Return to the killing fields

I feared that I would have to make this journey back into the heart of darkness. It has been 18 years since I first went to this unattractive bush wilderness bordering the gorges of the southern highlands as a reporter.

Now I'm standing in the freezing rain at the same scene of so much horror, the killing ground of Ivan Milat, who murdered seven hitchhiking backpackers between 1989 and 1992.

An eighth body was found last Sunday in eucalypt scrub near the Red Arm Fire Trail. There are questions as to whether the body is the work of a copycat killer, or an accomplice who was never caught.

At Milat's sentencing to seven life sentences in 1996, Justice David Hunt said it was clear from the evidence that in at least two of Milat's killing scenes - those of British women Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters, and German couple Anja Habschied and Gabor Neugebauer, two people had a hand. This was due to the different manner in which they were killed after being separated in the scrub. But it did not diminish Milat's part in the crimes, he said.

Ms Walters had been stabbed 21 times in the back and 14 times in the chest, her spine severed and paralysed by one vicious blow. She had been placed under a rock below a campsite on the Longacre Creek Fire Trail and covered with light scrub. Ms Clarke had been marched 10 metres away and shot 10 times in the head while blindfolded with her sloppy joe, then stabbed once in the chest.

I was there as a reporter when all those bodies of those young people were recovered, including those of German Simone Schmidl, and Victorian couple Deborah Everist and James Gibson at two other sites.

Now I am looking at a scene that mirrors those same murders and horror played out in the bush, but this time it's off the Red Arm Fire Trail on the far western edge of the forest that was never searched. Police have spent four days sifting the scene where the remains of a small female were discovered among logs by a trail bike rider, with clothing scattered nearby.

A new homicide team headed by Detective Inspector Mark Newham would only say no ballistics evidence was found at the scene, nor had the victim been shot. Disturbingly, 200 metres away, off a smaller fire trail, are the remains of a camp littered with fireplaces and rubbish, beer bottles and bourbon cans. A Woodstock Bourbon can with two bullet holes is tied to a tree, a shooting gallery that has not been examined by this new search team.

Alarm bells ring in my head. Gabor Neugebauer, whose neck was broken and spine severed, and Anja Habschied, who was decapitated, were found under large logs 200 metres from a campsite littered with bottles and cans that had been shot to pieces. It was at that site that police recovered bullet cartridges and boxes matched to those found in Milat's Eagle Vale home when he was arrested in 1994.

But Inspector Newham told The Sun-Herald pathologists believe this woman died long after Milat's arrest. He would not reveal how long the remains had been there. Nor, at this stage do police have theories as to who she may be. "There are many names that have been put forward. The difficulty with identification is we have to take into consideration the fact there are also a number of other people from overseas and interstate who are still missing," he said.

On Friday, past and serving members of Task Force Air, the team that locked up Milat, gathered in Sydney for the retirement of Detective Inspector Mick Ashwood. Many among them believe Milat had a partner in crime at some of those scenes. They believe Belanglo may still yield more victims from him and that a comprehensive search of remaining tracks must be undertaken.