Milat
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Asked whether ‘any greater priority was given to Ivan’, Gordon replied, ‘Well, he [Clive] did order the dogs, or surveillance people, to watch Ivan’s comings and goings, but that was only for about four weeks all up. No other higher priority was given to it.’ Asked what should have happened, Gordon said, ‘Well, you would think at the least telephone intercepts on his [Ivan’s] phone and probably listening devices . . . ordered for his house . . . We definitely would have had enough to convince a judge [to issue an authorising warrant]. And that could have revealed some incriminating evidence, had they been on early enough.’
Noel Newnham, former Queensland Police commissioner and at the time a visiting fellow of the Australian Graduate School of Police Management at Charles Sturt University in Manly, appeared on the Sunday program, apparently endorsing Gordon’s view of events. He was asked a series of leading questions, including this one: ‘As an independent analyst of this case is it fair to say on the strength of the hitchhiker abductions, it could have been solved by Christmas?’ Newnham replied, ‘I don’t think that’s an unfair comment.’
The program claimed that ‘bad police work allowed the person who attacked Paul Onions to go on and kill another five innocents’ and spoke of ‘the heavy price paid by a keen detective’. Gordon’s own assessment was, ‘I can’t deny I’m bitter. I think I was treated pretty badly.’
The Sunday program made no attempt to challenge Gordon’s version of the backpacker investigation, which was frequently at odds with the facts. He told Sunday, for example, that hypnotising Alex Milat destroyed ‘a potentially good witness’ and should have been used only as a last resort. Alex was hypnotised only after close examination of the facts by me and my colleagues on the task force and after consultation with police lawyers. The decision to hypnotise him was made only after he had given and signed a detailed statement. The facts contained in that statement would not be damaged by hypnosis. It was viewed by all of us at the time as a ‘last resort’ that might, perhaps, yield information that could prove, disprove or add to assertions contained in his statement. As a member of the task force, Gordon should have known this, although his subsequent criticism implied he didn’t.
Gordon’s account of how he came to check the criminal histories of Richard, Alex, Ivan and other members of the Milat family was simply not true. Gordon researched the criminal histories of the Milats because I told him to. When he failed to check the pre-computer records (causing him to inform me, in the presence of Rod Lynch and others, that none of the Milats had a serious criminal record), I sent him back to examine them. He returned a day or two later and declared, ‘Ivan’s our man.’ Gordon’s enthusiasm for Ivan was understandable, but I was concerned by the way he spoke about the 1971 rape charge against Ivan as if it were ‘evidence’ that could be admitted in court against Ivan in the backpacker case. As even the most junior police officer should have known, it wasn’t evidence and it wouldn’t be admissible in court. Gordon’s only interest was in incriminating Ivan, but such a single-minded presumption of guilt risked overlooking crucial exculpatory evidence, and we could not afford to let this happen; that’s why I told Gordon to look for any reasons why Ivan might not be the backpacker killer. The idea that I was arguing against Ivan’s guilt, as Gordon implied to the Sunday program, is completely false.
The claim that surveillance police were put onto Ivan ‘only for about four weeks’, as Gordon told Sunday, omitted one key fact: that it was cut short because of Gordon’s own actions. The unit was assigned to target Ivan on 26 February and surveillance continued until 4 April. It was discontinued because of information received by the task force that Ivan had been tipped off that police were asking questions about him. It was Gordon himself who caused Ivan to be tipped off through his clumsy inquiries at the RTA. This forced us to suspend surveillance in order to minimise operational risks to the investigation. Surveillance was resumed three weeks later and continued until Ivan’s arrest.
