Okay, I want you to imagine something. Imagine
you're standing in a forest, but not just any
forest. I want you to picture a plantation. It's
artificial. It's organized. You have these towering
radiata pines, and they're planted in these perfect
symmetrical rows. Yeah, they stretch on for miles.
For thousands of hectares. And from the air,
it looks like this lush green carpet. But when
you're on the ground, it's... Well, it's a cathedral
of shadows. And the floor is covered in pine
needles. It dampens every sound, every footstep.
It is incredibly quiet. It's a silence that feels
heavy. It's not the chaotic noise of, you know,
a natural bushland with birds and scrub. This
is a managed stillness. Exactly. We are talking
about the Belanglo State Forest in New South
Wales, Australia. And today... If you go there,
it's still beautiful. It is on the surface. But
for anyone who lived through the early 1990s
in Australia, that name Belanglo, it doesn't
conjure up images of camping trips or mushroom
picking. No. It is synonymous with a very specific,
a very particular kind of horror. It became the
setting for a national trauma. It really did.
It's a place where that natural isolation, which
is usually the appeal of a forest, was... It
was turned against people who were just out there
looking for adventure. And the man responsible
for turning those pine rows into a graveyard
is the subject of our deep dive today. Ivan Malat,
the backpacker murderer. A name that sends a
shiver down your spine even now. And I know what
you're thinking. If you follow true crime, or
if you're Australian, you know the name. You
know the headlines. You probably know about the
seven confirmed victims found in that forest.
The main story, yeah. But we are on a different
mission today. We are. Because the headlines,
while, you know, horrific, they're really just
the surface level, we've got a massive stack
of source material here. A comprehensive dossier
on Malat's entire life, court transcripts, police
intelligence reports, post -conviction investigations.
Everything. And when you actually wade through
all of this, you realize the story isn't just
about the seven people found in Belanglo. It's
about the making of a monster. We're going to
unpack the near misses, these moments where...
The system had him in its grip decades earlier
and just let him go. It's infuriating to read.
And we're going to look at the truly chilling
possibility, and I do not say this lightly, that
his victim count is significantly higher than
seven. When you look at the timeline and you
look at his mobility, the math is. It's terrifying.
This isn't just a story about one man's evil.
It's a story about a failure of systems to connect
the dots. Yes. It's about the terrifying freedom
of a predator who spent 20 years working as a
truck driver on lonely highways across a continent
that is, for the most part, empty space. I have
to say, just diving into this material. The sheer
volume of what -ifs and the number of unsolved
cases that are linked to him is shocking. It's
not just one or two question marks. It's a map
full of them. It is. And to understand how we
end up with a map like that, how a predator operates
in the shadows for that long, we have to look
at the soil he grew up in. We have to go back
to the Millat household back in the 1940s. Monsters
aren't born in a vacuum. Ivan was born in 1944.
And he wasn't an only child. Far from it. He
was the fifth of 14 children. 14 kids. I can't
even begin to imagine the noise level, let alone
the logistics of that. It's a massive family
unit, especially when you consider the economic
circumstances. They were living in semi -rural
poverty, first in a place called Bosley Park
and then Liverpool, which is on the outskirts
of Sydney. And at the time, this wasn't the suburbs
as we know them today. This was the fringe. The
absolute fringe. And the family dynamic described
in the reports is. Intense. Intense is a good
word. You've got the father, Stjepan, Stephen
Milat, who was a Croatian immigrant, a laborer.
Right. And the mother, Margaret, who was Australian.
From what I've read, the household was like a
fortress. That's a good word for it. The sources
describe a very specific vibe. The parents were,
on the outside, very conscientious. They were
strict. They sent the kids to Catholic schools.
They were big on discipline. But inside the walls?
