‘IVAN MILAT WAS MY PENPAL'

Nicola wrote letters to Australia’s worst serial killer while at school

- Emma Babbington

It was recess when 17-year-old Nicola West checked her phone and discovered Ivan Milat had sent her a letter.

“I got a text message from my mum with a picture of the envelope, and in caps: ‘HE WROTE BACK!’ I remember just freaking out. My hands were shaking,” recalls Nicola, now 31.

It was 2006 and Australia’s worst serial killer was 10 years into his life sentence at Goulburn’s Supermax prison. Nicola had written to him as part of her history HSC project but hadn’t imagined he would ever respond.

“I thought, yeah, I’ll write a letter to Milat – that will look really impressive!” she tells Woman’s Day.

Now a crime novelist, with her first book Catch Us The Foxes just released, incredibly Nicola wasn’t scared of approaching the convicted killer. She puts this down to coming from three generations of police officers.