TRANSCRIPT: Ivan Milat investigation

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CHRIS BATH: We begin tonight with an extraordinary breakthrough, an explosive new chapter in the story of Australia's most infamous and sadistic serial killer. After an extensive and painstaking investigation, we've discovered Ivan Milat's bloody trail began long before he tortured and murdered seven young backpackers. We've assembled a powerful and compelling case that Milat attacked his first victim decades earlier - a taxi driver who was gunned down and left for dead. Chillingly, the crime contained hallmark signatures of his later murder spree, prompting the question, if he had been caught and punished for this original crime, would history have played out as it did? Our story tonight is packed with astonishing revelations. Perhaps the most astounding of all was when we found the man jailed for the taxi shooting and revealed to him that he had done time for Ivan Milat's crime. Steve Pennells begins our special report with the star witness, a bloke who knows Ivan Milat better than most.

STEVE PENNELLS: Boris, thanks for your time.

BORIS MILAT: It's a pleasure.

STEVE PENNELLS: Who's Ivan Milat?

BORIS MILAT: Ivan Milat's my brother. My younger brother.

STEVE PENNELLS: What's it like carrying the Milat name?

BORIS MILAT: Bad. Bad, bad, bad. He was gonna kill somebody from the... ..from the age of 10, I'd say. You know, it was built into him. He had a different psyche. He was a psychopath. And it just manifested itself with, "I can do anything. I can do anything."

STEVE PENNELLS: Boris Milat is about to come clean. We've uncovered stunning new evidence about his brother, and Boris is about to confirm it all.

STEVE PENNELLS: This is a secret you've kept for 52 years now.

BORIS MILAT: Yes.

STEVE PENNELLS: But Boris isn't the only one we've discovered keeping this chilling secret.

STEVE PENNELLS: I mean, it's hard for me to understand how five decades can go by and you don't mention a word.

Not a word. Not a word.

STEVE PENNELLS: And it's kept a lid on a crime that could have shaped Australia's most notorious serial killer.
STEVE PENNELLS: Ivan Milat's first victim.

Yes. 100%.

STEVE PENNELLS: A bloody and brutal attack. The one he got away with.

STEVE PENNELLS: Did you know about this?

No, not at all. I didn't know anything about this.

STEVE PENNELLS: So this is the man we believe shot your father.

DEBORAH HUTTON: He If this man had been taken off the streets at the time, life would have been very different for a lot of people.

STEVE PENNELLS: It's more than two decades since the bodies of seven young backpackers were found in the Belanglo State Forest. The gruesome murders horrified Australia and the world. Three were from Germany, two from the UK and two from Australia. Their bodies were found mutilated, face down on the forest floor.

STEVE PENNELLS: A signature characteristic of the killeR was that at least five of the seven victims were paralysed before they were tortured and killed.

STEVE PENNELLS: In 1996, 53-year-old road worker Ivan Milat was convicted of the crimes. The name Milat is now forever associated with one of the worst crimes in Australia's history.

STEVE PENNELLS: But what wasn't known is that Ivan Milat's brutal, sadistic psyche was unleashed far earlier than anyone thought, on a victim no-one knew about until now.

STEVE PENNELLS: In the early '60s, the new suburbs of Sydney were packed with fibro houses, young families and troubled teenagers. The Milat family lived out west, in Moorebank. Ivan was the seventh of 14 children. A big family. The parents, Margaret and Stephen, had little control.

BORIS MILAT: There was just too many and too much going on in that place. You know, Dad used to drink a lot and we had a market garden going and all that stuff. And so we were all just.....by ourselves. The Milats were always basically by themselves.

STEVE PENNELLS: Boris Milat is two years older than Ivan. He is a retired builder, a loner who ever since his brother was convicted has carried the shame heavily on his shoulders.
BORIS MILAT: He's ruined the whole family. He's taken our name and dragged it... ..put it on the ground in mud and pushed it all around and then kicked it as well. (LAUGHS)

STEVE PENNELLS: What was Ivan like back then? What was his...his psyche?

BORIS MILAT: Demeanour, like?

STEVE PENNELLS: Yeah, his demeanour, yeah.

BORIS MILAT: Sneaky. You know, like... You'd be walking up the road or something like that and there's no-one around. All of a sudden, Ivan'd jump up out of the long grass, you know, and just... 'Cause he was always playing cat-and-mouse in some way. And that I remember very well.

STEVE PENNELLS: Were you concerned about him back then?

