AP Photo/Rick Rycroft
Backpacker serial killer Ivan Milat secretly confessed to his crimes to his mother – and was in an incestuous sexual relationship with his own sister, who may have also been involved in the crimes. Those are the sensational claims today, as the convicted serial killer faces a terminal cancer diagnosis.
WATCH: Inside serial killer Ivan Milat’s prison cell
Milat, 74, who has been diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer, has long refused to admit his guilt, even though detectives are hopeful he may change his mind as he faces imminent death.
But former police officer and author Clive Small, who wrote the book Milat, Inside Australia’s Biggest Manhunt, claims youngest Milat brother George got the truth about Ivan’s alleged private confession to his mother Margaret. The mum of 13 children – who is now dead – always publicly insisted Ivan was innocent.
According to a report on news.com.au, youngest sibling George extracted the revelation from his mother after she returned from a prison visit, with the matriarch allegedly confessing to her son, ‘He admitted he was guilty,’
The report also alleges that Milat’s late sister Shirley also knew the truth and may have been involved in the crimes, with the publication reporting the book’s extraordinary allegation that Ivan and Shirley were in a sexual relationship.
The pair were sharing a house – which was filled with some of the murder victims’ possessions – at the time of his arrest.
According to news.com.au, George was quoted as saying in the book: ‘Shirley was in on it. I can’t really say Shirley did (commit murders), all I can do is say she was involved.’
Then there is the bombshell allegation that there was ‘incest in the family … and Ivan had been having sex with Shirley since the 1950s when she was in her twenties’.
Shirley, who was accused of trying to get rid of items from the home after Ivan’s arrest, died in 2003.
Author Small was commanding officer of the task force that charged Milat with the brutal killings of Joanne Walters, Caroline Clarke, Deborah Everist, James Gibson, Gabor Neugebauer, Anja Habschied and Simone Schmidl.
