Ivan Robert Marko Milat (27 December 1944 – 27 October 2019), commonly referred to in media as the Backpacker Murderer, was an Australian serial killer who abducted, assaulted, robbed and murdered two men and five women in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992. His modus operandi was to approach backpackers along the Hume Highway under the guise of providing them transport to areas of southern New South Wales, then take his victims into the Belanglo State Forest where he would incapacitate and murder them. Milat is also suspected of having committed many other similar offences around Australia.
Early life
Ivan Milat was born on 27 December 1944, to Croatian emigrant and labourer Stjepan Marko "Steven" Milat (1902–1983) and Margaret Elizabeth Piddleston (1920–2001), an Australian national. Ivan was the fifth of their 14 children.
The impoverished Milat family initially lived on a rural weatherboard cottage farm in Bossley Park, 36 kilometres west of Sydney, before relocating to Liverpool, New South Wales. By all accounts, Milat's parents were conscientious in raising, educating...