BORIS MILAT: I knew he... I knew he was on a one-way trip. (LAUGHS) I knew that - that it's just a matter of how long.

STEVE PENNELLS: Was he sadistic at all?

BORIS MILAT: He was. He would treat animals and that bad. They'd all boast about that. They go out at night and do things and, you know, with machetes. Oh, he'd tell... He cut a dog in half with a machete and all that while he was growing up.

STEVE PENNELLS: The machete was a favourite of Ivan's, but there were other weapons the Milat children learned to use. Guns were a part of family life. (GUNSHOT) Boris got his first when he was five.

BORIS MILAT: We played with live guns. Cowboys and Indians...

STEVE PENNELLS: Where'd you get them from?

BORIS MILAT: Dad used to buy them. I'm a believer in guns and Ivan went one step further. He didn't buy any guns. He stole his first gun, then he went on to steal all the others.

STEVE PENNELLS: As Ivan grew up, he would often boast about his criminal exploits to Boris. First there were petty thefts and house robberies, then it escalated. When Ivan was just 17, the skinny teenager pointed a gun at a taxidriver's head.

BORIS MILAT: And he said, "Yeah." He said, "I just stuck a gun in a bloke's ear." And he took the money there. He robbed the money there. He got the money there. And that was it. As soon as a gun got in the hands of that fool, life changed.

STEVE PENNELLS: Milat was 17, armed and dangerous. He had already robbed one taxi driver and was planning to rob another. After an extensive investigation, we've discovered that Ivan's next victim would be a young father. His name - Neville Knight. He lived 12km from the Milat home with his wife, Eleanor, and three-year-old daughter, Deborah.

STEVE PENNELLS: When you think about your father, what comes to mind?

DEBORAH HUTTON: He Courage.

STEVE PENNELLS: Courage.

DEBORAH HUTTON: He Courage. Courage always comes to mind.

STEVE PENNELLS: Deborah's dad Neville had been a morse code specialist in the Australian Navy.

DEBORAH HUTTON: He used to like putting me on his shoulders, as dads do, and run up and down with me and feed me and dance with me and whatever to keep me happy.

STEVE PENNELLS: After leaving the Navy, Neville made ends meet by driving his father's taxi. (ENGINE STARTS) On Tuesday, March 6, 1962, Neville heads out for his night shift. At just after 10pm, he's waiting at a rank not far from his home. A skinny boy gets into the back seat.

DEBORAH HUTTON: Where do you want to go, mate?

STEVE PENNELLS: The boy says he's looking for an address, but he isn't sure where it is. Neville agrees to help him find it.

STEVE PENNELLS: They drive half an hour through the streets, looking for the house. Neville Knight has no idea that his passenger is armed, no idea of the danger he is in. We now believe the boy in the back seat is Ivan. It had been three weeks since he'd robbed his first taxi driver at gunpoint. He is about to hold up another.

STEVE PENNELLS: What's a 17-year-old doing with a gun in the back of a cab?

BORIS MILAT: His intention was to rob the taxi driver of his takings and what's going through his mind, why is he doing it, it's got more to do with his upbringing... ..why he's in there, but he's in there to rob money, for whatever reason. What went from there was that gun had a hair-trigger and while he was in the back of that vehicle, driving around, I suppose either getting up the gumption or the opportunity to rob the man of his takings, the gun went off and hit the poor fellow in the back.

STEVE PENNELLS: The single gunshot went through the seat, into Neville's back, lodging in his spine. He can't move his legs and he starts yelling.

BORIS MILAT: He yelled out, "I'm ruined, I'm ruined, I'm ruined, I'm ruined. "You've ruined me."

STEVE PENNELLS: The cab driver?

BORIS MILAT: He said it about four... about three to four times. The bloke straightaway knew he had lost everything in his bottom end. You know, his legs, feelings. He knew it went through his back. He knew he was...

STEVE PENNELLS: Ivan had paralysed him.

BORIS MILAT: Ivan paralysed him. Yeah. And then from there, he got out of the cab and got out of there as quick as he could.

(PANTING, HEAVY FOOTSTEPS)

STEVE PENNELLS: Soon police will be swarming all over this area, looking for the man who shot Neville Knight. But in the darkness, they won't find him.

STEVE PENNELLS: What were you told at the time?

DEBORAH HUTTON: Oh, just that he had been shot. A bad man had shot him, that he'd been, you know, in Grandpa's taxi.

