-With AAP.
1. “That’s him.” How a Canberra grandmother helped catch Ivan Milat.
On January 25, 1990, Canberra grandmother Joanne Berry was driving with her sister and five children from Mittagong on the Hume Highway when she saw two men wrestling on the road.
Berry stopped her car, and as vehicles swerved around it, one of the men approached her driver’s side window.
“Help me, he’s got a gun!” she recalled him yelling.
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Berry made a quick decision, allowing the man into her vehicle and driving him to a nearby police station.
Only after picking him up did she learn the man was Paul Onions, and the one he had been fighting was Ivan Milat.
Speaking to 7News, Berry said she and Onions both made statements to the police in 1990 – but their significance was only learned years later after bodies started being discovered from Belanglo State Forest, close to where Onions escaped Milat.
Onions made the link and called investigators.
Looking back on her run-in with the serial killer, Berry said she counted her blessings.
“Things could have taken a dramatic turn for the worst,” she said. “Milat could have come after us all.”
In 1994, Berry was watching the news when Milat was arrested.