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

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around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] we have seven bodies in this
investigation a huge investigation going on and 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 C
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 um possibly they bought these
from or what what rough location so in late 1993 the Tas 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
analyst on top of this a large reward was offered to the public for information on what the Press were
calling at the time the Bango 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 that investigators may have been talking or
seeking to talk to over 2,000 per 2,000 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
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 Mt 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 Bango 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 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 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 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 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 truly a weird scenario because we have two victims that went
missing right around that time we have Alex Mallette who's saying that he saw two females in these vehicles that
looked 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 have in fact have seen two vehicles there
that night but is he making up what he saw inside of those Vehicles that's a 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 Mallette Richard told a coworker and this is according to the
coworker 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 mhm he tell 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 Bango
serial killings M he told someone that stabbing a woman or cutting a woman was just and 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 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 alleged that he had said right the first there is a German couple out there they
haven't found all of the bodies yet this may seem strange given just that one one
statement that and even in fact when you apply it with all the 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 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 B 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 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 going to find more bodies well what about that missing couple that's
still missing mhm 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
seewhat 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 state of I know who killed the German couple was he say this before their
bodies were found right right right right right cuz 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 aha aha 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 portions 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 uh
suspecting this person of 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 Mallette 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
Mallette that is involved in this whole portion of the investigation Ivan Mallette all three of them are brothers
they're brothers from a very large family I think that there were 10 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'll tell you what even more interesting than all of that um this next stuff again comes from
the Sydney Morning Herold and the Herold really covered this case covered this story from top to
bottom covering it for years there is an article by stepen waro 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 happened because they report 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 victim 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 Mallette 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 mhm 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 Mallette beat the charges though 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 so well
all right yeah but okay here's the problem with that it's 1971 1972 when he points this out this
refuses 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 it's been uphill battle so back then it
was like 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 Mallet at the time he is I 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 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 uh 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 Mallette 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 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 on the part of the police and the investigators in those crimes and then we have this situation
where Ivan mlet picks up these two female hitchhikers and comes pretty close close to killing them and gets
away with it in court yeah which is crazy to me because it's you have two eyewitnesses you know what 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
then 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 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 Mallette 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 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 mhm 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 13th 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 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 Mallette 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 ve B 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 Mallette as the man that she said she saw that day with the
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freedom all right cheers mates Cheers Cheers Cheers Captain law enforcement they were
locking in on this Ivan Mallette 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 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 got him so this is
some this is some 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 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 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 to arrest Ivan Mallette 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 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 Mallette 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 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 Mallette is arrested correct and we talked about the former Constable earlier who gave the story to Steve waro
and a story to the Sydney Morning heral um this is Constable Paul Gordon this is where Paul Gordon story
gets tricky and I've tried to sift through this and I can't really find out the 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 Mallette 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 and 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 a and amongst the members that were the closest
involved in this investigation and in the arrest of Ivan Mallette 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 it 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 mullette for seven unsolved murders they've only arrested
him for the armed robbery charge now 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 the same time the whole thing
that's really going down and actually they 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 Mallette family members
warning each other of what's going on if in fact more are involved yeah so now that they have Ivan in their sites
they're going to have to search their property they they live just outside the city yeah and as said 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 most importantly they find a 22 rifle MH they find parts to another 22
rifle they find a pistol and they find one of those large Bowie knives now he he has 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 this is a lot of stuff and
some of this stuff they can't 100% say belong to a victim right but they can say I believe it was with one of the it
was with some of the um camping equipment yeah they found a tent and 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 not only is this a big family with a lot of brothers and
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 her roof and I believe that
maybe even Ivan and his sister shared a home together at one time what the 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 now 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 illegal guns we know that the
drugs were illegal they were charges that were brought forth on that nature now 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 of out of the city and
