In September 1992, two orienteers made their way through Belanglo State Forest, a dense stretch of Australian bushland seventy kilometers southwest of Sydney. They found a shallow grave. Human remains. Within months, investigators uncovered six more bodies scattered across twenty hectares of forest floor.
Seven young backpackers. All hitchhiking through New South Wales. All murdered. In 1996, Ivan Milat was convicted and sentenced to die in prison. He did exactly that in 2019, taking whatever secrets he held to his grave.
Now, thirty years after those first discoveries, a parliamentary inquiry is asking the question that should have been asked decades ago: How many people did Ivan Milat actually kill?
The Fifty Cases Under Review
The inquiry being led by NSW Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham is examining at least fifty cases of missing or murdered young people. The victims span two decades—from the early 1970s through the early 1990s—and came from across the globe: Americans, Italians, New Zealanders, Germans, British tourists, and young Australians.
All vanished while traveling through rural corridors that Milat knew intimately.
Former NSW detective Neville Scullion, who has spent years studying Milat's movements, work history, and known patterns, believes the true number of victims could reach eighty. That figure would make Milat not just Australia's most notorious killer, but one of history's most prolific serial murderers.
The evidence supporting this expanded scope is more than circumstantial. Consider Peter Letcher, eighteen years old when he was last seen hitchhiking near Jenolan Caves in November 1987—about seventy kilometers from Belanglo State Forest. His remains were found eighteen months later. He'd been stabbed multiple times and shot.
The bullets recovered from Peter Letcher's body matched the same firearm used to kill victims at Belanglo. The same gun. Different location. Five years before the known Belanglo murders.
A Pattern of Systemic Failure
The inquiry isn't just cataloging potential victims. It's examining how a violent predator walked free for twenty-three years while young people kept vanishing.
In 1971, Milat was charged with the double rape of two young hitchhikers. He skipped bail. And then the system simply lost track of him. For the next two decades, he lived openly—working on road crews throughout New South Wales, marrying, spending weekends hunting in the bush.
Those road crew jobs took him to remote highways across the state. He knew where bodies could disappear.
There's only one known survivor of a Milat attack. Paul Onions, a British backpacker, accepted a ride from Milat in January 1990. Milat pulled a gun. Onions ran. Milat fired at him as he fled into the bush. Through sheer luck and survival instinct, Onions escaped and flagged down a passing motorist.
Onions reported the attack to police. He provided a description, a partial license plate, the make of the vehicle. Milat remained free for another four years.
MP Jeremy Buckingham put the inquiry's central question bluntly: "The issue for us is how, from the early 1970s to Belanglo, he was allowed to commit scores of abductions and opportunistic homicidal killings."
The Backpackers Who Never Came Home
Among the fifty cases under review are Kay Docherty and Toni Cavanagh—two young women who vanished from the Illawarra region in 1979, where Milat was working road construction at the time. Deborah Balken and Gillian Jamieson disappeared in 1980 from the same region under identical circumstances: hitchhiking. Their remains surfaced in bushland two years later.
Backpacker culture in Australia during the 1970s and 80s was defined by hitchhiking. A lifted thumb was the cheapest way to explore the country. For some travelers, it was the last decision they ever made.
Milat's method wasn't random. He chose isolated locations. He targeted young people traveling alone or in pairs. He exploited the very freedom that brought backpackers to Australia in the first place.
What the Inquiry Can—and Cannot—Accomplish
The parliamentary committee has powers that weren't available during the original investigation—the ability to compel testimony and documents that may reveal connections missed decades ago. The report is expected by June 30th, 2026.
But investigators caution that definitive links may be impossible to establish after so many years, especially with Milat dead. He never confessed. He maintained his innocence throughout his trial and during twenty-five years in prison. He never showed remorse.
For families who have waited decades, this inquiry may finally provide answers. Others may never know for certain what happened to the people they loved.
The seven known victims of the Belanglo murders were travelers from Britain, Germany, and Australia, ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-two. Their names: Deborah Everist. James Gibson. Simone Schmidl. Gabor Neugebauer. Anja Habschied. Caroline Clarke. Joanne Walters.
The inquiry cannot punish Ivan Milat—he is beyond that now. But it can establish truth. It can provide closure. And it can examine why so many warning signs went unheeded, ensuring these failures never happen again.
For those with information about missing persons from the 1970s through 1990s in Australia—particularly travelers who vanished while hitchhiking—the parliamentary inquiry is actively seeking witnesses. The scope extends to international victims from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand.
The full accounting may never come. But after three decades, someone is finally asking the right questions.