According to Gordon, phone intercepts and listening devices for Ivan’s house should have been sought. ‘We definitely would have had enough to convince a judge [to issue an authorising warrant],’ Gordon said. ‘And that could have revealed some incriminating evidence, had they been on early enough.’ This was not true. There were insufficient grounds to justify an application for either a phone intercept or a listening device until Paul Onions made his identification of Ivan on 5 May 1994. Following that identification, an application was made and granted for an intercept on Ivan’s phone. The intercept was in operation from 19 May until Ivan’s arrest. Surveillance had revealed that Ivan’s house had a sophisticated electronic alarm system, which meant it was impracticable to install listening devices. This information, too, was available within the task force and should have been known to Gordon.
Gordon’s wider claim of inaction and delays in dealing with critical information received during late 1993 and early 1994 demonstrates his failure to understand the problems the task force was facing during that period. Literally tens of thousands of pieces of information were pouring into the task force and the police did not have an adequate information management system. The first priority for the task force was to ensure that no information received was lost. The second was to create an appropriate information management system. (Both these issues have been discussed earlier in this book.) By the time the task force closed its doors it had more than 1.8 million original documents, files and pieces of information/intelligence, most of which flowed into the task force during the first six months of its operation. While delays did occur, the systems we introduced ensured that no information or opportunities would be overlooked, and that all investigative avenues would be followed up, accounted for and reviewed, increasing the likelihood of an arrest or arrests followed by successful prosecutions. It was not a race to the finish line where mistakes and omissions could be tolerated; finding and then convicting the killer meant covering every possible angle and not making mistakes.
After his appearance on the Sunday program, Noel Newnham wrote to me. Among other things, he said:
I did not know of Paul Gordon, or of any person’s removal from the task force or resignation from the Service, until the show went to air.
A great deal of the information they gave me was capable of being portrayed in a negative way, and indeed was put to me in that way, but I put a balanced and a more constructive view on their information. Many of those points were matters for judgement and I expressed the view that no criticism could be made on the information available.
A good example of this might be the report to the effect that when Gordon proposed that Ivan Milat was the offender and should be closely targeted you told him to try to show why Milat could not be the offender. I expressed the view that that was sound management and good leadership, and that it indicated you wanted to ensure your people kept an open mind and did a good job. My opinion does not seem to have survived the editing process, and I was disappointed by that.
Newnham went on to say he was supportive of the record of the task force in such matters as ‘the hypnotising of a witness, the time of applications for telephone intercept warrants, and the time of the execution of search warrants’.
While sentencing Ivan the day before the Sunday program went to air, Justice David Hunt pointedly commended the task force for its ‘extensive and painstaking detection work’. Following the Sunday program, Acting Police Commissioner Neil Taylor put out a media release, ‘Police Service supports senior investigators’, which read, in part: ‘Chief Superintendent Clive Small and the current commander of Task Force Air, Detective Inspector Rod Lynch, are highly regarded investigators who have been responsible for management of a complex and meticulous investigation conducted in difficult circumstances.’ Taylor also drew attention to Justice Hunt’s praise of the investigation. Police Headquarters had also endorsed my removal of Gordon from the task force. Years later, during an interview with Crime Investigation Australia, Mark Tedeschi QC, by then senior Cro
wn prosecutor, said of the investigation, ‘[It was] amazing police work. Amazingly painstaking.’
At the time I considered seeking legal advice over the Sunday program, but I decided not to pursue the matter in case it was used by Ivan’s lawyers as grounds for an appeal.
Gordon’s campaign against me and the task force did not end with the Sunday program. Three weeks later The Sun-Herald ran two stories. One, headlined ‘Milat hunting party’, reported that ‘New information has come to light that a “hunting party” of three or more men may have been involved in some of the Belanglo State Forest backpacker murders.’ According to the story, these men, who had supposedly not been interviewed by Task Force Air, had ‘boasted about bodies buried in the forest, long before the backpackers’ fate was publicly known’. One of the men was said to have been ‘a regular drinker at the Blue Boar Inn in Bowral, the scene of one of the last sightings of murdered British backpackers Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters’. He was said to closely fit ‘a profile of the murderer prepared by criminologist Paul Wilson before Milat’s arrest’.
