Three police officers central to the hunt for serial killer Ivan Milat believe there could be up to 80 more victims murdered and dumped in the Australian bushland.
The Backpacker Murderer spent the end of his life behind bars, convicted of the abduction, assault and robbery of two men and five women in NSW between 1989 and 1992.
Milat maintained his innocence until his death in 2019.
Former NSW detectives Neville Scullion and Paul Gordon and a former undercover officer known as ‘Roy’ have aired their beliefs that Milat’s killing extended past the murders for which he was tried.
The detectives suggested they suspect Milat’s spree could date back to the 1970s.
Detective Scullion, who led the Milat investigation early in the 1990s, said there are about 900 people who have been missing long-term just in NSW.
Some of those missing people were also last seen in locations Milat was known to frequent.
Detective Scullion told The Missing Australia: Ivan Milat Untold podcast host Meni Caroutas there were about 700 unsolved murders, several of which ‘you could look at and think, yeah, Milat’s been involved here’.
Former detectives and an undercover cop believe Ivan Milat could have killed 80 people
Detective Paul Gordon (right) told the Missing podcast host Meni Caroutas (left) he believes Milat was active for 20 years, in the final interview before his own passing
‘There’s anything up to 80 people that he killed,’ he said.
‘The first body is found in 1992, he’s arrested in 1994, but he didn’t just start killing in ’92 … he was rampant over a 20-year period.’
Detective Gordon brought key survivor Paul Onions into the Milat investigation, allowing detectives to identify their man.
Mr Onions tussled with Milat in 1990 before making a formal police statement in Bowral. The statement sat filed away for years before it was looked into.
In his final interview, Detective Gordon separately asserted Milat had killed dozens more people than he was ever held accountable for.
‘Do the math, two or three a year for 20 years,’ Det Gordon said.
He believes it would amount to an additional 60 victims.
Undercover cop, Roy, was responsible for bugging Milat’s caravan before his arrest.
He found an extensive arms cache including guns, crossbows and knives inside the van.
That van helped lead Roy to believe Milat was a likely suspect for several other unexplained disappearances at least from the 1970s until his arrest in 1994.
Milat served time convicted of the abduction, assault, robbery of two men and five women in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992
Milat maintained his innocence until he died of cancer in Long Bay Prison, Sydney
‘He had a camping truck and he used to go camping in different parts of Australia. I’d definitely put him up high,’ Roy told the podcast.
Milat once let slip to a criminologist he had been writing to that one of his victims was raped before she was murdered, despite it not forming a part of the Crown’s case against him.
He let the information slip to author Amanda Howard shortly before his death, before she told the podcast.
Whether Milat acted alone has also been the subject of much speculation.
In Milat’s sentencing, Justice David Hunt said two people had clearly been involved in two of the murders.
Milat was an active shooter and hunter as a young man, and spent stints in prison for burglaries and break and enters in the 1960s.
In the 1970s he was tried and acquitted of the rape of an 18-year-old girl hitchhiking to Melbourne with a friend.
Friends said Milat often bragged about his taste for violence.
The crimes for which Milat served his jail sentence included the murder of Victorian 19-year-olds Deborah Everist and James Gibson, whose bodies were found in the Belanglo State Forest in 1993.
They had gone missing while hitchhiking to a music festival in 1989.
The body of German woman Simone Schmidl, 21, was also found at a fire trail in the Belanglo State Forest in 1993 after she left Sydney for Melbourne in 1991.
Germans Anja Habschied, 20, and Gabor Neugebauer, 21, were found dead 50m from each other in the State Forest in 1993 after they left Sydney for Adelaide in 1991.
British backpackers Joanne Walters, 22, and Caroline Clarke, 21, had also left Sydney to hitchhike south in April 1992.
Their bodies were found in September of that same year in the State Forest.