STEVE PENNELLS: The bullet was lodged in Neville's spinal cord and the once fit and active 29-year-old would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

DEBORAH HUTTON: Everyone thought he wasn't going to survive. They didn't know for several weeks that he would survive long-term, whether he'd even survive the next few months.

STEVE PENNELLS: The news reports said there appeared to be no motive. No money was taken. The attack was baffling. It was described as either an accidental shooting or the act of a crazed psychopath who simply felt like shooting someone.

STEVE PENNELLS: This was the newspaper the next day. The front page.

BORIS MILAT: Yeah. He was only a young bloke, wasn't he? Sad.

STEVE PENNELLS: That's the first time you've seen that, isn't it?
BORIS MILAT: It is. It's the first time I've seen it.

STEVE PENNELLS: Who shot Neville Knight on March 6, 1962?

BORIS MILAT: Ivan Milat.

STEVE PENNELLS: And how do you know this?

BORIS MILAT: Because he told me so.

STEVE PENNELLS: He told you?

BORIS MILAT: Yes. Told me the day after it happened.

STEVE PENNELLS: So what do the official records reveal about the shooting? For more than 50 years, the court papers, the police work, all the documentary evidence surrounding the case have been held in storage in Western Sydney. They make no mention of Ivan Milat. Instead, they reveal police arrested another man for the attack, and incredibly, that man even confessed to the crime. His name is Alan Dillon.

STEVE PENNELLS: Alan, thanks for your time.

ALAN DILLON: Right, mate.

STEVE PENNELLS: Did you shoot Neville Knight on March 6, 1962?

STEVE PENNELLS: When Ivan Milat was 17, he secretly confessed to his brother the details of his first violent crime.....shooting and crippling a young father, Sydney taxi driver, Neville Knight. It's a secret Boris Milat has kept for more than half a century.

STEVE PENNELLS: Why didn't you go to the police at that stage?

BORIS MILAT: Yeah. I'm glad you asked me that. My thinking didn't go like that then. You know, I was too much of a Milat then.

STEVE PENNELLS: If what you're saying is true, then...

BORIS MILAT: It's true. Everything I say to you. I'd cross me heart. I'm telling you. 100%.

STEVE PENNELLS: ..then this taxidriver is Ivan Milat's first victim.

BORIS MILAT: He's the first bloke that was shot, as far as I know, yes. 100%.

(SIRENS WAIL)
STEVE PENNELLS: But according to the police records we uncovered, Ivan Milat was never a suspect. Within days of the shooting, police had fixed their sights firmly on another man, Alan Dillon. This is Alan today. He is 74. We found him living a quiet life in a small town on the outskirts of Sydney. He collects watches and knows the value of time.

STEVE PENNELLS: You had a criminal history. Quite a long criminal history.

ALAN DILLON: Yes, from 15.

STEVE PENNELLS: Yeah, from 15.

ALAN DILLON: And from the age of 18, I was in jail, so the only people I knew was crooks, like, you know.

STEVE PENNELLS: In 1962, Alan was well known to police. He fitted the description of the person who shot Neville Knight and was living just around the corner from the Knight family.

ALAN DILLON: Is that us?

STEVE PENNELLS: That's you, yeah.

ALAN DILLON: Which one is me?

STEVE PENNELLS: I was hoping you'd tell me that.

ALAN DILLON: I'd have to be the bloke...

STEVE PENNELLS: I think you're the one in the top... ..top, yeah.

ALAN DILLON: That'd be me. Hmm. Wasn't a bad sort then. (LAUGHS) What's happened?

STEVE PENNELLS: Alan's dad had walked out on the family, leaving his mum to raise four boys. By 15, Alan was often running away from home.

ALAN DILLON: Over a period of time, sometimes I'd be hungry. I'd break into shops or something to get a feed and it went from there.

STEVE PENNELLS: As the oldest, Alan was protective of his brothers, especially the youngest, Brian. Around the time Neville Knight was shot, Alan was making a living as a petty thief.

STEVE PENNELLS: What kind of things were you doing back then?
ALAN DILLON: Probably breaking into some....stealing out of cars or something like that.

STEVE PENNELLS: Nothing involving guns?

ALAN DILLON: No. Nothing.

STEVE PENNELLS: A few days after the shooting, Alan Dillon was picked up by police for stealing radios. He was brought here to Long Bay jail and was being questioned by detectives, first about the petty theft, then, out of the blue, they started quizzing him about the shooting of a taxi driver.

STEVE PENNELLS: Do you remember what they told you when they came to see you?

