Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / A Nationwide Reckoning: Reopening the Milat Files | Jeremy Buckingham MP

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A Nationwide Reckoning: Reopening the Milat Files | Jeremy Buckingham MP · Real Crime with Adam Shand

0:05
Speaker 1: Apote production.
0:14
Speaker 2: Welcome to real crime at Adam Shand, I'm your host,
0:16
Speaker 2: Adam Shand how many people did Ivan Malatt really kill?
0:21
Speaker 2: Convicted backpacker killer Ivan Mulatt has died in prison, but
0:25
Speaker 2: detectives believe the true number of his victims may never
0:29
Speaker 2: be known. He was convicted of seven, but the number
0:33
Speaker 2: must be much higher. I was recently told that after
0:36
Speaker 2: Malatt was convicted of the seven backpacker murders between nineteen
0:39
Speaker 2: ninety nine and nineteen ninety two, he told his cell
0:42
Speaker 2: mate that the number was more like thirty seven. Former
0:46
Speaker 2: detectives have long suggested Mlatt may be linked to dozens
0:49
Speaker 2: of other unsolved murders across Australia. Maybe he'd lost count.
0:55
Speaker 2: I'm sure the number is much higher. The description of
0:58
Speaker 2: a man and a black hat with a handlebar mustache
1:01
Speaker 2: wielding a twenty two rifle pops up in so many
1:04
Speaker 2: unsold cases all over Australia. Police documents show similarities between
1:09
Speaker 2: the Bilanglow murders and cold cases in Victoria and Queensland
1:13
Speaker 2: dating back decades. It seems almost impossible to believe that
1:18
Speaker 2: Malatt only discovered his taste for killing defenseless people. In
1:22
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine and that he confined himself to New
1:25
Speaker 2: South Wales. There has never been a nationwide investigation of
1:29
Speaker 2: Malat's activities until now. New South Wales Legislative Council Member
1:35
Speaker 2: Jeremy Buckingham is the chair of an inquiry into the
1:38
Speaker 2: unsolved murders and missing persons cases across the southern Highlands
1:43
Speaker 2: of New South Wales Inner Sydney, Newcastle and North Coast
1:47
Speaker 2: regions between nineteen sixty five and twenty ten. It's fast
1:51
Speaker 2: becoming a nationwide probe into this most heenus of individuals.
1:56
Speaker 2: A road worker and long distance truck driver, Malap had
2:01
Speaker 2: the perfect opportunity to indulge his bloodlust, to kill randomly
2:06
Speaker 2: and then move on. There are dozens of unsolved cases
2:10
Speaker 2: outside New South Wales, in Victoria and Queensland that bear
2:14
Speaker 2: the hallmarks of this depraved individual. Malatt died in jail
2:19
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen while serving seven life sentences, but justice
2:23
Speaker 2: for other victims must still be served and Jeremy Buckingham
2:28
Speaker 2: is fast becoming the instrument of that justice. And it's
2:31
Speaker 2: my pleasure to welcome you back to the real crime studio.
2:35
Speaker 1: You I, Jeremy could I Adam, great to be with you, mate.
2:38
Speaker 3: Absolute pleasure. When you called me the other day.
2:41
Speaker 2: I was in a park in Perth doing work on
2:43
Speaker 2: another murder and I saw you a note, thought to
2:46
Speaker 2: take this call. This bloke's really on fire. Need to
2:49
Speaker 2: talk to him. And you've been doing more work. Your
2:51
Speaker 2: inquiry has started taking submissions this week and it's becoming
2:55
Speaker 2: very clear that you can't confine yourself to New South Wales.
3:00
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right, Adam.
3:01
Speaker 4: What we're discovering is that we know who Ivan Malatt
3:06
Speaker 4: was a road worker, but what's emerging is that he
3:09
Speaker 4: had a very long career as an interstate truck driver,
3:12
Speaker 4: driving into Queensland, driving into Victoria and beyond reports that
3:17
Speaker 4: he even went as far as South Australia and Western Australia.
3:21
Speaker 4: So we're starting to get information about murders, are unsolved homicides, disappearances,
3:29
Speaker 4: especially in central and southeast Queensland and in Victoria, that
3:34
Speaker 4: have all.
3:35
Speaker 1: The hallmarks of Ivan Malatt.
3:37
Speaker 4: People picked up from the roadside, found dumped in remote
3:41
Speaker 4: areas with the same mo in terms of savage bashings
3:46
Speaker 4: and stabbings and rapes, and also the fact that they
3:49
Speaker 4: were vulnerable people people hitchhiking by the side of the road,
3:54
Speaker 4: walking home, these types of things.
3:56
Speaker 1: So we're learning that more.
3:58
Speaker 4: And more people around the country, including retired police and
4:02
Speaker 4: the serving police, were of the view that Malat had
4:05
Speaker 4: killed a lot of other people. But we're not talking
4:08
Speaker 4: two or three. I think we're talking scores of people,
4:11
Speaker 4: and it's a nationwide issue and the biggest belief that
4:15
Speaker 4: this issue has not been properly looked at by law
4:19
Speaker 4: enforcement until now.
4:21
Speaker 2: Well it's right because you're talking about them. Because the
4:24
Speaker 2: motives operandi that comes out of the Blangalo State Forest
4:27
Speaker 2: murders or where he buried the bodies was of someone
4:30
Speaker 2: who killed with a twenty two rifle. Some were in
4:33
Speaker 2: that area. People he picked up between there in Sydney
4:36
Speaker 2: buried them in the forest, and that was pretty much
4:40
Speaker 2: how we were left to believe Malatt operated. But I
4:44
Speaker 2: think what you're finding is that this bloke was an
4:47
Speaker 2: opportunistic thrill killer and a lot of other crimes seem
4:52
Speaker 2: to fit that same mo But most critically, the description
4:57
Speaker 2: seems to be consistent. Over how many murders do you
5:01
Speaker 2: think this applies?
5:04
Speaker 4: I think Scullion, Paul Gordon, others have retired detectives who
5:08
Speaker 4: worked on Task Force Air said it was eighty plus
5:11
Speaker 4: and I think that that's a fair number looking around
5:14
Speaker 4: the country. The documents I've got out of Parliament, Task
5:17
Speaker 4: Force Air had fifty nine that they drew up in
5:21
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety three when they were looking for similar murders
5:24
Speaker 4: across Australia. So that's the sort of number we're looking at,
5:28
Speaker 4: close to one hundred. Where you have this stranger on
5:32
Speaker 4: stranger of violence, it's clearly the murder is not related
5:36
Speaker 4: to drugs or domestic violence or underworld activity. It's just
5:41
Speaker 4: a thrill killing. It's a psycho killer picking people up.
5:45
Speaker 4: Malatt had that opportunity as a road worker, you know,
5:48
Speaker 4: just traveling around and as a track driver, an opportunistic
5:52
Speaker 4: thrill killer. But the other part of them is, of course,
5:55
Speaker 4: if you just mentioned a twenty two rifle used in Bilangelo,
5:59
Speaker 4: other murders around New South Wales and the Eastern seaboard
6:03
Speaker 4: where that's the case, but also the ab that is
6:06
Speaker 4: a very rare thing, beggars belief that someone could bring
6:10
Speaker 4: themselves to do that to anyone in any circumstance, let
6:13
Speaker 4: alone a complete stranger.
6:16
Speaker 1: Yet when we look across some of.
6:18
Speaker 4: These murders in the early nineteen seventies in Queensland, the
6:22
Speaker 4: Norange killer rapist that was operating in Southeast Queensland and
6:26
Speaker 4: fled back into New South Wales and some of the
6:29
Speaker 4: murders in Victoria in Inner Melbourne in the early nineteen eighties.
6:34
Speaker 1: Savage murders are the.
