30: Who helped Ivan Milat? | 60+ Unsolved Murders

Ivan Milat was convicted of seven murders and died in a prison hospital bed in 2019, still insisting he didn't do it. Almost nobody in Australia believes him. But a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders and missing persons is now asking a different, more uncomfortable question: were seven enough?

This week, Rich and Nick dig into the growing list of cold cases with Milat's name attached to them - from a stabbing on a beach when he was 22, to a body found after he was already behind bars - and sit down with a former NSW detective pushing for a coercive-powers commission to finally crack them.

• The near-miss problem: Englishman Paul Onions, a gun, a rope, a highway shootout - and the report to police that went nowhere until bodies started turning up in a state forest
• The Wanda Beach problem: a 1965 double murder, a police artist's sketch, a photo of a 22-year-old Milat shown to the sitting Premier, and a resemblance nobody can quite explain away
• The ballistics problem: an 18-year-old hitchhiker, a Ruger 10/22 rifle, and free bullets that matched a gun already tied to two of Milat's known victims — with no charge ever laid
• The timeline problem: a 16-year-old's murder in the Hunter Valley that happened after Milat's arrest, and what that does to the theory that he always worked alone
• The institutional problem: a 12-day turnaround letter from the NSW Homicide Squad, a cold case process that reviews old files instead of starting fresh, and why the families still waiting call it a desktop exercise

Some of this is forensic - ballistics, timelines, photographs held up side by side. Some of it is just the arithmetic of a man who was, by his own family's account, capable of far worse than what he was ever tried for, working alone in a state forest for the better part of two decades before one man got away.

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The Conspiracy Cabal doesn't promote conspiracy theories — we examine them. We search for the kernel of truth in every story, exploring how conspiracies start, why they persist, and what drives people to believe them.

Contact the show at [email protected]

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