this is a time where you don't have internet and cable and things like this so they 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 10 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 especially if it's you know two boys cuz you got C
all those or commit armed robbery together like they did yeah but what I'm saying is there's there's 10 of them so
you just got this testosterone going and you know it 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 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 M when 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 has 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 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 27th 1996 a jury
found Ivan Mallette 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 maand jail where he was going to be housed
Ivan was beat up by another inmate so there is 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 savah 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 he swallowed some ra 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 mhm if you were under good behavior for x amount of
period at some point you are allowed to receive a a plastic knife like which 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
asked 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 uh 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 he he didn't get he got acquitted for MH so 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 that 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 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 yeah I 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 M 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 the lesbian couple oh yeah right so
we agree on that yeah I'm actually really shocked that even what ever 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 arm robbery That Could
Have Been Enough To possibly scare this psycho away for a while mhm like you said do you like him for 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
mhm yeah I I wonder in some of these cases I've seen what 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 in 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 a case off of off of
little to nothing right so in um 200 12 his nephew Matthew Mallette was convicted in court of murder because in
2010 he attacked a boy named David archelon So this poor kid David was struck over the head with a battle axe
it was a double-bladed battle axe and get this this attack took place in the bang State Forest the same place where
Ivan Mallette buried seven victims in the 9s so David was I don't know if you would call him a
friend but they knew each other Matthew and David knew each other and another guy Cohen kleene was friends with
Matthew Mallette as well the two 19-year-olds Matthew and Cohen they LED 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 axe now the super
gross and disgusting thing in this case is the Cohen the Cohen Klein the other person
there Matthews 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 mlet got 43
years and then we have kleene got 30 years I'm sorry it 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 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 very badly the last 2 minutes of his life the the strangest thing about this
Matthew Mallette 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 malette 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 away for Life yeah yeah
let's not get this is a long road to go down right right I mean a lot of time you know he he he tortured this guy we
have uh evidence of it and and he's he's going to Poss possibly get out one day and all he's going to do is he's chances
are now what we can hope for is that he will not be a model a 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 Mallette showed no remorse and poses a huge serious threat
to the Community this basically was a coldblooded premeditated Thrill Kill mhm 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 Mallette but he's like
the the great he's like a a a cousin or sorry a great nephew of him and he had a
different last name but changed it because it's mlet when he was 14 now I don't know if he was just going by the
last name of Mallette rather than officially having changed it but regardless I mean right you're psycho
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 16y 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 mhm we do have a man that was convicted of that crime
crime this was a guy that confessed shortly after this was a few months after the fact we have Allan
Dylan who confessed to shooting Neville Knight in the back in that cab he was sentenced to 5 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 uh 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 Mallette 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 served him and ran off now where we get the confession from is many
years later Alan Dylan the man who served 5 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 Allan Dylan's younger brother of committing
the crime Allan Dylan 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 travel 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 Iva mlet 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 a 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 allh so as you pointed out earlier
Captain you wonder given that this man probably has days left if in fact we will see some 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 and and 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 that I 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 confess to her all of his crimes that's
what they I believe yeah yeah I I went down that road and I um but it's not like she has rode 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 in the other claim 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 MH 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 in in the trial of the mar 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 Mallette 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 MH 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 and nine brothers big family out of the whole family Ian had a a a fairly sophisticated security system and he was
known to be extremely protective and secure of his home and we can only imagine the the many reasons why MH out
of all of his family Walter was the only one that had access 24/7 to his home 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 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 um Ivan
was having um a sexual relationship with one of his sisters uh supposedly the whole family knew about it uh supposedly
multiple Brothers had uh sexual relationships with that um 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 Ian 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 witch all serial killer by the great John Douglas this of
course this recommendation in the spirit of Mind Hunter season 2 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 [Music] you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to get
your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well
visit ang.com you can do this when you Angie that

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

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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 discusses the Bango serial killings and Ivan Mallette's investigation and conviction for multiple murders.

Key points

Gift of Better Sleep. Your mattress purchase helps give the gift of better sleep to children in need.
Investigating a Serial Killer. Law enforcement worries about a potential mass murder spree following the discovery of bodies.
The Mallette Brothers Connection. Two brothers share a last name and a potential connection to the case, raising suspicion.
Ivan Mallette's Arrest. After weeks of surveillance, police finally arrest Ivan Mallette, suspected of multiple murders.
Damning Evidence Found. Police discover weapons and items belonging to victims in Ivan's home, strengthening the case against him.
Trial Verdict. Ivan Mallette is found guilty of seven unsolved murders and receives seven life sentences.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's good to be seen and it's good to see you.

Host's greeting to the audience.

2:04WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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