Likely Milat ‘victim’ to be buried next to his mother

The remains of a suspected victim of Ivan Milat are to be buried after more than 30 years.

A school photo of likely Ivan Milat victim Peter Letcher.

The remains of Peter Letcher, a suspected victim of serial killer Ivan Milat, are to be buried more than 30 years after his murder.

Letcher’s body was discovered by a bushwalker in Jenolan State Forest near a fire trail in January 1988, covered in branches in a ­hollow caused by a fallen pine tree.

He was cremated and his ashes scattered at the Orange crematorium, but earlier this year representatives from the NSW Forensic and Analytical Science Service visited Letcher’s father, Brian, to inform him that some of his son’s remains were in storage.

Mr Letcher yesterday said the remains were due to be interred next month at Bathurst cemetery, at the grave of Letcher’s mother, Ann.

The 18-year-old had been shot five times in the head and was ­initially considered a victim of the local drug trade.

Evidence has since pointed to him being picked up hitchhiking by Milat, who was working on the Jenolan Caves road at the time.

Milat, now dying of oesophageal and stomach cancer, is serving seven life sentences for murdering seven young men and women who were hitching out of Sydney between December 1989 and April 1992.

The 74-year-old is a suspect in other killings and disappearances, including Letcher’s, but maintains he is innocent. On Friday, he was transferred from the Long Bay prison hospital to Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital with a high temperature.

“Last I heard, which is some time back now, police were going to visit him (Milat),” Mr Letcher, from Queensland’s Gold Coast, told The Australian.

“I think if he’d said anything, they would have let me know.”

Letcher, from Bathurst, disappeared in November 1987 after visit­ing a former girlfriend in Sydney. His murder predates the backpacker killings, raising the question of whether he was Milat’s first victim.

“He’s unlikely to say anything,” Mr Letcher said. “He won’t confess to anything. That’s the general opinion of people.”

Retired detective Clive Small, commander of the backpacker murders taskforce, has said he ­believed Milat almost certainly killed Letcher.

Ballistic examin­ations of bullets found with Letcher’s body suggested they were fired from the same model Ruger rifle used to murder two of Milat’s other victims, German backpacker Gabor Neugebauer and British backpacker Caroline Clarke, he said.

Milat’s brother Alex once asked police: “Have you checked out any unsolved murders in the Jenolan State Forest?”

Mr Small also suspects Milat murdered hitchhiker Dianne Pennacchio, found dead in the Tallaganda State Forest in 1991.

Pennacchio’s son, Jack, now 30, said this month he had one question for Milat before he died: “Was it you?”

Police files show the disposal of Letcher’s remains closely resembled the way Milat disposed of victims in the Belanglo State Forest.

Detective Senior Constable Raymond Stockton, then from Bathurst station, wrote in a statement that he attended the site where Letcher’s body was found.

“I saw what appeared to be a badly decomposed human body lying face down in a depression in the ground, this depression apparently having been caused some time earlier when a large pine tree had fallen, taking with it soil from around the root area,” he wrote.

“The body was partially covered by a network of branches and other fallen timber material.”