It's 1984, and I am working for the NSW Department of Main Roads, we are working on building a new part of the Highway near Straithfield.
In the Mid 80s, some workplaces were segregated, either by design or choice, I don't know. Anyway, there was two road work groups and two work caravans where the road crews would have there lunch.
There was the Wog Caravan, made up of Yugoslav's, Italians, Maltese and Greeks, and then there was the Skip Caravan made up of Anglo Aussies. One of my roles in the DMR, along with another young guy called Ricky was to get the lunch orders. I used to travel between both Caravans as my father was Italian with my mother being Australian.
There was this one Serb bloke, that I used to work with, every lunch time, he would sit on his Esky at the caravan table, and cut up his salami, with a huge bowie knife. One day he says to me, "Johnnie, you come shooting with me, I have many guns, we have much fun, we shoot the kangaroos, we shoot what you want." Well, I decide to take him up on this offer and plan to go shooting with him on the upcoming weekend.
Well, on that Friday afternoon, this little Italian man, who I worked with comes up to me and says, in a broken English Italian accent, "Johnnie, do not go with this man, this man is a crazy man." I took his advice and didn't go.
Ivan Milat in 1991 at Wombeyan Caves Road.
Three of the Milat brothers owned a small property on the Wombeyan Caves road, twenty five miles from Belanglo. The brothers used the place for camping and shooting practice. Ivan was a frequent visitor, either bringing his girlfriends, friends or just spending time with his brothers and their families.
The Wombeyan Caves Road is a New South Wales country road linking Mittagong near the Hume Highway in the east to the Goulburn-Oberon Road at the locality of Richlands in the west. The road is designated as Main Road 258.
The Backpacker Murders took place in the Belanglo State Forest, New South Wales, Australia, between 1989 and 1993. They are commonly believed to have been committed by Ivan Milat. 7 bodies of young backpackers were discovered there near the town of Berrima. 5 of the victims were foreign backpackers (3 German, 2 British) and 2 were Australian. Milat was convicted in July 1996 and was sentenced to 7 consecutive life sentences followed by 8 years without parole. Milat died in prison in Australia on 27 October 2019. In previous decades, backpacking through Australia was common and considered to be a mostly safe means of travelling for free. However, thanks to several missing persons cases in the 1970s and ‘80s, backpackers began travelling in pairs. By the time the first bodies were found in Belanglo State Forest, several backpackers had disappeared. These disappearances included Deborah Everist, 19, and her boyfriend James Gibson, 19, travelling from Sydney for ConFest on 30 December 1989, along with Simone Schmidl, 21, a German traveller missing since 20 January 1991. There was German couple Gabor Neugebauer, 21, and Anja Habschied, 20, vanishing in December 1991, and finally, a pair of British friends, 22-year-old Joanne Walters and 21-year-old Caroline Clarke, were last seen on 18 April 1992, before vanishing near the forest.
A hidden body was found by two people orienteering in Belanglo on September 19, 1992. Police found a second body nearby the following day. Dental records confirmed the bodies to be those of Clarke and Walters. Walters had been stabbed over a dozen times in the chest, once in the neck and 9 times in the back – an injury which would have paralysed her. Clarke was shot 10 times in the head, police believing she was used for target practice. Following a search of the forest, investigators ruled out the idea of more bodies in the forest. 13 months later, in October 1993, a local man searching the forest for firewood found some bones in a secluded part of the forest. He alerted police and two bodies were found, later identified as Everist and Gibson. Gibson’s skeleton, curled in a foetal position, showed 8 stab wounds. A large knife had severed his upper spine, again causing paralysis, and stab wounds in his back would have punctured his heart and lungs. Everist was brutally beaten, with a fractured skull, a broken jaw and knife wounds on her forehead. She was stabbed once in the back. Finding Gibson’s body there was a surprise to investigators, as his camera was found on December 31, 1989, and his backpack on March 13, 1990, by Galston Gorge, 75 miles away. On November 1, 1993, a skeleton was discovered during a police sweep of the forest for unrelated reasons. The body was identified as that of Simone Schmidl, who had suffered at least 8 stab wounds – two had severed her spine and others would have punctured her heart and lungs. Clothing found near her body did not belong to her, but matched another missing backpacker, Anja Habschied. Her body, along with that of her boyfriend, Gabor Neugebauer, were found on a nearby fire trail on November 4, 1993, in shallow graves. Habschied had been decapitated and her skull was never found. Neugebauer had been shot in the head 6 times.
