Читать книгу Born Killers - Christopher Berry-Dee - Страница 15

‘I just can’t begin to describe him as a human being. I don’t think that Milat had the feelings of a human being.’

Ian Clarke, father of victim Caroline Clarke

AT THE TIME of his arrest, Ivan Milat was Australia’s worst serial killer. From 1989–1992 he abducted, robbed and sexually molested, tortured and murdered seven backpackers and left their bodies in the Belanglo Forest, South of Sydney. Did the harsh environment Milat grew up in put him on the inevitable path to murder, or was he born to kill?

Short, dark and wiry, with a penetrating gaze – all traits he shared with Fred West – and sporting throughout his killing years a thick ‘macho-man’ moustache, Milat was every inch the Australian outback man. Hardy, independent and self-sufficient, these were all qualities that also served to make Milat a tough, ruthless loner who slaughtered his prey with a degree of sadism shocking even to those who study serial killers closely.

For many, Australia is a land promising adventure and excitement. Young people especially flock to it from around the world, eager to explore its beaches, forests, deserts and wide-open spaces. The outback is a particular lure, a magical, mystical landscape that casts a spell on visitors. And it was here that Milat preyed on his victims, finding a steady stream of trusting young travellers to pick up on the lonely highways. Between 1989 and 1992 seven people – that we know of – were abducted in the Belanglo State Forest, situated on the southern tablelands, approximately 10km (6 miles) west of Moss Vale, just South of Sydney. An exotic pine forest, Belanglo boasts some impressive bush walking along its numerous trails. Bird watching is a favoured pursuit at Belanglo.

But Milat had a different sort of pursuit in mind.

Until 1989 Australia enjoyed a reputation as one of the safest countries in the world. Some five million travellers journeyed to it each year. By tradition, these young backpackers would head for Sydney’s student and travellers’ district, King’s Cross, before setting off to explore the many natural wonders that Australia had to offer. Hitch-hiking was a popular way of travelling around the vast country, and for a dangerous individual such as Milat the prospect of so many young and vulnerable people wandering the roads and forests of his district was a temptation too far. Almost single-handedly, Ivan Milat would tarnish Australia’s reputation as a safe, welcoming place for independent travellers.

According to Commander Clive Small, a former Australian Police Superintendent: ‘He specifically targeted backpackers, because they were distant from relatives and friends. There was less likelihood of people knowing where they were, or what they were doing.’ The treatment he subjected his victims to almost beggars belief. As the forensic psychiatrist Dr Rod Milton puts it: ‘Why he killed was shocking. Some people were tortured. Some people were sexually assaulted and killed. Some people were used as target practice. He was a man who enjoyed killing. He was a man who enjoyed the power, and the sexual gratification that he got from his victims. I think it was violence, for the sake of violence, in someone who enjoyed the explosion of violence.’ Milat would sever his victims’ spines, in a deliberate effort to not only physically paralyse them but to put them completely at his mercy. He would also bind his victims as he raped and abused them, before engulfing them in a final flurry of bloodletting as they were beaten and strangled, then stabbed and shot repeatedly. No one in Australia had ever seen anything like it.

Following the discovery of a double murder in Belanglo Forest, with graphic details of the slayings revealed to the public, it quickly became apparent that a sadistic murderer was on the loose – and that he was unlikely to stop killing any time soon.

These first two victims were a pair of nineteen-year-olds, James Gibson and Deborah Everist, from Frankston, Victoria. They were last seen alive on Friday, 30 December 1989. This was at Surrey Hills in Sydney, from where they were planning to hitchhike the 140km (87 miles) to Albury.

The next victim followed soon after. Sunday, 20 January 1991, was the last day that twenty-year-old German backpacker Simone Schmidl was sighted in the town of Liverpool, west of Sydney. An intrepid girl known to her friends and family as ‘Simi’, she had been hitchhiking south to meet her mother in Melbourne.

