What do you think?
Rate this book
Fate: Inside the Backpacker Murders Investigation
324 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
29 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 9, 2019
Picked up from my long languishing bookshelf, following the death last month of Ivan Milat. Wanting to honour those killed by Australia's worst serial killer in recent times, after this man who cut their lives short featured in news headlines again with his declining health, treatment, and final days - receiving better health care than many in our community, including the homeless and people seeking asylum.
Authored by a reporter, the research and detail is comprehensive and compelling, albeit with an angle of faint police procedure questioning and corruption context. The insider police and crime reporting, and often inane Aussie white bloke idioms and colloquialisms were heavily litter throughout also.
But this book told the stories of the 7 young backpackers picked up hitching a ride from Sydney to Melbourne, and then brutally murdered and hidden in the Belanglo State Forest in the early 1990s. A story that changed the way people in this country view the safety of fellow drivers along highways, and inspired the movie Wolf Creek.
Not being from NSW originally, many of the finer details had escaped me - but most of it is laid out here. The movements and backgrounds of the young travellers from their last known contacts, to hints about what went on in their final hours. Sadly, the images made in Wolf Creek fill in many of the gaps.
Chilling details of the convicted killer, confronting innocence of the circumstances the led to the eventual deaths and finds of the end of these 7 people's lives, and incredibly sad tale of the families left behind to try and work our what happened to their children, mostly from the other side of the world.
Definitely worth a read for the case details - certainly made me shudder a little driving along the Hume Highway in Liverpool in the past week.
Authored by a reporter, the research and detail is comprehensive and compelling, albeit with an angle of faint police procedure questioning and corruption context. The insider police and crime reporting, and often inane Aussie white bloke idioms and colloquialisms were heavily litter throughout also.
But this book told the stories of the 7 young backpackers picked up hitching a ride from Sydney to Melbourne, and then brutally murdered and hidden in the Belanglo State Forest in the early 1990s. A story that changed the way people in this country view the safety of fellow drivers along highways, and inspired the movie Wolf Creek.
Not being from NSW originally, many of the finer details had escaped me - but most of it is laid out here. The movements and backgrounds of the young travellers from their last known contacts, to hints about what went on in their final hours. Sadly, the images made in Wolf Creek fill in many of the gaps.
Chilling details of the convicted killer, confronting innocence of the circumstances the led to the eventual deaths and finds of the end of these 7 people's lives, and incredibly sad tale of the families left behind to try and work our what happened to their children, mostly from the other side of the world.
Definitely worth a read for the case details - certainly made me shudder a little driving along the Hume Highway in Liverpool in the past week.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews