Peter Letcher may be serial killer Ivan Milat’s eighth victim

Milat had been charged, but acquitted, of the rape of two young female hitchhikers he picked up near Liverpool railway station in south western Sydney in 1971.

When that occurred, Mr Small said, Milat was not in a relationship.

He subsequently married a young woman, Karen Duck, but in 1987 the relationship was falling apart.

He had a growing obsession with guns which frightened Ms Duck, and an armoury which included large knives, a pistol, a revolver and a Ruger 10/22 rifle.

He took her on four tours of the remote Belnaglo Forest and once to the Jenolan State Forest, to see a dirt track and a pine plantation.

Ms Duck decided to leave her marriage with Milat, setting off, Mr Small says, the same emotional circumstances which triggered all his killings.

In the days before Mr Letcher disappeared, Milat was working for the DMR in the Jenolan State Forest area, 160kms west of Sydney, and living in south western Sydney.

On January 21, 1988, two bushwalkers came across Mr Letcher’s remains, 15m off a forest trail in a clear felled section of forest about 20km from the tourist attraction, the Jenolan Caves.

His body was lying face down in a shallow ditch, covered in branches and leaf litter.

He was clad only in jeans, football socks and adidas running shoes shoes.

Nearby lay his shirt and jumper, which were riddled with bullet holes.

The body was badly decomposed and it was only after forensic tests that police discovered the bullet wounds to his head.

Investigating detectives concluded Mr Letcher had been bound and blindfolded, stabbed multiple times in the back and shot five times in the head with a .22 calibre weapon.

A whisky bottle was found at the scene.

Mr Letcher’s murder happened two years before the first known backpacker murders were to occur, of Melbourne teenagers, Deborah Everist and James Gibson, who died from multiple stab wounds in December, 1989.

Twenty six days after their disappearance, British hitchhiker, Paul Onions, escaped from the vehicle of a gun wielding man on the Hume Highway, 800m north of the Belanglo Forest turn off.

Milat’s other victims were:

German Simone Schmidl, 20, who disappeared in January 1991, who died from multiple stab wounds, adidas philippines including a knife through her spinal cord.

Britons Caroline Clarke, 21, who was shot 10 times as if she was target practice and Joanne Walters, who was stabbed.

German former soldier, Gabor Neugebauer, 21, who was gagged and shot six times and his 20 year old girlfriend, Anja Habschied, who was decapitated and her spinal cord severed.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr Rod Milton concluded the backpacker killer took great enjoyment out of the killing scene and arranged his victims’ bodies like “babes in the wood”.

Beer bottles and cigarette butts were found near some of the burial sites and adidas superstar the bodies were placed in shallow graves and covered with branches and leaves.