Ivan Milat, Serving Seven Life Sentences for the Backpacker Murders, Dies at 74
Diagnosed with terminal cancer in May, the man convicted of murdering seven young hitchhikers found in Belanglo State Forest died in the medical wing of Sydney's Long Bay jail.
Published
Ivan Milat died in the medical wing of Sydney's Long Bay jail early on Sunday, October 27, 2019. In a statement, the New South Wales corrections department put the time at 4:07 a.m. He was 74, and he was serving seven life sentences for the murders of seven young backpackers.
The end had been coming since May, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the oesophagus and stomach. Earlier in the year he had been moved out of solitary confinement at Goulburn's Supermax prison for treatment, and on October 11 he was taken to Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital for advanced pain relief. As with every death in custody, his body is to pass to the coroner.
Between 1989 and 1992, seven hitchhikers heading south along the Hume Highway near Liverpool, in western Sydney, disappeared. Their bodies were found in shallow graves in the Belanglo State Forest, south-west of the city, in 1992 and 1993. Deborah Everist and James Gibson, both 19, were from Victoria. Simone Schmidl, 21, came from Germany, as did Anja Habschied, 20, and Gabor Neugebauer, 21, who were travelling as a couple. Caroline Clarke, 21, and Joanne Walters, 22, were from Britain.
The case turned on a man who got away. In 1990 a British hitchhiker, Paul Onions, then 24, accepted a lift in Casula, near Liverpool, from a driver who introduced himself as Bill. When the driver pulled a gun, Onions escaped, flagged down a passing car and was taken to a police station. His account was not followed up.
After the bodies were found and police appealed for information, Onions came forward again. Flown back to Sydney in 1994, he picked out a photograph of Milat, by then already of interest to detectives through other tip-offs, as the man who had called himself Bill.
A few weeks later, police raided Milat's home and found clothing, camping equipment and other belongings of the dead backpackers, along with weapons and ammunition. His arrest that year followed one of the largest police investigations in Australian history. In July 1996 he was found guilty of all seven murders and of abducting Paul Onions.
Sources
- Hell won't be hot enough: Serial killer Ivan Milat dies in prison at 74, The New Daily (ABC)