Inside the walls. The father, Stephen, was an
alcoholic with a ferocious temper. So it was
an incredibly volatile environment. And... In
a house with 14 kids and a volatile father, you
create this us against the world mentality, I
imagine. You do. But there's one detail from
their childhood that really stood out to me as
a precursor to what was coming. It wasn't just
the roughhousing. It was their relationship with
weapons. This is crucial context. It is. The
Milat boys. and there were 10 of them, were well
known to the local police. They were the bad
boys of the neighborhood. Right. But beyond just
being rowdy, they grew up in a culture where
handling knives and firearms was completely normalized.
They spent their afternoons in the backyard shooting
at targets. And we aren't talking about Red Ryder
BB guns here, are we? No, we are talking about
high -powered rifles, shotguns, machetes. This
was a complete immersion in gun culture. They
were comfortable with lethal weapons from a very
young age. It was their form of play. And for
Ivan specifically, that comfort with violence
started to manifest in some pretty disturbing
ways very, very early on. We always look for
the red flags, right? The classic signs of sociopathy.
And when you look at Ivan's childhood dossier,
they're flashing neon lights. They are textbook.
Siblings recalled Ivan displaying really antisocial
behavior as a child. The most chilling example
is his aggression toward animals. He wasn't just
hunting for food. No, no. He was known to attack
animals with machetes. That is a very specific
kind of violence. I mean, shooting a rabbit for
dinner is one thing. Attacking an animal with
a machete implies a desire to be a close. To
see the damage. Yes. Precisely. It shows a desire
to inflict pain and a total lack of... of empathy,
which are the hallmarks of psychopathy. It's
all about dominance. Oh, well, unsurprisingly,
this escalated. Of course it did. At 13, he is
sent to a residential school. By 17, he's in
juvenile detention for theft. By 19, he's involved
in breaking and entering shoplifting. So it's
a clear progression. He starts with property
crime, but you can feel that violence is just
simmering underneath. It's there. And then we
get to 1971. This is the what -if moment that
really blew my mind. Because I hadn't fully realized
how close the system came to stopping him nearly
20 years before the backpacker murders. This
is the critical juncture. April 7th, 1971. Ivan
Milat is 26 years old. He picks up two 18 -year
-old female hitchhikers near Liverpool Railway
Station. And you have to remember, in 1971, hitchhiking
was common. It was just part of the culture.
It was, but this wasn't a friendly ride that
went wrong. This was calculated from the second
they got in the car. Immediately. Immediately.
He threatens them with a knife. He abducts them.
He drives them to a secluded spot and rapes one
of the women. But, and this is the miracle of
the story, they manage to escape. He stops at
a petrol station cafe and the women, showing
just incredible bravery, make a run for it, they
bolt. Yeah. And the system worked, at least initially.
He didn't just vanish into thin air. No, he was
arrested that same day. That same day. He was
charged with one count of rape and two counts
of armed robbery. The police had him. The victims
identified him. This should have been the end
of the Ivan Milat story. He should have been
locked away for a decade or more. But this is
where the story takes a turn that feels like
something out of a movie script. While he's awaiting
trial... He's out on bail. Right. And he decides
to pull a stunt that just shows you how manipulative
he was. He fakes his own suicide. It's incredibly
dramatic. He goes to a place called The Gap,
which is this notorious suicide spot on the ocean
cliffs in Sydney. Everyone in Sydney knows the
gap. Everyone does. And he leaves his shoes there,
neatly placed right at the edge. He wants the
authorities to believe he's jumped into the ocean
and been washed away. And meanwhile. Meanwhile,
he's already on his way to New Zealand. So he's
on the run. He lives in New Zealand for two years,
is that right? Roughly, yes. He was living under
the radar, working odd jobs. But eventually,
he comes back to Australia. The authorities suspect
he used a fake passport or came in through a
loose border check. And he's still a fugitive.
He is. He's living interstate to avoid detection.
But the law has a long memory. He eventually
gets rearrested in 1974. His mother had a heart
attack. He risked a visit to the hospital. And
the police were watching. They got him. They
got him. So finally, three years late, but he
is going to trial for the 1971 rape and abduction.
