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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Warburg Thun. Tonight, we return again to the Australian outback to continue our bushwhacking adventures looking into Ivan Millett's exploits.
This episode is also somewhat of a treat made for you, dear listener, as it is completely free of sponsored ads. The episode is 100% funded by my very loyal patrons, who donate to the show every month. It is vital that if you haven't listened to part one of the Ivan Milet story, you need to do so now.
The Millat Saga is in three parts, and this is part two. I would also like to apologize for an error I made in part one. In the first episode of this series, I started out by pronouncing the killer's name as Ivan Millat. I should, of course, have been pronouncing his name as Ivan Millat all along. Hopefully, you can forgive me this blunder.
The Serial Killer Podcast now has well over 8 million downloads. I am humbled by this. And to be honest, I never thought the show would grow so large. I could not have made this show without the support of my loyal patrons. I am very thankful for your support. And to my dear listeners who haven't visited my Patreon yet, I have some very interesting news.
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To donate and choose from these tiers, go to patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast now. The Belanglo State Forest is barely a two-hour drive from the heart of Sydney. It is announced by a small sign and turnoff alongside Australia's busiest trunk road, the Hume Highway.
Towards the end of 1993, it became the focus of the largest homicide inquiry in the nation's history. Raw police recruits, state emergency workers, and others were drafted into comb-wide swathes of the forest, often on their hands and knees, for anything that could provide a clue.
They were supported by nine analysts from the State Intelligence Group who cross-checked every shred of information and every possible lead. The nation was horrified as police revealed the brutal nature of the murders.
There was evidence that the killer, or killers, had become increasingly confident with every murder and had spent longer time at each successive crime scene. The commander of Task Force Air, Clive Small, by now our chief superintendent, revealed that the first three victims had been killed comparatively swiftly.
But by the time Gabor Neugebauer was shot and his girlfriend Anja Habschied beheaded, the killer had begun playing his own perverted games. The victims had been bound, and at some stage had been unbound, and moved several hundred meters. Further, there were quite a number of spent shells. The police believe about one hundred.
which suggested there was a good deal of time firing weapons. Worse still, it appeared the killer had set up beer bottles on a tree stump to show off his marksmanship to the victims. It even seemed that Caroline Clark and Joanne Walters had been made to undress, and then dress again in a hurry.
Caroline was then shot repeatedly in the head through her maroon sweatshirt. Joanne was stabbed twenty times through her top, which was later to become a significant exhibit in Ivan Millat's murder trial. Again, dear listener, I feel I need to pause briefly in our story to contemplate the fate of these two young women.
Being shot in the head, especially repeatedly, will in most likelihood cause immediate unconsciousness and death. But Caroline would first have seen Ivan Millat shoot Cairns and explained to her what he was going to do to her head, what he had done to the Cairns he was firing at. When he bound her head with her sweatshirt,
One can scarcely imagine her horror as she waited for the sound of Ivan's gun to cock before her life suddenly would be over. Joanne, on the other hand, would not only have been forced to witness her friend being shot dead, but after her killing, Ivan would have turned his attention to her when he produced a knife instead of his gun
her horror would have intensified immensely. Being stabbed, especially when you are alerted to the attack beforehand, is extremely painful. The feeling of the cold, sharp steel ripping through your stomach and your lungs is not dampened by your fear, but enhanced by the adrenaline surging through your body.
Every nerve ending is alert, and Joanne would have felt every stab. Twenty times she was stabbed, and unless the killer struck her heart, she would have most probably been conscious long after the final blow, only losing consciousness when the blood loss caused her to pass out and finally die.
It is a brutal, slow, painful and horrible way to die, and Ivan Milat enjoyed every second of it. At this stage, all that the police knew for certain was that the killer would probably drive a four-wheel drive vehicle to access the remote bush tracks, and had some knowledge of the forest.
Meanwhile, ballistics experts found that the same gun was used to kill Gabor and Caroline, a US-made Ruger 10-22 rifle, which was competitively rare in Australia. The investigation team also knew that the danger periods were during the holidays. All the backpackers vanished through Australia's long summer, the Christmas break and around Easter.
They also thought the use of rifles and knives suggested the killer was a hunter. Because the travelers died in the same clothing they had worn on their fateful trips down the Hume Highway, it seemed they were probably killed the same day they went missing. This suggested the killer was living in or around the southwestern region of Sydney.
There were plenty of theories, but few hard facts. Psychologists helped draft a profile of the killer. I quote, It is fair to say that almost without exception, the people involved in this type of crime come from unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, said Superintendent Small. Again, I quote, I am not trying to put a class thing on it,
But I think they are the facts of the matter." On the 5th of November, 1993, the New South Wales government offered a reward of $500,000 for information leading to the killer's conviction.
the largest bounty ever offered in the country. A free pardon was also offered to any accomplice not involved in the murders who would give the killer up. Information lines were set up, and within the first 24 hours, 5,100 calls were logged. The public response was enormous.
