Australia’s serial killer and a man who kidnapped and murdered hitchhikers, using most of his victims as shooting practice, Ivan Milat has died at the age of 74.
Ivan Milat who before his death was serving a life sentence for killing seven backpackers between 1989 and 1992 and dumping their bodies in a New South Wales forest, died of cancer in a Sydney hospital early on Sunday local time.
Ivan Milat had earlier been transferred to the Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital due to his condition worsening after he was diagnosed with terminal oesophagus and stomach cancer earlier this year. Sources close to the Backpack Murderer explained that he had been “in agony” in the past few weeks and believed he was “only days away from his death bed”
According to the report by BBC, the Police said Milat’s lifelong refusal to admit his crimes had hampered further investigations into the killings and other unsolved cases.
His murder victims were three Germans, two Britons and two Australians. All were aged between 19 and 22.
Ivan Milat was arrested after targeting another backpacker, British man Paul Onions, who escaped and alerted police.
A subsequent trial heard that Milat had searched for hitchhikers to abduct from a major highway between Sydney and Melbourne.
The bodies of his victims were found buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 120km (75 miles) south-west of Sydney, in 1992 and 1993.