The Backpacker Murders /// Part 2 /// 331 | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] [Applause] thank you welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thank you
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foreign [Music] we have seven bodies in this investigation a huge investigation going
on in a lot of media coverage now law enforcement they were worried that the discovery of the bodies and the media
coverage that followed could invoke an evil reaction from our undetected serial killer where he might go on a mass
murdering spree ultimately seeking more victims more chaos and panic and a suicide by cop ending and we have these
extensive profiles but really we don't have a ton of evidence the biggest evidence that we probably have in this
whole scenario is the bullets that they left behind from the target practice Yeah the cuts and stab wounds are not
extremely valuable from a clue standpoint you know we've discussed this before it's just difficult matching these up to
a knife or another sharp object when you have nothing to compare them to now the
bindings are of good value though anything that was used to bind the victims in some of these capes cases we
know that they used rope and electrical tape that sort of thing so yes Captain you're exactly right the the most
valuable clues that they're going to have are the bullets the shell casings the cartridge
containers as well as these ropes and electrical tape that was used on the victims yeah I would
assume that it would be hard but not impossible to take these shell casings and and figure out
where uh possibly they bought these from or what what rough location so in late 1993 the task force air was formed they
were to spearhead this serial killer investigation the task force was made up of more than 20 detectives an analysts
on top of this a large reward was offered to the public for information on what the Press were calling at the time
the balanglo serial killings the profiles were made as we discussed and they were made public the task force was
established and now they're begging the public for help so where does that get you it gets you a ton of info to sift
through which is extremely difficult just to organize and catalog everything that's coming in
the task force one of their first jobs is to Simply organize all of this information and then to find a
constructive way to apply it to the investigation and as for the investigation hell just with 20
different task force members you have a lot of moving pieces and so some sort of
checks and balances is required you need to know for sure that so and so did speak to this suspect or this witness
and that the information was collected and appropriately cataloged because there is just so much of it some of the
focus is really going to be the gun angle right Captain we know that we have bullets that were found at the scene we
know that we have two different calibers we we're looking through gun licenses that's what police wanted to do they're
going to look through gun licenses to try to provide some leads in the way of who is their guy or who is their killers
I've seen some numbers in this case and some were as big as the investigators may have been talking or
seeking to talk to over 2 000 per 2000 persons just in relation to the gun angle
but with all of their hard work effort and Analysis they really were looking at over 200
possible good suspects not just people that have a gun license right eventually taking that 200 possible suspects and
breaking that down to about 30. some Persons of Interest without going through all 30 or so of them
now remember guns may be how they're able to find the killer or killer so they amongst other strategies are going
around to gun clubs and interviewing members at these gun clubs at one such Club they were interviewing members and
these members told investigators to talk to a man named Alex malat so Alex he had a strange story to tell he sat
down and spoke with these investigators he said that one night in April of 1992 now mind you this is Around The
Disappearance of two of our victims yeah he says that he and a friend were driving home that night from The Gun
Club and as they neared a service road to the balanglo state forest they passed two
vehicles one I believe was a car and the other was a 4x4 in this scenario he tells the investigators that he saw a
woman a single woman in each one of those Vehicles right and also in the vehicle with them were a
group of men the women he says were bound they were I don't I take that back I don't know that
he said that they were bound I know he said that they were gagged but his description of this scenario is that the
women likely they look to have been abducted they're with these men they don't want to be in the car and he goes
on to give very good detailed information regarding the men and what they look like as well
he's unable to give any plate numbers regarding these vehicles police of course are going to find this extremely
interesting for any number of reasons really what they're going to do is they locate the man that he says he was
traveling with that night they speak with him the man verifies some portions of this
story basically that yes I was with Alex that night yes we went to the gun club we took that route home
and I believe that yeah I did see two vehicles that night he says nothing about the women being in the vehicles
he says nothing about the men being in the vehicles nor does he give any type of description of anybody or anything
that's going on never mind that if if the gagging part didn't come up like I mean if you're driving home with your
buddy and you see some girls quote unquote gagged you'd think that would come up in conversation right and if it
comes up in conversation it's not something that you're going to forget especially if you can remember being at
the gun club that day and taking that route home that night so that's that's what is is really a truly a weird
scenario because we have two victims that went missing right around that time we have Alex Millet who's saying that he
saw two females in these vehicles that look like they were abducted yet here's the other thing too until police came
looking for him he never bothered to share this information with anybody he never took it to police he never said
hey I saw something strange going on or you know he didn't do this when he didn't do it that night
so he didn't seem to be concerned of of these two women he didn't do it when the
bodies were found and as you just pointed out he very likely didn't even mention it to the man
sitting in the vehicle with him that night right because apparently given their statements they didn't see the
same things right so it seems like it's a half-truth story yeah he may in fact have seen two vehicles there that night
but is he making up what he saw inside of those Vehicles that's the sick thing for somebody to make up yeah well you
have to wonder One why would he be making it up or two if in fact that is what he saw why didn't he tell anybody
why did he choose not to tell anybody then there's another person uh police police are talking about uh this is one
of their Persons of Interest and this comes from a tipster that called in regarding a man named Richard Millette
Richard told a co-worker and this is according to the co-worker right this is alleged what he told them
Richard said in regards to the backpack murders that there is a German couple out there
that they haven't found all of the bodies yet this is before the German couple was in
fact found he tells someone else I know who killed the German couple other odd things and comments that he
was saying he told someone how easy it would be to abduct someone out in the area of the blanglo serial killings he
