Notorious serial killer Ivan Milat dies in prison from cancer
Notorious serial killer Ivan Milat, who murdered seven young backpackers south of Sydney in the early 1990s, has died in prison from oesophagus and stomach cancer.
Milat, 74, who had been in prison since 1994, died at Long Bay Hospital at 4.07am (local time) on Sunday, Corrective Services NSW said in a statement.
He who had been undergoing chemotherapy since being diagnosed in May.
The 74-year-old murdered three German, two British, and two Australian backpackers after giving them rides while they were hitchhiking.
The former road worker was sentenced in 1996 to seven consecutive life sentences for murdering the seven young backpackers whose mutilated bodies were found in makeshift graves in the NSW Belanglo State Forest in the 1990s.
The father of 21-year-old British backpacker Caroline Clarke, who along with her 22-year-old friend, Joanne Walter, was among those killed, said the family thought of his daughter every day.
"We still think of Caroline every day but it doesn't mean to say we have to think of Milat every day," Mr Clarke told AAP from his home in Northumberland earlier in October.
Of the killer's demise, he added: "It's a horrible way for anybody to end their life but then it was even more horrible the way our daughter and so many others lost theirs, so sympathy isn't high on the list, I'm afraid."
Mr Clarke said a belated confession and the disclosure of where any other bodies were disposed of could bring some kind of closure to other families, who he said he feels "desperately sorry for".
"If he was to finally face up to the fact and admit to any others that he has done, if indeed he has, then I think that would be a wonderful thing for those parents, because for the short time that we didn't know, I know just how they must be feeling," he said.
Mr Clarke added he and his wife, Jacqueline, had been thankful to be able to bury their daughter.
"It was in its way a form of closure, that we'd found her and we were able to lay her to rest properly," he said.
"It's these other parents who don't have the luxury of being able to do that."
Former detective and assistant commissioner Clive Small who led the team that captured Milat, has said he was suspected of committing other rapes and at least another three murders.
As well as Ms Clarke and Ms Walters, Milat was convicted of killing Melbourne couple James Gibson and Deborah Everist, both 19, and German backpackers Simone Schmidl, 20, Gabor Neugebauer, 21, and Anja Habschied, 20.
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