Malcolm Naden: Mick Peet speaks out on 20th anniversary of daughter Lateesha Nolan’s murder

On the 20th anniversary of Lateesha Nolan’s murder, her father speaks of the pain that never eases and his family’s battles to rebuild lives, as a fresh clue that may have stopped killer Malcolm Naden in his tracks emerges.

Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of Dubbo mother-of-four Lateesha Nolan being murdered by her cousin Malcolm Naden. He was not suspected for six months and her partial remains were not found until 2016. (File picture)

The calls always came within a few minutes of Lateesha Nolan’s mother leaving their West Dubbo home to visit her own mum nearby.

They were always on the phone’s landline, and Lateesha’s ear was always met with heaving breathing from the other end.

No voice. Nothing. The same. Always.

Within months of the calls starting, Lateesha vanishes, leaving her four children without their mum and sparking an investigation that would morph into one of the longest and most intense manhunts in Australian history.

And with it one of the country’s greatest criminal myths – the mystery of Malcolm Naden.

Lateesha Nolan.

Malcolm Naden.

Now – on the 20th anniversary of Lateesha’s disappearance and murder on January 4, 2005 – the clues which had the potential to stop her killer before he brutally struck twice in a matter of months, can be revealed for the first time.

And it all revolves around the mysterious phone calls and why they never appeared relevant until it was too late.

Lateesha’s long-suffering father, Mick Peet, recalls their concerns about the rash of calls were so heightened they reported them to police.

Both before his daughter disappeared, and after.

Lateesha Nolan had been receiving prank calls in the lead-up to her disappearance on January 5, 2005.

But phone records would show nothing out of the ordinary to investigators, possibly even after Naden became the prime suspect in his cousin’s disappearance when another woman, Kristy Scholes, was found murdered in his bedroom.

Even two decades on, Mr Peet still queries whether it was simply because no one ever suspected his nephew at the time.

And was that because Naden’s bedroom was in the same home that Joan Nolan would visit – the premises of her mother and Naden’s grandmother?

So phone calls between the two homes would never have raised an eyebrow until it was too late.

A precious photograph of Mick Peet with his daughter, Lateesha Nolan

For even though Naden had already begun slowly removing himself from society, by locking himself in his darkened room and having relatives leave his meals at the door, he would have known exactly when his Aunty Joan was visiting and when Lateesha was home alone.

“She thought someone must have been watching her from the park across the road,” Mick Peet says.

“We never thought it could be Malcolm.”

It is one on an almost endless list of memories that still haunt Mr Peet, who is speaking out on the anniversary in a bid to help others who may fall into the cavernous depths of despair when losing someone close to them.

Mick Peet continued to keep his missing daughter, Lateesha Nolan, in the media spotlight in a bid to find her remains. Here he is speaking out the front of NSW Supreme Court when Malcolm Naden was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 14, 2013. It would be another three years before her partial remains were found near the Macquarie River at Dubbo.

He has courageously spoken about his fight with the “Black Dog”, of his battle with the booze and his constant anguish at thinking of Lateesha’s last moments and what happened on the banks of the Macquarie River later that night.

He fights back tears as he speaks of being grateful authorities have found some of his daughter’s remains – 16 precious bones – but also the endless want of all to also rest in some sort of peace.

Police during a search for the remains of the murdered woman Lateesha Nolan at the riverbank near Butlers Falls, Dubbo, after a bone was found on 2016.

“If anything could come out of this 20-year nightmare, it is the wish to try and help others,” Mr Peet says.

“There were a few people who helped me along the way. I need to find a way to help others now.”

Mr Peet is not languishing in self-pity.

His fight to keep his daughter’s name in the public domain in a bid to find her - and then Naden during his extraordinary seven-year run from the law - is evidence of that.

But there have been many moments of quiet and sombre reflection, along with sometimes more intense bouts with his own demons, which now give him time to pause.

“I spent seven years of my life hunting Naden. It nearly killed me,” Mr Peet says.

