‘Ivan Milat’ theory in missing campers probe

After Carol Clay and Russell Hill vanished in Victoria’s remote alpine region, investigators began exploring other cold cases and a possible “Ivan Milat” situation.

Initially, local police and emergency services believed the couple were lost hikers, focussing efforts on locating them or their remains.

But detectives from the missing persons squad called in after the extensive search effort found no trace of the missing couple, other than their charred campsite.

Among hundreds of possible sightings and tips coming through following a public appeal, detectives began to look at similarities with other cold cases.

Five others had vanished in Victoria’s High Country since the turn of the millennium, with police exploring the prospect of a serial killer.

“I was concentrating on another aspect of the investigation which was, you know, did we have an Ivan Milat scenario with all these other missing persons,” Detective Sergeant Brett Florence told Victoria’s Supreme Court last year of his early involvement in the case.

“The whole of the Great Alpine National Park is about 1.5 million hectares, so it’s a large area.”

Ivan Milat was an Australian serial killer responsible for the abduction and murders of seven young hitchhikers between 1989 to 1992.

In pretrial hearings held late last year, new details of the police investigation in the months following the couple’s disappearance were aired publicly for the first time.

The court heard in the days and weeks after the pair vanished in March 2020, investigators had no idea what happened, and had explored possible scenarios including; murder, suicide, misadventure or the couple eloping.

The case was officially transferred to the missing persons squad in mid-April after proof of life checks on Mr Hill and Mrs Clay’s bank accounts, phones and social media were negative.

“There was nothing to suggest that they were living at that point,” Sergeant Florence said.

He said his initial role was to comb through information reports from the public and he began to explore other missing persons cases.

“This couple was lost in the High Country, so naturally, um, we were asked to look across all of those, just to see if there was any sort of correlation,” he said.

Sergeant Florence said he found five unsolved cases in the region; Warren Meyer in 2008, David Prideaux in 2011, Conrad Whitlock in 2019, Niels Becker the same year, and an unnamed fifth person.

Ultimately this line of investigation was abandoned after investigators zeroed in on Mr Lynn in June following the discovery of a series of photographs taken by an automatic number plate recognition camera at the Mount Hotham Resort.

The morning after the couple vanished, Mr Hill’s phone har reconnected to the network for half an hour and passed the camera about 9.50am.

A dozen vehicles were snapped passing through within a 30-minute period, but only Mr Lynn’s had not been photographed entering the resort from the other side of the mountain.

In the early months, Sergeant Florence said part of his job was to chase down information coming in through the public tip line, identifying two men. Both men were subsequently cleared of any involvement.

“Every person that was ever ... nominated, was always, ah, fully looked at as best we could,” he said.

One of these men, a transient bushman known locally as the Button Man, had been nominated so many times the detective asked the media to report he was not a person of interest.

“There were multiple reports … he was this scary person in the High Country,” he said.

“We were having so many information reports coming in about him, and the information reports were about - that he scared hunters, and he would walk into people’s campsites.

“I was concerned, at the time, that someone may mistake him for somebody, ah, sinister and that he may end up injured.”

He said he tracked down the man, whose first name is Alex, on April 28 at Five Ways in Mount Howitt.

Sergeant Florence said Alex’s statement, corroborated with phone data, indicated he was at his usual camp when the couple disappeared.

Another man, David, was nominated by Parks Victoria who was described as a “quite aggressive” hunter in the area.

“They were concerned about him and his nature within the valley and the parks. Sergeant Florence said.

“He’s what they call a hound hunter, which is illegal, and he would approach Parks Victoria people with firearms.”

The detective said he made “appropriate enquiries” into David and spoke to him in July the same year, ultimately discounting him from the investigation.

Also in the early stages of the investigation, Detective Florence said he chased down two men whose names had come through the tip line as possible persons of interest.