March 19, 2010
Sex, drugs and Ivan Milat: Charlestown lawyer's novel blends fact and fiction
SERIAL killer Ivan Milat may have murdered more than 100 people during his bloody career, and his accomplices are still walking free, one of the notorious criminal's former lawyers believes.
Charlestown solicitor Leon Sokulsky, who is about to launch his first book, a fictionalised account of aspects of Milat's crimes, said some people missing from the Hunter had almost certainly been buried by the killer and his helpers in the Belanglo State Forest.
Mr Sokulsky, 48, grew up in Newcastle and was educated at Glendale High School before moving to Sydney to study law. His first employer in the legal field was flamboyant advocate John Marsden.
Mr Sokulsky has been involved in some notable cases since moving back to Newcastle to establish a practice. He represented a man accused of having sex with a horse, proposed a class action by Islington residents angry at street prostitution and, more recently, suggested a similar action by people unhappy with the NSW Government's self-approved public housing projects.
Mr Sokulsky's new book describes a period in the life of a young lawyer, evidently modelled on Mr Sokulsky himself.
Like Mr Sokulsky in real life, the book's young lawyer meets Milat at a party thrown by his employer John Marsden.
Milat was one of Mr Marsden's long-time clients and Mr Sokulsky met him in the mid-1980s when he was fresh out of law school, well before Milat was charged and convicted over the famous backpacker murders.
Mr Sokulsky's book traces the lawyer's involvement with the mysteriously wealthy and well-connected roadworker from their first meeting to a terrifying confrontation in the Belanglo, where he and two colleagues are lucky to escape in a night-time four-wheel-drive pursuit along forest trails.
The story asserts that the lawyers had discovered a blood-spattered cabin, stacked with camping gear and other items that the reader assumes may have belonged to Milat's victims.
Mr Sokulsky insists all the key events portrayed in the book are true, with just names and dates altered for the sake of professional integrity and the novel's readability.
He believes Milat was protected by corrupt benefactors among the NSW police and in legal and social circles.
And he is certain the killer had help with his murders.
"I don't believe anybody could control a vehicle properly on those rough Belanglo tracks while also subduing a captive," Mr Sokulsky said.
"In some places logs placed over burial sites are too heavy for one person to have handled.
"And while Milat was a non-smoker and a non-drinker, some of the graves so far discovered were surrounded by cigarette butts and alcohol bottles," he said.
Mr Sokulsky said the public would probably never know the full truth about Milat's crimes.
"The Belanglo Forest is huge and hundreds of bodies could be buried there and never found," he said.
"Unless Milat rolls over and tells what he knows the public will never find out the whole truth.
"If he was a half a human being he'd do that, but I don't believe he has a conscience."
Mr Sokulsky said he planned to send Milat a copy of his book.
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