Tip-offs lead NSW inquiry to Milat properties allegedly overlooked in 1994 searches

Exclusive: The head of a NSW parliamentary inquiry is urging the state’s police commissioner to search three Ivan Milat-linked properties allegedly missed during the original 1994 investigation.

NSW Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham, who is chairing the inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons, claims homes in Sydney’s south-west and southern suburbs were not included in the major police operation that led to Milat’s serial murder conviction.

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Buckingham told nine.com.au he believes police need to secure and search two properties on Rickards Road in Leppington and an apartment in Sans Souci. 

He said the residences have been owned by the Milat family over the decades.

“[The Leppington properties have] been owned by the Milat clan and it looks like it has been transferred in and out of different names multiple times over the decades,” Buckingham said. 

“It’s been essentially in the Milat family for 60 years and it appears that at various times various family members - Ivan’s side of the family - have lived there.

“So we’re just getting to the bottom of it… but collectively it looks like it’s a compound [or] farm that has been owned by the Milats for a long time.”

The tip-offs

Buckingham said he received tip-offs about the three properties through the parliamentary inquiry.

The first piece of information, regarding the Leppington properties, came from an Aboriginal cultural official who was conducting a heritage assessment in the early 2020s.

Buckingham said the official was inspecting the land for Aboriginal artefacts following its sale to ALAND, one of Australia’s biggest property developers.

“He contacted us and claimed, ‘I was looking at a property on Rickards Road in Leppington and I found an oven there that had weird bones in it. It had human bones at the back of the property,’” Buckingham said.

According to Buckingham, the official told him, “He was so concerned that he contacted Crime Stoppers. Now, I don’t know if this is true, but he said subsequently he found out the property was owned by the Milats.”

Buckingham said the official told him he has never heard back from NSW police.

Nine.com.au has contacted NSW Police for comment on this claim.

The second tip-off came after Buckingham appeared on an episode of Nine’s 60 Minutes program in July, where he discussed Milat.

According to Buckingham, the information provided mentioned the Milat family, Leppington and a shooting range at the back of a property on “Richards” Road - a misspelt reference to Rickards Road.

“I had a look and realised it was a series of houses and next door to one of the houses looked like it has an old, redundant infrastructure for a piggery at the back of this property as well,” Buckingham said.

“So [my office] did a title search and it came up with the name Milat. It came out that it had been transferred into a Brian Milat’s name. So we went out and had a look.”

The $32 million deal

Property searches conducted by nine.com.au confirm a Brian Milat owned the two sprawling Leppington properties until 2021. Nine.com.au is not suggesting Brian or any of the other Milat family members, aside from Ivan, were involved in any wrongdoing; simply that their properties should be the subject of thorough searches, in case they contain evidence of further murders carried out by Ivan.

The two parcels - one with a three-bedroom house on it and the other a four-bedroom residence - were sold in 2021 to ALAND for a combined $32 million.

The site is now part of a proposed commercial, retail and hospitality precinct, estimated to cost $796.4 million, according to planning documents.

Plans for the precinct include eight high-density residential towers with up to 2,100 apartments, a four-storey shopping centre with a cinema, a six-storey 176-room hotel and parking for more than 1300 vehicles.

Planning approvals have progressed, however the project remains in a pre-construction phase. As Buckingham discovered, members of the Milats are now leasing back the properties from the developers.

Buckingham said that during a recent visit to the location, he met a tenant.

“He said, ‘I don’t know who owns the place, we’re renting it out’ and I said to him ‘Was it ever owned by the Milats?’ and then he told me to get off the property and get away. He didn’t want to talk to me,” Buckingham said.

When Buckingham left, he walked to the neighbouring house.

“I knocked on that house and he answered again,” Buckingham said.

The tenant was also renting the second property. During their second conversation, Buckingham said the tenant recalled the previous owner as Brian Milat.

Buckingham said he then walked across the street and spoke with a neighbour who had lived in the area for five years.

“I said, ‘Do you know the people over the road?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, Brian and Jason, they’re related.’”

When Buckingham asked if the owners were Milats from “that family”, the neighbour confirmed they were.

The ‘overlooked’ searches

After Buckingham considered he had established a link between the Milat family and the Leppington properties, he questioned whether the sites were searched around the time of Ivan Milat’s arrest in 1994.

He firmly believes that despite being in the Milat family since the late 1960s, the properties were not included in the major Task Force Air operation.

Task Force Air was the specialised NSW Police unit formed to investigate the Belanglo State Forest backpacker murders.

On May 22, 1994, simultaneous dawn search warrants were executed across seven properties involving more than 300 police officers.

The locations searched included Milat’s home in Eagle Vale, his mother Margaret’s house in Guildford and properties linked to a number of his brothers.

“At some of those properties, evidence was found that incriminated Ivan - backpacks, guns, ammunition, currency, all kinds of things,” Buckingham said.

“The question is, why didn’t the police go and search this other Milat property that is literally a five-minute drive from where Ivan lived?”

Were all properties searched?

Buckingham said he has scoured the official records of Milat’s arrest and cannot find any reference to the Leppington properties being searched.

“I’ve looked at every single thing that happened on that day, on 22 May, 1994, and where they’ve [NSW police] said they have searched,” he said.

“The key thing is, here’s a property owned continuously by the Milat clan in the heart of the south-west of Sydney in Leppington, a property where the Milats have lived on and off and frequented and done who knows what and it’s not searched. Remarkable.”

Buckingham said further information provided to the inquiry alleges the family also owned an apartment in Sans Souci.

He does not believe that property was ever searched by police either.

“I’m going to write to the commissioner and say that the [Leppington] properties should be secured and searched,” he said.

“How is it that this wasn’t done at the time? We have people approach us now telling us they’ve seen unusual things there. I’ll certainly be calling on them [NSW Police] to secure and search it.”

He also wants the Sans Souci property searched.

Key evidence in the original investigation was uncovered at properties linked to Milat’s relatives rather than in his own name.

“The backpacks, the guns and ammunition and other material evidence that was found at his brother’s houses, were properties that weren’t in his [Milat’s] name,” Buckingham said.

“I think it’s in the public’s interest that they [police] have a look at it.”

Nine.com.au reached out to NSW Police for comment on Buckingham’s claims and was told they would not be commenting “on anything related to the Parliamentary inquiry while it’s ongoing”.

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Ivan Milat’s chilling final police interview

Milat was arrested in 1994 and sentenced in 1996 to seven consecutive life sentences for murdering seven backpackers whose bodies were found in makeshift graves in NSW’s Belanglo State Forest.

However, police taskforce files and cold-case investigators have long suspected Milat was linked to scores of other unsolved disappearances stretching well before the 1990s. 

The former road worker died from terminal oesophagus and stomach cancer at Long Bay Hospital in 2019, aged 74. He remains Australia’s most notorious serial killer.

The NSW parliamentary inquiry into historical cold cases continues to hear evidence and is set to report its final findings to parliament in February 2027.