ALAN DILLON: I can still remember a lot of it.

STEVE PENNELLS: So, you're in Long Bay. Yeah. You're in an office somewhere at a table.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah, they put me into one office where the police interviewed you and one was sitting here like you are. Two were behind me. And this one here would be asking me questions and getting me to sign things.

STEVE PENNELLS: You confessed twice to the crime.

ALAN DILLON: Yes, I've heard. (LAUGHS) Yeah.

STEVE PENNELLS: I have your confessions here.

ALAN DILLON: Well, it's all bullshit. I probably didn't read it. I just signed it.

STEVE PENNELLS: It's in your handwriting.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah, but I... Oh, is it? Yeah. Well, I still can't remember doing it.

STEVE PENNELLS: It's in your handwriting, then retyped. Is that...is that your writing?

ALAN DILLON: Yeah.

STEVE PENNELLS: I've got to ask you a question. Did you shoot Neville Knight on March 6, 1962?

ALAN DILLON: No, I didn't.

STEVE PENNELLS: Then why did you say you did?

ALAN DILLON: Because they were gonna convict.....arrest me brother and charge him with it.

STEVE PENNELLS: Alan says it became clear to him during the interrogation that police wanted to nab his little brother for the crime. They wanted him to spill the beans on Brian. Instead, he chose to take the rap himself. He says he did it to protect his brother and save his mum from grief she couldn't bear.

STEVE PENNELLS: Why would you confess to it, though? I mean, it's...

ALAN DILLON: It's your family. And Mum never needed another one of us going the way I went.

STEVE PENNELLS: Alan was sentenced to five years' jail and he did the time here at Sydney's Parramatta prison.

STEVE PENNELLS: It's been 32 years since you've been here.

ALAN DILLON: It is too. Yeah. I can't believe it. I'd rather be out there anyway.

STEVE PENNELLS: His stretch in jail sent him on a spiral deeper into crime. When he got out, he tried his hand at bank robbery, got mixed up in an underworld murder in Kings Cross and spent the best part of the next 20 years behind bars.

ALAN DILLON: Too late to regret it. I didn't regret it. But it's me own doing. I got what I deserve. So...

STEVE PENNELLS: Eventually, Alan turned his life around. He went straight, got a job at St Vinnies, and until he was contacted by Sunday Night, always believed he'd been protecting his brother, Brian, when he went to jail. Not once in the years since had he ever asked his brother if he had really shot Neville Knight.

STEVE PENNELLS: So for five decades, you believed your brother had committed this crime.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah.

STEVE PENNELLS: And you had covered for him.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah. Till last week, I think it was, or the week before.

STEVE PENNELLS: Till we contacted you.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah, yeah.

STEVE PENNELLS: He thought you had shot the taxidriver.

ALAN DILLON: yeah. And then I said to him, I said, "Well, I thought you done it." And he said no. And he said, "Are you fair dinkum?" I said, "Of course I'm fair dinkum." And he just broke down and cried. So...

STEVE PENNELLS: He had no idea.

ALAN DILLON: No. None whatsoever.

STEVE PENNELLS: Does it feel like a weight? A weight off your shoulders?

ALAN DILLON: It does. It does. But how stupid am I that me brother didn't do it either?

STEVE PENNELLS: It must be tough knowing that your mum, who will not know this...

ALAN DILLON: Yeah. Yeah, that'd hurt. She was a good woman, you know. Um...

STEVE PENNELLS: And she believed this whole time that you had...

ALAN DILLON: Thought it had been me until the day she died.

STEVE PENNELLS: And there's another terrible twist Alan is about to learn. He has no idea who he may have really been protecting when he took the blame for the shooting of Neville Knight.

STEVE PENNELLS: The person who actually allegedly did the crime... That's him.

ALAN DILLON: That's Ivan, isn't it?

STEVE PENNELLS: Ivan Milat.

ALAN DILLON: Jesus.

STEVE PENNELLS: How does it feel doing time for the crime of what possibly was Ivan Milat's first victim?

ALAN DILLON: That sounds strange, you know. That sounds strange.

BORIS MILAT: Ivan himself had said, "Oh, well, they got the bloke 'cause he looks like me." He said, "Oh, they're blaming someone else." He said, "Which is good." But I didn't think it was good. But I didn't want to see him go to jail either, you know. I didn't want to see him harmed either. He was my little brother. He hadn't gone on to bigger things.

STEVE PENNELLS: So why, 52 years later, are you now coming forward and talking about this?

