Australia’s most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat, died on Sunday morning at the age of 74. His death comes almost six months after it was revealed that the so-called Backpacker Killer—convicted in 1996 of the murder of seven people, aged 19 to 22—had been diagnosed with stomach and throat cancer.
Shortly after that diagnosis, police launched an operation attempting to get Milat to confess to his suspected involvement with the disappearances of multiple other people over the past several decades. Yet despite some small hope for a deathbed confession, Milat—who maintained his innocence right up until the end—seems to have taken whatever secrets he had to his grave.
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Detectives from the NSW police task force involved in his arrest said they have no doubt he got away with further murders, The Australian reports.
“He is still without peer as Australia’s worst serial killer,” said former detective Stuart Wilkins. “It’s a real travesty the way he sat there and still denied his absolute guilt in committing those murders and others. It just goes to show his psychopathic personality to the end.”
Milat was pronounced dead at Long Bay Hospital at 4.07AM on Sunday. He was serving seven consecutive life sentences for the murders of seven people: Melbourne couple Deborah Everist, 19, and James Gibson, 19; German traveller Simone Schmidl, 21; German couple Anja Habschied, 20, and Gabor Neugebauer, 21; and British travellers Joanne Walters, 22, and Caroline Clarke, 21.
All of the victims were hitchhikers who died under horrific circumstances—one shot 10 times in the head; another decapitated; several bound or gagged—and all of their bodies were found buried in makeshift graves in New South Wales’ Belanglo State Forest throughout the early 90s. In 1996, Milat was finally arrested following a police raid on his house in the south-west Sydney suburb of Eagle Vale. Notwithstanding his recent stints in hospital to receive chemotherapy for his cancer, he remained locked up since.
In the days and weeks leading up to his death, detectives played Milat videos of his victims’ grief-stricken families, hoping that it might convince him to confess to the crimes and give them some closure and relief. Instead, he callously declared that “people die, they should just get over it.”
Former detective Clive Small, head of the backpacker killings task force, expressed disappointment and frustration with the fact that Milat refused to admit to any of his crimes—neither those of which he was convicted, nor the several others of which he was suspected.
“If Ivan had had any decency whatsoever in him, he would have confessed and cleared the slate in respect of his crimes and violence while living,” he told The Australian prior to Milat’s death. “He has been involved as far as I’m concerned in at least another three additional murders that he hasn’t been convicted of and I would have little doubt that there are a few more bodies that we still don’t know about.
“Our thoughts will be with all those people, rather than with Ivan.”
NSW police have transferred Milat’s body to the state coroner, who will decide how his remains are disposed of in consultation with his family. In his final letter to his brother Bill, penned on October 24, Ivan stated that he wanted a “pauper burial” paid for entirely by Corrective Services NSW.
“Due to my health issues, I wish to leave you all I have: all funds held in my prison account and to possession of all other the items/property and legal trial and appeal review documents held on my behalf by Corrective Services NSW,” reads the letter, as reprinted with permission by the Illawarra Mercury. “Please don’t pay for any funeral service or contribute in any way. Corrective Services NSW to fund it all, a pauper burial or whatever is suitable. I have advised the Commissioner of Corrective Services NSW of my wishes.”
Finally, he signed off with the declaration that “I am innocent of the crimes convicted of.”
