The former police officer who led the the team that captured Ivan Milat says “Australia would be best served” if the convicted backpacker killer died.

Milat, who is fighting terminal oesophageal and stomach cancer, is being treated at in a secure annex at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital after taking a turn for the worse earlier this week.

The 74-year-old has been having chemotherapy since being diagnosed in May and according to some reports, only has days to live.

Clive Small, the former assistant police commissioner who led the team that captured Milat, said he had little sympathy for the serial killer.

“I think Ivan was a person who was never going to be sorry or regret the murders he carried out and he would have carried out the murders as long as he was free – they would have continued,” Mr Small told Seven’s Sunrise on Thursday.

“There is a real sense in which I think Australia would be best served if Ivan died.”

Clive Small speaks to the media in 2002. Photo: AAP

Milat, a former road worker, was sentenced in 1996 to seven consecutive life sentences for murdering seven backpackers whose bodies were found in makeshift graves in NSW’s Belanglo State Forest in the 1990s.

In a three-page handwritten letter dated July 11 and sent to The Sun Herald, he claimed he was innocent of the deaths.

Mr Small expected there would be no deathbed confession for the seven murders or other killings Milat is suspected of.

“There were believed to be at least another three murders that he is responsible for but hasn’t been convicted of,” Mr Small said.

“Ivan will not show any regret. He will believe that he is in charge, he is in control of the situation, and as long as he has information that he knows others want, including the police, he believes he is the boss.”

-AAP