Ivan Milat could be linked to 11 more murders, a politician has claimed, as a long-awaited parliamentary inquiry into unsolved killings begins in Bowral on Thursday.
MLC Jeremy Buckingham - who spearheaded the years-long campaign to establish the inquiry - says police are expected to give evidence tying the notorious serial killer to several additional victims, a revelation that would more than double his official toll of seven.
'They've told me that they're prepared to acknowledge that Ivan was responsible for 11 other murders,' Buckingham told the Daily Mail.
'There's a very strong case there, and I think it's just the tip of the iceberg.'
Mr Buckingham has spent years independently researching these cases and lobbying the Premier to finally secure the backing of the NSW Parliament for this probe, which goes far deeper than simply querying other potential murders and disappearances linked to Milat.
Buckingham's mission is to provide families whose loved ones' murders or disappearances remain unsolved with the opportunity for 'truth-telling' - a goal he came upon after discovering what he calls a 'shocking' number of murders and unsolved disappearances in his hometown of Bellingen in NSW.
'I lost a son to suicide,' Buckingham told the Daily Mail. 'So after losing a child in pretty awful circumstances, you become aware of how much pain there is out there.'
'I began looking into disappearances in Bellingen and I was shocked to discover that just in and around my area there were between 10 to 15 unsolved homicides and long-term missing persons over the '80s and '90s and early 2000s, as well as a couple of really nasty murders.'
Ivan Milat (pictured) could be linked to 11 more murders, a politician has claimed
Buckingham - a member of the Legalise Cannabis Party - found himself pulled into research that would unearth a horrifying statistic: there were over 67 murdered or missing women who had disappeared along the stretch of highway between Sydney and Tweed Heads in NSW over the past 50 years.
'I asked some questions at Parliament about how many... the numbers came back as shockingly high,' said Buckingham.
'I asked about the period from the late '70s to the early 2000s on the North Coast of New South Wales, and the police said there were 67 unsolved homicides or long-term missing persons cases involving women.'
'That's not even men and that's not even children. If you add in men and children, that number is over 100. And I find that appalling,' he said.
Buckingham's campaign to raise awareness of these missing and murdered people, along with social media speculation, has led to a growing number of people raising the alarm that a serial killer or killers could be active along the NSW East Coast.
'To me, something is going on in Byron, and while I'm not saying necessarily the cases are linked, I do think that there's more activity around the Byron Bay area that needs explanation,' leading forensic anthropologist and criminologist Dr Xanthé Mallett told the Daily Mail.
The committee will also examine the 1970 abduction of three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer (pictured) from Fairy Meadow Beach - a tragic case Buckingham claims was 'horrendously bungled' despite a confession
'I think that's for a number of reasons. We've got a particularly transient population there with lots of people passing through, lots of travellers, that kind of thing.'
'There's also quite a strong drug culture undercurrent to Byron,' she added. 'People think of it as this beautiful place, and it is, but there's a dark side to Byron that I don't think a lot of people really comprehend.'
For Buckingham, the idea of a serial killer - or killers - operating along the Northern NSW Coast makes sense.
'Until we can rule it out, we've got to rule it in, and that means that with the 100 or more cases we've got on the North Coast, either 100 murderers got away with it, or half a dozen prolific serial killers did,' he said.
'Either situation is utterly unacceptable.'
'If you look at some of the geographic similarities, the profiles of the victims and the rest, it's clear that in a number of instances, a serial killer's been operating,' he said.
'Again and again we saw clusters around Newcastle, Taree, Grafton, the Byron Bay Hinterland area … where in a period of a couple of years, three, four, five people disappear or turn up murdered, and it's unsolved.
'You know, you draw the obvious conclusion.'
Mallett, who is set to give evidence at Thursday's inquiry alongside her podcast co-host, criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro, says she believes it is plausible that several of the homicides or disappearances that have taken place between Sydney and Byron could be linked, but that focusing solely on women is a misstep.
'I think one of the issues is that it's probably not [just] missing women that we need to look at,' she said.
'I think there are certainly a number of interesting cases around Byron Bay, [including] Theo Hayez and Jackson Stacker, for example, so to me, limiting it to women is a mistake. We know that a lot of serial predators, some target women specifically or preferentially, but others don't. If you think of Ivan Milat, he targeted couples, including two females, as well as a male and a female.'
Buckingham agrees with this, believing Milat's victim profile should have been expanded by police decades ago to include men.
Peter Letcher was just 18 years old when he was stabbed and then shot execution-style, his body covered with branches in the Jenolan State Forest, west of Sydney
While Theo Hayez (pictured) went missing long after Milat's reign of terror, his disappearance remains one of many unsolved on the NSW coast
'We know that he tried to abduct Paul Onions, a single guy,' he argued.
'The police also had a brief of evidence that he [may have] killed Peter Letcher out near Bathurst in 1988.'
Peter Letcher was just 18 years old when he was stabbed and then shot execution style, his body covered with branches in the Jenolan State Forest west of Sydney.
In the days before Mr Letcher disappeared, Milat was working for the DMR in the Jenolan State Forest area, 160km west of Sydney, and living in south-western Sydney.
While the shadow of Milat looms large over the state's cold cases, experts warn the inquiry must look beyond just one man.
Mallett believes that while the inquiry is a powerful and much-needed result of years of campaigning - for which she gives full credit to Buckingham - there is more that still needs to be investigated.
'The inquiry is looking at 18 missing and murdered,' she said. 'But there are a lot more cases that need to be assessed. They're looking from 1965 to 2010, but there are a lot of cold cases that could be reviewed, using pattern analysis, geographical analysis, forensic analysis.'
'What evidence exists that could be re-tested with new techniques? Have new eyewitnesses come forward? Can we use improved computer technology for increased matching? There's lots of potential, but I would say that some of that attention is being put on those cases now, which is great. So that's 18, but I want to see that broadened.'
Thursday's hearing will finally give a voice to families who have spent decades fighting for justice for their loved ones.
Among those giving evidence is Kevin Docherty, the twin brother of 16-year-old Kay Docherty, who vanished alongside her friend Toni Cavanagh from a Wollongong bus stop in 1979.
The committee will also examine the horrific 1970 abduction of three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer from Fairy Meadow Beach - a tragic case Buckingham claims was 'horrendously bungled' despite a confession.
The family of Keren Rowland (pictured) will testify
Teenagers Kay Docherty and Toni Cavanaugh vanished from a Wollongong bus stop in 1979
MLC Jeremy Buckingham (pictured) spearheaded the years-long campaign to establish the inquiry into the unsolved killings
Also expected to testify is the family of Keren Rowland, a pregnant young woman murdered in 1971.
Buckingham believes that the inquiry may go on 'for years', but that it's a mission he'll see to the bitter end.
'It's laborious [work], but it's really important for this truth to come out about what happened in Australia,' he explains.
'Again and again, the criticism that's levelled at us by, especially by the police, is, 'oh, well, you're giving people false hope,'' Buckingham said, 'and we understand that in the vast majority of these cases, we may never know what happened, and we may never catch a perpetrator. I know myself, the pain never goes away, and for these families, I know that's the same for them.'
'But what we do is we tell the truth about what happened, the family and the loved ones get an opportunity to express their sorrow,' he continues.
'And if we're lucky, we learn something, and we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.'
'That's part of helping to heal and diminishing the pain.'
'I'm very keen to keep the work going. It'll probably take me many, many years. I might never, ever stop doing it - but it's rewarding, if relentless.'
NSW police said: 'We wouldn't comment on what evidence may or may not be supplied at a parliamentary inquiry before it occurs.'
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