Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (27 page)

A potential victim escapes

Just over three weeks later, Ivan’s bloodlust had built up again.

On 25 January 1990, he offered a lift to 24-year-old Paul Onions, a British hitch-hiker. Paul had been working his way around Australia for several weeks and was now hitching from Sydney to Melbourne.

At first Ivan chatted pleasantly, but then he began to work himself up into a rage, suggesting that foreigners like Paul were stealing work from the locals. He stopped the vehicle, produced a gun and a length of nylon rope and made it clear that he was about to tie the youth up, saying that the motive was robbery.

Paul, who’d spent years in the navy, acted instinctively, jumping from the four wheel drive. Ivan leapt after him and they grappled by the roadside. Paul managed to escape and zigzagged up the road, his attacker in close pursuit. Ignoring the passing traffic, Ivan Milat fired wildly at the fleeing man.

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Flagging down a vehicle, the 24-year-old persuaded the frightened woman driver to take him to the nearest police station. Meanwhile his middle-aged attacker returned to his vehicle and sped away.

Paul lost his backpack containing all of his money and his clothes during the escapade, but felt extremely lucky to have escaped with his life. He continued to have flashbacks to the crime, reliving his attacker’s enraged voice and merciless stare.

It’s possible that Paul Onions escape scared Ivan Milat and that he kept a low profile for a while because a year passed before his next known murder. Meanwhile he continued to torture animals and birds.

A single murder

On 20 January 1991, Ivan was on holiday, driving through Queensland and Sydney for several days. He doubtless encountered experienced traveller Simone Schmidl, who was going to meet up with her mother in Melbourne, and forced her deep into the forest. The 21-year-old German tourist was stabbed from behind through the spine, causing paralysis.

Thereafter, her killer may have tied her up – a loop of wire and piece of material were found beside her body. Her blouse was pushed up and she was gagged. Like the other victims, she was apparently sexually assaulted, her underpants removed.

Simone was also stabbed again and again in the chest and spine, one of those wounds resulting in her death.

Another double murder

In late December 1991, the backpacker murderer struck again. 21-year-old Gabor Neugebauer and 20-year-old Anja Habschied, who’d been hitchhiking in Bali and Australia, set off for Darwin. They were excited about the next part of their 225

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journey, travelling around Indonesia, but anxious in case they couldn’t travel the 4,200 kilometres to Darwin airport in time to catch their flight.

Sometime between 26 and 31 December, the killer attacked the unsuspecting couple. Gabor was muffled with two gags and shot several times in the head.

Anja was partially stripped – her body would be found nude below the waist – and was tied up: cord, tape and a leather strap were found in the vicinity of her body. She was eventually made to kneel and was decapitated. Her head has never been found.

In the same time period, Ivan Milat arrived home with a bullet hole in his van which had clearly been shot from the driver’s seat. He also arrived at his brother David’s house with a bloody knife and told him he’d stabbed a man through the spine. The comment was overheard by one of David’s friends

– and Ivan offered him the passport of a German male.

A double murder

Milat’s final known victims disappeared between 18 and 21

April 1992. Joanne Walters, from Wales in Britain, had travelled to Australia to become a nanny. There she met up with fellow Brit Caroline Clarke and the two young women decided to travel around the continent together. En route to a fruit-picking job, they met their deaths.

Joanne was stabbed twice in the spinal cord at the base of her neck which would have paralysed her. When she was helpless her killer may well have moved on to his other victim, Caroline, and immobilised her.

He gagged and probably sexually assaulted Joanne – when found, her body had an undone fly and no underwear and her shirt was pushed up at the front. Her killer had stabbed her again and again in the chest and rained further blows with his single-bladed knife on her spinal column. Some of the chest 226

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wounds had sliced into her internal organs and caused her death.

Caroline may also have been sexually assaulted as her bra was unfastened. She was stabbed once in the back and was probably strangled – again the hyoid bone in her throat was missing when her body was found. Her sweatshirt was wrapped around her head and face then she was shot ten times from three different angles, the killer moving her head around and essentially using it for target practice. The police were surprised at so many gunshots being used, but they hadn’t yet made the acquaintance of the trigger-happy Ivan Milat who, whilst hunting, often fired hundreds of rounds.

Desolate families

Meanwhile, the families of all the missing backpackers campaigned the authorities endlessly for news, even flying out to Australia. They also hired private detectives at considerable cost. But as the months passed with no sight or sound of their loved ones and none of the backpackers’ traveller’s cheques being cashed, they began to fear the worst.

A new girlfriend

That summer, Ivan began to date an Indian divorcee called Chalinder Hughes, something which surprised his family as he’d previously been xenophobic. By now he was dying his greying hair black and consistently trying to act like a younger man. He worked hard all day then came home and mowed the lawn, obsessively cleaned his car or made model aeroplanes, neither his girlfriend or his neighbours suspecting his darker side. Ivan also read murder mysteries, particularly enjoying the novels of Patricia Cornwell with their emphasis on forensic detail. As long as the murders remained undiscovered, he knew that he was safe from official scrutiny.

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The bodies are discovered

But in September 1992, Joanne Walters’ body, half hidden by leaves and large sticks, was found by two joggers. Her T-shirt bore the rips made by numerous stab wounds and the fly of her jeans was partially undone. The following day police found Caroline Clarke’s corpse nearby, her head still wrapped in the red cloth peppered with bullet holes.

Over the next few weeks the other corpses were discovered, each with bindings, gags, stab wounds and bullet holes. It was clear that a sadistic killer was at large.

