What judge David Hunt said when sentencing Ivan Milat for murder

On Saturday July 27, 1996 Supreme Court Judge David Hunt delivered his sentence in the matter of Regina v Ivan Robert Marko Milat, who was found guilty of seven counts of murder. This is his judgment.

• Serial killer Ivan Milat dies
• Inside the mind of a serial killer
• Families of victims united by grief

On Saturday July 27, 1996 Supreme Court Judge David Hunt delivered his sentence in the matter of Regina v Ivan Robert Marko Milat, who was found guilty of seven counts of murder. This is his judgment.

The prisoner (Ivan Robert Mark Milat) was charged with seven counts of murder.

Each of the victims was young — they were between nineteen and twenty-two years old. Each was travelling far from home, the inference being that they would not have been missed for some time if anything happened to them.

In my view, it is inevitable that the prisoner was not alone in that criminal enterprise, but I do not take that fact into account either in aggravation or mitigation when considering what sentences should be imposed.

Justice David Hunt.

It is sufficient here to record that each of the victims was attacked savagely and cruelly, with force which was unusual and vastly more than was necessary to case death, and for some form of psychological gratification.

MORE:

How backpacker helped convict Ivan Milat

Milat’s deadly path inside Belanglo Forest

Milat family still in denial about guilt

Cops believe Milat behind unsolved murders

Each of two of the victims was shot a number of times in the head. A third was decapitated, in circumstances which establish that she would have been alive at the time. The stab wounds to each of the three others would have cause paralysis, two of them having had their spinal cords completely severed. The multiple stab wounds to three of the seven victims would have been likely to have penetrated their hearts. There are signs that two of them had been strangled. All but one of them appears to have been sexually interfered with either before or after death.

These seven young persons were at the threshold of their lives, with everything to look forward to — travel, career happiness, love, family, and even old age.

Whatever the actual causes of their death may have been in each case, it is clear that they were subjected to behaviour which, for callous indifference to suffering and complete disregard of humanity, is almost beyond belief.

Artist's impression of Mark Tedeschi QC addressing the jury on the first day of Ivan Milat’s trial, which was presided over by Justice David Hunt.

They would obviously have been absolutely terrified, and death is unlikely to have been swiftly applied.

Above all, these truly horrible crimes of murder demand sentences which operate by way of retribution, or (as it is sometimes described) by the taking of vengeance for the injury which was done by the prisoner in committing them.

Not only must the community be satisfied that the criminal is given his just desserts, it is important that those whom the victims have left behind also feel that justice has been done.

Ivan Robert Marko Milat … I sentence you to penal servitude for life, commencing on 22 May 1994 and to be served for the term of your natural life.