Cut to the bone: How Australia’s most notorious serial killer ‘got off’ chopping up his own finger

The men who daily guarded Ivan Milat have revealed how Australia’s worst serial killer revelled in his notoriety and would do anything for attention... including cutting off his own finger. ‘He will probably die happy. He deserves to die anonymously in his cell,’ said one of them.

• End is near for evil serial killer Ivan Milat
• Ivan Milat’s victims, murder secrets and his painful death

He is the “attention seeking grub’’ that will die wearing a smile.

That is the opinion of some of the men that knew Ivan Milat best with former Goulburn correction officers revealing Australia’s worst serial killer revelled in his notoriety.

“He wants more than anything to be famous,’’ said one of Milat’s former prison guards.

“I don’t think he cared what people said about him. He just wanted them to be talking about him. He would love all the attention he is getting now. He will probably die happy. He deserves to die anonymously in his cell.’’

Terminally-ill Milat is wheeled from hospital yesterday to Long Bay jail. Picture: Diimex

Milat’s biggest fear was being forgotten. Of being a nobody.

That’s what I learned whilst writing Australia’s Most Murderous Prison – Inside the Walls of Goulburn Jail.

In a series of interviews conducted for the book, those who knew the monster best spoke of a desperately lonely man who would do anything for attention.

Including cutting off his own finger…

The following is an excerpt from Australia’s Most Murderous Prison – Inside the Walls of Goulburn Jail by James Phelps.

Convicted backpacker murderer Ivan Milat after getting treatment at the hospital for his left pinky finger. Picture: John Grainger

MR MILAT’S MAIL

The officer picked up the chunky envelope addressed to the High Court of Australia.

Bit heavy for a bit of paper – better have a look.

The officer slowly, carefully sliced open the package that a Mr. Ivan Milat was attempting to send to Australia’s final court of appeal.

Ivan Milat had cut off his finger and tried to mail it out of Supermax.

He shook the envelope over a table.

Plop.

A blood splattered tissue hit the desk.

What do we have here?

The officer, wearing protective gloves, slowly pulled away tissue. One layer, another layer, a third.

And there it was . . .

A bloody finger inside a bloody tissue.

Ivan Milat had cut off his finger and tried to mail it out of Supermax.

Milat is led to jail to start life behind bars.

‘Help!’ the officer cried over the intercom. ‘Come here. Come here now. I need help.’

Frantic officers burst through the door and into Milat’s cell. The serial killer, now a serial self-mutilator, was sitting on the edge of the bed, his left hand holding his right.

‘At first he looked calm,’ an officer recalled. ‘Even relaxed. But he wasn’t being tough or anything like that. He was so placid because he was about to pass out. He was turning white.’

Milat pulled back the tissue, exposing a bloody stump.

He was missing the little finger on his right hand . . . from the top knuckle up anyway.

‘They get issued a BIC razor blade every week to shave. They have to hand the old one in before they get the new one,’ said a Goulburn Supermax full-timer.

Ivan Milat and his seven backpacker victims. Picture: Rick Rycroft.

‘The officer is supposed to check the old razor to make sure it is all there. The guys obviously didn’t check to see if [Milat’s]BIC still had the blade in it. They put it in the tub and just issued him with a new one.’

Milat wasn’t reinventing the wheel when he prised the steel from the shaver.

‘You just break the plastic surrounds of the BIC and you produce the blade,’ the veteran continued. ‘It’s easy to do. So he used the blade to hack into the finger, but he couldn’t get through it, not all the way. What he did next was just gruesome. He got to the bone with the blade and stalled. I’m not sure if it had become too blunt or had broken, but [the razor] couldn’t finish the job.’

Look away now if you are squeamish. Seriously . . . skip a par.

‘So he broke the bone,’ the officer continued. ‘Not sure how. Maybe he jammed it into a wall and stomped on it, maybe he just snapped it with his other hand. We aren’t sure, but he broke it. It was broken most of the way through, but not all the way through.’

Enter a plastic picnic knife he had smuggled into the room . . . the kind designed to cut through a T-bone steak.

‘He used that to finish the bone,’ said the officer. ‘He sawed his way through the rest.’

Milat was calm, cool and collected when he was finally found.

‘He was nearly passed out when we got to the door,’ said an officer. ‘He was struggling big time. The door was open and he was sitting on the bed. He looked calm for a second, but he suddenly went lethargic and all limp. He had lost a heap of blood, but he must of drained it in the toilet or the shower because there was only a bit of blood in the room. Not as much as you would expect, and I’ve seen a lot worse.’

Milat pictured sometime during his murderous rampage.

Milat was rushed to Goulburn Hospital where ‘medical staff were unable to say whether the severed finger, which had been placed on ice, could be saved.’

‘We were told he hardly said a word when he went to the hospital,’ said an officer. ‘The blokes that were there told us he had a bit of a smirk on his face because, despite the pain, he was Ivan Milat. It was an ego thing. The nurses immediately knew who he was and he got off on it. That’s why he did shit like this.’

But did they save the finger?

‘They didn’t,’ the guard said. ‘They never even bothered. Why would they? It was on ice and all that, but there was no attempt. Who would want to save Ivan Milat?’

Supermax guard Kevin Camberwell claimed Milat chopped off his digit in a bloody bid to escape: ‘He knew it was never going to get past security. All the mail coming in and out of there is screened. Of course it was found – and that is what he would have wanted. He would have been hoping he could escape while on escort to hospital.’

That was never going to happen, not with four armed, high-risk escorts transferring him to Goulburn Hospital.

Now … Ivan Milat’s most recent mug shot. Then … Undated file photo of Milat.

‘He was always faking injuries to try to get out of the High-Risk Management Correctional Centre,’ said former Goulburn supervisor Dave Farrell. ‘He reckoned the air-conditioning was playing up. He would claim it was poisoned and point to his head. It would be all red because he had stood rubbing it on the wall for half a day. He would say he was getting rashes and needed to move out. He would try anything and everything to get himself out. He was a serial pest.’

Another guard, who worked closely with Milat, said the finger-severing stunt was purely for attention and had nothing to do with an impossible escape attempt.

Milat started with hunger strikes and then progressed to self mutilation. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

‘It goes to show he is not completely insane because he buzzed up,’ said the Supermax officer. ‘That means he pressed the knock-up system [a prison intercom used by the inmates in case of emergency] to alert the officer in the control room that he was hurt. They alerted the security units and they went in to help him. He was found before the letter. It was all for attention. He just wanted to have a break from the normal routine and go and look into the eyes of the public when they recognised who he was.’

Camberwell said that experts had predicted Milat would hurt himself.

‘The psychiatrist warned us that he would eventually start mutilating because he couldn’t kill anyone,’ he said.‘He killed because he was addicted to harm and mutilation, and they said he would need to fulfil that urge. In prison, in almost exclusive segregation, the only way he could do that was by hurting himself. And that is exactly what he did. He started with hunger strikes and then progressed.’