As a result of the discoveries, Task Force Air (containing over 20 detectives and analysts) was set up by the NSW Police on October 14, 1993. The following month the NSW government increased the reward for information on the killings to $500,000. Public warnings were given against hitchhiking along the Hume Highway. After creating a profile of the killer, the police faced a huge amount of data from hundreds of sources. Investigators used link analysis to review vehicle records, gym memberships, gun licenses and police records. Following this, the list of suspects was narrowed to a list of 230, before being whittled down to 32. All murders contained similar aspects – each body was dumped in remote bushland and covered with sticks and ferns. Forensics showed that each victim had suffered multiple stab wounds to the torso and many showed signs of sexual assault. The killer, believed to be a local with a 4-wheel-drive, had obviously restrained and spent lots of time with the victims both during and after the murders, as campsites were found near the location of each body. Matching bullets, shell casings and cartridge boxes from 2 different weapons also linked the scenes. It was speculated that this could be the work of several killers, since most victims were attacked in pairs, were killed in different ways and were buried separately. On November 13, 1993, Paul Onions, 24, called police from the UK. He told a very interesting story… on January 25, 1990, he was backpacking in Australia and whilst hitchhiking from Liverpool station to Mildura, accepted a ride from a man he knew as “Bill”. Less than 1km from Belanglo State Forest, “Bill” stopped and pulled out a revolver and ropes, telling Onions it was a robbery. Onions managed to escape while the assailant followed and attempted to shoot him. Onions managed to flag down passing motorist Joanne Berry, and they sped off to file a complaint with the Bowral police. On April 13, 1994, detectives found a note regarding Onions’ call, but the original report was missing from the Bowral police station. Luckily, a constable wrote the details down in her notebook. The statement was corroborated by Berry, who contacted the investigation team separately. Someone else who contacted the police was the girlfriend of a man who worked with someone she thought police should look at. The name? Ivan Milat.
The Backpacker Murders is one of the worst serial killings in Australia’s history after Ivan Milat killed seven backpackers across the span of four years. Due to the lack of the death penalty in Australia he’s still alive residing in Australia’s most secure prison Goulburn Correctional Centre.
Lead up to crime
Milat was raised by his Yugoslavian father and Australian-born mother among thirteen other siblings.
He’s been described by a brother as showing psychopathic tendencies at a young age but, however, that comment’s been disputed many times by several other family members.
As a teenager he had a fascination in hunting and guns, and later on he was involved with crimes varying from home break-ins to armed robberies. Police regularly visited the Milat household to follow-up on crimes Milat and his brothers had been committing. However, none of those crimes were anywhere as bad as the crimes he’d later commit in his adulthood.
In 1971 at age 26, Milat was accused of raping two female hitchhikers and was consequently put on trial. The two women testified saying that he had even held them at knifepoint, but the prosecution failed to make a convincing case against Milat which resulted in him getting acquitted.
Fifteen years later in 1985, Milat married teenage Karen Duck and subsequently divorced four years later in 1989, the year Milat’s first victims went missing.
Paul Onions
In 1990, Paul Onions, a British backpacker, hitchhiked with Milat. Milat introduced himself as Bill and seemed friendly to Onions at first but soon started making racist and xenophobic remarks. Luckily when Milat pulled over the car to the side of the road, Onions escaped in another vehicle despite Milat pulling out a revolver and threatening to kill him if he left the car.
In an interview with British media he said this of the experience:
As the car sped off, I just remember this stupid grin on Milat’s face and that look has stayed with me ever since.
Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters
In September 1992, two orienteers found a decaying corpse in a part of Belanglo State Forest known as Executioners Drop. The day after, two police officers discovered a second corpse less than fifty metres away from the other.
At first media reports had suggested the corpses belonged to two British backpackers Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters who had been missing since April that year. However, there were five other people who had gone missing in the nearby area during the past three years.
It didn’t take long for police to confirm the identity of the corpses as indeed being Clarke and Walters. Both had been stabbed repeatedly and Clarke had been shot ten times. A wound to Walters’ spine is believed to have paralyzed her during the attack. Clarke also had a similar wound to the spine.
Walters’ jeans were found unzipped which potentially meant she was sexually assaulted by Milat. However, her remains were so decomposed that it couldn’t be established if a sexual assault had even occurred.
Four bullets that remained in Clarke’s skull were preserved by detectives for forensic analysis. This evidence provided a confidence boost that they’d find the killer.
Near the bodies detectives found .22-caliber cartridge cases, cigarette butts and a brick fireplace. Despite no more bodies being found after an extensive search, the press speculated that there was a serial killer on the loose.
Sadly the police made little progress with the case despite the colossal amount of evidence they had gathered from the scene.
Deborah Everist and James Gibson
Only a year later, two more dead bodies were found in the same forest. The remains were identified as Deborah Everist and James Gibson—two Australian nationals who had been missing since 1989.
Gibson’s zipper was found unzipped and the first button fastened, in a similar manner to Joanne Walters’. Autopsies of the corpses revealed similar spinal wounds to the previous victims. Again, there was the killer’s signature brick fireplace near the bodies.
Simone Schmidl, Anja Habschied and Gabor Neugebauer
After the discovery of Everist and Gibson’s corpses, police started a manual search across the extended part of the Belanglo State Forest. Less than a month after the beginning of the search, the body of Simone Schmidl, a German hitchhiker, was found after being missing since January 1991.
Near Schmidl’s body, there was a brick fireplace and shells of .22-caliber ammunition. Her remains also had the trademark spinal injury.
The search continued and three days later, two more bodies were found. Anja Habschied and Gabor Neugebauer’s corpses were found after their disappearance two years prior. The couple were also German hitchhikers.
Habschied’s corpse was missing the skull completely; she’d been decapitated with a sword or machete.
Yet again, .22 ammunition was found near the bodies.
Search by police
The superintendent had to announce to the public that the police were now looking for a serial killer. However, due to the range of methods used to kill the seven victims, it wasn’t going to be easy for them to find the killer.
Police was suspicious that Ivan Milat was linked but they had no evidence against him at the time. Due to international media coverage, Paul Onions contacted Australian authorities recounting his encounter with Milat.
After Onions was flown to Australia he picked Milat in a video line-up. Not long after, the Milat home was raided where a vast amount of the victims’ personal belongings were found. Police also found a .22-caliber rifle, and at Milat’s mother’s home, a curved cavalry sword.
Arrest and trial
On 22 May 1994, fifty police officers surrounded Milat’s home on Cinnabar Street at Eagle Vale along with Tactical Operations Unit officers. Among his home, numerous of Milat’s siblings’ homes were searched giving police enough evidence to bring Milat and two of his siblings into custody.
Milat was charged with all seven murders and the attempted murder of John Onions. He hired the defence attorney he used in his last trial in 1971, John Marsden. Marsden suggested he plead guilty and got sacked by Milat for the suggestion. Milat pleaded not guilty to all eight charges.
Wolf Creek
Ivan Milat inspired the main character Mick Taylor in 2005 horror movie, Wolf Creek. The character (played by Australian actor, John Jarratt) is a “sadistic psychopath” that befriends and tries to kill three backpackers in the Australian outback.
The first photo shows police shift logs at the crime scene of Gabor Neugebauer and Anja Habschied in the Belanglo State Forest. As you can see it took two officers to lift one of the logs covering the bodies. Some of the logs were so huge that it took three persons to lift them.
The second photo is another look at the same crime scene showing more logs. Ivan Milat was certainly a strong man but looking at some of the logs it seems impossible he could have lifted them on his own.