Twenty-one-year-old Gabor Kurt Neugebauer and his twenty-year-old girlfriend Anja Habschied were two more German hitchhikers out on their own. They left Sydney’s King’s Cross district on 20 December 1991 to travel to Darwin. They never made it.

British pair, Joanne Walters and Caroline Clarke, left King’s Cross on 18 April 1992, a Friday. They had planned to travel around Australia, paying their way by picking fruit en route. Instead, like the rest of Milat’s victims, their remains were later discovered in Belanglo State Forest.

Caroline’s parents, Ian and Jacquie Clarke, remember being a little apprehensive before Caroline flew to Australia. Ian Clarke recalls: ‘Off she went, and she was having a wonderful time. You know, we always talked about hitchhiking as something that should not be encouraged. And we always said to Caroline, look whatever you do, never do this on your own. Always use public transport, even if it meant working for a bit longer to pay for the fare. Well, well, she didn’t.’ When Caroline went missing her family did everything they could to search for her. They created fly-posters with Caroline’s photograph and details on them and sent them to all the major backpacking hostels. Backpackers were asked to take bundles of posters with them and hand them out to other travellers. In this way, news of the missing girls quickly spread across the continent. However, despite Ian and Jacquie’s best efforts, news was slow in coming through. It was a terrible time, as Jacquie explains: ‘You can’t believe anything has gone wrong. But, of course you just can’t believe it. However, as the weeks turned into months, the realisation dawns. I was in a state of limbo, I must say.’ Her husband was equally traumatised, adding: ‘I don’t think we really, until quite late on, finally faced up to the fact that they weren’t coming back. Then a different kind of anguish comes in; when you know they are dead. Then you can start to mourn them.’

The Clarkes were able to begin to mourn their youngest daughter in September 1992. On the nineteenth, the remains of Joanne Walters were discovered under a rock in Belanglo. Her clothing, which lay nearby, had been carefully arranged, suggesting a sexual element to the crime. The following day, the body of Caroline Clarke was discovered by police just fifteen metres away. The body was also left in a ‘posed’ position, which clearly signified something to the killer. According to forensic psychiatrist Dr Rod Milton: ‘She was lying face down, with one arm up and her head on her hand, and she had been repeatedly shot through the head. The autopsy reports show several entry points to the skull, which suggests that the killer had moved the head in order to do what pleased him. This was a particularly cold-blooded murder, although it is not unknown for serial killers to arrange the bodies in a particular way. There was some similarity between Miss Walters and Miss Clarke, in that they were both laying face down, and both had their hands raised up somewhere near the vicinity of the head.’

Once the Clarkes knew that their daughter had been murdered they wanted to find out by whom. Ian Clarke says: ‘We knew the broad outline of what had happened to Caroline, and that was horrid because it was such an evil and disgusting event. You know, you start reliving it on their behalf, conjuring up what they’d gone through.’ Sadly for the Clarkes, it would be a while before the identity of their daughter’s killer would be revealed.

The Hume Highway is the major arterial link between Sydney and Melbourne. The road travels for much of the way along the Great Dividing Range and passes through the Murray River towns of Albury and Wodonga. The Hume Highway was developed when paddle steamer trade along the river was the only way of marketing the crops and produce of the surrounding countryside. It passes near the Snowy Mountains, through the Riverina, Bushranger Country, and the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. It was along this same road that Milat picked up all of his victims for their final ride.

Ivan Milat, a trawler and opportunist – like so many serial murderers – would cruise the Hume on a regular basis. He was a hunter and this was his turf, the place he was most familiar with and where he was most comfortable in selecting his prey. The only other area where Milat felt as secure was the Belanglo State Forest, where he would take his victims to act out the final agonised stages of their lives.