6:35
Speaker 4: Murder of Thomas Cooper Bomarus in July nineteen eighty. Someone
6:40
Speaker 4: just walked up and shot him and his girlfriend point Blake,
6:43
Speaker 4: and the description of that killer in nineteen eighty was
6:46
Speaker 4: of a man in a big black hat with a
6:48
Speaker 4: handlebar mustache shot Thomas Cooper, dared, his girlfriend lived, gave
6:53
Speaker 4: an interview to police, described him, and just a month
6:56
Speaker 4: prior to that Adam in Paramatta, two women disappeared, Deborah
7:01
Speaker 4: Balkan and Gillian Jamison from the Tollgate Hotel. They disappeared
7:05
Speaker 4: just a month earlier and the headlines were searched for
7:09
Speaker 4: the man in the big black hat and an identic
7:11
Speaker 4: kit that looks like Malatt looks like the identic kit
7:15
Speaker 4: of the killer of Thomas Cooper, and it just beag
7:17
Speaker 4: his belief that police did not put those two together
7:22
Speaker 4: and an actual fact, what we've discovered is in some
7:25
Speaker 4: cases they did there was an indication that the police
7:29
Speaker 4: were in New South Wales thought that some of the
7:32
Speaker 4: murders in New South Wales in the early nineteen seventies
7:35
Speaker 4: were linked to some of the murders Michelle Riley in
7:39
Speaker 4: Southeast Coeensland in the early nineteen seventies.
7:43
Speaker 3: You mentioned Thomas Cooper.
7:45
Speaker 2: I had the pleasure recently of interviewing Graham Henderson, who
7:48
Speaker 2: was the first police officer on the scene at bo
7:51
Speaker 2: Morris there and he told the story of talking to
7:53
Speaker 2: Thomas Cooper's girlfriend who was obviously distraught and she'd just
7:57
Speaker 2: been through a terrible ordeal. Where they're in the car there,
8:00
Speaker 2: it's a lover's lane type situation and this figure, as
8:03
Speaker 2: you say, musta black hatters looms up at the car
8:06
Speaker 2: and shoots through the window at poor Thomas. He manages
8:11
Speaker 2: to drive away. The figure continues to shoot and unfortunately
8:15
Speaker 2: Cooper passes away and his girlfriend, who unfortunately is also deceased,
8:20
Speaker 2: otherwise she could pop up at your inquiry, which would
8:23
Speaker 2: be good, gives the description. And you've talked to me
8:27
Speaker 2: about the fact that Malatt and his brothers for that matter,
8:31
Speaker 2: had this unpleasant game, if you could call it, of
8:36
Speaker 2: what they call rattling people in their cars.
8:39
Speaker 3: What was that?
8:40
Speaker 4: Boris Malatt describes it. He said that these Malats were
8:45
Speaker 4: a gang. They were a gang when you think about
8:47
Speaker 4: organized crime, they were gangsters and they were all in
8:51
Speaker 4: like I believe, heavily involved in organized crime from the
8:55
Speaker 4: early nineteen sixties. They were dealing drugs, doing ram raids
8:59
Speaker 4: on gun shops, and a propensity for extreme criminality and violence.
9:05
Speaker 4: Roris malat Ivan's older brother describes the fun they would
9:08
Speaker 4: have on a weekend, which was a couple of them
9:11
Speaker 4: getting a car, steal a car, go out and rattle cars.
9:15
Speaker 4: And that was that they would pull up next to
9:18
Speaker 4: someone at a lover's lane, get out of the car,
9:21
Speaker 4: bash the guy, and rape the girl. That sort of
9:25
Speaker 4: brutality just is beyond comprehension. But Boris Malatt described that
9:31
Speaker 4: as the fun they used to have. And when you
9:34
Speaker 4: look around the country, there are a couple of very
9:37
Speaker 4: very concerning, alarming, egregious murders. Thomas Cooper in Bomars. There's
9:44
Speaker 4: Carol Down and her boyfriend in Kingscliff nineteen seventy seven
9:48
Speaker 4: on the beach in northern New South Wales. A stranger
9:51
Speaker 4: just comes up and shoots them with a shotgun, both dead.
9:55
Speaker 4: There's a double murder Carol Reese and her boyfriend in Newcastle.
10:01
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies.
10:02
Speaker 4: An ex wife Falcon Malat drove x Y Falcon has
10:06
Speaker 4: seen next to their car. They are just shot dead
10:09
Speaker 4: at a lover's lane, exactly the same circumstance as poor
10:12
Speaker 4: Thomas Cooper in nineteen seventy. And then there's another couple
10:16
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy six, a fellow called mister Barton and
10:19
Speaker 4: his lover whoever, in an affair at Golston Gorge who was
10:23
Speaker 4: shot dead with the twenty two no theft just a
10:26
Speaker 4: thrill killing, no motive in nineteen seventy six, and Golston
10:30
Speaker 4: Gorge was an area that Mlat was known to frequent
10:33
Speaker 4: He dumped some of the backpackers' equipment in that area.
10:37
Speaker 4: So the question is has anyone ever looked at those murders.
10:41
Speaker 4: There's four that I know of of just lovers lane murders.
10:44
Speaker 4: They're strikingly similar to the murders the Son of Sam murders.
10:49
Speaker 4: Just people in their cars, someone walking up and shooting
10:52
Speaker 4: them with the twenty two did other jurisdictions look at
10:56
Speaker 4: Mlat and ask for information about Malat? And this inquiry
11:00
Speaker 4: is going to get to the bottom of it. We're
11:02
Speaker 4: going to write to those other police commands Victoria, Queensland,
11:08
Speaker 4: every state and territory and ask whether or not there
11:10
Speaker 4: were murders that were on their books that they think
11:14
Speaker 4: Malatt could have been a person of interest in.
11:16
Speaker 2: So this is the New South Wales Parliamentary Inquiry of
11:19
Speaker 2: that's going national. Do you, in terms of reference to
11:21
Speaker 2: ll are you to go outside of New South Wales?
11:23
Speaker 4: Well, I think they do on the chair of the committee,
11:25
Speaker 4: and because there's a clever clause that I put in
11:28
Speaker 4: the bottom of the terms of reference and it's any
11:30
Speaker 4: other related matter. Now we're talking about the crimes of
11:34
Speaker 4: a New South Welshman. So as long as I'm talking
11:36
Speaker 4: about Malatt, I can't look at unsolved crimes where it
11:39
Speaker 4: has nothing to do with Malat. But if we are
11:42
Speaker 4: are outside of New South Wales. But if we've got
11:45
Speaker 4: a New South Welshman and Malatt was born and raised here,
11:49
Speaker 4: is a product of New South Wales. If he's going
11:52
Speaker 4: into state and committing crimes, well that's of interest to
11:56
Speaker 4: the people of New South Wales, and we want to
11:58
Speaker 4: know if the New South Wales police were working with
12:01
Speaker 4: other jurisdictions, and potentially if they weren't.
12:05
Speaker 2: You go to the heart of one of the problems
12:08
Speaker 2: of our federal system back then that state police forces
12:11
Speaker 2: did not play well with each other. They're almost in
12:14
Speaker 2: competition with each other.
12:15
Speaker 3: There was no.
12:16
Speaker 2: National databases, no DNA, no ways of cooperation. So the
12:20
Speaker 2: traveling crook, whether it was a bank robber, a murder,
12:23
Speaker 2: of thrillcare of whatever, had a tremendous advantage. And I
12:27
Speaker 2: can see someone like Malat he is a thrill killer
12:30
Speaker 2: and it's all about the kill for him, So he
12:33
Speaker 2: can do this and you'd expect that once he gets
12:36
Speaker 2: away with one and moves on, it's pleasure out of
12:39
Speaker 2: the press that he's seeing about these killings, goes to
12:42
Speaker 2: the next one and the next one, and he.
12:45
Speaker 3: Must be thinking to himself, they're not putting it together.
12:48
Speaker 3: This is a free for all.
12:50
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I think happened.
12:52
Speaker 4: Mlatt was incredibly mobile from a very young age. He
12:56
Speaker 4: was stealing cars, incredibly mobile, moving around a lot. We
13:01
Speaker 4: know that his wife said of him that if he
13:04
Speaker 4: was working north of Newcastle, and if this is before
13:07
Speaker 4: mobile phones in the eighties, if he rang her in
13:10
Speaker 4: the evening and she didn't answer the phone at six
13:13
Speaker 4: o'clock when he'd organized to talk to her, and he
13:16
Speaker 4: was very coercive and threatening and violent individual, he would
13:20
Speaker 4: drive from northern Newcastle to Campbelltown to check on her
13:24
Speaker 4: and then be back at work in the morning. Now
13:26
Speaker 4: that's a four and a half hour trip in the
13:28
Speaker 4: nineteen eighties, like that is a massive long drive. That
13:32
Speaker 4: is driving all night. We know he was a truck driver.
13:35
Speaker 4: We know that he read up on tracks. He always
13:37
Speaker 4: had big muscle cars. He loved to drive, and we
13:41
Speaker 4: know that all he had to do was pop across
13:43
Speaker 4: the border. The AFP were nascent back then, if they
13:48
Speaker 4: really existed at all, the New South Wales jurisdictions couldn't
13:52
Speaker 4: follow him across the border. You got across the border,
13:55
Speaker 4: you're in another world. And we look at that murder
13:58
Speaker 4: and that's what it was of Gillian Jamison and debraah
14:00
Speaker 4: borkm July nineteen eighty. That happens headline search for the
14:06
Speaker 4: Man in the Big Black Hat.
14:07
Speaker 1: It's front page of the Sydney papers.
14:10
Speaker 4: A month later Thomas Cooper's shot and there's a headline
14:14
Speaker 4: cowboy killer strikes and then an identicate of a man
14:17
Speaker 4: in a big black hat with Aelby mustache, and no
14:20
Speaker 4: one puts two and two together. It just beggars belief,
14:23
Speaker 4: but it's possible. But it makes me sit up and
14:26
Speaker 4: think we need to look far and wide, because there's
14:29
Speaker 4: examples in Southeast Queensland, central Queensland, as far away as
14:34
Speaker 4: Western Australia where there's no unsolved homicide that have all
14:39
Speaker 4: the hallmarks of ive in malat And I want to
14:41
Speaker 4: ask for these different police organizations and agencies what they
14:45
Speaker 4: knew and when they knew it, and whether or not
14:48
Speaker 4: they were asking the New South Wales Police, where was
14:51
Speaker 4: your man in the nineteen seventy his eighties? Where are
14:54
Speaker 4: the log books of his work as a truck driver?
14:57
Speaker 4: Which companies did he work for? When did he have
14:59
Speaker 4: two weeks off and go on a holiday? Because this
15:02
Speaker 4: is a guy that I think moved around like a
15:04
Speaker 4: blow fly on the bottom, just zinging from one spot
15:07
Speaker 4: to the other and just commit a crime.
15:10
Speaker 1: Hit the road.
15:11
Speaker 4: Really, you know, it's encapsulated by the ACDC song came
15:16
Speaker 4: out at that time. Highway to Hell. That's what he
15:18
Speaker 4: was on. He was flying up and down these highways,
15:22
Speaker 4: killing with impunity. That's my belief, and I think more
15:25
Speaker 4: and more that we look at it, the evidence is
15:27
Speaker 4: stacking that up.
15:29
Speaker 3: Let's hope he made it to his preferred destination. Jeremy.
15:32
Speaker 2: I'm not a religious man, but there should be some
15:34
Speaker 2: punishment for this. Seven life sentences wasn't enough. Now you
15:37
Speaker 2: talk about clusters of unsolved murders on the Eastern seaboard,
15:43
Speaker 2: and you, I think, have tried to look at well,
15:45
Speaker 2: that's possible. Itinery where they coincide with those clusters.
15:49
Speaker 3: Take us through a few of those.
15:51
Speaker 4: Well, what we know going back in nineteen seventy one,
15:55
Speaker 4: there's a rape, a double rape, and a murder down
15:57
Speaker 4: in Canberra, Karen Rowlands, and there was a double rape
16:00
Speaker 4: that he was charged but not convicted for. So we
16:03
Speaker 4: can see early on here's a propensity for extreme violence,
16:08
Speaker 4: raping people at knife point, and.
16:10
Speaker 1: He's a young man.
16:11
Speaker 4: Nineteen seventy one, he essentially skips the bail and disappears
16:15
Speaker 4: for a couple of years. But we look at nineteen
16:17
Speaker 4: seventy three, what happens in central Queensland and that Charterstownsville
16:23
Speaker 4: Townsville area, there's reports of the Cowboy killer, a man
16:27
Speaker 4: called Tex. There's the killing of Anita Cunningham and Robin
16:30
Speaker 4: Hondrel Bartram out on that Highway twenty two execution rape.
16:35
Speaker 4: And in southeast Queensland there's the Nerang killer rapist, which
16:40
Speaker 4: was caused for such concern that jobioccipedis in the Premier
16:44
Speaker 4: closed the border and they were talking about instituting a
16:47
Speaker 4: state of emergency because there was Gabriel Jenki and Michelle Riley.
16:51
Speaker 4: They were abducted and savagely murdered and then another young
16:55
Speaker 4: woman in Irang was picked up and savagely stabbed. Now
16:58
Speaker 4: she survived, gave a description of the person that fitted Malat,
17:02
Speaker 4: fitted his car, and that the purse and the police
17:05
Speaker 4: knew had escaped over the border. So there's a cluster
17:09
Speaker 4: in Queensland in that seventy two seventy three period. He
17:13
Speaker 4: escapes over into the border. We don't know what happens
17:16
Speaker 4: New South Wales. CIB at the time said that they
17:20
Speaker 4: thought the person responsible for Gabriel Jenki and Michelle Riley's
17:24
Speaker 4: murder had killed Jeanette Hannington and Guy Meer and also
17:28
Speaker 4: Bromwin Richardson in Aubury. Now Mlap was a person of
17:32
Speaker 4: interest in the Aubury murder at the time, so that
17:36
Speaker 4: Lynks Mlap certainly the police were making the links to
17:39
Speaker 4: Malap and those Southeast Queensland murders. And then beyond that,
17:43
Speaker 4: basically the mid to late seventies there's just this explosion
17:48
Speaker 4: of unsolved homicides involving young women hitch hiking, walking home, abducted,
17:54
Speaker 4: egregiously murdered in the Woollongong, Central Sydney and especially North
18:00
Speaker 4: Sydney Newcastle area. So we see a lot in the
18:03
Speaker 4: North Sydney area. Shell Pope and her partner abducted in
18:08
Speaker 4: North Sydney, the murders in and around Newcastle, Lean Goodall,
18:12
Speaker 4: Amanda Robinson, amongst others. That was the subject of a
18:16
Speaker 4: police task force after Mlatt's arrest, Task Force Fenwick that
18:21
Speaker 4: looked at seventeen murders in North Sydney and Newcastle in
18:26
Speaker 4: that area and never came up with an extra charge.
18:30
Speaker 4: There was an abduction of Kerry Joel and Elane Johnson,
18:33
Speaker 4: Tony Cavanar and k Dougherty in the Woollongong area, amongst others.
18:38
Speaker 4: So that's where we see Mlatt was living, that was
18:40
Speaker 4: where he was working, and there was just a huge
18:43
Speaker 4: number up until about the mid nineteen eighties and this
18:47
Speaker 4: Paramatta Tollgate Hotel abduction where there was a witness, there
18:52
Speaker 4: was an identic kit, it was front page of the paper.
18:55
Speaker 4: And then what happens We have Thomas Cooper a month
18:58
Speaker 4: later in Victoria murdered a thrill killing down at Beaumars
19:04
Speaker 4: and around that time. Around that time there were a
19:07
Speaker 4: number of the alarming increases I think in unsolved homicides
19:11
Speaker 4: and thrill killings in that Melbourne area.
19:14
Speaker 1: Now I don't want.
19:15
Speaker 4: To draw too many conclusions, but I do think we
19:18
Speaker 4: can say that Malap was very mobile. His brother said,
19:22
Speaker 4: wherever he went, people were killed. That's what his brother
19:26
Speaker 4: Boris said. His brother Boris had a bit of an
19:28
Speaker 4: axe to grind. But his other brother said, David says, oh,
19:32
Speaker 4: we know he does bad things.
19:34
Speaker 1: We think he might have stopped.
19:35
Speaker 4: And so this period, this mystery period for Ivan Malap,
19:39
Speaker 4: the late sixties to the late nineteen eighties, Where was he,
19:44
Speaker 4: who was he, what was he working?
19:46
Speaker 1: Who for? We need to know, like on.
19:49
Speaker 4: A day by day basis where this guy was, so
19:53
Speaker 4: we can at least line up whether or not he
19:55
Speaker 4: had the opportunity to commit some of these murders, because
19:58
Speaker 4: I think he did.