The victims are ready to testify. This is it.
It should have been. But Ivan Milat had a very
effective, very expensive lawyer named John Marsden.
And the defense strategy was ruthless. They just
attacked the victims. They attacked the credibility
of the victims. They poked holes in the timeline.
They created doubt. And somehow the case failed
at trial. He was acquitted. It makes your blood
boil to read it. He kidnaps two women at knife
point, rapes one, fakes his own death, flees
the country, gets caught, and then... Just walks
away a free man. And you have to think about
the psychological impact of that acquittal on
someone like Millett. He's a narcissist. He's
a psychopath. This didn't teach him to be good.
No. It taught him a very dangerous lesson. He
was smarter than them. He could rape and attack.
And even if he got caught, he could manipulate
the court and win. It emboldened him. Significantly.
It gave him a sense of invincibility. And it
gave him another 20 years of freedom. 20 years
to refine his methods. Which brings us to the
horrific events that made him infamous. The backpacker
murders. We're jumping forward now to the period
between 1989 and 1992. By this time, Millat is
working for the Roads and Traffic Authority,
or the RTA. He's driving a 4WD Nissan Patrol.
He's tough. He's fit. And he's hunting. Let's
talk about the modus operandi. Yeah. Because
it was terrifyingly simple, wasn't it? Deceptively
simple. He targeted international travelers,
people who were miles from home, often trying
to save money, who trusted the Australian tradition
of hitchhiking. And he would ply the Hume Highway,
the main artery connecting Sydney to Melbourne
in the south. Right. And he'd present himself
as this helpful local. Bill was the name he often
used. A rugged, friendly guy offering a lift
to southern New South Wales. And once he had
them in the car. Trapped in that metal box, moving
at 100 kilometers an hour. He was in total control.
And the destination was always the same. The
Langlois State Forest. The kill zone. He would
take them off the highway, drive down those fire
trails deep into the pines where the trees just
block out all sound. It was there that he would
incapacitate them and murder them. I want to
walk through. the discovery of the victims because
the way this unfolded for the public wasn't all
at once it was a slow motion nightmare that really
gripped the country it starts in september 1992.
right starts with two runners they were orienteering
in the forest you know navigating through the
bush with a map and compass yeah they stumble
upon something that just looks wrong a mount
of earth a shoe sticking out they realize it's
a concealed corpse and the police come in They
cordon off the area, and the next morning, just
30 meters away, they find a second body. And
these are the first two confirmed victims, Carolyn
Clark and Joanne Walters, British backpackers.
And when the details of their deaths eventually
came out, this is where we see that this wasn't
just murder. It was sadism. It was horrific.
Joanne Walters had been stabbed 15 times. But
the forensic analysis revealed something very
specific and chilling. Her spine had been severed.
Just shall I pause on that for a second? Severed?
Yes. The medical examiner found that the spinal
cord had been cut. This causes immediate paralysis.
It implies she was likely alive, conscious, but
completely unable to move or fight back while
the attack continued. You wanted her to watch.
That's the terrifying implication. God, that
is nightmarish. And Carolyn Clark. Her death
was different, but equally disturbing. She had
been shot ten times in the head. The police described
it as if she had been used for target practice.
So one is stabbed and paralyzed, the other is
executed with a rifle. It's like he was experimenting.
Or enjoying different methods. It shows he carried
a kit, knives, guns, ropes. He was prepared for
anything. And at the time, the police searched
the forest, found nothing else, and declared
it an isolated double murder. But they were wrong.
