The miraculous escape of the Brazilian and German backpackers at Salt Creek in South Australia
Revised September 2024
In early February 2016. two young women met with a plan to travel from Adelaide in South Australia, along the Great Ocean Road, to Melbourne in Victoria. They were both 23 years old: Beatriz (surname not released) from Brazil and Lena Rabente from Germany.
They posted an advert for a ride-share on Gumtree and received two responses. They chose to go with one of these offers but had to change their plans when the car broke down. So reluctantly, they decided to take a ride from 61-year-old Roman Heinze. Lena and Beatriz thought they would be safe while traveling together despite reservations about the man.
Roman Heinze in the car on the Great Ocean Road
The two young ladies were to regret that decision as, on February 9, 2016, they were brutally attacked at a place called Salt Creek, at the southern tip of the Coorong. But the maniac was thwarted because of Lena’s bravery and a fortunate encounter with some friendly strangers who came to their rescue. It was like a movie and something from the Australian film and TV series, “Wolf Creek”.
There have been several notorious backpacker attacks in Australia over the last few decades.
Between December 1989 and April 1992, seven young backpackers went missing while hitchhiking between Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. At the time, the cases caused plenty of fear amongst tourists in Australia but were quickly forgotten when the murderer was caught. For the teenagers, it was a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.
The bodies of the hitchhikers were all discovered in the Belanglo State Forest, southwest of Sydney and 80 miles west of the New South Wales city of Wollongong in Australia.
Eventually, serial killer Ivan Milat was convicted of the murders on July 27, 1996, and was serving seven consecutive life sentences, as well as 18 years without parole, at the maximum-security Goulburn Correctional Centre, an Australian super-maximum security prison for males, located in Goulburn, New South Wales. The backpacker killer, Milat, died at the age of 74, at 4.07 am on October 27, 2019, as a result of oesophageal cancer.
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The real Wolf Creek - The Backpacker Murders in the Australian Outback
