Ivan Milat

+Backpacker Murderer+

Born: December 27, 1944
Guildford, New South Wales
Number of victims: seven confirmed
Span of killings: 1989 through 1994
Country: Australia

Australian serial killer, convicted of the murder of seven local and international hitchhikers during the 1980s and 1990s.

+Sept. of 1992, while running in the Belanglo State Forest, a pair of trail runners discovered the decomposing corpses of Caroline Clark and Joanne Walters buried under sticks and leaves. It was only the beginning of what would eventually result in the capture of Australia's most famed serial killer. Searchers would then discover five more bodies stowed away in the woods of the park, ending the mystery of the disappearances of foot travelers in the area.The bodies discovered by the runners were identified as Clark and Walters, both of whom were British and traveling together on foot. They had last been seen over five months before.

+Oct. 1993, the remains of hitchhikers James Gibson and Deborah Everlist, both 19, were found in the same vicinity. They had disappeared in 1989 while hitchhiking.

+Almost a month later, Nov.1, 20-yr-old Simone Schmidl's body, also a hitchhiker, was discovered under the now-familiar pile of brush. When a pair of jeans found near Schmidl's body were found to be the property of yet another missing person, the searching continued. Predictably, the jeans' owner,Anja Habschied, a German national and her boyfriend Gabor Neugebauer were found nearby dead. The young couple had been missing since December of 1991.

+On Nov. 4, more than 300 police officers conducted a search of the area and found two more skeletons, identified as the remains of 21-year-old Gabor Kurt Neugebauer and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Anja Susanne Habschied, also German tourists who have recently vanished. Neugebauer had been shot repeatedly. Habschied had been decapitated.

+A possible eighth victim was added to the list in November. An examination of unsolved murders turned up the name of Diane Pennacchio, a 29-year-old mother whose body had been found in bushland in 1991. She had been stabbed to death and the body had been placed face down with hands placed behind her back near a fallen tree, as had those of the previous victims. A triangular canopy of sticks had been built over the bodies and covered with ferns.

+February 1994, there was a breakthrough in the investigation. A 20-year-old woman told police that while hitchiking in January 1990 in New South Wales she was offered a lift, which she had accepted. While in the vehicle the driver had behaved strangely, and she got out of the vehicle and ran into the Belangalo State Forest. As she ran, the driver allegedly fired shots at her, but missed.

+Then another information from a second witness, British tourist Paul Onions, who told police that on Jan 25,1990 he accepted a lift from a driver in the same area. The driver told him that he needed to stop the vehicle to get music cassette tapes out the rear of the car. When the driver produced a gun from the glove compartment, Paul Onions ran away, and the driver fired shots at him. A passing driver rescued Paul Onions from the scene. Onions was able to identify the driver from police photographs and identify the vehicle.

+May 1994 police carried out dawn raids on seven properties, taking three men into custody. One of these men was 49-year-old Ivan Milat, who was charged with armed robbery and discharging a firearm, who was then later to be charged with the murders. During the raids police found parts of a .22 calibre rifle that matched the type used in the backpacker murders, along with personal items from several of the victims.

+On May 30, following continued police investigations, Milat was charged with the murders of seven backpackers.

+Milat has stated plans to escape at every opporunity but thus far has not made good on the threat. He has, however, attempted to kill himself at least twice after swallowing such materials as razor blades and staples.

+In March 1996 the trial finally opened and, in July, he received seven life sentences, one for each of his victims.

+There were obvious similarities between the way all the victims had disappeared and been disposed of, also their causes of death were a bit dissimilar.Clark had been stabbed in the chest area, Clark had been stabbed and shot in the head several times, Gibson had been repeatedly stabbed, Everist had been slashed in the face in additon to her stab wounds, Schmidl had also been stabbed, Habschied was decapitated, and Neugebauer had been shot in the head five times with the same weapon that killed Walters. The stabbing victims all had a unique injury, though, a stab wound to the upper back that severed the victim's spinal cord and rendered them helpless. Also, many of the victims were partially undressed with their pants buttoned but not zipped. Evidence of crude bondage and strangulation was present in most of the cases.