Very wrong. Because a year later, October 1993,
a local guy is out looking for firewood. And
he finds a skull and a large bone in a remote
section of the forest. And this was the discovery
of Deborah Everest and James Gibson, a young
couple from Victoria who had been missing since
1989. They were actually some of the earliest
victims, but they were found later. Okay, now
this is where a really strange puzzle piece comes
in. Regarding James Gibson's gear. Yes, this
baffled investigators. Gibson's camera had been
found way back in late 1989 and his backpack
in early 1990. But not in Belanglo. Not even
close. They were found at Galston Gorge, which
is in the northern suburbs of Sydney, over 120
kilometers away from the forest. So the bodies
are deep south of Sydney, but their stuff is
dumped north of Sydney. Exactly. It suggests
Millett was moving items around. Was it to confuse
police or was it just convenience? He kept the
bag in his truck, drove around to work for a
few days. weeks and then just dumped it when
he was sick of looking at it. It highlights his
mobility. He was all over the map. So now the
police have four bodies. The panic is setting
in. They launch a massive police sweep in November
of 93 and they find three more. Three more. Simone
Schmidl, a German tourist, stabbed. And again,
the spine was severed. That signature injury.
The same one. The same one. And then the German
couple, Gabor Neugebauer and Anja Hopschied.
And this discovery was perhaps the most gruesome.
It was. They were found in shallow graves. Gabor
had been shot six times in the head. But Anja,
Anja had been decapitated. And despite extensive
searching of the entire forest floor, her skull
was never found. It's just unthinkable brutality.
Looking at the patterns here, the couples, the
spinal injuries, what was the... Expert consensus
on his psychology. What does this tell us? It's
about two things. Overkill and control. The severing
of the spines appears in multiple cases. That
is a very specific, deliberate act. You don't
do that by accident. You don't accidentally sever
a spine. He wanted them helpless. He wanted total
dominance. And interestingly, the couples were
often attacked together but buried separately.
He separated them in death. It was his forest,
his rules. So by late 1993... The police know
they have a serial killer. They set up task force
air. And they are facing a needle in a haystack
problem. It was a massive operation. They had
a list of suspects that started at 230 people.
They had to narrow that down. And this is where
we need to talk about the technology of the time.
They used something called link analysis. Which
sounds fancy, but in 1993, this wasn't AI doing
the work. This was old school. No, this was grueling
manual labor. Imagine a Venn diagram. They took
a list of everyone who owned a 4WD. specifically
a Nissan Patrol, because witnesses had seen one
near the forest. That's a huge list. A huge list.
Then they took a list of everyone who had registered
a Ruger 10 -22 rifle or similar parts. Another
huge list. Then they looked at work records from
the RTA who was working near the forest. And
they just looked for the name that appeared on
all the lists. Exactly. They were manually cross
-referencing thousands of data points. And slowly,
the name Malat started to float to the surface.
He owned the car. He owned the guns. He worked
on the roads. But circumstantial evidence isn't
enough for a conviction. They needed a witness.
They needed a breakthrough. They did. And incredibly,
there was one walking around in the UK, a man
named Paul Onions. Paul Onions is the absolute
hero of this story. Without him, Malat might
have kept going for years. Tell us about Paul.
Paul was a UK backpacker. Back in January 1990,
so years before the bodies were even found, he
was hitchhiking south of Sydney. Okay, so take
us into that moment. It's 1990. Paul gets picked
up. He gets picked up by a guy who introduces
himself as Bill. Friendly enough. But as they
get closer to the Belanglo turnoff, Bill's demeanor
changes. He starts asking weird, invasive questions.
He slows the vehicle down. And this is where
the survival instinct kicks in. Bill pulls the
car over to the side of the road. He reaches
under the seat and pulls out a revolver and a
length of rope, and he tells Paul to put his
seatbelt on. I can't even imagine the terror.
You're in a foreign country in the middle of
nowhere. And a gun is pointed at you. But Paul
Onions made a split second calculation. He realized
if he stayed in that car, he was dead. So he
unbuckled his seatbelt. Threw the door open and
he bailed out. He just scrambled out of the car
and started running. And he didn't run into the
woods. He ran onto the highway. Right into traffic.
Midlife gets out and starts shooting at him.
Bullets were whizzing past him. And Paul is waving
his arms, trying to flag down cars that are doing
110 kilometers an hour. Most people just swerved
and drove past. One person stalked. One person
stalked, a woman named Joanne Berry. She was
driving a van with her sister and her children.