“I lost more of my family, I lost a lot of my hair and my teeth became all loose from grinding them at night. And that was when I could get myself to sleep.

“I spent almost a decade on zero sleep. Spent many nights up just Googling for more information on where Malcolm was or could be.”

Mick Peet had shirts made in memory of Lateesha to wear at the sentencing of Malcolm Naden. Photo: Max Fleet / NewsMail

Days after finally being arrested in a small Barrington Tops hut in the middle of a night in 2012, Naden would take homicide squad detectives to the banks of the Macquarie River where he buried Lateesha.

He had already admitted to murdering her after his cousin had come across him in her car and offered him a ride.

What he did on the banks at a place called Devil’s Hole has been suppressed by the courts, but Mr Peet has read Naden’s 25-page confession.

And although a firm motive has never been forthcoming, Mr Peet is certain he knows why.

And he recalls Lateesha mentioning that Naden had become even stranger in the months leading up to her disappearance.

“I blamed myself a lot in the past for not protecting Lateesha and for teaching her to stand up for her own rights,” he says.

“I felt that for ages that I got her killed.

“Lateesha was very strong-minded. She did stand up for her own rights and she stood up for others, including (the person) Naden molested leading up to her disappearance.

“And she was really worried about those phone calls.”

Kristy Scholes’ death on June 6, 2005, sparked a seven-year manhunt for Malcolm Naden.

And so, for the six months between Lateesha’s disappearance and the discovery of Kristy Scholes’ body in Naden’s bedroom in June 2005, many theorised Lateesha had left on her own accord.

Especially the police.

She was a young mum with four children and the theory went that she needed some time out.

But Mr Peet, a long-term resident of Bundaberg, and his wider Dubbo-based family, were adamant something sinister had happened.

And that was confirmed with the discovery of the body of Ms Scholes, a partner of another of Naden’s cousins, in June 2005.

They were not to know that the nightmare had really only just begun, as Naden continued to stay steps ahead of the law for nearly 2500 days.

And much of that was with little fanfare.

Although there was some media coverage during his initial time on the run, especially when the Malcolm myth grew following the discovery he had been camping out in the iconic zoo just out of Dubbo, the story quickly left the news pages and television screens.

Police cameras rigged up in the bush captured then-fugitive Malcolm Naden.

It petered out, sometimes for years, until it was discovered that he was roaming parts of a massive expanse of bush between the Barrington Tops, north of Newcastle, and further north to the west of Kempsey.

It became quietly termed as Naden’s Highway and was littered with weekenders where the fugitive would help himself to food and other items.

But it still caused the wrong perception that Naden was some master bushman, who lived off the land, and grew his legend despite being wanted for two horrific murders and child sex offences.

One local mayor even suggested he was moving at night like a fox and living off wombats and wild berries.

The hunt got real when Naden shot a cop near his makeshift camp near Niangala in late 2011.

Within four months, he was in custody.

Naden’s time on the run, and even the time after he was sentenced to life imprisonment, caused family and mental breakdowns for Mr Peet and others.

Malcolm Naden shortly after his arrest.

“I had a mate turn up at my house for my birthday and he found me loading a gun,” Mr Peet says.

“I heard his footsteps on the stones outside and my elbow kept slipping.

“I thought I must have spilt water but it was from the tears streaming from my face.”

Mr Peet got the professional help he needed, and he is now pleading with others to do the same.

“If only I had done it earlier,” he laments.

“I found myself drinking too much, way too much, and I found myself in that dark a hole I couldn’t see the light.”

Mr Peet is continually to battle the anguish, but he is slowly improving as he continues to understand what his life after Lateesha brings.

He breeds guinea pigs on his little piece of paradise at Bundaberg, and is trying to mend relationships where he can.

He has also found his birth mother and a bunch of siblings he didn’t he had until less than a decade ago.

“I got very sick and the doctors found I wasn’t pumping blood to the top of my heart. There were no arteries blocked or anything.”

Perhaps he was suffering from a broken heart.

And perhaps, ever so slowly, it is mending.