Is notorious serial killer Ivan Milat behind dozens of other unsolved murders?
It’s not in dispute Ivan Milat was an evil, violent criminal.
One of Australia’s worst serial killers.
Responsible for the brutal killings of seven backpackers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ivan Milat is one of Australia’s worst serial killers. Nine
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he murdered seven young backpackers in the Belanglo State Forest, south of Sydney.
What’s long been suspected though, but not proven, is that Milat’s killing spree actually began years earlier, and that he’s responsible for many, currently unsolved homicides.
Milat died in 2019 but a NSW parliamentary inquiry has now been set up to try to establish the true extent of his depravity.
Its aim is to uncover information which might not only assist police, but also the families of possible Milat victims.
20-year-old Keren Rowland was five months pregnant when her body was found dumped in a shallow grave in Fair Bairn Forest near Canberra airport. Nine
Remarkably, it has already made some stunning progress.
For Steve Rowland and his cousin, Hugh Hughes, visiting a forest on the outskirts of the ACT is haunting and heartbreaking.
Fifty-five years ago, Steve’s sister was found dumped in a shallow grave, almost three months after vanishing from the side of a road in Canberra.
Twenty-year-old Keren Rowland had been five months pregnant.
Whoever murdered her has not been found.
Ivan Milat’s arrest following the infamous backpackers murders alerted some people to encounters with the notorious serial killer. Nine
“It’s cruel. They must be so mentally crook, I suppose,” Steve said.
“Unbelievable. I mean, what sort of person does that? We know one sort of person that’s sort of made a bit of a career out of that.”
For more than five decades, Steve and his family have searched for clues about Keren’s death.
Now they believe they’re close to an answer.
She was likely Milat’s first murder victim.
Hughes is a retired British detective.
Keren Rowland’s family have been fighting to know whether her death is linked to Ivan Milat. Nine
He says similarities between Keren’s death and Milat’s murderous rampage in the Belanglo State Forest almost 20 years later are striking.
“The positioning of the body, the fact that shrubbery and old twigs were laid over to conceal, similar to the seven that we know of in Belanglo, and also suggestions that the body had been interfered with. Another hallmark of Milat’s,” he said.
“Plus the fact that there was a beer bottle found right next to her. ”
Of course parallels between the cases, no matter how compelling, don’t constitute proof, but what’s given the family fresh hope is the recently launched NSW parliamentary inquiry.
Already the state’s homicide commander, Joe Doueihi, has revealed that police too have long suspected that Milat killed Keren.
It’s an extraordinary admission for the Rowland family to hear.
“Stunned, it’s taken eight years for a serving police officer to say the words that Ivan Milat is highly likely to be the man who was responsible for Keren Rowland’s murder,” Hughes said.
NSW politician Jeremy Buckingham has made it his mission to prove whether a handful of historical unsolved homicides and missing persons cases have links to Ivan Milat. Nine
Milat is notorious for his brutal crimes in the Belanglo State Forest.
But the mission of the parliamentary inquiry is to scrutinise the possibility that Milat’s killing spree started decades before anyone realised.
It’s a contention that raises uncomfortable questions.
Could one of Australia’s worst serial killers have been stopped years before the backpacker murders? And if so, why wasn’t he?
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