Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killer - The Ivan Milat story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Ivan Milat is probably Australia's most notorious serial killer, murdering as many as 20 hitchhikers in or near Belanglo State Forest

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out of trouble. And I guess at some point in his adult life, he decides, hey, I'm going to unalive some people. Sounds like fun. So one day when he's 26 years old, he's driving along outside of town and he picks up these two hitchhikers, two women. And he's trying to chat them up And I guess these women are polite, but they don't really find him all that charming. And this pisses Ivan off. So he pulls the car over and he pulls out a knife and he threatens them with it. And then he assays at least one of them. And then he pulls over at a gas station and somehow these two women get away from him and they go and they report him to the police.

So then bam, police they go and arrest him. But unfortunately, he somehow ends up getting. acquitted of this crime. And so 17 years pass, and he's 45 now, and Ivan decides to strike again. And one day, he's driving along, and he sees a young couple walking along the road. They're both 19, and they're hitchhiking to some kind of hippie festival. So Ivan pulls up, and he's like, good I might, or whatever Australian say, and he offers them a ride. And so they get in, and they're all chatting, I guess, and as they chat, he drives them through Belangelo state forest, which is a forest in this area. But then he decides to pull over and he

forces the couple to walk through the trees. Now we don't know how he forced them, probably by knife point, because once they're deep in the forest, boom, he stabs the boyfriend a bunch of times. Then he stabs the girlfriend and then he beats her until she's unalived. Then three weeks later, he's driving along and he spots another backpacker. This guy, his names onions. So Ivan pulls over and he offers him a ride and onions is like, that would be brilliant bruv, because, you know, he's English. So he gets in and as they're driving through Belangelo State Forest, they're chatting and onions starts getting a really bad feeling about Ivan. Because Ivan's asking him way too many questions. And that is when boom, Ivan pulls the car over and he

pulls out of pew-poo. And onions is like, oh bloody hell. And he jumps out of the car and he runs away. So Ivan, he gets out of the car and he runs after him and blam, blam, he fires his pew-poo, but he keeps missing, lucky for onions. And ultimately, Onions is able to run far enough away and he flags down a passing car and he is able to escape. And later, Onions is at the police station and he reports Ivan, but for whatever reason, police don't do anything. I don't know if they don't have enough information to investigate or what, but nothing happens to Ivan. So this psychopath just keeps going. And about a year later, he strikes again.

He's driving along the road and he picks up yet another hitchhiker, a German woman, and he drives her to Palangelo State Forest and he ends up unaliving her with a knife. 11 months after that, he picks up a German couple who are hitchhiking across Australia. And he drives them to the forest and there he shoots the guy six times and he decapitates the woman. Four months later, he picks up a pair of English women, hitchhikers. And again, he drives them to the forest, and he stabs one of them a bunch of times, and he shoots the other. Now, of course, over the years, all these missing hitchhikers and backpackers, they've been reported missing by their families. But so far, none of their bodies have been found. Like, where do you even

begin to look for the body of a missing hitchhiker? They're traveling across the country. Like, They could be anywhere. Well, in this case, they actually do find them. Because a few months later, after Ivan had unalive the two English women, two runners are in the Balangelo State Forest. And they're participating in some orientering event. It's like an event where they're supposed to navigate through the forest. And while they're there, suddenly, boom, they come across some human remains,

remains belonging to one of the English women. And so they contact police. And the next day, police go out and they see. search that area and they find the remains of the other English woman who was with her. Then, a year later, a local man is out in the forest and he's collecting firewood and he stumbles across the remains of the boyfriend from that 19-year-old couple Ivan had unalived years before. So, police start combing through the area again and they find the remains of the girlfriend from that couple. A month after that, police are still looking and they find the remains

of three more people, the German hitchhiker and the German couple that Ivan had unalived. And that is when police start thinking they might have a serial killer on their hands. I think it's fair to say that given that we now have seven bodies recovered, that we do have a serial killer. And so police, they start looking at people who live in or around the area where the victims were found. And there is one local guy who they know of who not only has a criminal record, but also has a history of violence, a guy who had been credibly accused of attacking and essaying two hitchhiking women all those years ago and went to court for it. That guy is in fact Ivan.

So police start investigating and looking into Ivan. But unfortunately, he's just a suspicious guy with a criminal record. There's nothing tying him directly to these murders. Until. Okay, here's the thing about what Ivan is doing. The way he's murdering people does in fact make him. a serial killer and a potential serial killer is big news. So all the news stations are definitely going to report on it. And sometimes news like this, it's so big that it ends up getting

international coverage. And this particular story is definitely getting international coverage. And so all the way over in jolly old England, a man is watching TV and he's watching the news. That man is onions. And so onions, he sees... this news report about a bunch of bodies being found in Australia in the Belangelo State Forest, and onions, he's like, Roy, that was the bloke that was shooting at me. And so he calls the Australian feds, and he tells them about what happened to him all those years ago when he was in Australia, that he was hitchhiking and a man offered him a ride, and then he pulled out a pew-pue, and he was chasing him around with it trying to shoot him. And so the feds fly him out,

from England all the way to Australia so that he can be a key witness and help him. them solve this case. And they end up showing him a picture of Ivan and onions looks right at that picture and he's like, right, that's the bastard. So then, bam, 50 police officers go and raid Ivan's family compound. And here's actually some like news footage of it. And if you pause, you can see all of the officers gathered there during the raid. And during this raid, they find pew-pues that match the type of pew-pues that were used in the murders. And they find backpacks and other personal items that belong to the missing hitchhikers. So pro is definitely guilty. And so, kaboom, they end up arresting Ivan and they charge him with murdering seven people and a bunch of

other stuff. Now, here's what's crazy though. They only charge him with the murders that they could actually prove that he did. But they suspect that he was responsible for almost 20 murders in the area, maybe even more. They just couldn't prove it. Because apparently hitchhikers used to go missing in that area all the time. But whatever, the seven murder. that they could prove were enough to put him away. And so he goes to trial and he's found guilty and he's given seven life sentences, one for each murder. And he spends the next 23 years in prison

and then he dies in prison of cancer. So. To realize the future America needs, we understand what's needed from us. To face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this.

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Terms apply. Good for him.