Ivan’s method of selecting his victims was very straightforward. When he spotted a likely victim or victims on the highway he would pull his blue, four-wheel drive vehicle over and start by offering a tried-and-tested cheery grin. He was adept at playing the role of the Good Samaritan, a friendly travelling companion. But once Ivan was sure his new travelling companions were safely in his control things would quickly change. By the time his victims realised they were being kidnapped it was too late. A gun would be pulled and his passengers would be tied up in quick order. Then it was off to the forest. Ivan’s special place.

Milat enjoyed the isolation that the bush afforded him. Taking his victims to such a lonely setting was the perfect place for him to abuse them without fear of being disturbed. He could work in private, uninterrupted, a cold and selfish killer who could take all the time he desired with his immobilised victims. Like other such killers, he could control not only the manner of his victims’ deaths, but what happened to them afterwards. He would play with the corpses of his victims, posing them in positions that held some secret meaning for him and then secreting the bodies in places and in a manner that would signify something intensely personal to him. In this he was following his own inner signature, lost in the compulsive pleasure that it lent him. Once he was sated, Milat would strip the corpses of any jewellery or possessions he wished to retain and then, almost carelessly, hide the bodies beneath a makeshift blanket of branches and leaves.

There is something about Australia’s serial killers that seems to separate them from the often-diverse backgrounds of repetitive murderers from other countries. Australia’s serial killers are almost exclusively from underprivileged backgrounds. They have poor work histories and nomadic tendencies. It is almost as if they are born outlaws who believe from the very beginning that they can and will do as they please. According to Paul Kidd, author of Australian Serial Killers, Milat exemplifies this attitude. He writes: ‘Milat was an extremely clever serial killer. I mean this within the Australian genre. By that I mean, it is a lonely place, it’s in the bush, he is abducting strangers, people he doesn’t know. He’s taking them to a place of absolute isolation where he’s committing his crimes… he is secreting the bodies, hiding the bodies, in a place where they are unlikely to be found. Ninety per cent, or more probably, of Australia’s serial killers, are pure opportunists.’

Ivan was born on 27 December 1944, the fifth child in a family of fourteen. The Milat family lived in a very rural area and as such were a close-knit group. Suspicious of outsiders, they turned inwards and were bound together only by their loyalty to one another and their fierce family privacy. It is not difficult to imagine the Milat family as a hillbilly clan at large in the countryside.

One of the Milat family’s favourite activities was gunplay. Ivan and his many brothers loved to mess around with guns – they even manufactured their own rifles and revolvers. Taking their weaponry, they would disappear into the forest to hunt rabbits and birds. Their father, Stephan, a Croatian immigrant, was a ruthless disciplinarian who thought nothing of beating his boys for any unruly behaviour. The Milat children had an absolute fear of their father, and when they weren’t working alongside him on the family’s tomato crops they would generally try to escape his attentions altogether.

Stephen Milat was, of course, a product of a different time and culture. His neighbours recall one particularly disturbing incident of abuse involving Stephen standing upon the backs of two of his prone sons and bludgeoning them mercilessly with a piece of wood. Stephen’s propensity for violence is well documented, and his sons regularly experienced it first hand. However, rather than instil discipline, Stephan’s punishments only created a bitter resentment in Ivan, who would grow to loathe authority in all its forms.

A significant point in Ivan’s young life, and his first encounter with death, came when his sister Margaret was killed in a car accident. The accident happened close to the Milat family home and Ivan was able to race to the scene, where he found his own horribly injured sister in deep distress. Margaret was rushed to hospital where she managed to hold on for two weeks before finally succumbing to her injuries, having never regained consciousness. The close-knit Milat family was devastated by its loss and Ivan, having witnessed some terrible scenes at the roadside, was hit the hardest.

The first effects of this trauma appeared when Ivan became a teenager. He began to retreat into an inner world and became obsessed with his own body. He would spend hours exercising and toning himself with weights. He dressed himself as expensively as his parents could afford and would pose with guns, as if living out some inner fantasy. This all far exceeded normal teenage vanity. Ivan was transfixed by his own appearance and his self-image assumed prime importance over everything else in his life. And, beneath the rugged image he had created, the cauldron simmered. Ivan Milat was very angry at life. Perhaps he sensed that he was a born loser, too weak to break away from the family pack. Only his guns and bad boy behaviour seemed to give him some measure of relief.