20:00
Speaker 2: I think you're probably right, but we don't really know
20:02
Speaker 2: what the police know. Typically US journalists of ass questions
20:06
Speaker 2: about these murders and possible links to particularly when the
20:10
Speaker 2: killers are alive, we get this, this is an ongoing
20:12
Speaker 2: investigation and we can't comment, and this can be about
20:16
Speaker 2: murders from thirty or forty years before. How confident are
20:19
Speaker 2: you that New South Wales police will be willing to
20:23
Speaker 2: share these details with you.
20:26
Speaker 4: It's a million dollar question, Adam. I really hope that
20:29
Speaker 4: they are. We had a big inquiry in New South
20:31
Speaker 4: Wales which was the Gay Hate Crimes Inquiry, and the
20:35
Speaker 4: police didn't play nicely in that didn't provide the information
20:39
Speaker 4: that that inquiry ran into a Special Commission of Inquiry
20:43
Speaker 4: and had some really important recommendations and some truth telling.
20:48
Speaker 4: I think the police in New South Wales can look
20:50
Speaker 4: at that. That's the process. Where on I'm going to
20:52
Speaker 4: be in Parliament for the next six years. I'm never
20:54
Speaker 4: giving up. The families aren't giving up the communities not
20:57
Speaker 4: giving up and how is it not in the public
21:00
Speaker 4: interest for the police to provide our inquiry And even
21:04
Speaker 4: if it's the committee confidential and privileged information, how is
21:09
Speaker 4: it not in the public interest to show us what
21:12
Speaker 4: they know on these matters. We want to see his
21:15
Speaker 4: police record, We want to see his work record. We
21:17
Speaker 4: want to see what things he was charged for and
21:20
Speaker 4: win in different jurisdictions. We want to see what these
21:23
Speaker 4: task forces turned up Fenwick and Air why they didn't
21:28
Speaker 4: pursue him on other matters, because he's an really egregious case.
21:32
Speaker 4: The case of Peter Letcher. Peter Letcher was murdered in
21:35
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight and Jenolan Caves. He was abducted and
21:38
Speaker 4: picked up hitch hiking. He'd been raped, He'd been shot
21:42
Speaker 4: and savagely stabbed, his body left underneath the log in
21:45
Speaker 4: Janolan Caves. It's the same type of murder in the
21:48
Speaker 4: same place, in the same time as the Blangelo murders.
21:52
Speaker 4: And then this Clive Small, the detective inspector that led
21:56
Speaker 4: Task Force AIR, said on the public record that the
22:00
Speaker 4: ballistics found at Peter Letcher's murder site matched Angelo. Yet
22:06
Speaker 4: Malat was never charged. Now, how can that be Why
22:09
Speaker 4: would you not get this guy out of jail and
22:12
Speaker 4: convict him for another murder? Peter Leccher and his family
22:16
Speaker 4: demanding it. It just doesn't pass muster. Clive Small said
22:20
Speaker 4: there wasn't the political appetite to go after Malat's other crimes.
22:24
Speaker 4: And that's a million dollar question, because you know, I
22:28
Speaker 4: think it opened up a Pandoras box that goes all
22:31
Speaker 4: the way back into the nineteen sixties and seventies.
22:35
Speaker 3: It is troubling, and Clive Small was a friend of mine.
22:38
Speaker 2: He died recently, God rest his soul, and one of
22:41
Speaker 2: the most dedicated officers and human beings I've dealt with
22:45
Speaker 2: in my true prime career. And if he could have
22:47
Speaker 2: prosecuted Malat, I think he would have. So are we
22:51
Speaker 2: talking about people in the system and the hierarchy, possibly
22:55
Speaker 2: even in politics, who've conspired to minimize even Malat's activities.
23:01
Speaker 1: That's exactly what we're saying.
23:02
Speaker 4: I think that the cops would have gone after in
23:04
Speaker 4: Foot Bottle, There's no doubt about it.
23:07
Speaker 1: There's no way that they would.
23:08
Speaker 4: Leave murders hanging out there, unless of course there was
23:12
Speaker 4: some you know, and the police are beholden to the politicians.
23:16
Speaker 4: They're the ones that do the appointing of the senior police,
23:19
Speaker 4: They're the ones that provide the budgets, and they're the
23:22
Speaker 4: ones that write the laws and have incredible power. And
23:26
Speaker 4: we look at New South Wales and the nineteen seventies
23:29
Speaker 4: and eighties in particular, one of the most corrupt places
23:33
Speaker 4: on Earth and the New South Wales police right there
23:35
Speaker 4: in the middle of the police, the judiciary, the executive,
23:39
Speaker 4: the government bureaucracy, all of it was an absolute cesspool.
23:42
Speaker 4: People think that places like Bangkok or corrupt places, well,
23:47
Speaker 4: I describe Sydney in that time as like a white Bangkok.
23:51
Speaker 4: It was anything goes, drugs, prostitution, all illegal, all green lit,
23:57
Speaker 4: and with that a criminal element that just ran amok,
24:01
Speaker 4: essentially operated with impunity.
24:03
Speaker 1: Now we had the Wood Royal.
24:04
Speaker 4: Commission in South Wales cleared a lot of that out,
24:08
Speaker 4: but at the heart of this and the Wood Royal
24:11
Speaker 4: Commission was I think some of the real damage done
24:14
Speaker 4: in that corruption was what happens when some of these
24:18
Speaker 4: criminal figures are basically green lit. You look at some
24:22
Speaker 4: of the more notorious ones people Likeneddie Smith operating essentially
24:26
Speaker 4: with impunity, doing armed robberies. Well, what if someone like
24:29
Speaker 4: Ivan Malap was useful connected running drugs, potentially.
24:34
Speaker 1: Knew a few people in power.
24:36
Speaker 4: What if they were green lip, They'd basically been given
24:39
Speaker 4: a leave pass and they went, okay, well I'm going
24:42
Speaker 4: to use this to the full extent. And I wonder
24:45
Speaker 4: if that's why there wasn't a political appetite to have
24:49
Speaker 4: a look back at what he was really up to.
24:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure there are people out there listening to
24:54
Speaker 2: the podcast saying, oh, this Jeremy Buckingham is a conspiracy theorist.
24:57
Speaker 2: How could this happen? I'll give you a good precedent
25:00
Speaker 2: you dubting Thomas's. Neville Tween was the likely the abductor,
25:06
Speaker 2: rapist and murderer of Trudy Adams. She was picked up
25:09
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight on the Northern Beaches there and she
25:13
Speaker 2: was murdered not just by Twin but a group of men.
25:16
Speaker 2: He later becomes an informant to the New South Wales
25:19
Speaker 2: Crime Commission investigator Mark Standen. He was paid one hundred
25:22
Speaker 2: grand or more in public money for his information and
25:26
Speaker 2: there's evidence that he was protected. Of course, Mark Standon
25:29
Speaker 2: goes to jail later on for drug crimes. So as
25:31
Speaker 2: you say, New South Wales was hardly squeaky clean and
25:34
Speaker 2: there are these precedents for this sort of pragmatic approach. Well,
25:39
Speaker 2: you know, Melat's in there for seven life sentences. Why
25:42
Speaker 2: do we have to spend more energy and time when
25:45
Speaker 2: you know pragmatic thoughts may have ruled the day. And
25:49
Speaker 2: I think Tween is a very good excent. He's also
25:50
Speaker 2: dead by the one, A more loathsome character you couldn't find.
25:54
Speaker 2: But these sort of individuals thrived in that kind of
25:58
Speaker 2: environment in those days.
26:00
Speaker 1: Well that is exactly right.
26:02
Speaker 4: You look at it, the close links between some of
26:04
Speaker 4: the pool and these career criminals who would do anything.
26:09
Speaker 4: I think that they would rape, murder, drugs, crime, corruption, standover.
26:14
Speaker 4: That was their bread and butter, you know, institutionalized criminality.
26:18
Speaker 1: But we really have to have a look at who
26:20
Speaker 1: Ivan Malatt is.
26:21
Speaker 4: We were told that Ivan Malat was this familial road worker,
26:25
Speaker 4: but he was a career criminal, a really serious criminal,
26:29
Speaker 4: like he was doing armed robberies, he was doing ram raids,
26:32
Speaker 4: he was running drugs, like major shipments of cannabis in
26:36
Speaker 4: and out of Queensland in the mid nineteen eighties, moving
26:39
Speaker 4: guns and arms.
26:40
Speaker 1: Across the border and how did he see himself?
26:43
Speaker 4: Well, Ivan Malatt used to sign off and people can
26:46
Speaker 4: google this up used to sign off his name as
26:50
Speaker 4: Ivan with a stick figure that was the Saint, like
26:53
Speaker 4: the Saint Kilda football club logo. It was the Saint now.
26:57
Speaker 4: The Saint was a Roger Moore character from the nineteen
27:00
Speaker 4: sixties who was like a vigilante, like an Underworld charrector,
27:05
Speaker 4: a James Bond character, a hit man working sort of
27:10
Speaker 4: for the good of society, cleaning up the streets. He
27:13
Speaker 4: would go out, he would knock off baddies, people involved
27:18
Speaker 4: in prostitution and drugs and espionage. We would knock them off.
27:22
Speaker 4: Malat's nickname that his mum gave him was Kookie. Kookie
27:26
Speaker 4: was an undercover cop in the nineteen sixties TV show
27:30
Speaker 4: seventy seven Sunset Strip. Malatt used to dress up as
27:34
Speaker 4: a ranger. People have come forward to me and said
27:37
Speaker 4: that they had seen Malatt in Darlinghurst in the seventies
27:40
Speaker 4: and eighties and like one couple said, he tried to
27:43
Speaker 4: abduct them and he was wearing a police uniform. His
27:47
Speaker 4: gun that he carried around had KGB written on it.
27:51
Speaker 4: His rifles and his gun were inscribed with KGB, and
27:55
Speaker 4: he had a paintball mask in his keel kit and
27:57
Speaker 4: a camouflage paintball mask that had inscribed in it KGB.
28:02
Speaker 4: And we look at the attitudes of police, especially to
28:05
Speaker 4: young women in that seventies and eighties. They blame the
28:09
Speaker 4: women that are picked up and raped and murdered. They say, well,
28:13
Speaker 4: this is what you get if you're this sort of
28:15
Speaker 4: person who's smoking a bit of dope and hitch hiking
28:18
Speaker 4: and heading off to a hippie commune.
28:21
Speaker 1: This is what you can get.
28:22
Speaker 4: In one case, the police officer complains about the amount
28:26
Speaker 4: of work it's creating.
28:28
Speaker 1: For police officers.
28:29
Speaker 4: These women and young men who are hitch hiking and
28:32
Speaker 4: getting into trouble.
28:34
Speaker 1: They blame the victim quite literally.
28:36
Speaker 4: And the perpetrators were I think just not even pursued,
28:41
Speaker 4: and I think that was just seen as sort of
28:43
Speaker 4: collateral damage. Well, what do you expect if you're a
28:46
Speaker 4: beautiful young girl walking home at night on your own
28:49
Speaker 4: or going home? In one case, the police warned women
28:52
Speaker 4: not to be home alone on their own. Now, in
28:56
Speaker 4: today's standards, you just think that doesn't pass muster. People
28:59
Speaker 4: should be allowed to be at home alone and be
29:01
Speaker 4: safe without having their door kicked in and being stabbed
29:04
Speaker 4: to death. But in the nineteen seventies it was a
29:07
Speaker 4: different world.
29:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up in the seventies and was one
29:10
Speaker 2: of our rights of passage. Going hitchhiking. You go with
29:12
Speaker 2: your girlfriend. You couldn't afford the train of the plane,
29:15
Speaker 2: so you hit. So everyone did it. And yet to
29:17
Speaker 2: think what we know now about the dangers of it.
29:20
Speaker 2: I mean, we're absolutely off our heads. You look at
29:23
Speaker 2: them in the backpacker murders again, that it's accommodation of
29:28
Speaker 2: stabbing and shooting. Normally these things are separate. The killer
29:33
Speaker 2: with a firearm tends to from remote control further back
29:36
Speaker 2: it if it's closed up, but still there's a certain distance,
29:39
Speaker 2: whereas someone who uses a knife likes to be up close,
29:43
Speaker 2: likes to feel someone's life force ebbing away. And I'm
29:48
Speaker 2: always struck by that picture we've seen of Malett in
29:51
Speaker 2: the back of a police car and he's looking into
29:54
Speaker 2: the camera with this gleeful evil look on his face,
29:59
Speaker 2: like I am just pure undistilled hate and lovelust.
30:06
Speaker 3: This bloke can do anything.
30:08
Speaker 4: I think so, and I think it's likely he operated
30:11
Speaker 4: in concert at sometimes, but probably only with people that
30:15
Speaker 4: were very close to him, like he trusted with his
30:18
Speaker 4: life literally, so you know, of course his family members,
30:22
Speaker 4: his brother Richard and Bill and Walter were always implicated
30:27
Speaker 4: and a person's of interest. How Richard Mlatt wasn't charged
30:31
Speaker 4: by Task Force heir was all of the evidence that
30:34
Speaker 4: they've got they had against Malat, apart from the ruga
30:38
Speaker 4: rifle parts in the house, were essentially applied to Richard.
30:42
Speaker 4: But I think the interesting thing about Malat was it
30:45
Speaker 4: was about control. He was a control freak, and so
30:49
Speaker 4: he loved tying people up and torturing them. And so
30:53
Speaker 4: I think he would kill one person in one way
30:55
Speaker 4: in front of the other person, terrify the other person
30:58
Speaker 4: they knew that their fate was sealed. One of the
31:01
Speaker 4: most appalling parts of the Backpack of Murders is that
31:05
Speaker 4: really wasn't looked into was well. First of all, there's
31:08
Speaker 4: an indication in the joe Anne Walters and Caroline Clark
31:12
Speaker 4: that joe Ane Walters died months after Caroline Clark. She
31:17
Speaker 4: may well have been the forensics couldn't nail that down.
31:20
Speaker 4: She may well have been kept for a very long time,
31:23
Speaker 4: I'm talking months, and.
31:25
Speaker 1: In the other murders, the people were eviscerated.
31:29
Speaker 4: In one case, the torso and the legs were found
31:32
Speaker 4: a long way away from each other, the heads missing,
31:35
Speaker 4: body parts missing, and it's symptomatic, like it's very very
31:40
Speaker 4: rare to find serial killers at all. It's very rare
31:44
Speaker 4: to find serial killers that will stab people to death.
31:48
Speaker 4: It's like it's just such an incredibly intense and violent effect.
31:53
Speaker 4: And yet across Australia what we see is this pattern
31:57
Speaker 4: of these stabbing and also, i should say, adam, as
32:01
Speaker 4: appalling as it is if you're stabbing someone because they
32:04
Speaker 4: owe you money or like a domestic violent situation, like
32:09
Speaker 4: that's one thing, terrible as it is, but to stab
32:13
Speaker 4: someone you've never met before, a complete stranger, is just
32:17
Speaker 4: in another class of evil. And yet that's what we
32:21
Speaker 4: see in Southeast Queensland in the Blangelo murders, wander Beach,
32:26
Speaker 4: some of these murders, these other murders.
32:28
Speaker 1: That are unsolved.
32:29
Speaker 4: And how many of these serial killers have we had
32:32
Speaker 4: in Australia who involved in long term patterns of extreme
32:37
Speaker 4: violence picking up strangers, maybe three or four maybe three
32:42
Speaker 4: or four. And Ivan Malatt was a career criminal, and
32:46
Speaker 4: I just don't believe that he wasn't responsible for many, many,
32:51
Speaker 4: many of these other murders. And the key thing we
32:54
Speaker 4: want to get to is where was Ivan? Where was he?
32:58
Speaker 4: How is it that Ivan Malat is a mystery in
33:02
Speaker 4: the nineteen seventies. Where was he? What was he doing?
33:06
Speaker 4: Who were his friends? What was his job on this
33:09
Speaker 4: day that day? Where was he? We want to get
33:12
Speaker 4: to the bottom of it.
