murders around Australia.

Ivan Milat was born on 27 December 1944 at Crown Street Women's Hospital in Guildford, New South Wales, the son of Croatian emigrant and labourer Stjepan Marko "Steven" Milat (1902–1983) and Margaret Elizabeth Piddleston (1920–2001), 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.

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 during their childhood, 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 he 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 young 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 was charged with one count of rape and two counts of armed robbery.

While awaiting trial, he 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, Milat is suspected of having returned surreptitiously using a fake passport and lived interstate to avoid detection.

He 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.

By the time of the initial discoveries in the Belanglo State Forest, several backpackers had been reported missing.

One case involved a young Victorian couple from Frankston, Deborah Everist, 19, and James Gibson, 19, who had been missing since leaving Sydney for ConFest, near Albury, on 30 December 1989.

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 120 km to the north.

Another related to Simone Schmidl, 21, from Germany, who had been missing since leaving Sydney for Melbourne on 20 January 1991.

Similarly, a German couple, Gabor Neugebauer, 21, and Anja Habschied, 20, had disappeared after leaving a Kings Cross hostel for Mildura on 26 December 1991.

Another involved missing British backpackers Caroline Clarke, 21, and Joanne Walters, 22, who were last seen in Kings Cross on 18 April 1992.

On 19 September 1992, two runners discovered a concealed corpse while orienteering in Belanglo.

The following morning, police discovered a second body 30 m 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.