Ivan would go shooting on his own sometimes, but more often than not he would spend time with some of his brothers. Although they were a solid unit, at least one of Ivan’s brothers began to harbour doubts about his behaviour, especially his liking for guns. His younger brother George claimed: ‘Everybody in the family, a few of my brothers said “well maybe there’s something wrong with Ivan – there’s definitely something wrong with him! Never leave a gun loaded, no matter what!”’ As he slowly disengaged himself from the family unit, Milat became a petty criminal. Like Ian Brady, Ivan began to develop an idea of himself as a renegade and an outlaw.

Although Ivan wanted to join the big-time criminal league he never quite made it. But at the same time, his obsession with guns and his self-image as a renegade moved him away from the constraints of a society he had elected to go to war with. Neither professional criminal nor ordinary member of the public, Ivan existed in a kind of limbo. This made him a difficult person to be around, especially as he grew into a tough young man with a fiery temper when provoked and a highly developed bent toward violence. ‘I didn’t get on with Ivan because he was quite wild. Maybe because I stayed out of trouble. He would fly off the handle at any chance, to the point I would tell him nothing anymore,’ says his brother George.

When he ventured outside of the family unit and tried to form human relationships with others Ivan struggled. Peter Cantarella, who employed Ivan for one year at his fruit market, recalls that he initially saw Milat as a decent, hardworking young man. However, this impression did not last. Problems surfaced when Ivan asked Peter to become guarantor for a vehicle he wished to purchase. Cantarella agreed, on the understanding that the loan Ivan needed to buy the car would be repaid. Ivan bought the car and then defaulted on the loan, leaving Cantarella liable for it. At first, Ivan went to ground but when he did finally resurface it wasn’t to ask Cantarella for forgiveness. Instead, with his brothers in tow, Ivan began to harass Cantarella and his wife. The situation steadily worsened as the Milats stole guns and jewellery from Cantarella and his wife then would turn up at the Cantarella family home and pelt it with stones. A no-nonsense character himself, Cantarella eventually decided to take matters in hand when Ivan and his family turned up one day, brandishing their weapons and threatening robbery. He remembers: ‘Milat walked into my shop, with his brothers and guns, and took the jewellery off my first wife, and I thumped him in the head. He was just getting in the wrong crowd and was getting bad.’

Ivan’s car trouble marked the beginning of his life outside the law. Along with some of his brothers Ivan embarked on a crime spree, robbing and vandalising his way through town. The Milat boys were troublemakers but were hardly master criminals. Although they were always in trouble with the law, the Milats’ crimes were not the sort to bring them national notoriety. Ivan seems to have been an especially inept villain. He began with stealing cars and burglary and graduated on to one day breaking into an army barracks and making off with a safe.

But Milat was not what one could call an effective criminal. More often than not he was caught and incarcerated. Once in prison he was able to mix with other criminals, as well as with men who were truly evil and psychopathic. The type of men who, like Ivan, held a grudge against society and who at the same time felt they were being persecuted by it.

In 1971, not long being discharged from his latest stint in jail, Ivan Milat committed an act which instantly took him from the ranks of small-time crooks and put him into a much higher league. He decided to abduct two female hitchhikers who were on their way to Melbourne. In what would become his hallmark, Milat picked up the two young women in an initially friendly manner and quickly metamorphosed in a monster once he had them under his control. When the girls had appraised themselves of the danger they were in, they played a successful psychological game with Milat. He had made it clear that he intended to kill both women, so one of them struck a bargain with Milat – that he should let them live if she agreed to have sex with him. Shortly after Milat released his two captives he found himself arrested and charged with rape (the charge was later dropped when one of the victims changed her testimony).