Custody

The police were already suspicious of the Milat family because a witness had reported hearing Richard Milat say ‘they haven’t found the two German bodies yet’ at a time when no one knew that Anja and Gabor were dead. Richard had also told a friend that once someone got a taste for this sort of torture-murder it was just like having a beer. And Alex Milat had told the police that he saw two vehicles, each with a frightened-looking gagged female in the back seat, but that he’d just assumed the male drivers were taking them into the forest to have a good time.

Not to be outdone, Ivan had joked about stabbing a German man through the spine.

Looking into the brothers’ histories, the authorities found that Ivan had been off work during every one of the seven murders.

Searching his home, they found numerous items belonging to the murder victims, none of which he could explain.

Brought back to Australia and shown a line-up consisting of 13 photographs, a nervous Paul Onions picked out Ivan Milat as his attacker. Ever since the attempted abduction, the man’s face had haunted his dreams.

A taciturn Milat now refused to answer any questions and was remanded in custody until his trial.

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Brothers in arms

Milat’s defence, suggested by his lawyers, was that two of his brothers had committed the murders. But Richard Milat’s work sheet gave him an alibi for the period whilst James Gibson and Deborah Everist were being killed. The defence noted that items belonging to the backpackers were found at Wally Milat’s house and at Alex Milat’s house as well as at Ivan’s place.

But the prosecution showed how the forensic evidence stacked up against Ivan Milat. Apart from the numerous grisly souvenirs in his attic and garage, an unused bullet consistent with the ones used to kill Caroline Clarke was found in his car.

Human blood was found on rope in his possession and he was unable to explain whose it was and how it got there. Equally damningly, Paul Onions identified Ivan Milat in court.

After three months of testimony, Ivan Milat himself took the stand and denied everything. Questioned as to why he’d asked a friend who worked as a security guard to get him handcuffs, he replied ‘they just seemed to be interesting’.

The prosecution agreed that it was possible Milat had committed some of the murders with another member of his family. In turn, the defence wondered if Wally Milat could have planted the backpackers’ possessions on Ivan out of jealousy as his ex-wife had been close to Ivan. And they suggested that Richard Milat could have gotten off work earlier than his work records showed and attacked Paul Onions.

But Richard had apparently never grown the thick moustache that Paul Onions saw on his attacker. Ivan, too, said he’d never had such a moustache but a work photograph showed him sporting one less than a fortnight before he pulled a gun on Paul.

On 27 July 1996, 51-year-old Ivan Milat was found guilty of all seven murders and given seven life sentences. He was additionally sentenced to six years in prison for the attack on Paul Onions.

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Afterwards, Bill Milat, three years younger than his brother Ivan, beat up a photographer outside court and smashed both his cameras. He was subsequently fined.

Two killers?

So were there two killers in the double backpack murders?

Some criminologists believe that the very different methods of torture-murder points to two men being present, one doing the shooting and the other the paralysing and stabbing. They note that solo killers tend to favour one style of killing and repeat it.

They also note that one of the bodies was covered by huge logs which probably couldn’t have been lifted by one man. There again, a killer in the grip of a psychotic rage has much more energy than the average man… They suggest that one man tried to prove his dominance by doing more and more extreme things to the bodies such as decapitation in order to impress a slightly more submissive brother.

But there’s equally potent evidence which points to Ivan Milat acting alone. He was working solo in his mid twenties when he tied up the two girls and raped one of them. He was also alone when he pulled a gun on Paul Onions and made moves to tie him up.

Ivan enjoyed buggery, which might have explained why so many of the victims were lying on their stomachs. He loved to fire his guns and the victims who’d been shot dead had been subjected to overkill. He also knew how to stab someone in order to paralyse them, a technique previously described to him by a Vietnamese war veteran.

What is clear is that several members of the Milat family – and possibly some of their friends – strongly suspected what was going on. One brother told a friend that Ivan was doing bad things again. Another brother suggested that the authorities look at unsolved murders in Jenolan Forest, and they found that a man there had had his shirt wrapped around his head 230

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before his skull was used for target practice, just as Caroline Clarke’s had been – and that Ivan had been working in the vicinity. A third brother hinted that Ivan may have killed up to 28 men and women.

One anthropologist said that the level of violence indicated

‘someone who was beaten by his father’ but, sadly, this fate had befallen all of the Milat boys.

Prison

Immediately on his arrival at Maitland Maximum Security Prison, Ivan Milat was beaten up by another prisoner. Shortly afterwards, hearing rumours of an escape attempt, the authorities moved him to Goulburn Jail where he has subsequently gone on several short hunger strikes and threatened suicide.

But on other occasions he seems to enjoy life, following a fitness plan and reading legal texts in the hope of mounting an appeal. He also waves to everyone in the visitor’s room when he’s visited by one of his many relatives. Surprisingly, given the amount of evidence against him, he has a group of supporters who call themselves the FIRM – Friends of Ivan Robert Milat

– and who are campaigning for his release.

Milat appealed against his sentence, claiming that he’d received poor legal representation, but the appeal was dismissed.

In 2004 he launched another appeal, stating that the Crown had put a case to the jury unsupported by its own witnesses.

But this appeal was out of time.

In 2006 the sadist had a television and a toaster installed in his cell by the authorities as a reward for good behaviour – but that summer there was outrage when the victims’ relatives found out about these privileges. Both items were withdrawn but later returned. It’s likely that we’ll hear more about Ivan Milat, as young women remain missing from areas where he used to work…

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PAUL CHARLES DENYER

Australia’s best known sadistic killers are doubtless
Catherine and David Birnie, who killed four young
women and were in the throes of torturing a fifth
teenage girl when she escaped. The country has
also witnessed massacres by some of the worst spree
killers in history, each accruing a substantial body
count.