The location of the teenagers' bodies confounded police as their belongings had cropped up in December 1989, 75 miles north. From the crime scene to the courtroom: the journey of a DNA sample. Both bodies were found lying face down, covered in branches. [11] He returned with police to the scene where two bodies were quickly discovered and later identified as Gibson and Everist. For other, typically older cases of John and Jane Does the names commonly given to unidentified people some remains may need to be exhumed. A week later, at 8am on October 13, Gabriele Jahnkes body was found at the bottom of a steep embankment on the side of the Pacific Highway at Ormeau, half way between Brisbane and Surfers Paradise. Police would speculate that the killer, or killers, was a local who knew the area due to the fact that the bodies had all been dumped deep within the forest (UPI, 8 October, 1993 Fear of Serial Killer Grips Town After More Backpacker Deaths). Police launched an intensive search, but the teenagers case was eventually filed as a missing person. Some time before the mid-1970s, Ivan Milat began a job driving trucks carting tyres to Goulburn, Yass, Canberra, Perth via Adelaide, Melbourne, Yass and Brisbane. His daughters remains have been found 15 metres off a track in the Fairburn Pine Plantation near the National Air Disaster Memorial. The bodies of the British women and the Australian couple were found close together, as were those of the three Germans. [36] On 28 June, Milat sacked his defence lawyer, Marsden, and sought legal aid to pay for his defence. From late 1989 or early 1990, Milat is working for the Department of Main Roads again, renamed as the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA). It's fairly dense highland scrub, with a swath of plantation pine down the middle. She would have been 22 that year. It quickly became apparent that the murders were all linked and there was an active serial killer stalking New South Wales (The Kingston Whig-Standard, 24 October, 1994 Man Goes on Trial in Backpacker Killing Case). The witness, a woman, said she and her mother had chatted with the girls at the hotel bar in July. If you speak to five psychiatrists, you get five separate opinions. After checking out, they were headed for Confest, planning to hitchhike to Albury. Grisly roadside discovery linked to a body found in the infamous Belanglo State Forest years ago, say police. First of all, there are millions of human bodies in the ocean at any given time. You wont scream, when I cut your throats will you?. During the dawn raids the NSW police had found a 22 Caliber rifle, that was an exact match to the type of gun that had been used in the backpacker murders, the police believed that to be too much of a coincidence so Walter was also arrest for questioning, but never charged with The monument lists seven names, but presumably the parents of 21-year-old Simone Schmidl wanted her to have something personal. Its been 52 years since the Beaumont children disappeared from Glenelg beach, Adelaide on Australia Day 1966. In 1994, a road worker named Ivan Milat was arrested at his nearby home. They were headed for Victoria to pick fruit and made it to the Bulli Pass, near Wollongong, where they reportedly asked for directions to the Hume Highway. Belanglo State Forest sits halfway between Canberra and Sydney. He binds the girls and tells them, I am going to kill you. The girls were teenage student nurses and flatmates who set off from Melbourne in June 1972 with camping gear and a plan to hitchhike to northern Queensland. Her body was found six weeks later five miles (8km) downstream. Milat gave evidence, saying he had picked up about 15 hitchhikers but not in the Hunter. Milat appeared in court on 23 May, but he did not enter a plea. And yet, Daniel Holdom was attracted to Belanglo too. [32] Police also confirmed that Milat had not been working on any of the days of the attacks[31][33] and acquaintances also told police about Milat's obsession with weapons. The 27-year-old was found hanged on September 27. "You can speculate about why, but I think it would be purely speculation. Less than four months later, on the 18th of April, 1992, two British backpackers, 21-year-old Caroline Clarke and 22-year-old Joanne Walters, disappeared. It would be some of his last moments in the outside world. A man testified that he had seen Milat at the Belmont hotel the night before Robyn disappeared. It can be challenging to extract useable DNA from old, degraded bones. Others are found with personal items, but still baffle investigators. Bodies of seven missing young people between the age of 19 and 22, five of whom were foreigners, were discovered partially buried in the Belanglo State Forest. Ultimately, the jury would side with the prosecution and they would find Ivan Milat guilty of the seven backpacker murders. Everist had been savagely beaten; her skull was fractured in two places, her jaw was broken and there were knife marks on her forehead. One was decapitated when she was still alive. They have both pleaded guilty to the charge of murder in the first degree, with special circumstances of it being pre-meditated, objective seriousness, actual use of a weapon, committed in company and gratuitous cruelty. Then there were these: Stuffed animals in the rain. This would be similar to the successful United States model, where the Missing Persons Unit at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification processes the bulk of the missing persons casework across the country. Officials said they found human remains in the Florida reserve where Laundrie went missing.. In May of 1994, there would finally be a breakthrough in the case when it was announced that 49-year-old roadworker, Ivan Milat, had been arrested during a dawn raid at his home in Eagle Vale. After a few weeks of investigating police dropped the case, regarding her as a runaway. the woman found in Belanglo would have looked like . The killer, probably a local with a 4WD,[19] had evidently restrained and spent considerable time with the victims both during and after the murders, as campsites were discovered close to the location of each body.