No chance’ Milat will confess: Small

Ivan Milat won’t admit to the backpacker murders: he thinks he’s “still winning”.

Ivan Milat would have gone on killing if he hadn’t been caught, says the man who lead the backpacker murders investigation, former detective and assistant commissioner Clive Small.

Serial killer Ivan Milat should be approached by police in a new bid to convince him to confess to his crimes before he dies, says the man who led the team that captured him.

But former detective and assistant commissioner Clive Small says he believes there is close to no chance Milat will admit to the backpacker murders he was convicted of, or other murders and rapes.

“Ivan has not admitted to any of the crimes, despite the overwhelming evidence against him,” said Mr Small, who headed the backpacker murder task force.

“With him passing in the near future, the best thing one could expect from him is to admit to the crimes and give the family and relatives of the deceased people some peace in knowing what happened and that the offender has admitted the crimes.”

Milat was this week moved from Goulburn’s supermax prison to Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital, his days numbered after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, with tumours in his throat and stomach.

It is expected he will stay in a secure unit in the hospital, in handcuffs and ankle cuffs and watched by two guards, until at least next week. He is likely to next be moved to Long Bay jail hospital.

Mr Small says despite the odds being stacked heavily against Milat suddenly reversing his denials, NSW police should make the new attempt if they have not already done so.

“I do think the police should approach Milat and see if he will talk,” he said.

He added: “I don’t think there’s any chance he will at all. He is what I call a cool, callous person who had no concern for anybody.

“Ivan was a very nasty criminal and as far as I can see he would have gone on killing until he got arrested or killed himself.

“I think he feels while he hasn’t admitted to it he’s still winning. He’s still alive and they’re having to treat him reasonably despite what’s gone on.

“He feels he’s showing them who’s the boss still. He believes he’s the winner.”

Milat was convicted in 1996 of the murders of seven backpackers, who disappeared between December 1989 and April 1992.

The bodies of Deborah Everist and James Gibson from Victoria, Simone Schmidl from Germany, Anja Habschied and Gabor Neugebauer, also from Germany, and Joanne Walters and Caroline Clarke from the UK were discovered in Belanglo State Forest between September 1992 and November 1993.

Each had left Sydney to travel south, hitchhiking along the Hume Highway from near Liverpool. They were between 19 and 22 years old.

Mr Small says he is certain Milat murdered at least one other person, 18-year-old Peter Letcher, whose body was found in the Jenolan Caves State Forest in January 1988.

A ballistics examination of bullets recovered from the Letcher crime scene suggested they were fired from the same model rifle used to murder Clarke and Neugebauer, but Milat was never charged.