1994: Clive Small, capturing Milat

FORMER detective Clive Small is not yet done with serial killer Ivan Milat.

Clive Small

IN September 1992, a couple of men were orienteering in the Belanglo State Forest, 120km southwest of Sydney, when they noticed a rancid stench.

Beneath a mound of sticks they could see clumps of hair and the heel of a shoe. The next day, another body was found. A year later, Detective Clive Small got a call to set up a task force - a third body had been uncovered.

Belanglo, it seemed, was a killing field.

Small, now 67, had worked on some of Australia's most high-profile cases: the disappearance of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay, the murder of Cabramatta MP John Newman, and the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank.

But this was seen as a poison chalice. The chances of success were slim.

On the day Small was driving out to Belanglo State Forest in NSW for the first time he got word a fourth body had been discovered. "As you could imagine, the media was going ballistic," Small tells me. "I knew the case was going to be very, very difficult and may never be solved. The bodies were in the middle of an isolated forest and had been there for several years. They were backpackers and no one knew where or whom they'd been with beforehand."

Seven bodies in total were uncovered.

The pressure was immense. "Everyone was thinking the same thing - we have to catch him before he kills again."

The case generated intense media interest, both here and in Europe, and police were swamped with millions of calls, tip-offs and scraps of evidence.

Members of the Milat family had been flagged as possible perpetrators on a list that contained dozens of names, but there was nothing definitively linking anyone to the crime.

The breakthrough came when two of the pieces in the vast jigsaw were fitted together. In 1990, English backpacker Paul Onions had been hitchhiking on the highway south of Mittagong when he was picked up by a man who pulled a gun on him.

Onions escaped and flagged down a passing motorist, Joanne Berry, who took the terrified traveller to Bowral police. The initial police report went nowhere - but three years later, after hearing about the bodies discovered in Belanglo, Onions and Berry contacted Small's task force. Small now had a witness, and another to corroborate his account; Onions was flown to Australia, where he was able to identify Ivan Milat and his distinctive moustache.

At dawn on May 22, 1994, more than 50 police surrounded Milat's house in Sydney's southwest, while hundreds more were positioned around houses belonging to his relatives. They phoned Milat, ordered him out and arrested him. Small had been overseeing the raids from Campbelltown Police Station, and, when things were running smoothly, drove to Milat's house. "Milat was sitting there calmly. He was a guy who thought he was still in control. I remember looking at him and thinking, 'This guy thinks this will all be over in an hour or two'." In 1996, Milat was found guilty of the seven murders and he lives out his days in the Goulburn Supermax, a prison within a prison.

Small rose to NSW assistant commissioner and at one point was a contender for the top job. But he'd made enemies within the hierarchy of the force and ran afoul of radio broadcaster Alan Jones. In 2003 his contract was not renewed. He worked for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption but retired in 2007 to write crime books and pursue Alan Jones for defamation, winning a substantial settlement.

But he's not yet done with Milat.

Small believes that a body found in Jenolan State Forest in 1988, that of 18-year-old Peter Letcher, is another of Milat's victims. "There could be more," he says. Do you think much about Milat now, I ask? "When I do it gives me great satisfaction, knowing he is going to die in jail and can do no more harm." Small is writing a book about the murders, due out next year.

ALSO IN 1994

* Films: Muriel's Wedding; Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

* The Cruel Sea wins four ARIAs for The Honeymoon is Over

* Wollemi Pine "living fossil" found in NSW

* Eight-digit telephone numbers introduced

* Former WA premier Brian Burke goes to jail