Eventually, more than one million tip-offs were received, of which police followed up 10,000 leads. Investigators used a computer system called NetMap to chart the connections between the fragments of information about names, addresses, gun ownership, vehicles and times. The clues to catch the killer were there.
But it was not just a matter of finding them. They had to be matched together. Even satellite photographs were used to see how wet conditions had been on the days the backpackers vanished. But in faraway Birmingham, England, the trap was beginning to close.
Paul Onions, aged twenty-seven, was beginning to brood about tabloid newspaper reports about the Forest of Death, and details of his brush with unarmed rubber on the same road three years earlier seemed more than just coincidence.
Onions contacted the Australian High Commission in London and, on the 13th of November 1993, was put in touch with Task Force Eyre, to whom he gave details of his attack and a full description of his assailant. However, it was to be five months before he heard from them again. Meanwhile, the Millat name started to crop up in investigations.
Police discovered a statement in their files from Ivan's brother, Alex, who had contacted detectives in October of 1993 with a strange story. Eighteen months earlier, he claimed he had seen two women tied up in the back of two cars with a group of men near the Belanglo State Forest.
But the details and dates did not match, and the man Alex said he was with failed to corroborate the story fully. Police discounted Alex Millett's statement. Investigators also found a report from the wife of a worker at a building materials plant, detailing her suspicions about her husband's workmate.
The tip-off, made in early October just after the second set of bodies was found, referred to a worker called Paul Miller. Police already knew he was actually Richard Millat, Ivan's younger brother.
During the murder trial, it was alleged that after the British girl's bodies were discovered, Richard had told workmates, "'There's more out there. They haven't found them all yet.' On other occasions, he allegedly went on, "'They haven't found the Germans out there yet. And I know who killed the Germans.'
This was months before any of the three German victims were discovered. In a phrase which would come back to haunt him, Richard, although he denied making all the statements, was also quoted as saying, "'Stabbing a woman is like cutting a loaf of bread.'"
On the 16th of November, the 400 police in the Belanglo State Forest paused for one minute's silence out of respect for the dead. Their six-week search of the area was now officially over. By the end of the year, police were making discreet inquiries about Ivan Millett at the New South Wales Road and Traffic Authority depot in Granville, Sydney.
They found out the dates of his holidays and days off. They also approached Ivan's brother, Walter, at his home while checking gun licenses. But Ivan had got wind of the investigation and, unknown to detectives, began to stash his firearms in a secret alcove in Walter's home.
In January of 1994, Senior Constable Paul Gordon followed up his theory that backpackers were all hitchhiking when they met their murderer. He checked the records for attacks on travellers who had left the Liverpool area and came across Ivan Millat's acquittal in 1971 for the rape of two hitchhikers. The news was beginning to tighten.
Millat was their number one suspect, but the task force still needed stronger evidence before they dared move. They mounted a major surveillance operation, shadowing Ivan Millat's every move. Tradesmen's vans began to appear regularly, near his home in Cinnabar Street, on a housing estate in Eagle Vale in Sydney's Southwest District.
Millat was seen staring back at police through binoculars from his front window. Then, in April, came the breakthrough. Paul Onions told police by telephone from England the full details of what happened while he was hitching south on the Hume Highway in January of 1990. His attacker drove a white four-wheel drive
called himself Bill and had a moustache, like Australian cricketer Merv Hughes. He was also from a Yugoslav background, was divorced and worked on the roads. The description fitted Ivan Millat like a glove. Onions was secretly flown to Australia on the 2nd of May,
and took police to the spot near the Belanglo turn-off, where the man attempted to rob and abduct him at gunpoint. He was shown 13 photographs on a video of men matching his description, and identified Ivan Milat. I quote, I remember the moustache, end quote.
Millat's ex-wife Karen confirmed that Millat had made trips into the forest as far back as the early 1980s. At last, the police were ready to move and planned to raid seven properties owned by the Millat family.
A few days later, on the 21st of May, three detectives from Task Force Air flew to Queensland to interview Alex Millat about his claimed sighting of two women in the forest in 1992. There, his wife Joan handed them a backpack she said Ivan had given them, saying it belonged to a friend who had returned to New Zealand and did not need it anymore.
Subsequent tests showed it had once belonged to Simone Schmidl. Police were also alerted when Joan made some unsolicited comments about serial killers keeping trophies from their victims. That night Ivan was called by a relative in the nearby town of Bargo, telling him police had been round asking about a silver Nissan four-wheel drive he once owned.
At 2 a.m., his brother William rang to say he, too, had been questioned about the car and his involvement in an armed robbery. And so it was that, at 6.36 a.m. on Sunday, the 22nd of May, police called Ivan Millet's home and told him to come out with his arms outstretched.
