POLICE have relaunched an investigation into the death of schoolgirl Rachel Antonio, which may determine whether her secret boyfriend Robert Hytch could be charged with perjury.
The Courier-Mail has been told officers are reinterviewing witnesses in the case, which could take months.
It effectively means police will start from scratch in a case they have investigated for over 20 years.
The latest breakthrough comes after The Courier-Mail’s podcast, Searching For Rachel, brought the case back into the public eye in late 2016, following a coronial inquest.
The podcast led to police excavating the Bowen tip in 2017, searching for clues in Rachel’s disappearance, but nothing was found.
Rachel was 16 years old when she disappeared in 1998, after being dropped off by her mother to see a movie in Bowen in north Queensland.
Mr Hytch, who was 25 when Rachel disappeared, was found guilty of her manslaughter in 1999. He was acquitted at retrial.
The former surf lifesaving captain denied being in a secret relationship with the schoolgirl and has always maintained his innocence.
Coroner David O’Connell in 2016 found Mr Hytch had been in an intimate relationship with Rachel.
He found that Mr Hytch had disposed of her body after he fatally injured her.
Rachel faked a pregnancy with Mr Hytch to get back at him for having sex with someone else, the inquest was told.
Around the time she was last seen alive, Mr Hytch left his brother’s 18th birthday party and had no one to corroborate his whereabouts for about half an hour.
When he returned, he was not wearing his Nike shirt and a tiny drop of Rachel’s blood was later found on the sandals he had been wearing.
The coroner referred the case to the DPP for a possible charge of perjury against Mr Hytch for information he gave to the inquest in relation to his denials of a relationship with the teen.
Mr Hytch challenged the Coroner’s findings and appealed, but the Supreme Court upheld the decision last year.
When asked if there was a decision in relation to a perjury charge, an ODPP spokeswoman said “the ODPP has for some time been in contact with investigators as to certain aspects of the investigation”.
“The decision of the DPP cannot be finalised until those matters have been clarified.”
Rachel’s parents Ian and Cheryl Antonio could not be contacted yesterday, but when the findings of the inquest were upheld, Mrs Antonio told The Courier-Mail that she would like to see Mr Hytch charged with perjury.
“Ian and I are glad it went this way … what I’d really like is to know where she is,” Mrs Antonio said.
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