By Max Maddison
NSW Police explored whether infamous serial killer Ivan Milat was linked to the disappearance of 58 young people over three decades in every Australian jurisdiction, including German backpacker Nancy Grunwaldt, who disappeared after travelling down Tasmania’s east coast in 1993.
A list provided to NSW parliament by Police Minister Yasmin Catley comes after Legalise Cannabis MLC Jeremy Buckingham called for an inquiry into the “true extent of the crimes of Milat and his associates”. Premier Chris Minns told budget estimates this week he was open to the idea.
Ivan Milat, shown leaving an unsuccessful appeal hearing, was given a life sentence for the backpacker murders.Credit: Adam Pretty
Milat, who died in October 2019 at Long Bay jail hospital, was convicted over the murder of seven backpackers. Task Force Air was established in 1993 shortly after Milat’s first victims were discovered in Belanglo State Forest in the NSW Southern Highlands.
Buckingham has spent considerable time using parliamentary mechanisms to unveil more information about Milat and his crimes. On Tuesday, he asked the premier whether he believed a sketch of the Wanda Beach killer – relating to an unsolved murder of two teenage girls in January 1965 – bore a marked resemblance to Milat.
“Yes, remarkably similar,” Minns said.
Milat was charged with breaking and entering in 1964 and was placed in the Emu Plains corrections centre for 18 months.
In response to Buckingham’s call for an inquiry into Milat and his associates, Minns said: “I wouldn’t rule it out. I think that may be the necessary next step given the scale of some of the things that you’re mentioning.
“Perhaps the best thing for me to do is to meet with you – and I’m with you; it would be a privilege to meet victims’ families. I think that’s an important thing to do, to understand not just their circumstances and their anguish associated with the loss of their loved one.”
Taskforce Air had more than 20 detectives and analysts and led to the serial killer’s arrest in May 1994. Despite efforts by detectives to obtain a confession before Milat’s death, the 74-year-old showed no remorse for his crimes.
The list, sought by Buckingham, includes several cases previously linked to Milat, including Robyn Hickie, an 18-year-old dental nurse who was abducted near Newcastle in 1979, along with Amanda Robinson, 14, who went missing two weeks later at Swansea.
The disappearances span every state and territory in Australia, including two in Western Australia: Lorraine Kessey in 1977, and Pauline Walter, 1980. It includes Anna Liva, a 30-year-old Italian backpacker who went missing in Coober Pedy, an opal mining town in South Australia, in 1991.
The earliest missing person on the Taskforce Air list is Keren Rowland, 20, who went missing after her car broke down in Canberra in early 1971. Her remains were discovered three months later. Former NSW detective Clive Small, who led the original investigation, believed Milat was responsible for her death.
Police considered young people who went missing as recently as 1993: Carl Collins, a New Zealand tourist who vanished in Queensland, and Grunwaldt’s disappearance. Just two years ago, Tasmanian detectives searched a new area of bushland on the state’s east coast after a tip-off about the location of the 26-year-old’s remains. No trace of her body, clothes or bike has ever been found.
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