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Boris an outcast from Milat clan

Boris Milat arranges the rifles on the dining room table - a good half-dozen spit-polished weapons - and prompts me to pick up one. He roars with laughter: "You've taken a ladies' one!"

But it does the same job, right?

He grins, takes it from my hands and clicks the barrel open and closed with the deft skill of a man who was given his first gun at age five.

If ever there was a window into the life of a Milat, this is it: looking in to this non-descript suburban dining room as the elder brother of Australia's most famous serial killer says he doesn't remember a time when he or his 13 siblings didn't have access to a gun. Boris Milat hasn't gone by that name in more than a decade but he can't change his DNA.

When he sits down on a chair, holding one of the rifles, the most famous image of his brother - the one used in just about any news report on Ivan's crimes - is unwittingly brought to life.

I ask him if he ever fears he is wired like his brother.

"I think it's in everyone . . . I'm sorry to say to you that I even believe there is a bit in you but it doesn't manifest itself like it did in the form of Ivan," he said.

"There's something in all of us if you're pushed to that limit."

It is a combination of loyalty and fear that has kept Boris silent about Ivan's crimes for decades and turned him into a recluse after his brother's arrest.

Ivan Milat led into court. Picture: Andrew Darby.

But last month, in a six-month joint investigation between _The Weekend West _ and Channel 7's Sunday Night, Boris revealed that a 17-year-old Ivan had shot and paralysed a Sydney taxi driver Neville Knight, who is now believed to have been Ivan's first victim.

Another man was convicted and jailed for the crime and NSW Police are now re-examining the case.

Boris also suspects that Ivan, who as a teenager would swerve his car to run over animals in the street and hack away at dogs with a machete, has a victim count at least double that of the seven brutal backpacker murders for which he has been convicted.

He knew growing up that his skinny but fiercely-intelligent younger brother had psychopathic tendencies.

And when the bodies of the backpackers were discovered in Belanglo State Forest, he immediately suspected his brother was responsible.

"Ivan came home at the time and he was really dirty and he had all these leather things over his shoulder and all these knives and these buckles strapped to him," he recalls.

Ivan walked in the room, covered in sweat and dirt and with knives hanging off his belt, and stared at Boris' partner at the time Pam.

She told Boris later that her "blood ran cold".

"I went away, I didn't say anything," Boris says. "I tried to put it out of my head."

By any definition, the Milat clan is not a typical family. Boris calmly recounts the 11-year affair Ivan had with his wife, the daughter he thought was his but was actually fathered by Ivan and the time he took a rifle to the Milat home with the intention of killing his brother.

The family is fiercely closed and protective.

Ivan has never admitted any of his crimes.

When he sends letters to his family from prison, he signs them with the logo associated with Leslie Charteris' famous character The Saint: a stick figure with a halo over his head.

Bizarrely, for his sin of going public, it is Boris, not Ivan, who is the black sheep of the Milat clan.

Boris is a compelling anachronism who wouldn't be out of place in a David Lynch movie. Or in another decade.

He wears waistcoats and snakeskin boots and his hair changes shade week to week.

"I love everybody," he says when I ask him if the reason he's agreed to talk about Ivan is because of malice.

"I love you too, Steve, but not like a poofter would."

Serial killer Ivan Milat. Picture: File

He talks of "courting" his partner Denise, who he met after he put an advertisement in the local newspaper 12 years ago seeking a "lady companion".

Denise later describes it like a job application: "He was looking for a decent lady who would like to go out and have dinner and go dancing. I applied."

And he talks of a sense of honour, a twisted version of which kept him silent on Ivan's crimes for decades ("I was too much of a Milat then") and another version of which has now prompted him to speak.

"They hate my guts and that's good," he says of the family's anger that he's gone public.

"I'm glad they do because if you hate someone that bad, it's got to hurt you, and I'm glad they're hurting."

Boris took a risk when he told Denise on their first date that he was a Milat. The five words "Ivan Milat is my brother" - or the fear of even saying them had been terminal to his love life.

Denise, a magnetic mother of seven with beehive hair, metal knees and a glass eye, has been by his side ever since.

"I was frightened what impact it would have on me," she says. "Other people would think, 'Oh a Milat, how did you get involved with him?

"But he's a wonderful man. And he's very sensitive."

She had her first taste of what she's in for when she went to the funeral of Boris' brother David last year.

Boris had been David's carer and what was supposed to be a sombre event erupted into chaos.

Family members who still maintain Ivan is innocent abused the couple and told Denise: "You shouldn't be with him, he's no good."

"It was terrible," she said. "I have never experienced anything like it in all my life. It really upset me."

Speaking now was one of the "bravest things I've ever seen any man do".

"He's a wonderful man," she says, her one good eye moistening. Boris asked her before agreeing to speak because of the impact it could have on her.

He says he's made peace with his past but too many people have paid a price for his brother's sins.

Does he love Ivan?

"No, no. That is a question going too far that is, that's a bit like me forgiving him, and I can't forgive him," he says.

"I can't do that. The priest tells me I'm going to be damned to hell because I'm judging him, well good, let me go, I don't care.

"The most joyous day of my life will be (when) the guy that brought all of this about, that's Ivan, has passed on and I hope he passes on before me."

Catching Milat - Sunday 8.50pm on Channel Seven