33:14
Speaker 2: Indeed, you mentioned Caroline Clark, the possive that she was
33:17
Speaker 2: kept for some time. We see also the disappearance of
33:22
Speaker 2: Anita Cunningham. Her traveling partner Robin Hoynevilbartram was found under
33:27
Speaker 2: a bridget sensible creeking of Charter's towers. There's never been
33:30
Speaker 2: any sign of Anita Cunningham, and I wonder whether this
33:34
Speaker 2: fits because the witness in that case, who unfortunately stayed
33:37
Speaker 2: quiet for decades and her information only really came out
33:41
Speaker 2: after her death. MERL White, I'm talking about she identified
33:45
Speaker 2: someone looked very much like Ivan ma lap up there
33:49
Speaker 2: black hat, called himself Cowboy. But he was with other
33:53
Speaker 2: people as well, And I wonder what happened to those people?
33:59
Speaker 2: Are they able to give evidence even at this long
34:03
Speaker 2: distance of time, are they still out there?
34:05
Speaker 3: Do you reckon, Jeremy, There's no.
34:06
Speaker 1: Doubt about it.
34:07
Speaker 4: I think that Ivan had accomplices, family members highly likely.
34:12
Speaker 1: I think that there's other people that know things.
34:15
Speaker 4: But I think that Ivan learned something early on that
34:19
Speaker 4: if you have witnesses. There's a remarkable letter he sent
34:22
Speaker 4: to one of his family members who was quite senior
34:25
Speaker 4: in the Rebels motorcycle gang, and he said, whenever you're
34:29
Speaker 4: talking about doing business, and when he meant business and
34:32
Speaker 4: he meant sort of dealing with rival motorcycle gangs, he said,
34:36
Speaker 4: make sure you do it on your own, don't leave witnesses.
34:40
Speaker 4: That's Ivan Malat's letter to one of his family members
34:44
Speaker 4: on how you deal with doing business. So I do
34:47
Speaker 4: think they're out there, but I'll tell you what, they'd
34:49
Speaker 4: be living under a rock because they would be terrified
34:52
Speaker 4: of the Malats. But the key thing you were saying
34:54
Speaker 4: there was we're told that Ivan Malak picked up his
34:58
Speaker 4: chikers by the highway. Well, there's no evidence he did that.
35:01
Speaker 4: All of the backpackers, apart from Simone Schmied, were last
35:06
Speaker 4: seen in King's Cross, walking out of youth hostels and
35:10
Speaker 4: the Germans said we've organized a lift with a guy,
35:14
Speaker 4: and they had organized a lift.
35:16
Speaker 1: I think that Malatt went to the source.
35:18
Speaker 4: He sat outside the train station, that's what he did
35:21
Speaker 4: with Paul Onions, spotted the backpackers getting off the train,
35:25
Speaker 4: leaving the backpackers. I think he was a hunter, opportunistic
35:30
Speaker 4: on his days off, driving the highways in a truck,
35:33
Speaker 4: working the roads. And we look at a number of
35:36
Speaker 4: the murders and disappearances of young people in Sydney in
35:39
Speaker 4: the late eighties. So Ka Dougherty and Tony Kavnar disappeared
35:44
Speaker 4: from Wollongong. He's working on the roads just down the
35:47
Speaker 4: road in nineteen seventy nine. Those two were just riding
35:51
Speaker 4: their bikes to a babysitting job and were never seen again.
35:56
Speaker 4: But two weeks later their family got two letters postmarked
36:00
Speaker 4: from Darlinghurst, written in the handwriting of k Dougherty, saying
36:04
Speaker 4: we've gone, We've met some friends, will be home soon.
36:08
Speaker 4: That's two weeks after they disappear the letter is sent.
36:11
Speaker 4: That's an indication that someone is trying to put them
36:13
Speaker 4: off the scene and their body's never found. The letters
36:16
Speaker 4: sent from Darlinghurst. There's Marion Sandford and Mary Davies as well.
36:21
Speaker 4: They both send letters disappear leave strange letters saying we've
36:26
Speaker 4: gone away, We've met some friends. Deborah Balkin and Gillian
36:29
Speaker 4: Jamison the same thing. They wrang their family members and said,
36:33
Speaker 4: oh we've met some people, We're going away. Annie Tomanak
36:37
Speaker 4: in Newcastle nineteen seventy nine does the same thing. There's
36:41
Speaker 4: about seven or eight murders where a letter is sent
36:45
Speaker 4: a phone call is made a Tooshak and Lacey in
36:48
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty as well. I think that's an indication that
36:51
Speaker 4: the people were being abducted and then kept, and a
36:55
Speaker 4: letter sent a clever ruse to put the people off.
36:58
Speaker 4: So when the people say, I'm reporting my daughter missing
37:01
Speaker 4: and she left a note saying that she's met some
37:03
Speaker 4: friends and go on to northern New South Wales and
37:05
Speaker 4: the police say, oh, well, so what. But it's an
37:07
Speaker 4: indication of someone who's cunning, someone who's potentially keeping people,
37:13
Speaker 4: and it sort of broadens the picture.
37:15
Speaker 1: And Malap was a person of interest.
37:17
Speaker 4: In many of those, many of those, and that broadens
37:21
Speaker 4: the picture of who he is and how he operated.
37:24
Speaker 4: And I think that if you think that he was
37:26
Speaker 4: a person who got his evil pleasure out of controlling people. Well,
37:30
Speaker 4: then why wouldn't he want to give people up after
37:32
Speaker 4: just a few hours. The evidence from Blangelo was that
37:36
Speaker 4: whoever it was and Ivan there had revisited the scene,
37:40
Speaker 4: and I think it shows a picture that Ivan may
37:42
Speaker 4: well have had a place where he kept people. We've
37:45
Speaker 4: discovered in the course of our inquiry that the Malats
37:48
Speaker 4: had a flat in San Suzi and Rockdale. Whether or
37:51
Speaker 4: not that's ever been searched, I don't know. And they
37:54
Speaker 4: had a massive property at Wombian Caves, five hundred acres
37:58
Speaker 4: on the Wombian Caves Road where there were huts and
38:02
Speaker 4: shacks and they used to go camping down there. That's
38:05
Speaker 4: only about fifty kilometers from Bilangelo. These are questions that
38:09
Speaker 4: we want to get to the bottom of.
38:10
Speaker 3: Can you subpoena the surviving family members?
38:15
Speaker 4: Yes, so we have under the Parliamentary Evidences Act, we
38:19
Speaker 4: can request people appear at the inquiry and if they resist,
38:24
Speaker 4: we can issue them as summons. So that's what we're
38:26
Speaker 4: going to do. So we are going to summons some
38:29
Speaker 4: of them Malats. We're also going to summon some of
38:32
Speaker 4: the most notorious criminals in Australian history, Les Murphy, Les Rose,
38:37
Speaker 4: Kevin Crump, some others, to get an understanding of who
38:40
Speaker 4: these people are, where they came from, because there was
38:43
Speaker 4: just this explosion in these extremely violent people in the
38:48
Speaker 4: early nineteen seventies and they've pretty much disappeared. They've pretty
38:53
Speaker 4: much disappeared, and we want to know where they come from.
38:55
Speaker 4: My suspicion is these were people who came from broken
38:58
Speaker 4: Hearn's abuse institutionalized early more abuse in those institutions, criminals, reality,
39:05
Speaker 4: jail abuse, and that cycle coughed out maniacs. We basically
39:10
Speaker 4: had maniac factories that delivered people like the Murphy's, the Mulats,
39:16
Speaker 4: amongst others, Kevin Crump and Allen. Yeah, so we do
39:20
Speaker 4: have the capacity to compel those people to appear.
39:23
Speaker 2: What I'm fascinated to hear is you're going to get
39:26
Speaker 2: Les Rose, who's in jail. He was a contract killer,
39:29
Speaker 2: I believe, and a serial killer in his own right
39:32
Speaker 2: to come in and testify. Do you think he'll come?
39:35
Speaker 2: Do you think he's going to answer the summons?
39:38
Speaker 1: He's got no choice. If he doesn't, he goes to jail.
39:41
Speaker 4: He's in jail, He'll go to our jail, I mean,
39:44
Speaker 4: but the point is he can't refuse to come and
39:47
Speaker 4: apparently Les doesn't like Ivan m'latt spent a couple of
39:51
Speaker 4: years in a jail cell with him, and we want
39:53
Speaker 4: to hear what they were talking too late until the night.
39:55
Speaker 1: Because Noel Manning, who was.
39:57
Speaker 4: A fellow who spent time in jail with Malatt in
40:00
Speaker 4: Long Bay in nineteen seventy four while he was on
40:03
Speaker 4: remand for his duble rape and double armed robbery, which
40:06
Speaker 4: he beat unbelievably.
40:08
Speaker 1: We're going to get to the bottom of that.
40:10
Speaker 4: But Manning said that Malatt would brag about having killed
40:13
Speaker 4: like scores of young people when he was working on
40:17
Speaker 4: the Cross City Tunnel. Malatt worked on the Cross City
40:19
Speaker 4: Tunnel in King's Cross. He said it inverted commas. It
40:23
Speaker 4: was a gold mine and I picked them up. He
40:25
Speaker 4: would describe torturing them, dumping their bodies down on the
40:29
Speaker 4: Heathcote Road. Noel Manning came forward and gave that evidence
40:33
Speaker 4: to police. Was due to appear in the court case
40:36
Speaker 4: against Malatt in ninety six, but two weeks before the
40:39
Speaker 4: trial killed himself.
40:41
Speaker 1: George Savas, the gangster.
40:44
Speaker 4: And corrupt politician, shared a seal with Malatt in Maitland
40:48
Speaker 4: in the early two thousands. They were apparently organizing to escape.
40:53
Speaker 4: The police became aware of it, they arrested them, separated them,
40:58
Speaker 4: and the next day George Savas killed himself.
41:01
Speaker 1: So a couple of.
41:02
Speaker 4: Malat's long term prison mate have ended up, you know,
41:07
Speaker 4: dead in their cell Les Rose is alive for the
41:10
Speaker 4: time being, and we'd love to hear what he has
41:12
Speaker 4: to say because apparently he's no fan of Malat, didn't
41:16
Speaker 4: like him and lay on the bunk bend for a
41:18
Speaker 4: couple of years listening to Malat wax lyrical.
41:21
Speaker 1: So about what and about who? We want to know.
41:23
Speaker 2: Another one you should be pursuing is who was a
41:28
Speaker 2: cellmate of Malats at Golden Supermax. He later became a
41:31
Speaker 2: Crown witness, so he may have to erase this afterwards
41:34
Speaker 2: when I check with my lawyers, but I believe he's
41:37
Speaker 2: in New Zealand and he was the one who told
41:40
Speaker 2: my source that Malatt told him forgets seven.
41:43
Speaker 3: It's more like thirty seven.
41:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, So hopefully you can cast the net far and
41:49
Speaker 2: wide and get all these people who are in the system.
41:51
Speaker 2: And I think there's you know, back in the day
41:53
Speaker 2: there was a code of silence, people were staunts.
41:56
Speaker 3: They're not anymore.
41:57
Speaker 2: And I wonder whether there can be there's lots of
42:00
Speaker 2: rewards out there as well for the solving of these murders.
42:04
Speaker 2: And you know, as much as it's a borring to
42:07
Speaker 2: me that criminals can step up having been quiet for
42:10
Speaker 2: years and accept rewards, is there a public interest in
42:14
Speaker 2: paying cash prizes if you like, for this information.
42:18
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and I think the reward system needs liberalizing. We
42:22
Speaker 4: need rewards for information that leads to charges, not just convictions,
42:28
Speaker 4: because what happens.
42:29
Speaker 1: Is people come forward, they give evidence.
42:32
Speaker 4: It's compelling at least at least brings people to understand
42:35
Speaker 4: that this person was of interest. But then maybe the
42:39
Speaker 4: evidence is deemed inadmissible or they're knocked out because they're
42:42
Speaker 4: not a credible witness. And I'm not talking million dollar awards,
42:46
Speaker 4: but if people can be induced to sort of come
42:48
Speaker 4: forward and get paid fifty thousand bucks or one hundred
42:51
Speaker 4: thousand bucks for information that leads to charges, where the
42:55
Speaker 4: DPP says, okay, fair enough, that's enough for us to
42:59
Speaker 4: lay charges and pursue this person, and then you know
43:02
Speaker 4: it's over to the courts to then stack it up.
43:05
Speaker 4: I think that that would get a lot more people
43:07
Speaker 4: out of the woodwork because we're only paying out rewards
43:10
Speaker 4: on convictions and those rewards aren't paid out. They really
43:14
Speaker 4: aren't paid out. They're not So there's and what it
43:17
Speaker 4: is is on the anniversary of a serious crime, the
43:20
Speaker 4: head of the crime command will come out and say
43:23
Speaker 4: we're upping the reward in this case from one hundred
43:25
Speaker 4: thousand to five hundred thousand whatever, and everyone goes, Oh,
43:29
Speaker 4: they're paying attention and doing something. Well, that's not enough.
43:33
Speaker 4: What we really want to have a look at in
43:35
Speaker 4: this inquiry is how these cold cases are managed. Because
43:39
Speaker 4: there's the reward system I think is broken. The coronial
43:43
Speaker 4: inquest system is broken. We have coronial inquests and if
43:46
Speaker 4: there's a coronial in quest in New South Wales, the
43:49
Speaker 4: procedure after the coronial inquest is for the case to
43:52
Speaker 4: go in the freezer for five years. Now, why would
43:55
Speaker 4: you do that if you've had all this new information,
43:58
Speaker 4: you've had this exploration, everyone there talking about the issue,
44:03
Speaker 4: and then you're not going to revisit it for five years.
44:06
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you do it?
44:07
Speaker 4: And there's just this ad hoc approach to coronial inquest.
44:11
Speaker 4: Some take five years, some take five months, some take
44:15
Speaker 4: thirty five years. This ad hoc approach, we want to
44:19
Speaker 4: do a deep dive. I want to reach out to
44:21
Speaker 4: the FBI, New Scotland, yard other jurisdictions and find out
44:25
Speaker 4: how they manage cold cases, they're forensics, how they're using
44:30
Speaker 4: AI with their databases, how they're using AI in terms
44:35
Speaker 4: of profiling. Because what I think we can do Adam
44:38
Speaker 4: is really say what does it take to be a
44:41
Speaker 4: serial killer? You have to be a mania you like,
44:45
Speaker 4: they come out of just a couple of narrow strains
44:48
Speaker 4: of existence where they end up this pathological homicidal maniac.
44:55
Speaker 4: And we can basically reverse engineer some of our most
45:00
Speaker 4: notorious criminals back then, and so you can rule a
45:03
Speaker 4: lot out. You can say, well, look, we've got these
45:06
Speaker 4: serial killers that we know about. Who are they, where
45:09
Speaker 4: are they from, how did they become this person? And
45:12
Speaker 4: then did they have the opportunity to do these other crimes?
45:16
Speaker 4: And that's what I want to do with Ivan malap
45:18
Speaker 4: who actually is he? Whind the tape back and then
45:22
Speaker 4: wind it forward. What we're working under is that Malat's
45:26
Speaker 4: a killer from the nineteen sixties, let's assume that, and
45:30
Speaker 4: let's assume that he's a killer. He's a thrill killer
45:34
Speaker 4: early on, is a rapist and a homicidal maniac. Where
45:38
Speaker 4: is Ivan malatt On every day of his life from
45:41
Speaker 4: that point on?
45:41
Speaker 1: And were there any other crimes? And what we're going
45:44
Speaker 1: to find is that there were. I'm certain of it.
45:48
Speaker 2: Now other lad is dead. He can't hurt anybody anymore.
45:53
Speaker 2: But what you're doing, you're pulling the thread on the tapestry.
45:57
Speaker 2: It may well unravel before your eyes. There are other
45:59
Speaker 2: people who may be out there have something to figure out.
46:03
Speaker 4: Now.
46:03
Speaker 2: I get asked all the time in my true crime career.
46:06
Speaker 2: Aren't you worried personally about saying these things about people?
46:10
Speaker 2: You live in the most corrupt stated in Australia's still
46:13
Speaker 2: in New South Wales. Are you concerned for your personal
46:16
Speaker 2: safety as you go into this whole thing?
46:18
Speaker 4: No, not really, because if I get rubbed out Adam,
46:22
Speaker 4: like everyone will knows right like say, hopefully.
46:26
Speaker 1: They do some digging.
