Northumberland woman’s killer demands review

Aug 1 2010 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

A SERIAL killer who murdered a North woman has protested his innocence in a letter penned from behind bars, the Sunday Sun has learned.

Ivan Milat was caged for life in 1996 after being convicted of murdering seven backpackers in some of the worst atrocities committed in Australia.

Among his victims was Caroline Clarke, 22, a nanny from Hexham, Northumberland, whose body was found in 1992 along with her friend and fellow backpacker Joanne Walters, of Maesteg, South Wales, in a shallow grave in a forest.

The horrific murders inspired the grisly horror movie Wolf Creek, which was widely condemned by the victims’ families.

Now Milat, who is serving seven life sentences in the maximum security Goulburn jail, in New South Wales, Australia, has written to a Sydney newspaper from his "sunless cement cave" to demand a review of his trial, the evidence and his conviction.

In a six-page letter he writes: "I have been denied natural and judicial justice continually." He also describes his incarceration as "a legal anomaly" and a "miscarriage of justice."

Among his complaints is that none of the DNA evidence collected by police at the murder scenes produced any match with him or any member of his family.

He said: "The Crown said no DNA implicated Ivan Milat. Yet it throws off the DNA evidence by suggesting it was ‘contaminated’, but I have never seen any proof of it being contaminated."