Australian serial killer Ivan Milat, who murdered seven young backpackers in the early 1990s, has died at the age of 74.
Milat, one of the continent's most notorious mass murderers, was sentenced in 1996 for the slaying of his victims, including Joanne Walters, a 22-year-old from Maesteg.
The bodies were found in shallow graves in a forest near Sydney between September 1992 and November 1993, leading to him being given seven life sentences.
Milat, who had been in prison since 1994, was diagnosed in early 2019 with oesophageal and stomach cancer.
New South Wales state corrective services said in a statement that Milat died in the medical wing of Sydney's Long Bay Prison on Sunday.
The weapons-obsessed former road worker murdered his victims after giving them rides while they were hitchhiking.
He picked up Joanne and friend Caroline Clarke in his 4X4 after he spotted them on a rural stretch of the Hume Highway - which links Sydney and Melbourne - in Easter 1992.
It was the last time the two women were seen alive and when Joanne failed to ring her parents Ray and Gill Walters as promised, alarm bells started to ring.
Ray and Gill later travelled to Australia to make a TV appeal in the hope their daughter would be found safe and well.
But five months on from her disappearance, the couple's worst fears were realised - Joanne's body was discovered by orienteers who had stumbled across the sport where she'd been crudely buried.
Joanne had been stabbed nine times.
Caroline, from Northumberland - found alongside her - had been shot in the head and knifed.
Milat was arrested in 1994, based in part on a British hitchhiker's account of escaping a driver who had shot at him.