BORIS MILAT: The main object of the thing is bringing closure to the other man. And that's really why I'm talking. And this fella went to jail to protect his brother. To me, that's a lot of heart. There's some good in that man somewhere, you know.

STEVE PENNELLS: If you could meet the guy who went to jail, would you?

BORIS MILAT: I possibly would, yes. Yes. I would.

STEVE PENNELLS: What would you say to him?

BORIS MILAT: I would say that I should have spoke up earlier. That's what I would say.

STEVE PENNELLS: Boris, you can tell him yourself. Meet Alan Dillon.

BORIS MILAT: Where is he?

STEVE PENNELLS: In the last 50 years, have you thought about the bloke who went to jail?

BORIS MILAT: Yes. All the time. All the time. I thought about it soon as I knew he was charged. I thought about it, "How the hell do I fix that?"

STEVE PENNELLS: If you could meet the guy who went to jail, would you?

BORIS MILAT: I possibly would. Yes. Yes.

STEVE PENNELLS: What would you say to him?

BORIS MILAT: I would say that I should have spoke up earlier. That's what I would say.

STEVE PENNELLS: Boris, you can tell him yourself. Meet Alan Dillon.

BORIS MILAT: Where is he?

ALAN DILLON: Hey, mate. How are you? Don't hold yourself responsible.

BORIS MILAT: Good. How are you going?

ALAN DILLON: Good, mate. How are you going?

BORIS MILAT: Yeah. I'm a little late.

ALAN DILLON: That happens.

BORIS MILAT: Yeah.

STEVE PENNELLS: We can pull up a chair.

BORIS MILAT: That's it. Come around here so I can see you.

STEVE PENNELLS: Alan, you've heard what I've been saying?

ALAN DILLON: Not all of it.

BORIS MILAT: But...OK, I made some pretty big claims here - that Ivan shot the bloke. Did you shoot the bloke?

ALAN DILLON: No. I didn't.

BORIS MILAT: No, you didn't.

ALAN DILLON: But I thought my brother did and he didn't either.

BORIS MILAT: And was your brother inclined to go and rob taxis?

ALAN DILLON: No, I don't think so. No. No.

BORIS MILAT: Well, Ivan was.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah.

BORIS MILAT: And Ivan shot this bloke in the back. And the reason you... The reason you were charged, from what I can gather, was to protect your brother.

ALAN DILLON: That's right.

BORIS MILAT: I also was protecting him by shutting up.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah. Yeah. I can see that.

BORIS MILAT: And I thought, you know... It's something that, um... Yeah. You've been on my mind a lot, anyhow.

ALAN DILLON: Thanks. Thanks for coming across.

BORIS MILAT: That's alright, mate.

STEVE PENNELLS: Neville Knight was shot in the back in his taxi in March 1962. Ivan was 17 years old and beginning his life of extreme violence. Three decades later, Ivan Milat's most infamous crime spree is discovered here. The Belanglo State Forest had become his killing ground. In 1992 and 1993, the remains of four women and three men - all backpackers - were discovered. Their partially buried bodies were found facedown with their hands behind their backs. The murder weapons were knives and guns. Some of the victims had been strangled and beaten. One, decapitated. Ivan was arrested on May 22, 1994. Personal belongings from the backpackers were found in his home.

CLIVE SMALL: We had a person who, despite everything that was going on, the police and everything like that, he still thought he was in charge. And he thought he would be going home to have tea that night.

STEVE PENNELLS: Superintendent Clive Small led the police investigation into the backpacker murders. He knows more about Ivan Milat's criminal past than just about anyone.

STEVE PENNELLS: This taxidriver is Ivan Milat's first victim.

BORIS MILAT: Yes. 100%.

STEVE PENNELLS: We showed him our interviews with Boris and Alan.

STEVE PENNELLS: That's him.

ALAN DILLON: That's Ivan, is it?

STEVE PENNELLS: Ivan Milat.

ALAN DILLON: Jesus.

STEVE PENNELLS: Ivan's possible involvement in the shooting of a taxidriver is brand-new information. Clive, what do you think of what you've just seen?

CLIVE SMALL: This is the first time I've heard these claims. But in what I've seen now, it seems to me that both Boris and Alan were very sincere in the story they're telling.

STEVE PENNELLS: You believe them?

CLIVE SMALL: Certainly on what I've seen here, I would believe them.