told someone that stabbing a woman or cutting a woman was just forgive me Captain I've seen this reported several
different ways that he said that it it was like cutting a loaf of bread and then one of the other sources say that
he said cutting a woman was like cutting a banana so I'm not sure which one he in
fact used or allegedly said but still some very odd strange statements coming from this man here I do want to point
out a few things about what it is that allege that he had said right the first there is a German couple out there they
haven't found all the bodies yet this may seem strange given just that one statement that and even in fact when
you apply it with all these others that we went through but just that short little statement does seem strange but
we also need to keep in mind as we reported there were reports out there in June that there was a missing
German couple so that that's not like it was some top secret information that was public
information to anybody that read those papers hey there there's there's a German couple that is believed to be
missing since regarding that newspaper article it's been over six months by that point and then on top of that when
they found the first two victims when they found the first two bodies what was the statement given by law enforcement
at the time we're going to find more bodies we expect to find more bodies so really when you dissect his statement
it's actually nothing that he could that anybody couldn't have come up with right
right and again this is big news and they don't want you know hitchhikers or tourists going missing so is it just one
of those things where you go okay they're gonna find more bodies but what about that missing couple that's still
missing yeah I mean it's it's not that far of a stretch to get get to there the other thing too is
pointing out how easy he believed it would be to abduct somebody out in that area that specific area
I don't find that to be too incredibly of an odd statement well here's here's what's odd we have two individuals with
the same last name both seem what somewhat telling like half truths right so what's that all about well I think
the most the strangest statement by Richard would be the one of I know who killed the German couple yes the thing I
would like to backtrack on which I couldn't find through all the digging it it just wasn't there if anybody finds
this or knows this information please put it on the blog but one thing I was very curious about
with the statement of I know who killed the German couple was he saying this before their bodies
were found right right right right right because I mean of course it you could see how he
would believe that they were were killed but but to to make a statement like that
before the bodies were in fact found would be a big huge red flag and as you said another red flag is that you have
two individuals who share the same last name who in fact are brothers [Music] it goes back to that profiling right
right and that's the thing here we're going to start to see some things regarding this profile and I think that
you know not only just the profile itself but once they're collecting the task force is collecting all this
information that's coming in possible leads possible evidence Clues names that are coming up time and time again
throughout the course of their investigation you you really want to go when okay when we need to talk to 2 000
people or maybe more than 2 000 people let's create a list of people and go how many boxes do does each individual
potentially check off right because we have to prioritize who we're going to speak with we can't just have a pool of
suspects being 2 000 people and then they Whittle it down to what did we say 200 and then to 30 right but now on this
list of 30 it appears that we have two men who are in fact brothers and we do have them fitting some Porsche versions
of the profile itself you know just the simple statement of somebody saying you know what it would be easy to abduct
people out in that area that to me doesn't does not set off any alarm Bells as far as
suspecting this person of being an abductor or a killer what it points out to me immediately is this person
obviously feels that he has a strong connection to that area to that that he's familiar and he has knowledge
about that area well that's one thing that was in the profile to be looking for we also have a situation where the
other man Richard Millette he has a criminal record also in the profile one of the things on his record involves a
gun charge again as you pointed out back to the profile now there was also another
Millet that is involved in this whole portion of the investigation Ivan millet all three of them are brothers they're
brothers from a very large family I think that there were ten Brothers total and four sisters yeah 14 siblings total
yeah so we're talking a huge family here now Ivan was in fact familiar to the task force this is because he was called
in on the tip hotline now the caller thought that he fit some aspects of the profile
plus the caller said that he drove a four-wheel drive and owned some guns right known to shoot guns has a
four-wheeler also lives in a rural area yeah and I and all of that this next stuff again comes from the
Sydney Morning Herald and the herald really covered this case covered the story from top to bottom
covering it for years there is an article by Stephen Warnock where we have a former senior Constable
Paul Gordon now anybody familiar with this case there there's some alarm bells that are going to go off because
this Paul Gordon is a complicated character in this story and we can get into that a little more but what's
important here is some things that we know that did in fact happen we just don't know exactly how they
happen because they reported they were reported to the newspaper in a strange way right so according to one version of
the story Paul Gordon was working on a theory that Liverpool I guess this is an exit that is along the way from Sydney
to Melbourne via the Hume Highway he or somebody else came up with the theory that there are hundreds of
hitchhikers thumbing lifts South in this area and that maybe this is where the killer or killers were getting
their victims from using this Theory they decide to go back and they are checking through police
files for past crimes against Hitchhikers in that area what they find is a case from April of
1971. right so almost two decades before our victims start disappearing right in this case
the offender or alleged offender was a man named Ivan millet he was accused of assault rape and threatening to kill two
female Hitchhikers in April of 1971. so we have The Hitchhikers we have a pair of them yeah and we have a similar type
crime although it does not end in Murder but the reason why this crime does not end in Murder
the the two hitchhikers they got away from this man right and this is basically because they they tricked him
and they had to escape him he didn't he didn't let them go nothing like that they had to escape and after reviewing
the case personally Captain I believe he very very likely would have killed both
of them he in fact according to the two victims did say at one point his intention was to do just that
Millet beat the charges though hmm and if you want we can we can get into that it's a little it's a bit of a difficult
story and it's it's a bit of a long one but in the end his his lawyer pulled some
tricky [ __ ] and got him out of those charges okay what do you mean tricky [ __ ]
well the lawyer was able to prove that the two women that he picked up were in fact lesbians
okay and the lawyer was not so well all right but yeah but okay here's the problem with that it's 1971 1972.
