Australia's most infamous serial killer, Ivan Milat, claims he has been framed for the murder of seven backpackers, in a handwritten letter from his death bed in Long Bay jail hospital.
As he prepares to undergo his third round of chemotherapy for oesophageal cancer this week, Milat continues to protest his innocence, denying his victims' families any closure.
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Australia's most infamous serial killer, Ivan Milat.
In a three-page letter to Australia's The Sun-Herald newspaper, the 74-year-old talks of his failing health and makes an extended attack on the legal system and the judiciary.
"My life since arrest, and then conviction, has been devoted wholly to prove my innocence…[and] the court judiciary who conspired to obscure the miscarriages of justice," he writes.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
A letter from serial killer Ivan Milat, claiming he was 'framed'.
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The cancer diagnosis, he says, gives him a "less than 50 per cent chance of survival".
Milat heads his handwritten letter with an attack on former New South Wales detective Clive Small, the lead investigator into the backpacker murders for which Milat was convicted in 1996.
In a statement at the top of the first page he declares: "framed by Small and co., a malicious court trial, the appeal judiciary protect the verdict [sic]."
Small, now retired, responded saying: "Framed? You only have to look at the trial records and papers and his claim becomes a joke."
Milat was transferred from Goulburn Supermax jail in May to a high-security ward at the Prince of Wales Hospital, after he was diagnosed with advanced cancer of the oesophagus.
He was then moved in a three-vehicle convoy to the hospital at Long Bay Correctional Centre.
NICK MOIRNICK MOIR/THE SUN-HERALD
Ivan Milat being led away on April 11, 1996.
The Sun-Herald has confirmed Milat recently began chemotherapy to treat the cancer and is scheduled to undergo a third round this week, with family members saying that he is responding well and has "even put on more weight...eating normal food."
Milat's letter is dated July 11 and would have been vetted through Corrective Services channels before it was delivered last week.
Milat says that his health is in God's hands.
"I am sure that you are aware of how cancer is, it's a grim finding and less than fifty per cent survive it and, I feel that the unpredictability of the effect of the treatment would overtake any commentary by me of it. It is in the hands of my carers (doctors etc) and of course, Our Lord in Heaven."
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Milat says his cancer diagnosis give him gives him a 'less than 50 per cent chance of survival'.
Between 1989 and 1992 seven backpackers disappeared as they travelled out of Sydney, hitch-hiking south down the Hume Highway.
Their bodies were eventually discovered in various locations near fire trails in the Belanglo State Forest, covered in sticks and leaf litter.
Several were shot in the head, while one was decapitated. Some body parts have never been found.
Just over four years later, Milat was found guilty of all seven murders, as well as the abduction of another English backpacker, receiving more than seven life sentences for the crimes.
Milat claims that then-New South Wales Supreme Court trial judge David Hunt became an advocate for the prosecution case and expanded greatly non-existent evidence in relation to the murders. In his letter he attacks the manner in which the judge directed the jury.
But upon sentencing Milat in 1996, Hunt said: "The case against the prisoner at the conclusion of the evidence and the addresses was, in my view, an overwhelming one."
He went on: "Although his legal representatives displayed a tactical ability of a high order, and conducted his defence in a skilful and responsible manner, in my view the jury's verdicts were, in the end, inevitable, I agree entirely with those verdicts. Any other, in my view, would have flown in the face of reality."
Legal experts and those most familiar with the case say, no matter the killer's ongoing protestations, there can be no doubt that Milat was granted a fair trial.
"It is a load of rubbish and if you simply have a look at the trial itself and the number of exhibits presented, you would see how much nonsense there is in his claim," said Small.
"The evidence against Ivan was overwhelming ... many of those exhibits [personal belongings of the victims] came from the homes of other members of the Milat family, to whom he had given the items."
LES SMITH/THE SUN-HERALD
Rescue workers remove the body of a female British backpacker after it was discovered in the Belanglo State Forest on September 20, 1992.
Small said Milat had never been able to offer an explanation for why some of the victims' belongings were found in his garage.
"Or how the firearm that killed [the backpackers] came to be at his house, or why the rope used to tie up the backpackers was found in his garage."
In his letter, Milat goes on to write that the court system had placed obstacles in his way as he sought an inquiry into his conviction. "I strive to overcome their bastardry, I have on occasions seriously jeopardised my life to overcome their utter unreasonableness," he says.
He lodged his first appeal against his conviction on August 5, 1996, less than 10 days after he was sentenced.
The resulting judgment from the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in 1998 was the first of many walls Milat would hit in an attempt to prove his innocence.
NINEVMS
Ivan Milat is having his cancer treated in prison.
The appeal attempted to take to task the evidence of Paul Onions, the solo English backpacker who escaped after being lured and abducted by Milat while hitch-hiking.
It argued media publicity had hindered his right to a fair trial and that Hunt failed to put the case to the jury fairly, a claim Milat continues to make in his most recent letter.
Dismissing all six grounds of appeal, the court ruled it was satisfied Milat "had a fair trial" and that his complaints "produced no miscarriage of justice".
It described the evidence linking victims' belongings to Milat as "so comprehensive, and so overwhelming in its force", that Milat's own defence counsel made a key concession during the original trial, when he said: "There can be absolutely no doubt that whoever committed all eight offences must be within the Milat family or very, very closely associated with it."
THE SUN-HERALD
Beast of Belanglo: How The Sun-Herald newspaper covered the story in July 1996
But the 1998 appeal judgment would only be the start of a persistent campaign by the convicted murderer to challenge his conviction, twice taking his case unsuccessfully to the High Court.
Between 2005 and 2017 he failed in making seven applications to the NSW Supreme Court for an inquiry into his convictions, with Justice Megan Latham refusing the seventh, stating Milat was "unable to understand, or willing to accept, the Court's determination."
As Milat confronts a terminal illness from Sydney's Long Bay jail, his prognosis remains unclear.
And while Australia may be keeping a close watch on the 74-year-old's declining health, the same cannot be said for the families of his victims, whose lives were torn apart almost three decades ago.
DARREN PATEMAN/SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Ivan Milat in 1998.
Answering the door at his home in Hexham, near Newcastle in northern England, Ian Clarke, the father of UK backpacker Caroline Clarke, said he had knew of Milat's illness but had nothing more to say about him or the murder of his daughter in 1992.
"We are tired of telling the story," he said. "We really just want to draw a curtain over it. It's very draining."
Raymond Walters, the father of Joanne Walters who was killed alongside Caroline, felt the same, saying that he did not even want to call for a deathbed confession.
"We're not interested in talking about Milat," he said from his home in Maesteg, Wales.
Additional reporting by Nick Miller.
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