Hitchhikers decapitated, stabbed, shot in head 10 times and left in 'Serial Killer Forest'

Steven Clark considers himself fortunate to be alive. He is convinced he was being taken to his death by a serial killer who was subsequently convicted of murdering seven young people. Mr Clark had been hitchhiking with a companion as a teenager when a speeding car abruptly hit the brakes and stopped for them. They climbed in.

“As my mate was just starting to close the door, he took off, he hit the accelerator. He hadn’t even got the door closed,” Mr Clark told ABC, explaining that the driver then began posing suspicious questions such as who knew they were hitchhiking and who knew their destination.

“He was quite happy to ask us questions and begin to find out stuff about us, but he wouldn’t volunteer even his name to us,” said Mr Clark. Fortunately for the young hitchhikers, the erratic driving attracted police attention, resulting in a traffic stop and the driver receiving a speeding citation.

The driver’s demeanor shifted instantly and he dropped the teenagers off at the promised location – but not before Mr Clark glimpsed the opening two letters of his name on the speeding citation, reports The Mirror US.

“It began with I, V,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to read the rest of it.”

He had no clue at the time how narrowly he’d escaped a serial killer.

Years later, Mr Clark was watching the news when he spotted the man once more: “I recognised him straight away,” he said. The man was Ivan Milat and he had just been arrested in connection with the murder of at least seven young hitchhikers.

Between 1989 and 1992, Milat abducted, assaulted and murdered seven young people and dumped their bodies in Belanglo State Forest, roughly two hours south of Sydney, Australia. It was subsequently labeled “Serial Killer Forest”.

Three of his victims were German, two were British and two Australian. However, police and others believe he could be responsible for the deaths of many, many more dating back to the 1970s and even earlier, well before the first murder for which he was convicted.

An inquiry launched this summer in Australia to investigate the connections between unsolved missing persons cases and Ivan Milat. Among them is Kay Docherty, who disappeared at the age of 15 in 1979 while hitchhiking on the same road where Mr Clark was picked up.

Her brother, Kevin, told the inquiry: “I promised my mum, who died in my arms, that I would continue the search for her daughter, my twin sister.”