Ivan Milat (pictured) wrote a one-page letter on Thursday to his brother Bill two days before his death
Notorious serial killer Ivan Milat demanded the government pay for his funeral in a letter penned just days before his death.
Milat wrote a one-page letter on Thursday to his brother Bill and sister-in-law Carol with instructions for it to be sealed until his death.
The backpacker murderer died in Long Bay jail’s hospital on Sunday morning after being diagnosed with oesophageal and stomach cancer in May.
In the letter, Milat asks for his belongings and legal documents to be handed over to his family, Network Ten reported on Monday.
‘Please don’t pay for my funeral services or contribute in any way,’ the 74-year-old wrote.
‘Corrective Services NSW to fund it all – a pauper’s burial or whatever is suitable.’
Milat was sentenced in 1996 to seven consecutive life sentences for murdering seven backpackers whose bodies were found in makeshift graves in the Belanglo State Forest in the 1990s.
Bill Milat told Ten on Monday: ‘It’s the taxpayer that put him in there (prison) so the taxpayer has to pay. Corrective Services had him all this time so Corrective Services can foot the bill.’
Ivan Milat signed off the letter with his name and a small illustration of a figure with a halo above the word ‘innocent’.
The letter was addressed to his brother Bill (pictured with the letter) and sister-in-law Carol with instructions for it to be sealed until his death
Ivan Milat signed off the letter with his name and a small illustration of a figure with a halo above the word ‘innocent’ (pictured)
Bill, who has always maintained his brother’s innocence, told 10 Daily he was sorry the young backpackers had died.
‘Awfully sorry that these people have lost their loved ones, you’ve got to feel for them, they’re kids and kids should be entitled to roam the country wherever without being hindered or picked up of molested. I just hope this doesn’t happen again.’
He also said the family would not have a private funeral or bury Milat, but that he would be cremated and scattered.
‘Have a funeral and every kook in the country will be there — if he was buried they’d desecrate the grave and make a mess of the place.’
Corrective Services on Monday said its commissioner hadn’t received any recent correspondence from Milat.
‘Corrective Services NSW will under no circumstances be paying for this funeral,’ a spokeswoman said.
Bill Milat (left) has always maintained his brother’s innocence. Boris Milat (right) is the only one of the Milat family to speak out against Ivan
Another of Milat’s brothers says the convicted murderer was evil ‘right to the last bone’.
Boris Milat is the only one of the Milat family to speak out against Ivan.
‘I am definitely embarrassed to be a Milat,’ Boris Milat told the Nine Network.
‘To me, he died a long time ago … he’s nothing but an evil killer.’
But most of Ivan’s family don’t believe he’s a serial killer.
‘They’re denying that he killed anybody. They are saying that the police made it all up,’ Boris Milat said
‘I’m putting it out there on the family now, these mongrels hate my guts because I’m the one guy that speaks out … I just want the truth out there.’
Ivan Milat (pictured) is suspected of many more murders than those of which he was convicted
Milat is suspected of many more murders than those of which he was convicted – murders he denied committing, despite the efforts of detectives to get him to confess.
These included the killings of at least three people whose bodies were found in three other forests between 1971 to 1991.
Former detective Clive Small, who led the NSW Police investigation into the backpacker killings, believes Ivan Milat thwarted police to keep his ‘power’.
‘Ivan, having information that he knew others didn’t have, he saw himself as being the boss or in control of the situation,’ he told 2GB radio.
‘I think he believed that once he gave that information up he no longer had the power.’
The contents of the letter come just after the final chilling interviews between Milat and police were released (pictured)
The contents of the letter come just after the final chilling interviews between Milat and police were released.
In a bid to bring closure to his victims’ families, detectives tried repeatedly to get him to confess in the hours before his painful death from throat and stomach cancer on Sunday in Sydney’s Long Bay jail – but Milat gave nothing away.
Police had remained tight-lipped about the contents of the interviews and the tactics they employed, until they were laid bare on Monday.
When speaking about the unsolved murders police suspect he committed, Milat said: ‘You could blow me eyes with a blowtorch and I still could not tell you one word about any of them missing people.’