when he points this out this confuses the jury back then right and you see what I mean and it
it's been an uphill battle for anybody that has come forward with any allegations of sexual assault or rape
right now so back then it was like big time yeah you know uh yeah it's pathetic but yeah keep going well I will say I do
want to say this real quick too the the attorney that was representing Ivan Millet at the time
he is I believe he's deceased now um he was a homosexual man so in in a sense and I think well I
shouldn't say I think I know because interviews late in his life he says that he really regretted using that tactic
um but that's the tactic that he chose yeah right he chose to use that strategy it was shameful but it worked at the
time that is that that is the problem with that profession because it's like you it's very important to have good
defense attorneys but at the same time it's and you don't want to assume that they're bad individuals because they
help these awful people get out of crimes well Millet may have just been and I mean Ivan
he's just super lucky right because he was also facing charges and these were Hefty charges of armed robbery in fact
these were robberies that he committed with one of his other brothers yeah that we've already named what ended up
happening in that situation is those charges I believe they were dropped because of
the way that the they were investigated there was rumors of misconduct on the pot on the part of the police and the
investigators in those crimes and then we have this situation where Ivan Millet picks up these two female hitchhikers
and comes pretty close to killing them it gets away with it in court yeah which was crazy to me because it's
you have two eyewitnesses yeah I mean like it's not just he said she said it's He Said She Said She Said
So yeah like you said a little bit of evil luck but in the in the end in the 90s what's going to really stand out to
the task force is that even though he may have got away with that crime back in the 70s this very much fits
it's very similar to what was going on in The Backpacker murders well right like if we look at the profile we have
two victims we have you know sexual intent I think we could say I agree or or some type of gratification from it
right and then on top of that you have these armed robberies that were committed with him and his brother and
that fits the profile you know at least a couple times with them thinking that these there could be two attackers and
them being related so the Millet family they are now pretty much the prime target of this
investigation and if you really want to try to put it in order I think we're looking at a
situation where we have Ivan at the very top of that list followed by his brother
Richard [Music] and Ivan just looks like I mean he looks evil well and the other thing that's going to
put Ivan and Richard above some of the other brothers in this even Alex who we've already named
those two were known to have been working in the area at the time of the disappearances so that puts them that at
a much higher probability so they were looking into these men from this family and the more that they
looked the more that Ivan started to look better and better and fit being their possible unsub
so this becomes even more clear when police get a phone call from the United Kingdom
it's Paul onions on November 13 1993 Paul called the authorities in The Backpacker murders
case he saw the case on the news and he immediately thought of the time when he was attacked way back in 1990. police
never made the connection between Paul's case and the seven unsolved murders remember when Paul reported this
from the outside looking in you may have thought you were just dealing with an armed robbery
so now we have a victim coming forward and saying I believe what happened to me is
connected to your unsolved murders eventually they get Paul out to the to Australia and they want to talk with him
face to face they want to show him some materials and they want to know what he knows of his attack
eventually he positively identifies Ivan Millet as the man who was calling himself Bill who offered him a ride and
tried to take his life firing the gun at him as he was running from him Joanne Barry the woman who was brave
enough to stop her van and allow a complete stranger to get inside the vehicle when others wouldn't even stop
to help poor Paul she was able to positively identify Ivan Millet as the man that she said she saw
that day with the gun all right cheers mates Cheers Cheers Cheers captain law enforcement they were locking in on
this Ivan millet they surveilled Ivan for weeks they tapped his phone and police located a vehicle that he
once owned this is the four-wheel drive vehicle that Paul onions says that this man named Bill quote unquote bill was
driving when he picked him up and attacked him so they found this new owner they confirmed that it was in fact
a vehicle that was purchased from Ivan still inside the vehicle they located a 22 caliber bullet under the driver's
seat it matched bullets that were found at the murder scenes so this is some this is some big info
here there's some difficulty with the investigation because of another brother and this brother's name is in fact bill
right so what becomes difficult with this case is Ivan for whatever reason was registering vehicles in his
brother's name for a good portion of his life um the other thing too why is he doing
that I don't know if this was with his brother's permission or if he was just doing this on his own right but surely
if you are up to no good it is an advantage for you to be able to drive vehicles but not have them
necessarily in your name right [Music] so with all this information and a lot of it being
information coming from Paul onions it sounds like police are ready to make an arrest and they're going to arrest
Ivan millet but remember all along they anticipated that their killer should they be on to
the right guy if the heat got cranked up too high for his liking if an arrest was
expected he very likely would want to do it on his own terms and go out in a blaze of glory yeah
police knew how dangerous whoever this man was they knew that who they were looking for