She saw Paul, saw the absolute terror in his
face, and she braked. Paul dived into the van,
shouted, he's got a gun, and she floored it.
And they went straight to the police, right?
They did. But here's the tragedy of bureaucracy.
In 1990, the police treated it as an isolated
attempted robbery. They filed a report and it
sat in a drawer in the barrel police station
gathering dust. It's agonizing to think about.
If they'd connected the dots then, the later
victims might still be alive. It is. But in 1993,
when the news of the Belanglo bodies broke internationally,
Paul Onions saw it on TV in the UK. And he remembered.
He recognized the location. He called the task
force hotline. He said, I think I met this guy.
That call must have been electric for the task
force. It was the missing link. It corroborated
with Joanne Berry's statement, which they dug
up. Paul Onions agreed to fly back to Australia
in 1994. He walked into a police station, looked
at a photo lineup, and pointed straight at number
four. That's the man. And that gave them probable
cause. May 22, 1994. The arrest. They didn't
take any chances. They authorized a massive raid.
Fifty heavily armed police officers surrounded
Millat's home in Eagle Vale at dawn. They breached
the door. And what they found inside wasn't just
evidence. It was an Aladdin's cave of horror.
The trove. This is what nailed him. They found
the weapons, or Anschitz rifle, and parts of
the Ruger 10 -22 hidden in a wall cavity. Ballistics
eventually matched these perfectly to the bullets
found in the victims. But even more damning were
the souvenirs. The camping gear. The clothes.
Yeah. They found sleeping bags, tents, water
bottles, and clothing that belonged to the victims.
And he wasn't just hiding them in a box. He was
using them. There are photos of the Millat family
using the victims' camping equipment. He had
given shirts belonging to the murdered backpackers
to his unsuspecting girlfriends. That is just
deeply, deeply psychological. Why do that? Why
keep the evidence that can hang you? It's trophy
keeping. For a serial killer, the act of murder
is a high, but it's fleeting. Keeping a trophy,
wearing the victim's shirt, using their tent.
It allows them to relive the kill. It extends
the fantasy. Exactly. It's also an act of total
ownership. I took your life and now I own your
things. It's the ultimate narcissism. So he's
caught red -handed. We move to section four,
the trial. Malat pleads not guilty. And this
was not a quick trial. No, it was a spectacle.
Malat was incredibly arrogant. His defense was
audacious. It wasn't me. It was my family. He
tried to frame his own brothers, specifically
Richard and Walter Millott. Can you imagine sitting
in court and watching your brother point the
finger at you for serial murder? It tore the
family apart, although the family was already
a mess of secrets. But the prosecution, led by
Mark Tedesi, was brilliant. Tedeschi didn't just
present the facts. He engaged Malat in the witness
box. And Malat got cocky. He got so cocky he
started tripping himself up. He knew too much
about the weapons. He knew too much about the
geography of the forest. And the jury saw right
through it. They did. In July 1996, the verdict
came down. Guilty on all counts. Seven murders
and the imprisonment and robbery of Paul Onions.
And the sentence. Seven life sentences without
parole. And even then, as he was being led away,
he remained defiant. He never showed a shred
of remorse. Never. He maintained his innocence
until the day he died. He viewed the trial as
a game he had temporarily lost, not a judgment
of his morality. But here is where the story
gets really dark. If that's even possible. It
is. We've covered the seven victims. But the
deep dive mission today is to look at what we
don't know. Because Ivan Milat wasn't just a
killer in a forest. He was a truck driver. This
is the truck driver factor, and it is the thing
that keeps cold case detectives awake at night.
Millat started working as a truck driver in the
mid -70s. He worked for the RTA for 20 years.
And for our international listeners, or even
locals who haven't done the drive, we need to
paint a picture of Australian trucking. We aren't
talking about a drive from London to Manchester.
No, we are talking about vast, vast distances.