Despite the fact that he had ultimately been acquitted, the message was clear to Ivan Milat: if he let his victims live, they would run and tell their tales; it would be better for Milat if they died. By killing them it also meant he could take his time with them, do exactly as he pleased and have as much ‘fun’ as he wanted. And why not? They would be dead at the end of it anyway, he reasoned.

At this stage in his development Milat was still the anger-fuelled, resentful and fractious child he had always been. To project the desired self-image he had painstakingly prepared for himself Milat would abstain from drinking and drug-taking, marking him out as very different from other people of his age and social situation at the time. Once again we see parallels with Fred West, who was quite happy to view others losing control whilst under the influence of drink, but who himself had to remain rigidly in hand. It heightened his sense of superiority over those around him. There is no reason to think any differently about the attitude of Ivan Milat. This compulsive quality is something he would later extend to his home and garden. As with many other organised serial killers, John Gacy being pre-eminent among them, Milat would have to keep his property immaculate at all times. This is a classic displacement activity – a way of controlling one’s own environment when you are not necessarily able to take charge of other areas of your personal life.

At the age of thirty, Ivan Milat met a girl named Karen Duck. She was six months pregnant with another man’s child and, needing someone who would be prepared to care for her and her unborn child, she agreed to stay with Milat. There is no indication that Karen ever loved Ivan – or indeed that he loved her – but he eventually asked her to marry him and she agreed. The relationship was doomed from the outset.

Karen soon discovered that Ivan was incredibly domineering and jealous. He would often not even allow her to leave the house. When he did, he would demand that she tell him exactly where she had been and what she had been doing while she was away from his watchful gaze. He also forced Karen to account for every cent that she spent, and demanded to see receipts for everything she bought. Karen would later recount the way her husband was able to control his emotions, the same way he did with other aspects of his life and surroundings. Rather than burst into frequent fits of rage, Milat would smoulder quietly instead. When he did lose his temper his rage was all the more fearsome for it.

The marriage inevitably came to an end. Karen had been so thoroughly demeaned and beaten down by her husband that she could stand no more. The spectre of violence had loomed over their entire relationship and it was a brave and difficult decision on Karen’s part to take. Naturally, Milat was furious at his wife’s rejection and was typically unable to accept any part of the blame for the failure of his marriage. After brooding on his marital breakdown for a while, Milat’s rage finally exploded and he took his revenge by setting fire to Karen’s parents’ house. George Milat says of his brother’s actions: ‘He was upset about the divorce… and what I know of… he caused it. He started punching [Karen] and the police were called. When Ivan got violent, he got very violent.’

When Karen left Ivan he lost the one person he was able to control utterly, the person who allowed him to walk all over her and vent his frustrations at life. Now, with her gone, there was just the hopeless inadequate Ivan, left once again to his own devices. There was no one to take it all out on any more.

There is a theory about Milat that argues that it was his marital breakdown that caused him to exercise his fantasies about power and domination on the Hume Highway. While this idea is certainly in part valid it is also the case that Ivan already harboured deeply entrenched dreams of depravity, even before his marriage. It is highly unlikely that this single event, as emotionally damaging as it was, was the sole reason Milat finally felt the urge to go out seeking victims to murder. It may have triggered the mechanism that turned him into a killer, but all the ingredients were firmly in place long before.

On 13 July 1989, Karen and Ivan Milat divorced. Six months later the first two of his victims would die, very hard.

As much as guns held his fascination as a boy, as he grew up Ivan’s love for them strengthened even more. Milat had become a man well-accustomed to believing himself above the scrutiny of society and the law. His vast arsenal of weapons reinforced the outlaw image he coveted. Growing up, he and his brothers had even constructed their own shooting range on the family property. Photographs taken of Ivan, from boy to man, show a smiling, triumphant individual, small but well-muscled, cradling his guns the way another man might hold a girlfriend. His weapons were very important to him. So much so that he could not even resist taking some of them to work with him, at his job working on the roads.