is probably a weapons enthusiast so they knew psycho though yes yeah this is a psycho
so they knew what to expect if they in fact had their right guy so when they go to make the arrest on
Ivan Millet they're going to be a little nervous in this situation but they're also going to bring everything that you
got right you bring the kitchen sink Ivan's house was surrounded by about 50 armed officers most of them heavily
armed officers phone calls were placed to the home the general strategy here is Captain you
want to try to get your guy to come outside you really want to avoid going in after him
so on these phone calls they're trying to explain to him why they want to talk to him why he is being arrested that day
and in a good strategy here for many reasons they basically tell them look you're suspected in an armed robbery we
need to talk to you about that and we have a warrant for your arrest in regards to that
that case notice that they are conveniently avoiding the seven unsolved murders when
talking to Ivan right Ivan didn't want to come outside he he did this kind of weird game of like cat
and mouse where at first he kind of said yeah I'll be out just give me a few minutes
and then a lot of time would go by and he still not come out this of course making the police more nervous and more
nervous as it goes along they would call him back he would try the same tactic I'm coming out but I don't understand
why you're here to talk to me I've not done anything wrong now he's playing the Innocence card right this goes back and
forth for a while until he he does eventually end up coming outside right so on May 22nd 1994 Ivan Millet is
arrested correct and we talked about the former Constable earlier who gave the story to Steve Warnock and a story to
the Sydney Morning Herald um this is Constable Paul Gordon this is where Paul Gordon's story gets
tricky and I've tried to sift through this and I can't really find out that the real details here but what we do know is
that Paul Gordon at some point spoke to the newspaper okay and in this time that he's talking to him initially
it seems like he not only takes credit for the theory brought forward about the hitchhikers and the location but he also
takes credit for finding the the previous case from 1971 that names Ivan Millet as the suspect
and he tells this to the newspaper so he presents a story in the light where it's
almost like I'm the guy that cracked the case and in a lot of tellings of this story
in this case it seems more so that maybe just as much as that scenario but it also seems like the Paul onions the
former victim the Survivor that came forward was just as much that cracked this case right and so where Paul Gordon
gets in trouble the the former Constable where he gets in trouble there was an a
an agreement amongst the task force and amongst the members that were the closest involved in this investigation
and in the arrest of Ivan millet that they were not to talk to the newspapers Paul Gordon did
so Paul Gordon was eventually let go from that task force that's why it gets difficult to sift through his words and
know what to believe and know not what to believe right right because we don't know
if he was let go because he talked to the paper or if he lied being the guy that quote unquote cracked the case
but that was something that went down now because Paul Gordon spoke to the newspapers now a lot of their stuff is
starting to become public that's why they didn't want anybody talking to the newspapers that were involved in the
task force that makes it harder to get a conviction yeah and it also makes it tougher for the investigators to
continue down the roads that they've already traveled down they've already started down these roads on
investigating Ivan Millet for seven unsolved murders they've only arrested him for the armed robbery charge
now it shows their hand that this is what we actually want him for this is what we actually think he's suspected of
right and the fact that they're still not for sure if it's if if it's just Ivan that's responsible or is it Ivan
and one of his brothers that they've already talked to and so you don't want to show all your hand because
you don't want Ivan to be protecting one of his brothers and you then you have another psychopath that's out on the
loose well and you want to make sure that you have your right guy and you want to make sure that you are building
your case as such but now with their cards kind of shown with their cards out there
this is when the the lead member of the task force says we were kind of forced at this point to actually start charging
him with these unsolved murders now at this same time the whole thing that's really going down and actually
they've been working their way through this there were searches obviously of Ivan's home and of many of his family
members homes as well and they were very smart they did these searches basically all at the same time
so as you pointed out we can't have the different Millet family members warning each other of what's going on if in fact
more are involved yeah so now that they have Ivan and their sites they're going to have to search their property they
they live just outside the city they're going to search some of his family members homes about the same time
right well they find some interesting things in Ivan's home and most importantly they find a 22
rifle they find parts to another 22 rifle they find a pistol and they find one of
those large Bowie knives now he he is said time and time again to the investigators that he didn't own any
weapons and of course they immediately find weapons inside his home they also recovered a trove of items believed to
belong to the killed hitchhikers these items included clothing tents sleeping bags backpacks cooking and
camping equipment and cameras this is a lot of stuff and some of this stuff they can't 100
percent say belong to a victim right but they can say I believe it was with one of the it was
with some of the camping equipment yeah no but what I mean by this is there there was one of these items you
couldn't purchase it in in Australia right you had to purchase it from where one of the victims was from so the the