Millett claims he thought the call was a prank and ignored the order. After a third call, he and his girlfriend, Challinder Hughes, a public servant, came out to find fifty heavily armed police surrounding them. The investigators were confident they had their man at last. Now, they just had to prove it.
Soon after his arrest, Ivan Milat was interrogated by detectives for three hours at his home. He was asked if he had ever used the name Bill, if he owned any firearms, and if he'd ever used a Ruger 10-22 rifle. He said no to each question.
The next day he appeared in Campbelltown local court, charged with armed robbery and using a revolver, with intent to commit an indictable offense in relation to Paul Onions. It wasn't until the 31st of May that he was formally charged with the murder of the seven backpackers, the attempted abduction of Paul Onions, and several firearm offenses.
From day one, Millat denied all the charges. But behind the scenes, investigators were seizing a wealth of ballistics, scientific and physical evidence. The irony was that most of it came from the ordinary brick suburban building worth around 100,000 pounds that Ivan called home, and appeared to be macabre trophies of his exploits.
Millat had had ample time to dispose of the evidence, but for some reason he chose not to.
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In Millard's bedroom they found thirty-eight .22-caliber cartridges in a tin, and electrical tape similar to that found at the murder scenes. In a spare room was a manual for a Ruger 10-22, more ammunition and a bowie knife, and in the laundry was a .32-caliber Browning pistol with its ammunition.
Then, in a wall cavity, were found parts of a Ruger trigger assembly, which tests showed was used in the murders. In a cupboard were more parts of the gun Millat denied that he ever owned, together with a map showing the Belanglo State Forest. Police, who had spent months getting nowhere on the investigation, could not believe their luck. Soon.
They turned up a water bottle that had belonged to German victim Simone Schmidl, and an Olympus camera that had belonged to Caroline Clark. They also found small amounts of foreign coins from all the countries that the backpackers had visited en route to Australia. More disturbingly, in the garage was a pillowcase containing five sash cords,
One had bloodstains that DNA tests showed were consistent with blood belonging to a child born to Ian and Jacqueline Clark. There was also a tent belonging to Simone and a homemade silencer for a rifle. Millat shared the house with his sister, Shirley Swar. In her bedroom were found sleeping bags belonging to Deborah Everest and Simone Schmidl.
In court, it was alleged that Millat asked her to dispose of a Colt .45 caliber pistol, which he had buried in the garden. It was claimed Ivan's brother Walter sold the weapon to a stranger and passed on the $800 to Shirley. Another key piece of evidence was a photograph of Millat's girlfriend, Challinder Hughes, in a green and white Benetton top, exactly the same color.
as one that Caroline Clark brought with her to Australia. And there was more to come at the various homes of the Millett clan, whom anonymous callers to the police hotline had called a "hillbilly family." The family had remained close-knit over the years, especially the five brothers: Ivan, Wally, Bill, Alex and Richard, who shared a love of hunting, shooting and cars.
In Walter's home was an Anschutz .22-calibre rifle and bolt of the type used at the murder scene of Anja Habschied and her boyfriend, as well as a pack that had been Simone's. At Richard's property were Caroline Clark's tent and bedroll. At Alex Millat's home in West Wombie, Queensland, police were handed Simone's backpack.
and at the Millat's mother's home in the Sydney suburb of Guildford, where Millat was living at the time of the murders, were found a t-shirt belonging to Simone and a Next Brand t-shirt that Paul Onions formally identified as his. It seemed as though the police had an open-and-shut case, but in fact, all the mounting evidence was still circumstantial.
There was nothing which put Ivan Millat in the forest at the time of any of the deaths, and although there were a number of strong leads, some of the best would never be heard in a court of law. Among such leads was the bizarre story that Alex Millat had told police as the second group of bodies was being discovered. It claimed that
that in the easter of nineteen ninety two as he drove past the belanglo state forest on a dirt road he had seen two girls tied up and gagged in the back seats of two passing four-wheel drives
Police were incredulous as Alex gave detailed descriptions of the men and the guns he said they were carrying, despite the fact that both vehicles were being driven at speed in the opposite direction. The friend Millat said he was with could only partly verify the story.
But later investigators discovered that the registration numbers Alex had given them matched part of the registration of a car which his brother Ivan had once owned. It is still not known if Alex was trying to, in an indirect way, tip off police to his brother, or to try and protect him by trying to confuse police.
He has since maintained he told the complete truth about what he saw in the forest. Police were also intrigued by a confession that Millat allegedly made to a former prisoner called Noel Manning, with whom he had shared a cell while awaiting his rape trial back in 1974. Manning told police officers,
that Millat had explained how he had raped a girl after stabbing her spine to paralyze her, so the victim could see the crime but couldn't stop it. Although this was years earlier than the backpacker murders, three of the seven victims had indeed been stabbed in the spine, and there was evidence all had been sexually assaulted.
