Episode Details

Ivan Milat was convicted of seven murders and died in a prison hospital bed in 2019, still insisting he didn't do it. Almost nobody in Australia believes him. But a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders and missing persons is now asking a different, more uncomfortable question: were seven enough?

This week, Rich and Nick dig into the growing list of cold cases with Milat's name attached to them - from a stabbing on a beach when he was 22, to a body found after he was already behind bars - and sit down with a former NSW detective pushing for a coercive-powers commission to finally crack them.

• The near-miss problem: Englishman Paul Onions, a gun, a rope, a highway shootout - and the report to police that went nowhere until bodies started turning up in a state forest
• The Wanda Beach problem: a 1965 double murder, a police artist's sketch, a photo of a 22-year-old Milat shown to the sitting Premier, and a resemblance nobody can quite explain away
• The ballistics problem: an 18-year-old hitchhiker, a Ruger 10/22 rifle, and free bullets that matched a gun already tied to two of Milat's known victims — with no charge ever laid
• The timeline problem: a 16-year-old's murder in the Hunter Valley that happened after Milat's arrest, and what that does to the theory that he always worked alone
• The institutional problem: a 12-day turnaround letter from the NSW Homicide Squad, a cold case process that reviews old files instead of starting fresh, and why the families still waiting call it a desktop exercise

Some of this is forensic - ballistics, timelines, photographs held up side by side. Some of it is just the arithmetic of a man who was, by his own family's account, capable of far worse than what he was ever tried for, working alone in a state forest for the better part of two decades before one man got away.

Contact the show at conspiracycabal@outlook.com.

The Conspiracy Cabal doesn't promote conspiracy theories — we examine them. We search for the kernel of truth in every story, exploring how conspiracies start, why they persist, and what drives people to believe them.

Contact the show at conspiracycabalpod@outlook.com

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