Throw Ivan Milat back in jail for 400 years, backpacker killer’s brother Bill says

Ivan Milat’s body should be thrown back in prison, his brother says, because the serial killer still has more than four hundred years left to serve of his sentence.

Bill Milat and the New South Wales prisons minister Anthony Roberts are locked in a tense stand-off over who will pay up for the backpacker murderer’s funeral. 

Mr Roberts said ‘hell will freeze over’ before Corrections pays up, but a former prison governor says the minister’s remarks are simply ‘a bit of political grandstanding.’ 

And Mr Milat is adamant that he will stick to his guns and follow his 74-year-old brother’s dying wish that the family not pay a cent for the funeral. 

‘I’m not going to pay for anything,’ he told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday, before throwing out some farcical suggestions about what should happen next.  

Tense standoff: Bill Milat (left) is refusing to pay for his brother’s funeral as it was his dying wish, but prisons minister Anthony Roberts (right) says ‘hell will freeze over’ before they pay

Above is a look inside a cell in the Long Bay prison. Ivan spent most of his thirty years behind bars at the jail

Mr Milat told Daily Mail Australia he didn’t mind what happened to his brother -whether he is left on ice in the morgue indefinitely, and even suggested he be chucked back in jail.  

‘I don’t care where (he goes) – they can stick him back in Long Bay,’ he said.  

‘He was given seven life sentences, he did one, so that means there’s six (sentences of) seventy-four years to go. 

‘Which is what, four hundred and forty four years?’ 

He continued to throw out other suggestions as he insisted: ‘We’re not going to claim the body, we’re not going to do anything. 

‘They can stick it down Macquarie Street, they can do whatever they please.’  

But there was one exception – he ruled out scattering Milat’s ashes at the Belanglo state forest, as some punters have sarcastically suggested online, saying the family never wanted to offend Milat’s seven victims. 

The family has explicitly ruled out scattering his ashes in the Belanglo state forest, despite troll suggestions online, and say his eventual grave will be unmarked

Bill Milat reads the final letter from his brother Ivan this week asking for ‘a pauper’s burial or whatever is suitable’

Mr Milat was handed a letter days before his death telling him ‘don’t pay for my funeral services or contribute in any way,’ and suggesting a pauper’s funeral. 

‘That’s not what his last wishes were and it’s as simple as that,’ the stubborn sibling said. 

In his statement earlier this week, Mr Roberts said: ‘Hell will freeze over before Corrections pays a cent for this man’s funeral. 

‘Ivan Milat’s body will remain on ice until the family stumps up cash or the family can tell police where the bodies are buried.’ 

A Corrective Services spokeswoman said while the agency sometimes provides a funeral subsidy to families of inmates who died in custody, ‘that will definitely not be happening in this case.’

Former prison governor John Heffernan said if nobody steps forward, Corrective Services or the NSW government is going to end up burying Milat

Former jail governor John Heffernan, who worked in prisons for three decades, said: ‘If nobody steps forward, given the fact he died in custody, Corrective Services has to step up to the mark and they’ve got to bury him.’

Mr Heffernan said one way or the other the government would probably have to pay for it.  

‘I couldn’t give a stuff if they took him out to sea and threw him overboard. Most people probably think that way.

‘We can’t do that – we’re supposed to be a humane society’.  

NSW Health, which currently has his body on ice, was approached for comment. 

• Categories
• Tags