Aussie teen Matthew Meuleman adopts the name of killer uncle and his murderous ways

It is a troubling sign when a child changes his name to that of a serial killer, and even worse when the criminal is a member of the family. That is just what Matthew Meuleman did. In 2007, at 14, he took on the surname of his great- uncle Ivan Milat, who was in prison for life for seven murders. Three years later, the Austral­ian teenager would prove that he was cut of the same monstrous cloth. On Nov. 20, 2010, the younger Milat and another teen, Cohen Klein, 18, lured schoolmate David Auchterlonie, 17, into the Belanglo State Forest in New South Wales. Milat held out the promise of a booze-and-pot celebration for David’s birthday, but a party was the last thing on his mind.

“Someone’s going to die,” he told friends in the days leading up to the deadly trip. As soon as they got into the forest, Milat took a double-bladed battle-ax and knocked David to the ground. “You keep looking at me and I’ll cut your head off,” he shrieked as David begged for his life. Thanks to Klein, who used a cell phone to make an audio recording of the attack, investigators heard every sickening detail — the verbal torment, screams, cries and the sound of an ax tearing into bone and flesh. The victim’s family endured some of it at Milat’s sentencing hearing in May 2012, in which acting Justice Jane Mathews gave him 43 years in prison. Klein got 30 years for his role as an accomplice.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/teen-adopted-kin-murderous-ways-article-1.1576627

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