He may have died in jail in 2019, but the crimes of notorious serial killer Ivan Milat continue to be revealed.
While he was only ever convicted for the murders of seven people, there are new fears he could be responsible for “hundreds” more.
A NSW MP has now called for an inquiry into the killer’s sordid past.
Jeremy Buckingham, who serves in the NSW Upper House with the Legalise Cannabis Party, said a parliamentary inquiry could bring justice to the families of dozens of victims.
“I think Ivan Milat was probably one of the worst serial killers in human history,” Jeremy told 10News+. “I think he has killed scores of people, if not hundreds of people.
“There’s a huge cluster of unsolved disappearances in South East Queensland in the 1970s. They called it the ‘Hitchhiker Murderer’, who was never caught.”
For Jeremy, the proximity of Milat’s work for the Department of Major Roads and the Sydney Water Board in that area seems a little too close to be coincidental.
“We know he worked in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong,” Jeremy said.
“Travelled occasionally to Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth. Wherever he was, there were similar disappearances.”
In 1996, Milat was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Joanne Walters, 22, and Caroline Clare, 21, Deborah Everist and James Gibson, both 19, Simone Schmidl, 21, Anja Habschied, 20, and Gabor Neugebauer, 21.
He buried their bodies in the Belanglo State Forest, south of Sydney.
The families of two teenage girls who disappeared from Newcastle, NSW, in April 1979, in similar circumstances, also believe that Milat killed them.
Robyn Hickie, 18, was last seen standing at a bus stop. Two weeks later, Amanda Robinson, 14, went missing after stepping off a bus. Their bodies have never been found.
Milat had been building roads in the region around the same time the girls went missing.
While investigators believed Milat was responsible, he denied any involvement in their disappearances during a 2002 coronial inquest.
Jeremy believes the inquiry could also potentially uncover a conspiracy involving corrupt police and organised crime who helped cover up the full extent of Milat’s crimes.
He’s confident he will be able to secure support for it to go ahead.
“I think it is very hard to argue the case that this is not in the public interest,” he says.
“That we don’t want to look into what happened to all these beautiful young people that had their lives and their futures stripped away from them.
“He was a stone-cold psychopath, and he was let loose on the people of NSW for a generation.”
Last week, NSW Premier Chris Minns said he’d be privileged to meet with the families of the unsolved murders. He also didn’t rule out the possibility of an inquiry.
