Sister may have helped in backpacker murders, alleges lawyer

CANBERRA - Startling new reports allege that Australia's notorious backpacker killings, in which seven young people were picked up, murdered, and buried in a forest near Sydney, were a family affair.

According to the lawyer who defended Ivan Milat, now serving a life sentence for the killings, the partner in the murders was Milat's sister Shirley Soire, who died in February 2003.

There have long been suspicions that Milat did not act alone, with various theories holding that he had either a single accomplice or operated with others, possibly as part of a gang that killed in different ways.

Possible suspects included Milat's brothers, but until yesterday no public fingers had been pointed at Soire, Milat's divorced sister who shared a house with the killer in which much of the evidence used to convict him was found.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph said Soire had been identified as Milat's accomplice by his lawyer, John Marsden, who had himself been investigated by police and who at one stage had been charged with illegally possessing a .45 pistol.

Marsden believed Soire helped Milat to hunt and kill the seven backpackers at Belanglo State Forest south of Sydney between 1989 and 1992.

But the policeman who led the hunt for Milat, former New South Wales assistant police commissioner Clive Small, told ABC radio he thought the killer had acted alone.

"I don't want to be macabre about this, but when you get these serial killers who actually enjoy what they're doing, they don't see it as a task - they see it as a pleasure," he said.

"The fact is that we know of three occasions where victims of Ivan escaped his clutches, very luckily for them, and on each of those occasions Ivan was by himself. The evidence suggests that Ivan operated alone."

However Small said he thought family members knew that Milat was a very violent person and he had no doubt that a number of them knew that Milat did "very bad things" at times.

Australia's worst serial killer murdered British backpackers Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters, Germans Gabor Neugebauer, Anja Habschield and Simone Schmidl, and Victorians Deborah Everist and James Gibson.

Milat was first suspected when he gave a statement including details of the case that only the killer could have known.

The Daily Telegraph was also told by an un-named senior police officer that even if Soire had not accompanied Milat during the killings, she must have known about them and tried to protect him.

Raids on her Eagle Vale house, on the outskirts of Sydney, uncovered a water bottle, sleeping bag, and tent belonging to Schmidl, Everist's sleeping bag, a map featuring Belanglo State Forest (where the bodies were dumped) and black electrical tape and cable ties of the type used in the killings.

Police also found Soire's unlicensed pistol, which could not be linked to the killings.

The Telegraph was also told by a source said to be a leading investigator in the case that Soire was suspected of disposing of foreign bank notes Milat had taken as souvenirs from his victim.