probability that he would own something like this highly unlikely right and then on top of
that we have scenarios where there are items that do seem to in fact belong to the victims where you can make a direct
connection where there's more proof of such like the initials being stitched into one of the items right and so this
is not looking good for Ivan so they searched his mother's home as well and at least three of his brother's
homes as well so this would be Alex Richard and Bill I believe his father was dead his father
had passed away wait you know they would have searched at least four of the brothers because Walter his home was
searched as well his sister Ivan's sister is a bit tricky for me because look so that not only is this a big
family with a lot of brothers and a lot of moving pieces but at one time throughout their adult lives they were
all a lot of them were moving back and forth in and out of mom's home and so some of them lived together for a
while under her roof and I believe that maybe even Ivan and his sister shared a home together at one time
what the the big problem is with this is that not only do they find these these damning items inside Ivan's home
they start finding other items that belong to these victims in the homes of his relatives as well and again
this is things like clothing tents backpacks cookware things of that nature some of these brothers homes they found
guns lots of ammo and marijuana so at the very least those Brothers can be arrested and charged with if they if
they had any legal guns we know that the drugs were illegal there were charges that were brought forth on that nature
now well yeah this family was known to one own a bunch of guns but to be Avid Shooters you know they're like I said
they lived out out of the city and this is a time where you don't have internet and cable and things like this so there
were Avid you know gun shooters well and a lot of the brothers had they were Rowdy let's say
right A lot of them had criminal records well there's there's ten of them I mean
if you grow up in a family just with one other sibling you're going to tend to get in some uh arguments or fights or
you know little tussles uh be or especially if it's you know two boys because or commit armed robbery together
like they did yeah but what I'm saying is there's there's ten of them so you just got this testosterone going and you
know it wasn't rumored I think it's pretty factual that these kids were beat uh at least the boys were beat up pretty
bad by their father uh consistently uh very abusive household so when you have that going and that probably stems from
anger and stems from a lack of resources and lack of money and also you have 14 kids that you're trying to feed I want
to talk about stresses um you know when when you get beat by your father you might then try to take that
out on your brother well regardless of all these items that they find throughout the different
households when it this thing comes to trial Ivan's going to be the only one facing trial
and he's now being charged with the seven murders as well as the crimes against Paul onions
Ivan to his credit during the whole time that he's being investigated during the
whole time of of his interrogations and the questioning and the interviewing right and even the trial itself he's
always stuck to his guns he his regardless of what he's been accused of he's maintained his innocence throughout
now at trial not only did he maintain his innocence he in fact pointed the finger at a couple of his brothers this
would be Walter and Richard and his defense that was put forward basically was stating that
the crimes were not commit committed by Ivan they were either committed by one or both Richard and Walter right the
interesting thing here too though is the crown okay so basically the the prosecutors and whatnot
they are saying during the course of this trial we do not have to prove whether Ivan acted alone or not right we
just are trying to prove that he was involved that he did it and they said that the evidence they actually pointed
this out which which is weird to me but at one point they even said something to
the fact that that the evidence somewhat strongly suggested that he may not have acted alone but they were so
sure that he was in fact involved he is regardless of who else could have been involved Ivan was responsible for the
crimes we are charging him with and this time they're going to get a guilty verdict yeah I mean it was a difficult
trial for all the reasons that we just pointed out but it was in fact July 27 1996 a jury found Ivan Millet guilty of
seven unsolved Backpacker murders he received seven life sentences for this without the possibility of parole
but our story doesn't end there does it Captain we got we got some more stuff to
get through because on his first day to the Maitland jail where he was going to be housed Ivan was beat up by another
inmate so there's your housewarming gift for you Mr Ivan welcome to prison yeah you get get your ass kicked on day one
you get [ __ ] up a year later Ivan and another inmate George Sava they worked together in an attempt to escape from
prison however they were caught in this attempted Escape Plan and the next day they find George dead in his cell
now they move Ivan to another prison to a Maximum Security Prison uh at another location
there are some more prison Antics here uh Ivan swallowed razor blades and Staples in a metal chain oh on one day
swallow some may the blade yeah and then in 2009 he cut off his little finger with a plastic knife on purpose yeah
yeah so this this is a just kind of a real dumbass plan here but so he he gets this this is actually
considered a privilege at the prison where he was housed if you were under good behavior for x amount of period at
some point you are allowed to receive a a plastic knife like what you would get at a picnic right a plastic knife to to
use while eating your meals yeah he had received this privilege and once he did so he decides to take a plastic knife
and attempts to cut off his little finger to which he was successful but his goal was to mail to put the finger