Manning told his story before the details of Millat's attacks were made public, but was never able to repeat them in court. He died in an apparent suicide only weeks before the trial began. More incriminating evidence against Ivan Millat would also be kept from the jury, this time for legal reasons. This was the story of the 1971 rape case.
On Friday, the 9th of April 1971, the 26-year-old Millat hit the road in his beloved 250-horsepower Falcon V8. He was hunting for hitchhikers. At Liverpool, he picked up two 18-year-old girls that wanted a lift to Melbourne. Both were undergoing psychiatric treatment and were high on Valium. The girls dozed off
and awoke on a dirt road where Milat produced knives, and told them he was going to have sex with both of them. He brazenly promised: "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to kill you. You won't scream when I cut your throats, will you?" Milat then bound their hands and feet with nylon cord and raped one girl in the front seat.
Later, they both escaped when he pulled into a gas station to buy them a fizzy drink. Perhaps the episode was a twisted dress rehearsal for what would follow years later. Or perhaps it was the regular but unreported pastime of a man who since the age of 17 had spent five years behind bars. In any case, Milad was caught on the road after a police chase.
He always claimed that the women consented to sex, and in 1974, after a poor performance from the victim, a New South Wales Supreme Court jury believed him. Millat was a free man and didn't appear in court again until 1994, when he stood charged with the backpacker murders.
A seasoned detective on Task Force Air who put Millat through intense interrogation said as follows, Ivan is the coolest man I have ever interviewed. It now appeared there was a pattern emerging in Millat's attacks.
Although Ivan seemed to have had several girlfriends, there were just two major relationships in his life, and the timings of both were crucial to the commission of his crimes. Ivan was introduced to his future wife Karen in October of 1975.
It was a time of apparent stability in his life. He had five jobs in 18 years, and all his bosses described him as the ideal employee. Although their relationship was turbulent, Ivan and Karen were apparently happy together, and they were married in 1984. But then, in 1987, Karen walked out on her husband. On the 13th of July, 1989,
They were divorced. Six months later, the first two backpackers went missing. For a period of two and a half years, between January of 1990 and April of 1992, Ivan Milat became a ruthless, cold-blooded, and sadistic killer who scoured the Hume Highway looking for victims. Then,
The murders stopped, just as suddenly as they began. Perhaps it was the unlikely relationship that Ivan Millat struck up with 43-year-old divorcee Chalinder Hughes, the Indian-born and English-educated registrar at the Federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.
Two years later, after there had been no more attacks, she was in his bed when the armed police raided Millett's house in Cinnabar Street. There was one more coincidence that pointed to a link between the murders and Millett's emotional state. After Millett's arrest, police checked all unresolved rapes to see if he was involved.
There was just one case in 1984, when two Asian girls hitching down the Hume Highway were picked up and taken to the Belanglo Forest. A man they later identified as Millat demanded, "'Okay, girls, which one of you wants to go first?'
The young women managed to escape and hid in the forest while Millat prowled around looking for them. Police found that the date coincided with one of Millat's temporary breakups from Karen. The evidence mounting against Ivan Millat was certainly sensational, but his trial proved to be even more dramatic than anyone could have expected.
Justice David Hunt warned the jury of eight men and four women, who had been whittled down from the 1,000 originally sent notices to appear, that the case would be emotional. He might also have added, Confusing, confounding, and contradictory. Seventeen weeks later, when he came to his summing up,
Justice Hunt said that in seventeen years as a judge, he had never known a case when the prosecution and defense cases had varied so much. Indeed, you may have wondered at times whether the barristers were each talking about the same case, he commented.
The committal of Ivan Millat at Campbelltown Local Court in Sydney's South West District, that began in October of 1994, had revealed the prosecution's huge weight of evidence against the road worker. Now, after 15 months of delays caused by legal aid arguments, it would soon be time for the defense to play their surprise trump card.
which left some believing Ivan could after all be an innocent party.
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And so ends the tale of Ivan Millet Part 2. Next week, we will conclude the Millet Saga. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. This podcast had not been possible if it hadn't been for my dear patrons that invest in this show via Patreon. My special thanks go out to those of you that have stayed loyal for a long time.
Those of you I would like to give an extra heartfelt thank you to are... Your monthly contributions really helps keep this podcast thriving. You have my deepest gratitude.
If you wish to have your name read here on the podcast, go to patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast now and choose the $15 tier option now. And I'll make sure to include you in this very exclusive club. I have been your host, Thomas Vabog Thun. And as always, I thank you, dear listener, for listening to
Please, feel free to leave a review on your favorite podcast app or on my Facebook page at facebook.com slash the SK podcast. And please, do subscribe to the show if you enjoy it. Thank you. Good night and good luck.