Ivan’s boss at the time, Don Borthwick, remembered him well: ‘You have the drinkers and the players. But Ivan had a knife… you could have cut up a horse with that knife.’ Borthwick also remembers that Ivan was never really the sort of man to socialise with his workmates, preferring to sit quietly with a book and a soft drink while his co-workers drank beer and engaged in the usual sort of barroom bravado. Nor did he chase after women, as many of co-workers did. Ivan Milat was content to go straight home after work and lose himself in one of his gun magazines. He was a very private man.

Borthwick also told of the occasions when Milat would proudly display his gun collection for the guys. He would grin broadly as everyone made a fuss over the impressive weapons, just as though he were a father showing off his newborn child. And then there was the large Bowie knife that Milat always carried. He claimed that he used it for cutting up apples, but Borthwick told him he thought it would be better for cutting up animals. Milat merely laughed at this and said something about how you could never be too careful and that you never knew who was watching.

On Thursday, 25 January 1990, when he was sure no one was watching, Ivan Milat went out cruising the Hume Highway, where he picked up Paul Onions, an English backpacker. Unlike Milat’s first two victims, Onions was able to escape before Milat was able to secure him. One can only imagine the fate that would have befallen him had he not. Milat had spotted Paul in a newsagent’s beside the highway and offered him a lift. Paul accepted and the pair hopped into Milat’s truck. As the journey progressed, so did Paul’s perception of the driver alter. As with Caroline Owens, who found herself at the mercy of Fred and Rose West after being picked up by them at the side of the road, Onions felt a pronounced change in atmosphere once he was inside the vehicle. Where Fred West had at this point stopped the car and punched Caroline in the face to subdue her, Ivan Milat pulled over and produced a pistol. Clearly in big trouble, Onions made the split-second decision that saved his life. He leapt from the vehicle and ran.

Zigzagging along the highway, as he had been taught by the navy to avoid gunfire, Onions managed to evade the shots that Milat fired at him. Onions managed to flag down a passing car and Milat jumped back into his vehicle and sped away. While the likes of Ted Bundy would have been back out searching for a victim later that same night, Milat, opportunistic and driven sexual murderer though he was, demonstrated remarkable restraint. It would be another year before he would launch another attack.

Onions, badly shaken by his ordeal, gave a statement to detectives that was dutifully filed away. Though he had obviously had a brush with death, the detectives dealing with Onions’ case did not take things any further. At the time it seemed like a one-off attack; four years – and several murders later – the assault on Paul Onions would take on a grim significance.

As a serial killer, the level of sadism Ivan Milat exhibited in his murders escalated radically as the killings progressed. There is evidence of sexual assaults committed on both his male and female victims, and there was an evident satisfaction in placing them in restraints and molesting one victim before the horrified eyes of another. This high degree of humiliation was vital to Milat’s fantasies of dominance and control. He revelled in placing his victims in tight, inescapable bondage and, as with Fred West, delighted in subjecting them to the most cruel of tortures before finally dispatching them.

Victims would typically be tied up with rope, elaborately gagged with cloth and stabbed in the spine, to paralyse and humble them yet further. The gag was most likely a crucial part of Milat’s signature, as it contributed to his ultimate goal of the complete dehumanisation of his victims. Unable to speak or communicate intelligibly, his victims were rapidly stripped of their personalities. This would have been of prime importance to a control freak such as Milat.

Some victims also had their faces obscured with articles of their own clothing during the attacks. They were blind and muted as their sadistic assailant hacked and stabbed at them. This would have thrilled Milat yet more. He was a killer who experimented with different methods of dispatching his victims. Some were bludgeoned, some were strangled. Others were shot and stabbed. Multiple knife wounds were often inflicted on his prey. These knife wounds were often inflicted in a methodical or detailed pattern. This is a demonstration of the killer’s ‘picquerism’ (a term used to classify a sexually deviant condition in which the offender harbours an unhealthy predilection for using a knife to penetrate or cut a person).