in the mail put it in an envelope hand it off to a guard and ask them to mail it well as the newspaper put it cutting
off a finger is quite painful so once he got to that part of the plan where the finger is now off he had trouble putting
it in the envelope and getting it to the guard basically his plan went sideways real quick because he didn't account for
how much pain he would be in uh this he was transferred to he's a psycho he was transferred to a hospital because of
this but they could not reattach the finger so it is no more uh he has on several
occasions attempted hunger strikes to get things that he wants to get his way the most famous of these hunger
strikes lasted nine days this was because he wanted a PlayStation in his cell the hunger strike ended and I'm very
happy to report that little Ivan did not get his PlayStation oh so sad one key thing with this case has always been
are there more victims yeah and if there are how many more well are there more victims I mean because
like you said he had the crimes a decade earlier that he didn't uh he he didn't get it he got acquitted for
see that just makes you wonder how many missing people are there and how many missing people have not been reported
missing because they were foreigners well and we're also talking about from from the time that he abducted those two
women beat the charges and then to the time that he's finally arrested we have two decades that went by right two
decades it went by and the murders that he's convicted of they actually happened
in just the years leading up to his capture right so how long was he active for and if in fact he was going to kill
those victims back in 1971 was that his intention all along if he was active that entire time I mean we know he shot
at Paul onions so it appears that that murder was his intent there or at the very least was his reaction to Paul
trying to flee him now we know that Ivan was questioned back in 2004 this regarding The Disappearance of two
Nurses Back In 1980 he was working in the area at the time then two years later in 2006 Ivan was named by police
as the main suspect in a double homicide in all it looks like there may have been
about 10 more cases that they you know they they like him for it they think that he's a good suspect in these 10
other cases and one of these cases dates all the way back to 1971. but we don't think he's going to
confess to these um I don't know I mean he's never he's never been one to confess he's
always maintained his innocence throughout even all this time in prison possible deathbed confession yeah and
the thing here though too is I I really wonder about a lot of these other cases because it would point out
to me a couple of things either he wasn't taking trophies from the earlier victims or he
discarded of those trophies at some point it's just very difficult because I I think he's probably good for some more I
don't think he's good for all 10 or 12 of these depending on what list you look at well we both agree that he's
responsible for the attacks on the the the lesbian couple oh yeah right yeah so we agree on that
yeah I'm actually really shocked that even whatever you know regardless of the strategy I'm shocked that any strategy
worked in that case after reviewing it but I think you said it best though I think it was because it was so
um you know so many years ago that's why that Malarkey worked but that being you know almost cop for that
and then the armed robbery That Could Have Been Enough To possibly scare this psycho away for a while
so like you said uh do you like him forever all these crimes I don't know I think he would have would have been
taking more items from the victims like you were saying yeah I I wonder in some of these cases
I've seen with two of them that I've reviewed out of that list those two almost feel to me like
there is no real connection and look I get it there is no real connection between Ivan and the ones
that he is convicted of but and the others there seems to be more of a scenario where he looks good for those
he looks there is some connection he was in the area at the time he may have been
active at the time so on and so forth a couple of them you look like you wonder if they're just starting
hey well let's take a shot at it it's like throwing a dart at the board and hoping that you close the case
off of off of little to nothing right so in um 2012. his nephew Matthew Millette was
convicted in court of murder because in 2010 he attacked a boy named David archoloni
so this poor kid David was struck over the head with a battle ax it was a double-bladed battle ax and get this
this attack took place in the blanglo State Forest the same place where Ivan Millet buried seven victims in the 90s
so David was I don't know if you call him a friend but they knew each other Matthew and
David knew each other and another guy Cohen Klein was friends with Matthew Millette as well the two 19
year olds Matthew and Cohen they lured 17 year old David this was on his birthday to the state forest they got
him to go along with them because they were promising him hey it's your birthday we're going to party at the
State Forest we got booze we got pot really the whole thing was a setup because once they get there at some
point Matthew starts chasing David around a car with the ax now the super gross and disgusting thing in this case
is the Cohen the the coincline the other person there Matthew's friend right as Matthew is attacking David Cohen
he recorded the whole thing on the audio anyway on his mobile phone and both of these guys were convicted
Millet got 43 years and then we have Klein got 30 years I'm sorry might have been 32 my notes
are a little difficult here but in the Klein case he has a minimum sentence of 22 years
that he's going to face for that and the saddest part of it is this murder took about two minutes to
commit the audio recording it recorded the full two minutes and the I mean the judges heard it and some
of the people at trial heard portions of this audio and it was very clear that this young man this boy David was
he was basically tortured and suffered very badly the last two minutes of his life
