Notorious backpacker killer Ivan Milat was behind the shooting of a taxi driver in western Sydney in the 1960s when he was just 17 years old, Channel Seven's Sunday Night has alleged.
Milat became notorious in the 1990s after he killed seven backpackers and dumped their bodies in the Belanglo State Forest.
In a joint investigation between Sunday Night and The West Australian, Milat's older brother Boris said Milat admitted to shooting taxi driver Neville Knight from the back seat of the cab in March 1962, with the bullet lodging in his spine and paralysing him for life.
Boris Milat, who changed his name to Steven Miller after his last name became notorious, was reduced to tears as he told reporter Steve Pennells that Milat told him about the crime the day after it happened but he kept it a secret for five decades to protect him.
He said his brother told him the gun went off with a "hair trigger" and the driver cried out "you've ruined me" four or five times.
"[Ivan] told me so. He told me the day after it happened," Mr Miller said. He said he did not go to the police because his "thinking didn't go like that [back] then".
"I was too much of a Milat," he said.
Mr Miller described a younger Milat as "sneaky" and "sadistic", describing how his younger brother would pop out of long grass to surprise people near their childhood home and had attacked animals with machetes.
Another man, Alan Dillon, was jailed for five years for the crime. Mr Dillon told Sunday Night he only confessed to protect his younger brother, who he thought was behind the attack.
"It's your family. Mum didn't need another one of us going away," he said.
The former detective who led the investigation into the backpacker murders, Superintendent Clive Small, said the claim by Mr Miller appeared "sincere".
Though he did not directly connect the shooting to Milat's future crimes, he said any crime would have added to a pattern of confidence and control that exhibited itself in the backpacker murders.
"I think that every time Ivan got away with a crime, it would have given him a feeling of control," he said.
"It appears Boris and Alan are very sincere in their claims."
Neville Knight's daughter, Deborah Hutton, said it was "horrifying" that her father might have been Milat's first attempt at a "thrill kill".
"If this man had been taken off the streets at the time, life would be very different for a lot of people," she said.
"There's something wrong in that man's DNA."