This was not new information. The matter had been fully investigated after one of the men was named as a suspect by Tim Bristow, a notorious convicted criminal, private eye, bouncer and standover man who died in 2003. No evidence was found to support Bristow’s allegation, or the claim that Clarke and Walters had been seen at the Blue Boar Inn in Bowral. The task force had not obtained, nor was it aware of, any profile of the backpacker murderer by Paul Wilson.
On the same page was a second article headlined, ‘Call for review of police probe’. The report stated that the then New South Wales shadow police minister, Andrew Tink, supported a call by Gordon for a review of the backpacker murder investigation: ‘[I]t was important authorities investigate why a statement by British tourist Paul Onions to Bowral police when Milat shot at him on January 25, 1990, allegedly disappeared.’ Gordon himself advocated a much broader review: ‘The overall task force investigation should be reviewed to identify any possible mistakes.’ The Sunday program had claimed that ‘bad police work allowed the person who attacked Paul Onions to go on and kill another five innocents’.
As with the Blue Boar Inn claim, there was no need for a ‘probe’. It had already been done. Before Ivan’s arrest, Task Force Air conducted an extensive search for documents relating to Onions’ statement; two months after Ivan’s arrest Rod Lynch, then commander of the task force, had submitted a report on Onions’ missing statement and other records at Bowral Police to Police Internal Affairs. Following an investigation, disciplinary action was taken against a number of officers and the matter was closed. During an interview with Neil Mercer for his book Fate: Inside the backpacker murders investigation, Rod Lynch concluded that failing to follow up Onions’ statement was a serious mistake, but probably didn’t have a material effect on the outcome: the driver who picked up Onions had been described but not identified, and the connection with Milat had not been established at the time Onions made his report. ‘I think it would have been a stretch to get him,’ Lynch said.
In an interview for Mark Whittaker and Les Kennedy’s book Sins of the Brother: The definitive story of Ivan Milat and the backpacker murders, Gordon told how he hadn’t been at the task force long when his team leader, Detective Sergeant Royce Gorman, handed him a file and said, ‘Have a look at this. I’ve tried to get Mr Small to have a look and he isn’t that interested.’ It was a file on the Milats. According to Gordon, Gorman had been keen to have someone look into this family for a while. Unfortunately, Royce Gorman died in 2011 following a series of long illnesses, so he cannot now be asked for his version of events. But again, Gordon’s version is misleading.
In January 1994 the task force was divided into teams. Royce Gorman was in charge of the team that included Gordon. Rod Lynch, the deputy commander of the task force, Detective Inspectors Bob Godden and Bob Benson and me—the four most senior officers on the task force, the leadership team if you like—assigned each team one or more tasks. One of the tasks assigned to Gorman was to look into the Milat family. It therefore makes little sense for Gorman to have claimed, ‘I’ve tried to get Mr Small to have a look and he isn’t that interested,’ when I was part of the team that had specifically assigned him that task. Furthermore, Gorman and Lynch were part of a small circle of close personal friends. If Gorman had been dissatisfied with any aspect of the investigation, he would have had no hesitation in discussing it with Lynch, who would certainly have listened. Gorman raised no such concerns.
As far as I am concerned, the inaccurate and self-serving claims made by Gordon after Ivan’s conviction only confirm that I was right to remove him from Task Force Air because he lacked ‘the level of competence, understanding and communication required of a relatively senior detective on a major investigation’. As I have demonstrated in the preceding pages, Gordon’s view of the backpacker investigation, and his role in it, simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
14
HOW MANY MORE?
In the two years between Ivan’s arrest and conviction, Task Force Air continued to investigate allegations against Ivan and other members of the Milat family, and to reinvestigate unsolved disappearances and murders. The focus was on people aged between seventeen and 40 who had gone missing in New South Wales between 1970 and 1992, and on unsolved murders, attempted murders and other crimes of violence in which a .22 calibre rifle and/or a knife had been used. The task force paid special attention to victims known to have been backpackers, hitchhikers or travellers. Help was sought from all Australian State and Territory law enforcement agencies.