the the strangest thing about this Matthew Millette character the the the nephew who's now in prison and I don't
know if there's a way to change this or or the the exact stipulations of his sentencing
this Matthew Millette guy should never be allowed out of prison yeah it's absolute worst I I I really think
and I don't want to get get into this too much but I think you know cost Effectiveness and all this stuff with
the death penalty it doesn't work for some states but it should be this simple you kill somebody uh you know uh you
know first degree murder you go well away for Life yeah yeah let's not get this is a long road to go
down right right you know he he tortured this guy we have uh and we know he didn't have evidence
of it and and he's he's gonna possibly get out one day and all he's gonna do is he's chances are now what we can hope
for is that he will not be a model uh citizen in prison and then he'll have to do do more time but uh but yeah these
these individuals they can't be helped well as Justice Matthews pointed out during the trial and at the during the
sentencing phase anyway was that Millet showed no remorse and poses a huge serious threat to the
community this basically was a cold-blooded premeditated Thrill Kill that this that this guy did and then on
top of that what's weird too is that is not his his last name by birth yes he's related to Ivan Millet but he's
like the the Great he's like a a cousin or sorry a great nephew of him and he had a different
last name but changed it because it's too late when he was 14. now I don't know if he was just going by the last
name of millet rather than officially having changed it but regardless I mean right you're psychic you see where we're
going with that now we talked about the case against Neville Knight in the trailer and I'm betting some of you are
wondering what does that have to do with this case we never really gave you the outcome of the story of the 16 year old
boy who was picked up by the cab driver the explosion that the cab driver heard the boy fired a gun through the back
seat shooting Neville in the back okay and the boy rather than helping Neville he just opened up the door
observed the damage he wanted to see the Damage Done and he ran off into the darkness
we do have a man that was convicted of that crime this was a guy that confessed shortly after this was a few months
after the fact we have Alan Dillon who confessed to shooting Neville Knight in the back in that cab he was sentenced to
five years for the shooting the attack left Neville Knight a paraplegic and he didn't live an extremely long
life he did live many years after that and he did a lot of good for other people he became an advocate for wounded
individuals so he did a lot of good in his life but where this story kind of circles back
around is in 2015 Ivan's brother Boris Millet he said that Ivan told him he was the one that shot Neville Knight back in
1962 in that cab that he shot the cab driver observed him and ran off now where we get the
confession from is many years later Alan Dillon the man who served five years for this attack he said the way it
was presented to him during the interviews with police was that they suspected his younger
brother Alan Dillon's younger brother of committing the crime Alan Dillon took it
upon himself to give them a false confession to spare his brother the jail sentence
right and unfortunately all these years later when this story finally comes to light in 2015
Neville Knight is no longer around to to confirm these suspicions but if in fact boris's statements
regarding his brother saying I was the one that shot that cab driver 19 in 1962. you can see the progression and it
also goes to what you can imagine Ivan was doing to his victims out there in the State Forest as he traveled as he
chased them down remember choice of weapon killer choice of victim killer he got them out there he chose his weapons
he chose his attack and it's almost you see the progression that started at the age of 16 when he sat in the back of
that cab and fired the gun into the seat and into the back of Neville Knight we do have a
somewhat of an update I know it's our first time covering this but Ivan has been in the news quite a bit
lately and this is because in May of this year may of 2019 Ivan Millet was it's been reported anyway that he was
diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer and I know I probably didn't say that in the best way but it's basically
cancer of the esophagus this from my understanding of a friend of mine his father
um suffered this same type of cancer and from what I've been told this is not a look they're all bad cancers but this
one is particularly bad where the the survival rate is not very high at all so as you pointed out earlier Captain
you wonder given that this man probably has days left if in fact we will see some type of
deathbed confession maybe it's maybe it's not all the information that's out there
maybe it doesn't you know but maybe it clears some things up we have other family members of his that have been
accused by the public in in suspicions upon them throughout the years Ivan did say through
when he was in prison many years after he was convicted that his brothers are not guilty of anything although he still
claims to be innocent of the murders themselves right but I want to break down that scenario a little bit better
because I think him trying to put the blame on his brothers I think that eventually came back to his mother and
he was kind of favored by his mother Ivan was So eventually at some point the rumor is or or what people speculate is
that he told his mother hey they're not responsible and actually confessed to her all of his crimes
that's what they believe yeah yeah I've I went down that road and I um but it's not like she has wrote him down and uh
did a press conference about it or anything so the way that I understand that is that the one of the lead
investigators I believe he was the man in charge of the task force he he wrote a book and His Name Escapes me at the
moment but he wrote a book about the case and actually there there are several books out there regarding this