The Nullarbor Plain, for example, is a stretch
of road that goes for over a thousand kilometers
without a single tree. Nothing. It's just red
dirt, scrub, and heat haze. You can drive for
six hours and not see another car. And Millot
was driving these routes. Sydney to Perth, Brisbane
to Melbourne. He was... everywhere. He had total
mobility, and he had a vehicle that was a mobile
room. If he picked up a hitchhiker on the air
highway in Western Australia, he could kill them
and bury them in a shallow grave 500 kilometers
from the nearest town. The body would never be
found. Never. So let's look at the specific cold
cases that experts believe are linked to him,
because the patterns are just too close to be
a coincidence. Let's start with Karen Rowland.
Karen Rowland, 1971. The same year as his first
known attack. She was 20 years old. She was pregnant.
She disappeared near Canberra. Her car was found
abandoned, but she was gone. Months later, her
remains were found in a pine plantation. A pine
plantation, just like Belanglo. Exactly. And
we know from his work records, Millat was working
in that specific area at that exact time. There
are even witness statements from old co -workers
who claim Millat boasted about murdering someone
and burying the body in the bush. And they just
thought he was talking tough. At the time, yeah.
Then there's Peter Letcher in 1987. This one
is chilling. Peter was a hitchhiker found in
the Genolan Caves area. Millat knew that area
well. It's documented he took his girlfriends
there on trips. Peter was found shot five times
in the head and stabbed in the back. That sounds
exactly like the backpacker murders, the overkill,
the combination of methods. It's almost a rehearsal,
shooting and stabbing. And stabbing in the back
suggests an ambush or a desire to incapacitate.
It's got his fingerprints all over it, metaphorically
speaking. Look, the one that really convinced
me, the one that feels like a smoking gun, is
Diane Pinocchio. In 1991. Diane Pinocchio is
the strongest link. She was a hitchhiker. She
disappeared. When her body was found, the pathology
report showed a knife wound to the spine. It
had severed her spinal cord. The signature. The
signature. You have to understand, severing a
spinal cord with a knife isn't easy. It requires
significant force and a specific angle. It's
not a common injury you see in frenzied attacks.
To find that exact specific injury on a victim
in 1991, right in the middle of the blanglo...
timeline is practically a fingerprint. And yet
he was never charged with any of these. No DNA,
no physical evidence linking him directly. But
circumstantially, it's overwhelming. And then
you have the cluster up in the Hunter region.
Leanne Goodall, Robin Hickey, Amanda Robinson.
Three young girls who vanished in the late 70s.
And guess where Milat was working? On a road
crew. On a road crew in that exact area. In fact,
during a coroner's inquest years later, Milat
actually admitted he used to pick up hitchhikers
in Newcastle all the time. He puts himself there.
The task force eventually looked at a list of
potential victims. How big was that list? They
started with 58. 58 missing persons were unsolved
murders that fit the timeline and the geography.
They couldn't prove them all, obviously. But
the consensus among the detectives who worked
the case is that the seven in Belanglo were just
the ones he got lazy with. They were his garden.
The ones he kept close to home. Exactly. The
others. The others are out there in the vastness
of the Australian bush. It's a haunting thought.
A serial killer with a truck is the ultimate
predator. He was a shark in an ocean of highway.
Eventually, though. The shark was caged. He spent
the rest of his life in prison. But he didn't
exactly go quietly, did he? He made sure we kept
talking about him. Prison became his stage. He
was a narcissist, and he was bored. He tried
to escape in 1997 from Maitland Jail with a drug
trafficker named George Savas. They planned to
scale the walls. And it was busted. But the plan
was busted. Savas realized it was over and hanged
himself in his cell the next day. Mellup just
shrugged it off and got moved to Supermax. And
then came the self -harm. But it wasn't. It wasn't
out of depression, was it? It felt like performance
art. It was manipulation, pure and simple. In
2001, he swallowed razor blades and staples.