The savagery of these murders was part of a steadily evolving ritual. The more Milat killed, the more ferocious the assaults became. Anja Habschied, her hands lashed behind her, was made to kneel down as if at some public execution, before being beheaded with a sword. Other victims were stabbed and slashed about the face and head. Many cases demonstrated instances of extreme ‘overkill’, demonstrating Milat’s almost unfathomable level of hatred for his victims. Some had been frenziedly stabbed, then shot multiple times in the head. In a number of cases, the head wounds were deliberately arranged to expose different areas of the skull to further attack. The aim was clearly to destroy, and each act was a different phase along an arc of pure sadism, committed out of an intense desire to inflict maximum suffering on a bound and helpless human being. Milat, as with so many other sexually sadistic serial killers, was a compulsive trophy taker, hoarding items of clothing and other personal effects as souvenirs that he could utilise later to relive his horrible deeds.

Seven murders and a forest full of death proved the undoing of Ivan Milat. When it became obvious that a demented serial killer was at work the police went all out to catch their man. It did not take long for the Milat family to come under suspicion. As a family already well known to the police and the authorities it was only a matter of time before the male members of the clan would come under official scrutiny. It was certainly a fact that several Milat brothers matched at least some of the profiles put together to describe the Belanglo Forest murderer. In the event, most turned out to have solid alibis. The exception was Ivan Milat, and he was placed under surveillance. Later examination of his, and other family members’ homes, yielded a wealth of evidence in the form of victims’ personal property. Forensic links were also established.

After months of close surveillance, the police finally secured a search warrant and raided Milat’s home on 22 May 1994. Neil Mercer from The Sunday Telegraph closely followed the case: ‘When the police raided the house, they found a treasure trove of evidence. There were backpacks, there were tents; there were cooking sets that had belonged to some of the backpackers. There were cameras; there were all sorts of things that could be traced back to individual backpackers.’ These items would later provide much of the evidence to convict Milat.

Police also raided the houses of other members of the Milat family. They found a huge amount of ammunition, an arsenal of weapons, and rope and cable ties that were identical to those found at the murder scenes. The Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi explains that there was even more damming evidence:

There was some rope found in a pillowcase at Milat’s home. There was some blood on this rope, and this blood was analysed and DNA profiling linked it to Mr and Mrs Clarke. Police found parts of a gun hidden in a wall cavity in Milat’s home. Ballistic tests proved that it was one of two weapons used in two of the murders. Milat’s response was, ‘I know knowing about the weapon’, even though it was painted with camouflage paint, and there were a whole load of other weapons, that he acknowledged were his, painted in exactly the same camouflage paint.

One item that Milat didn’t hide was a framed photograph of his girlfriend wearing a distinctive Benetton top. It was the same top that had been owned by Caroline Clarke.

More than ten years after Milat’s arrest, Police Superintendent Clive Small, who headed the task force set up to deal with the backpacker murders, spoke about his thoughts on Milat. Superintendent Small observed that Milat’s serial killer signature revealed: ‘a pattern of behaviour that goes clearly beyond just the killing of a person, and continues well after.’

As with the Russian cannibal Andrei Chikatilo – responsible for at least fifty-two brutal slayings – Ivan Milat felt compelled to hurt and terrorise his victims as much as possible. Both men preferred the outdoors as locations to perpetrate their killings, favouring dense woodland – a private place where they could spend a lot of time undisturbed with their victims. Some killers return to the scene of an undiscovered body, to gloat, masturbate or even engage in sexual acts with a decaying corpse. There is every reason to expect that Milat had returned to his own personal graveyard.