As a result of information received, the task force identified 43 missing persons and sixteen unsolved murders for investigation. Nine missing persons were found; DNA testing identified a body found in Perth in 1986 as belonging to a woman who, not long before she was reported missing in 1980, had travelled from Darwin to Perth. There was no indication that Ivan had been involved in the disappearance of any of the remaining 33 missing persons.
In thirteen of the sixteen unsolved murders, no evidence was found to implicate Ivan. In three cases there was cause for suspicion, but insufficient evidence to justify the prosecution of Ivan or any other person. I have no doubt, however, that one of these three was Ivan’s eighth victim or, to be exact, the first of his eight victims.
Peter David Letcher was only eighteen years old when he left his home in Bathurst to visit his girlfriend in Busby, near Liverpool. He was unemployed and had not been in contact with his family for two years. A week later, on 13 November 1987, with 44 cents in the bank and a borrowed $30 in his pocket, he is thought to have booked a rail ticket from Central station in Sydney to Bathurst. He hitched a lift from Busby to Liverpool with the intention of catching a train to Central. It was the last time he was seen alive. Nine weeks later, on 21 January 1988, Letcher’s body was found near a fire trail in the Jenolan Caves State Forest, about 800 metres off the Jenolan Caves Road and 20 kilometres from the caves, by a family visiting the forest. The body was lying face-down in a hollow, next to a log and partly covered by branches and leaf litter. Despite having been in the forest only a short time, the body was badly decomposed. The upper clothing revealed signs of multiple stab wounds to the back. Five bullet wounds were found in the back of the skull. Three .22 calibre bullets were recovered nearby.
In June 1995 a preliminary re-examination of the crime scene was undertaken by the task force, but the weather and the demands of the approaching trial meant that any further efforts had to be put on hold. A week after Ivan was convicted, however, the task force was back at the Letcher crime scene conducting a large-scale search using metal detectors. A fourth .22 calibre bullet was found.
A ballistics examination of the three bullets recovered at the crime scene in 1988 suggested they were fired from the same Ruger 10/22 model rifle that had been used to murder Caroline Clarke and Gabor Neugebauer. The fourth bullet recovered was also identified as a .22 calibre, but it was too badly
deteriorated to be able to identify the type of weapon used to fire it.
Several other factors pointed to Ivan’s involvement, including the location and circumstances of the attack, the violence associated with it and the ‘burial’ of the victim. Interestingly, Ivan had worked in the Jenolan Caves area during some of the days Letcher had been at Busby.
Despite all this, there was insufficient evidence to charge Ivan with the murder of Letcher.
As part of the Letcher investigation, the task force conducted a review of all outstanding persons (34 in all) reported missing in the Nepean, Blue Mountains, Central Western, Orana and Southern Highlands police districts between 1 July 1984 and 30 June 1994. Twenty-seven of the 34 had been sighted after being reported missing, meaning they had voluntarily left home for some reason. No connection could be found between Ivan and the other seven.
The second outstanding unsolved murder case involved a twenty-year-old woman we will call ‘Mary’, whose car was found on Parkes Way, Canberra, on the evening of 20 February 1971. The car had run out of petrol and Mary was last seen walking towards a car with a male driver that had stopped in front of her car. Three months later Mary’s body was found 10 kilometres away in the Fairbairn Pine Plantation in the Australian Capital Territory’s north-east. She had been raped and her body covered with pine branches. The cause of death could not be conclusively established, although it appeared she had been strangled. One month before the body was found, Ivan was charged with the rape of one of two hitchhikers he had picked up. The location of the attack, its timing and circumstances, and the makeshift ‘burial’ of the victim all gave rise to suspicions that Ivan might have been involved. Work records also indicated that Ivan was working nearby and had the opportunity.