Letter-writing ladies just love convicted serial killer Ivan Milat
AS a balding, ageing, convicted serial killer sentenced to live out his life in a sunless cell, Ivan Milat has absolutely nothing going for him — but that doesn’t stop women writing to him.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
AS a balding, ageing, convicted serial killer sentenced to live out his life in a sunless cell, Ivan Milat has absolutely nothing going for him — but that doesn’t stop women writing to him.
If they are seeking some kind of bizarre romance, it’s just as well he is locked up for their sake.
AN INSIGHT INTO THE COLD MIND OF ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S WORST KILLERS
SERIAL KILLER IVAN MILAT DENIES ANY LINK TO COLD CASES
Milat suggests there is one man who got it right — Henry VIII, who had two of his wives beheaded.
“It’s just as if you said Henry VIII had the right idea how to deal with women,” Milat, 70, wrote in one of his letters from behind bars to his oldest nephew Alistair Shipsey.
“As you know there are a lot of wackos out there as well. A lot of them write to me at times. I tell you Al, there are some real crazy people out and about.”
His letters, written alone in his cell at Goulburn’s Supermax, reveal a man blaming everyone but himself for where he is, with no mention of sympathy for the families of the seven young backpackers who he killed in the Belanglo State Forest south of Sydney between 1989 and 1992.
They were shot, stabbed and one was decapitated while she was still alive, her head was never found. Police believe some of the backpackers may have been raped.
The letters give a rare insight into the mind of one the country’s most notorious killers as he whinges about his life and how he might send other parts of his body to the authorities just as he hacked off his own finger with a plastic knife and addressed it to a judge in 2009.
“I do battle to cope with this s...ty claustrophobic place, no windows, it’s like a cement coffin. I suffer badly at times, I think the walls close in, no air, it’s a real s ... feeling, no I will never plead with the pricks,” he wrote.
“I will send them parts of my hand first, I have been considering this for a while and only need half a reason to show them how I feel with their s...head ideas, there is not much they can do to me any more and at my age I don’t give a f...k.”
As you know there are a lot of wackos out there as well. A lot of them write to me at times. I tell you Al, there are some real crazy people out and about.
- Ivan Milat
He wrote in another letter: “I was framed by the police and now persecuted by the government.”
Shipsey, whose mother Olga is Milat’s oldest sister, has released 94 of the letters in a book, The Milat Letters, because he says they show the real Milat, not the monster he is portrayed.
“He is a good-hearted person. When my father died, Ivan paid for the funeral, we couldn’t afford it,” Shipsey, 55, says.
“He has a lot of concern for my mum.”
He believes Milat was framed by the police, claiming they planted what was overwhelming evidence against him in the house he shared with his later sister, Shirley Soire, in Eagle Vale, including the bolt of a Ruger10/22 rifle which had fired spent cartridges found next to three of the victims.
“He may have done a couple (of killings) but I don’t think he did them all,” Shipsey says.
Because of his former links to the Rebels bikie gang, Shipsey has not been allowed to visit Milat but he says his Uncle Ivan gets plenty of visitors, as well as letters from all over the world.
“Mum says he has a couple of women from the North Shore visiting him,’ Shipsey says.
“He has people from overseas writing to him, one is a professor from Japan.
“He told me that it was funny when women write to him from America because they always state they are white.”
They also lie about their age, according to Milat.
“I get my share of women writing to me — some real good looking ones, too (if it’s their photographs they’re sending). For some reason, they all say they’re around 20 to 30 years old, though their writing suggests they’re much older,” he wrote.
“I’m very careful of my replies. I’m not real keen writing to the young ones.”
In another letter he wrote to Shipsey: “I note your views on women. Perhaps you will have to find a deaf or blind one, as you say there are some weird ones about. I often get them writing to me, the f...en frightening things they say.”
One of his unlikeliest regular letter writers is Margaret, one of the two women he was acquitted of raping at knifepoint after picking them up as hitchhikers in 1971. His then-lawyer, the late John Marsden, had persuaded the jury that the girls were lesbians and liars.
I get my share of women writing to me - some real good looking ones, too (if it’s their photographs they’re sending).
- Ivan Milat
Margaret started writing to Milat after he was charged with the backpacker murders in 1994.
His first reply was to tell her that he thought of her “fondly”, as he signed off as he always does to this day with a stick figure, a halo over its head, like that used as the sign of the “Saint” in the old television series.
But he seems to have become fed up with her letters.
“I still hear from Margaret who is writing to me, though I think someone presses her button just to see what I say. This crazy sheila (in her 50s now) has been writing to me ever since my arrest and sending me weird photos. She is unbelievable,” Milat wrote.
Two women who don’t visit him are his daughter Lysine and Chalinder Hughes, his girlfriend at the time he was arrested and to whom he had given the green-and-white Benetton top he had taken from one of the backpackers, Caroline Clarke.
Lysine did not know until after Milat was arrested that he was her father. Milat had had an affair with Marilyn, the wife of his older brother Boris. The couple brought up Lysine although they knew Ivan was her father. After his arrest, Lysine sold her story to Woman’s Day magazine.
Milat reveals in his letters that he has received at least one marriage proposal.
“Why they write to me is a puzzle. I often get letters, even had some crazy f... from Mulewa prison writing to me (I used to write to her in the past — she was doing a few years and got out but it lasted about three months),” Milat wrote
“She started writing again; in her last letter she asked me to marry her. I haven’t replied yet.
“But every month someone new writes; the latest one was from Texas. She tells me she’s 25, white. I ought to ask her “why” as she only knows me from a website, and there’s nothing nice about me on it.”
Another woman spent years writing to him about she was trying to contact the dead backpackers and ask them who their murderer was. They never told her.
Shipsey says Milat is happy to reply to people to talk about his case — but not about sex.
“One of them was talking to him about sexual things and as soon as they start writing things like that, he cuts them off,” Shipsey says.
Originally published as Letter-writing ladies just love convicted serial killer Ivan Milat
Bridge too far: How icon would have been blocked by DA red tape
The difficulty of building something as grand as the Sydney Harbour Bridge would have to contend with a logjam of environmental and bureaucratic red tape, experts say.
Confusing one-pager sums up Sydney’s biggest problem
It’s the one-page document that exposes the snakes and ladders approval process tying the NSW DA process in knots. And the Premier, who asked for the step-by-step guide, has had enough.