STEVE PENNELLS: Clive not only believes Boris and Alan, he also recognises Ivan's unique signature in the shooting. One of the features of this case was that the taxidriver, the victim, Neville Knight, was shot in the spine and paralysed. Is that consistent with Milat's methods, as you know them?

CLIVE SMALL: A number of the victims, most of the victims, had multiple stab wounds to the back, around the spinal area, which suggested he was trying to paralyse them while keeping them alive. And that story about the taxidriver being shot in the back, near the spine, was most interesting and similar.

STEVE PENNELLS: Do you think by getting away with the shooting of Neville Knight, it would have built his confidence, his arrogance?

CLIVE SMALL: I think that every time Ivan got away with a crime, his confidence would have built and would have given him this, "I'm in control. They can't catch me." It would have reinforced that every time. And even when you look at the crime scenes of the backpackers, what you can see is Ivan spending more and more time at each scene. The murders became more sophisticated. The number of shots that you could find around the crime scene sort of increased. It was as though he was saying, "That was good but next time, I can do it better." And he'd look at ways of making the crime more pleasurable to him.

STEVE PENNELLS: The unavoidable question is whether history could have been changed if Ivan had been brought to justice all those years earlier.

JULIAN PARMEGIANI: It would have certainly put him on the map in terms of a serial offender who starts early life. And then the next crime occurs and people look at potential suspects, he would be, you know, right up on that list.

STEVE PENNELLS: After examining the case reports, forensic psychiatrist Dr Julian Parmegiani believes that Ivan may have even set out to deliberately cripple the taxidriver. Would the plan have been to kill the driver or just to paralyse him?

JULIAN PARMEGIANI: You look at the final result and you work your way back. The fact is you've got a driver who was paralysed, paralysed for life, and then you have a series of victims later on who were paralysed. So, you can guess, probably fairly confidently, that the goal was to see whether he could paralyse someone using a firearm. With the subsequent history of thrill-killing that we now know about, one really has to question whether that was not a planned act which had taken some time in the making.

STEVE PENNELLS: He can't change history but Boris Milat hopes that by telling the truth now, he will right a wrong - especially for the families of Alan Dillon and Neville Knight.

BORIS MILAT: It's not about the victims so much - they're gone.

ALAN DILLON: The family.

BORIS MILAT: But it did upset the family. Yeah. Like your mother. You know...

STEVE PENNELLS: He gets quite emotional when he talks about your mother.

ALAN DILLON: Yeah, I know. C'mon, mate. You right? Hmm.

STEVE PENNELLS: How do you feel when you see him like that?

ALAN DILLON: Not nice. For what he's been through. This should bring some closure.

BORIS MILAT: (CLEARS THROAT) Anyhow, ah... It's all out now and all done. That's it.

STEVE PENNELLS: After the shooting, Neville Knight went back to school, became a computer engineer and a pioneer for disabled rights. He died in 1998. His family has always believed the man who shot and paralysed him was Alan Dillon. Now Neville's daughter is coming to terms with the knowledge that the real shooter was Ivan Milat. Was that tough to get your head around?

DEBORAH HUTTON: It is a bit, yes. You know, you grow up knowing the sky is blue and suddenly you discover, "Oh, it's actually been red all this time." It's quite a surprise.

STEVE PENNELLS: The name 'Milat' is a name that instantly conjures...

DEBORAH HUTTON: It's synonymous with just the most side of human nature, isn't it? It's synonymous with that thing you don't want to know about. The horrible black bogeyman that sits over your shoulder - you don't want to know about him and people of his ilk. Because they don't seem to have human emotion. Something somewhere went very wrong in that man's DNA. I don't know what or how he could be capable of what he's done. And if Dad was the first attempted thrill-kill, that sort of didn't quite work but he's one of his early attempts, how horrified can anybody be?

STEVE PENNELLS: While Alan can't get back the time he's done, he's hoping to have the conviction overturned. Because of the infamy of the Milat name, 10 years ago, Boris Milat changed his. He has a girlfriend and lives quietly in country New South Wales. He's relieved that at last the truth is out.

BORIS MILAT: It was a monkey on me back. It was a load on me back. And I knew one day I have to get rid of it.

STEVE PENNELLS: Ivan Milat is serving seven life sentences for the backpacker murders at Goulburn super-max prison. The hope now is that even though it's taken more than 50 years, there might finally be justice for his first victim.

DEBORAH HUTTON: If Ivan Milat has any bearing on this case, then it's important to know the truth.

CHRIS BATH: Steve Pennells with that special investigation. Thea Dikeos was the producer.