Using gags to muffle his captives’ pain, Milat would delight in maiming them with his weapons. While Chikatilo relished hearing his child victims’ screams whenever possible, Milat actually enjoyed gagging his. It furthered the control element to his fantasies as well as having the practical advantage of quieting their agonised cries. Evident in Milat’s case, too, as with Bundy, Gacy and Dean Corll, amongst so many others, is a unique thrill, gleaned from committing double homicides. Having a terrified boyfriend watch helplessly as his girlfriend was assaulted and killed, and vice versa, gave Milat insurmountable pleasure.

It has been alleged by one of Milat’s brothers that Ivan may have been responsible for up to twenty-eight murders, and that he also confessed the crimes to his mother, who has since passed away. Ivan was proven to have had an opportunity to commit the crimes associated with them each and every time.

Ivan Milat was arrogant and macho – a classic bully–loser type with a gargantuan chip on his shoulder. He was someone who craved attention, even if it was only in the form of notoriety. In prison for the rest of his days, he was moved to a maximum-security jail after a failed escape attempt. Milat, the tough guy, is segregated from many of his fellow inmates for his own protection. He has bragged that if ever presented with the opportunity he will escape from prison. He has also never once publicly admitted culpability for any of the murders.

Nevertheless, it is our opinion, based on viewing hours of trial testimony and reviewing the evidence in this case, that Milat’s guilt in these homicides is beyond reasonable doubt. Though the science of psychological profiling is far from gospel, Milat’s profiles closely resembled those based on the Belanglo killer. This, coupled with the rest of the police and prosecution’s findings, makes for a strong case indeed. Milat’s insistence that he is innocent is common among serial killers, especially seasoned and psychopathic criminals such as he.

For the families of the victims, Milat’s utter lack of remorse is yet another callous blow. Talking about their daughter Caroline, Jacquie and Ian Clarke remember fondly their bright and bubbly girl who had always dreamed of visiting Australia. She was a wilful, adventurous spirit, always keen to explore. When her wish was eventually granted, only to be cut dreadfully short by a pathetic, anger-driven, sexually inadequate monster, the pain was almost too much for her parents to bear. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to believe that such an insignificant little man could have wrought such horror and misery on so many people,’ says Ian Clarke. All these years later, the agony of knowing exactly what happened to their daughter is still very much with the couple, though they remained admirably composed during our interview with them. Resolute and dignified, they will not allow their daughter’s killer the satisfaction of seeing their own destruction.

Ian recalls the occasion, as he sat in court at Milat’s murder trial, when the wilting defendant, now lacking his trademark moustache, slipped up under clever questioning about a pair of gloves worn during some of the murders. Milat, under pressure had yelled: ‘I never wore any…’, before stopping himself.

‘You could have heard a pin drop. It was a magical moment,’ recalls Ian Clarke. Though the physical and circumstantial evidence against Milat was already more than clear Ian Clarke knew then that Milat was indeed Caroline’s killer. Though emotional, he was jubilant, knowing in his heart that the police had the right man and that he would pay for what he had done to Caroline and the others.

Ultimately, even members of Milat’s own family turned against him. The words of his brother George are damming: ‘I think he was more than twisted… he was definitively gone. Some of my brothers said there must be something wrong with him. Something wrong with him? Of course there was something wrong with him. The jail he’s in? It’s a special prison within a prison. What’s he going to do there? I don’t really know… I don’t really care. It’s his fault for landing in there. He’s been in trouble all his life.’ Milat’s lawyer, Terry Martin, explains, however, that Ivan still maintains his innocence, no matter what: ‘My client’s instructions to me were that he did not do it. Therefore if he didn’t do it, then someone terribly close to him must have. [But] when he spoke at his trial, he didn’t do himself any favours at all.’ Milat’s protestations of innocence, however callous, still find an audience willing to listen to him, but Neil Mercer of The Sunday Telegraph sums up the Milat case best of all: ‘There are the occasional outbreaks of “Milat is innocent”, but I think that’s rubbish. If you look at all the evidence, read the trial transcript, look at the exhibits and where they were found, and Milat’s answers in court – there is no doubt that he killed those seven people.’