46:28
Speaker 4: Being a member of parliament puts me in a class
46:30
Speaker 4: of people where I'm pretty protected. You know, it's quite
46:33
Speaker 4: rare for politicians to get rubbed out, to be shot
46:38
Speaker 4: to be killed more consolation.
46:39
Speaker 3: If it happens, though, my friend.
46:41
Speaker 4: Well, as I'm bleeding out, I'll say I told you so,
46:46
Speaker 4: and what are you going to do with your life?
46:48
Speaker 4: Like if it's an MP, I want to pursue justice,
46:51
Speaker 4: and pursue justice for some of the little people, like
46:55
Speaker 4: the people the First Nations, young women, working class, regional
47:00
Speaker 4: western suburbs. These are the people that the criminal justice
47:04
Speaker 4: is them just fed into this maniac machine. They just
47:08
Speaker 4: did not care enough to go out and catch this guy.
47:12
Speaker 4: And so in terms of New South Wales, I think
47:14
Speaker 4: it's a different place. It's a different place now. The
47:17
Speaker 4: powers and people that were able to operate in that
47:20
Speaker 4: time just can't operate now, they really can't. And I
47:25
Speaker 4: think we're in a different time. We're honest about abuse
47:30
Speaker 4: of young people. We're honest about domestic violence and the
47:33
Speaker 4: incredible impact that that has. And people will say to me, oh,
47:36
Speaker 4: you're the legalized cannabis MP, why are you doing this?
47:40
Speaker 1: Well, I say that the war on drugs.
47:43
Speaker 4: Has been what we should have just decriminalized drugs and
47:47
Speaker 4: personal possession of drugs so that police resources can focus
47:51
Speaker 4: on a war on thugs. Because domestic violence, violence in
47:57
Speaker 4: our community has a societal impact, a profound intergenerational impact,
48:03
Speaker 4: far beyond the impact of personal drug use, you know,
48:06
Speaker 4: commercial drug use, sure, and commercial drug dealing.
48:10
Speaker 1: Sure.
48:10
Speaker 4: There's a role for police to suppress that, but so
48:14
Speaker 4: much about policing resources goes into basically pursuing people over
48:20
Speaker 4: a victimless crime.
48:22
Speaker 1: Yet these other crimes, the police again and again.
48:25
Speaker 4: And again say well, we've only got so many resources,
48:27
Speaker 4: We've got all these murders on the books. What about
48:30
Speaker 4: how do we possibly do these Well, I say, with
48:33
Speaker 4: more people, with more money and better technology.
48:36
Speaker 1: And that's what this parliamentary inquiry is about.
48:38
Speaker 2: I have to agree because what I've seen over the
48:40
Speaker 2: years is the cultivation of cannabis in particular has been
48:44
Speaker 2: a cash flow for all kinds of other organized crime activity.
48:48
Speaker 2: So I really think that's a very good point and
48:50
Speaker 2: I hope you continue on that vein Now listen, how
48:53
Speaker 2: can people get in touch with the inquiry and how
48:57
Speaker 2: can they be sure that their information will be kept
49:00
Speaker 2: confidential and so they can move forward with confidence.
49:05
Speaker 4: They go to the New South Wales Party, if they
49:06
Speaker 4: google up New South Wales Parliament Committee Unsolved Murders and
49:10
Speaker 4: Missing Person's inquiry, it'll pop up. There's a page on
49:15
Speaker 4: the new South Wales Parliament. If they look at committees
49:19
Speaker 4: and Portfolio Committee number one, they'll see there that there's
49:22
Speaker 4: current inquiries they put on that they'll see there and
49:26
Speaker 4: they can make a submission and there's a box to
49:28
Speaker 4: check confidential.
49:30
Speaker 1: And if you make it confidential, no one sees it.
49:32
Speaker 4: The police don't see it, the committee members and the
49:35
Speaker 4: committee secretariat see it, and that's it.
49:38
Speaker 1: Then it's confidential forever.
49:40
Speaker 4: We've already had a number of people doing exactly that
49:44
Speaker 4: we receive, you know. And people can have parliamentary privilege
49:49
Speaker 4: in making a submission. They can make a submission and
49:52
Speaker 4: if they appear it as a witness, they can say, look,
49:55
Speaker 4: I was involved in some criminality et cetera, and so
49:58
Speaker 4: forth that cannot be used against them. And a lot
50:01
Speaker 4: of people they've run crime stoppers, they've gone to the cops,
50:04
Speaker 4: they've been ign and so this is another opportunity. And
50:08
Speaker 4: it just in the last few years where I've really
50:10
Speaker 4: been doing a deep dive into this, the numbers of
50:13
Speaker 4: people that have come forward with staggering information that I've
50:17
Speaker 4: handed on to police and building this picture.
50:20
Speaker 1: Of the number of these murders is just incredible.
50:23
Speaker 4: I would have had in the last two years, about
50:27
Speaker 4: twenty or thirty credible stories of people who escape, dive
50:32
Speaker 4: in the lap, punched him in the head, ran off
50:35
Speaker 4: from the car, saw him here, he approached them there,
50:40
Speaker 4: saw this, saw that people from all walks of life,
50:43
Speaker 4: going back all the way to.
50:45
Speaker 1: The nineteen seventies.
50:46
Speaker 4: And so when you start to piece it together, you've
50:49
Speaker 4: got the outline.
50:51
Speaker 1: Well, we've expanded that outline.
50:53
Speaker 4: From the story of what we thought Ivan was familial,
50:56
Speaker 4: suburban road worker into a career criminal, powerful associates, and
51:02
Speaker 4: that picture is filling in very quickly.
51:05
Speaker 3: Good. Well, I'll be there.
51:06
Speaker 2: It's April of twenty twenty six April this year, and whether.
51:11
Speaker 4: Or not you're like it or not, mate, we'll be
51:13
Speaker 4: sending you a summons to it. You're in Victoria. It's
51:16
Speaker 4: only people in New South Wales week and summons. So
51:19
Speaker 4: we can get you at the airport if you're coming through.
51:21
Speaker 4: But I'm sure you'd love to turn up and flap
51:24
Speaker 4: your gums for a couple of hours out everything.
51:26
Speaker 1: You know.
51:27
Speaker 2: I'll definitely come there, but I won't sit too close
51:29
Speaker 2: to you. Jerry Bucking Thank you so much for your time,
51:31
Speaker 2: but I wish you all the very best. I think
51:33
Speaker 2: you're a brave man and I think you're one of
51:35
Speaker 2: the most decent politicians I've met. And if I was
51:38
Speaker 2: the taxpayer in New South Wales, I'll be saluting you,
51:40
Speaker 2: which I'm doing anyway.
51:40
Speaker 3: So thanks for your time.
51:41
Speaker 1: Thanks Adam Man. Straight back at you, mate.
51:43
Speaker 4: The work you're doing is incredibly important, shining a light
51:47
Speaker 4: into these dark areas and it gives a lot of
51:50
Speaker 4: sucret of those families that their stories are heard and
51:54
Speaker 4: their loved.
51:55
Speaker 1: Ones are not forgotten.
51:56
Speaker 4: That's really important work to do, and so good on you,
51:58
Speaker 4: mate for the great work you do with your podcast
52:01
Speaker 4: and your journalism.
52:02
Speaker 1: Really important.
52:06
Speaker 2: That was New South Wales politician Jeremy Buckingham. He's a
52:09
Speaker 2: crusader and I love what he's doing. If you can
52:11
Speaker 2: help shed light on these unsolved crimes or have information
52:14
Speaker 2: on anything else, please see the link in the show
52:17
Speaker 2: notes and make sure.
52:18
Speaker 3: Your voice is heard.
52:20
Speaker 2: You'll be doing an enormous public service to the families
52:23
Speaker 2: of the victims and the people of New South Wales.
52:26
Speaker 2: Of course, as Jeremy says, Malat's reign of terror and
52:29
Speaker 2: murder extended well beyond New South Wales, so perhaps this
52:32
Speaker 2: inquiry made implications far beyond his home state, and maybe
52:37
Speaker 2: some accomplices will have something to fear once more, because
52:41
Speaker 2: murder is a crime you only truly get away with
52:44
Speaker 2: when you're dead. As well, this has been Adam Shanfer
52:47
Speaker 2: real crime. If you like our content, please subscribe and
52:51
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53:04
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