He wanted to get transferred to a hospital. He
wanted a change of scenery. But the most bizarre
incident was the plastic knife. The plastic knife.
2009, he took a serrated plastic knife, the kind
you get with a cafeteria meal, and he sawed off
his own pinky finger. I can't even process the
pain tolerance required for that. It's unbelievable.
And the reason why he did it, he put the finger
in an envelope and addressed it to the High Court
of Australia. What for? He was trying to force
an appeal. He thought, if I send them a piece
of me, they have to listen. It's just madness.
It's a desperation for control. He couldn't control
his victims anymore, so he turned that violence
onto his own body to try and control the legal
system. It didn't work, of course. And then the
ultimate act of pettiness. Right. The hunger
strike for the PlayStation. That sums him up
perfectly. In 2011, he went on a hunger strike.
He lost 25 kilograms. He was emaciated. And his
demand wasn't for better rights or a review of
his case. He wanted a PlayStation 3 in his cell.
You're kidding. He starved himself for a game
console. He was deadly serious. It just shows
you the level of childish narcissism we're dealing
with. It wasn't about justice. It was about,
I want this toy and I will make the authorities
panic until they give it to me. Unbelievable.
So he spends decades rotting in Supermax. But
outside, the Malat legacy continued to poison
things. It did. The name Malat became a curse.
And in 2010, history repeated itself in the most
tragic, horrifying way. We're talking about Matthew
Malott. Ivan's great nephew. Matthew was 19.
He had grown up with this dark family legend
of Uncle Ivan. He took a friend, a 17 -year -old
named David Octorlani, into Belanglo State Forest.
The exact same forest. And he killed him. He
killed him with an axe. And he had another friend
record it on a mobile phone. On the audio, you
can hear Matthew bragging. He says, this is what
my family does. That is just, it breaks your
heart. It forces you to ask that impossible question.
Is it nature? Is there a murder gene? Or was
it the nurture, the mythos of Ivan corrupting
a young mind? Most psychologists would say it's
the latter. Growing up in the shadow of that
infamy, hearing the war stories, for a disturbed
young man, Ivan wasn't a monster to be feared.
He was an idol to be emulated. Finally, we reached
the end of the man himself. Ivan Milip died in
October 2019. He was diagnosed with terminal
esophageal and stomach cancer. It was a slow,
painful, wasting away in the prison hospital.
The police tried one last time, didn't they,
to get a confession? They did. Detectives visited
him eight times on his deathbed. They pleaded
with him. Just tell us where the others are.
Give the families closure. And did he give them
anything? Not a word. He just looked at them
and stayed silent. He took his secrets to the
grave. It was his final act of control. He knew
that by staying silent, he was inflicting pain
on those families one last time. And his final
act of spite regarding the funeral. He requested
that the taxpayer pay for his funeral. The audacity.
Thankfully, the government refused. The costs
were taken from his small prison account. He
was cremated. No funeral. No memorial. Just gone.
So what does this all mean? We've unpacked the
childhood, the crimes, the investigation, the
near misses, and the cold cases. When you look
back at the devastation, what is the legacy?
The legacy is a loss of innocence. Before Millat,
hitchhiking in Australia was a rite of passage.
It was how you saw the country. It was. Millat
ended that. He turned the open road into a place
of suspicion. He taught an entire generation
that the friendly stranger might be a monster.
And that's the thought I want to leave you with
today. I want you to think about Ivan Millat's
work history again. 20 years. Driving trucks
across the entire continent. The emptiness of
the outback. The long, lonely stretches of the
Pacific Highway where the phone signal just drops
out. The thousands of hours of opportunities.
If the bodies in Belanglo were only found because
he got arrogant and clustered them in his own
backyard, how many lone victims are still out
there? How many people accepted a ride from a
friendly truckie named Bill and are still waiting
to be found in the red dirt? That is the question
that keeps the file open, and it's the reason
why, even though he's dead, the story isn't over.
Thanks for listening to this deep dive. And seriously,
stay safe out there.