Summary Of The Onion Case

On the 19th of September 1992, two deceased bodies of missing backpackers Joanne Walters and Caroline Clarke from United Kingdom were found in the Belanglo State Forest, south of Sydney, leading to a subject of an extensive police investigation. Over a year later, another five deceased bodies (Deborah Everist, James Gibson, Simone Schmidl, Gabor Neugebauer and Anja Habschied) were found in the same location as Joanne Walters and Caroline Clarke. However, there was a victim who was being able to escape from Ivan Milat named Paul Onions and he was the key witness of this case. In 1994, he helped the police to arrest Ivan Milat and Ivan Milat were found guilty to charge of seven murders. The primary aim of this paper is to conduct a review

(Griffith College,2017). When the police arrested Ivan Milat, the police had found lots of evidences such as clothing, pillow which belonged to the deceased backpackers. Also, the police had found the weapon which linked to the case and victims blood. (Supreme Court Of New South Wales,

Since the police are heavily rely on the media hence there are some roles for media in homicide investigations include informing the public of the event, raising public awareness. In this case, involves international victims hence, received worldwide attention. In this case, media helped to report the missing victims and the media profile remined Paul Onions that he might survive from a serial killer and cause him to contact the police again. Nevertheless, media seemed to help this case lot, there was massive media coverage of Ivan Milat case both before and during the trial and these coverage investigations resulted in unfair trial. (Supreme Court Of New South Wales, 1999). As mentioned above, the media can help the police to solve the case but also can mess up the whole case. Nevertheless, according to Brookman (2005), the police should use the media as a tool to show the professionalism of the police; to minimise the fear of crime in public; determine the public with the accurate information about the case the response from the police; distribute the relevant case prevention strategies. If the police can manage the media with the strategies listed above, the police will benefit from the media