case yes the way that I understand the story is he that investigator eventually heard this statement through one of the
brothers that the mother the mother apparently told one of the brothers Ivan confessed
to me and then she passed away so like everything else with this story it's not a clean
it's not a clean ending it's okay the story comes from one of the other brothers we know that other brothers
were well and the other class suspects or or you know at least suspicion from the public yeah because some of the
items that they found uh that they believe Ivan had were actually found in his brother's possession
um but now if you follow that story back it was items that he took from his family his home when he moved so it
wasn't like it wasn't like these items just happened to be at his house these items came from the family's house
um but I I think what's also really interesting is the his defense lawyer that which defended
him you know decades earlier and and the trial of the Marsden I think was his last name and before he passed
away he was saying that he believed um that none of the brothers actually helped Ivan but it was actually Ivan's
sister that helped him commit these crimes yeah I saw that the the other thing that's weird here
though while we talk about the brothers um Walter millet so the one of the most damning pieces of
evidence against Ivan during the course of his trial remember we stated that there were some
Firearms found in Ivan's home but actually the the thing that was worse for him was the peace
I said there were some gun parts that were found in his home it was one of the parts of of a 22 rifle that was found
that was a piece of evidence that was so very strong against Ivan because it was
found concealed in his home like hidden like purposely if you saw the thing you knew like somebody was trying to hide
this and not just hide it for today tomorrow or next week they didn't want anybody to find it ever
so when they found this piece and they ran their ballistics on it of course they had to you know reattach it to
other pieces of of guns and things like that but what they determined after firing bullets through that part was
that the markings on those bullets matched markings on bullets at multiple crime scenes at multiple murder scenes
basically knowing that that part of that gun was involved in the murder of those
victims that was found in Ivan's home in his possession what's interesting is out of all these
brothers we say he's got four sisters and nine brothers big family out of the whole family I even had a
a a a fairly sophisticated security system and he was known to be extremely protective insecure of his home and we
can only imagine the the many reasons why out of all of his family Walter Millet
was the only one that had access 24 7 to his whole so many have wandered throughout the years
this piece of evidence that was really the strongest piece of evidence against Ivan
Walter would have had the ability to place it in the home yeah there's a lot of stuff with this
family and we could probably spend another hour talking about some of the speculation but just to go over it
really quickly at some point people believe that Ivan was having affairs with his brother's
wives um there's also then rumors that Ivan was having a sexual relationship with one of his sisters supposedly the
whole family knew about it supposedly multiple Brothers had sexual relationships with that sister
you know like I said there was reports of physical abuse from the father possible physical abuse from the mother
um and so then you wonder if he was having an affair with one of his brother's wives is that enough to
you know plant evidence you know to get him convicted of a crime he didn't commit
uh there's just so many things strange about this family and and so many things you could dive in
um the speculation of this family well Ivan Millet is often referred to as Australia's most notorious and Infamous
serial killer and even though we have the convictions we are left here today believing we
still do not have all the answers and how about a little recommended reading before we wrap things up for
this week this week we're going to recommend BTK the true story behind the 30-year hunt for the notorious Wichita
serial killer by the great John Douglas this of course this recommendation in the spirit of Mind Hunter season two
which we have been discussing and will be discussing on our other great show off the Record so until next week
everybody out there be good be kind and don't litter foreign [Music]

The Backpacker Murders /// Part 2 /// 331

Part 2 of 2

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New South Wales, Australia - In the 1970’s Hitchhikers started to disappear. This continued for two decades. In the 1990’s they started finding bodies. This week we go down under and look at the largest manhunt in Australian history. Law Enforcement are still unsure of the true number of victims and the total number of killers. Join us as we hunt the Backpacker Murderer. Beer of the Week - Cheer Team by 3 Floyds Brewing Company Garage Grade - 4 and a half bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

The episode details the Balanglo serial killings, focusing on Ivan Milat's investigation, arrest, and trial for multiple murders.

Key points

Alex Malat's Strange Story. A key witness claims to have seen bound women in vehicles near the crime scene.
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Hosts Nick and Captain introduce the show and thank listeners for joining.
Drinking Cheer Team Ale. This week's beer is a New England IPA with a garage grade of four and a half bottle caps.
The Balanglo Serial Killings. A huge investigation with seven bodies discovered, raising fears of a serial killer's next move.
Richard Millette's Odd Statements. A person of interest makes strange comments about the abduction of women.
Ivan Millet's Arrest. On May 22, 1994, Ivan Millet was arrested after a lengthy investigation into multiple murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is a fascinating case.

Host discusses a listener's case suggestion.

2:10WatchNov 21, 2022

Tension

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