bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

sponsorType

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

Roger Maynard

For almost 41/2 years the Peter Falconio case has dominated my life. Rarely a day passes without someone engaging me in conversation about the British backpacker who went missing in the Australian Outback on July 14, 2001.

Falconio, who was 28, was touring Australia with his British girlfriend Joanne Lees, when they were stopped by a man in a truck who claimed there were sparks coming out of their campervan's exhaust pipe.

Falconio got out to investigate and chatted amiably to the other driver at the back of the VW Kombi.

Shortly afterwards he returned to ask his girlfriend to rev the engine. As Ms Lees pressed her foot on the accelerator she heard a bang but thought it was the vehicle backfiring.

Seconds later the other man appeared at the driver's side window and pointed a revolver at her.

He tied her hands behind her back with home-made manacles, fashioned from cable ties, threw her onto the roadside and then pushed her into the front cab of his pick-up truck.

Her boyfriend was never seen again.

Somehow Ms Lees, now 32, escaped from the rear of the gunman's vehicle and fled into the bush where she hid  near a tree while her attacker  searched for her with a torch. Eventually he gave up and drove off. It was another five hours before  she summoned the courage to emerge from her hiding spot and flag down a  road train.

But where was the body? What was the motive? To put it bluntly - there are doubts surrounding the case.

Not since the case of Lindy Chamberlain, the mother who was wrongly accused of killing her baby at Ayers Rock in 1980, has a Northern Territory criminal trial created so much international interest.

For eight weeks last year, court six in the Darwin Supreme Court played host to the prosecution of Bradley John Murdoch, the man accused of murdering Falconio and assaulting his girlfriend.

The 47-year-old motor mechanic from Broome in Western Australia denied the charges, but in December a jury found him guilty.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum parole period of 28 years. Last week  he lodged an appeal against the conviction.

But while the jury was presented with a compelling case against the accused, did he really do it?

There were many inconsistencies in  Ms Lees' evidence and strong grounds for arguing that Murdoch might have been set up to take the rap.

During the trial, it emerged that  Ms Lees had serious doubts about parts of her story, revealing under cross-examination that she had changed her mind about several crucial stages of the attack.

The most significant was her account of what happened when she was thrown into the cab of the gunman's utility vehicle. She had told police she wriggled her way into the rear tray of the truck through a gap behind the seats, but subsequent inquiries suggested no such vehicle existed.

She later said she could remember being pushed through by the gunman, but could not be sure.

'That was my belief, but it is possible I have come out of the vehicle and back into the vehicle by some other means,' she  said at the trial.

And despite earlier insisting that the headlights on the man's truck were switched on,  she later thought  they might have been turned off, because otherwise she would have looked for the body of her boyfriend. There was also the curious case of the gunman's dog, which sat in the cab alongside her but apparently showed no interest in her, preferring to stare resolutely ahead. And the gun. Strangely Ms Lees felt no heat from the barrel of the revolver which had just been fired, nor smelt any gunpowder, as it was held to her head.

She had also changed her mind about the man's identity.

Shown a shot from a security video of a man entering a garage shop, Ms Lees was asked why she had originally told police that it was not the person who attacked her, then changed her mind a few weeks later.

'The police were able to show me a better quality picture,' she explained.

Equally there were questions about the lack of footprints in the bush. Only one print from  Ms Lees' sandal was found, which was surprising given her attacker had been searching for her for at least half an hour.

And why was there so little blood on the roadside where  Falconio's body must have fallen - only half a litre, which was hardly life-threatening.

Also, where was the blood spatter from the wound or the drag marks on the gravel as the body was presumably lifted on to the gunman's truck before he disposed of it?

Doubts, innuendo and perceived inconsistencies in Ms Lees' account plagued  the investigation for more than four years.

Yet there was also incontrovertible proof that appeared to put Murdoch at the scene of the crime.

DNA from a tiny spot of blood found on the back of  Ms Lees' T-shirt was positively matched with that of the  killer's, the court was told.

And mixed DNA found on tape used to put together the home-made handcuffs was also found to match the defendant's, as well as DNA discovered on the gearstick of the campervan.

One doubt Ms Lees  did put to rest was how she brought her bound wrists from behind her body to the front while lying in  the bush.

After offering to demonstrate how she did it, the judge asked her to change into  trousers and show the jury. She walked down from the witness box, sat on the floor and performed the manoeuvre in a couple of seconds.

While  Ms Lees enjoyed considerable public sympathy during the trial, it had not always been so.

When she and her boyfriend were attacked at Barrow Creek, north of Alice Springs,  Ms Lees angered the media by refusing to hold a news conference to explain what happened.

It was  almost a fortnight before she agreed to speak to  the media and it  was so tightly controlled that you could hardly call it a press conference.  Ms Lees allowed only one reporter, one TV camera and two stills photographers to be present and then demanded  a list of topics beforehand.

Journalists compiled 13 questions but she only answered three and they were mostly devoted to her criticism of the media for doubting her story.

Even the police and forensic experts  didn't escape criticism.

During the investigation it emerged they overlooked  crucial evidence and accidentally contaminated exhibits with another person's DNA. As for Murdoch, he has always maintained his innocence,  saying he was hundreds of kilometres from Barrow Creek at the time of the crime.

Sure, he had been at Alice Springs on the day in question and may  have brushed against  Ms Lees at the Red Rooster cafe, which they both visited.

But the reality was that Murdoch was a drug dealer who never drew attention to himself. His job was to traffic cannabis from South Australia to Alice Springs and then across the desert tracks to Broome.

He was so paranoid about being caught that he rarely stopped for anyone and always paid for petrol in cash, so there were no credit card records.

He constantly changed his mobile phone, believing that the SIM card would enable police to track him.

And he wore  glasses and a cap  in public so he could not be recognised on security videos.

Murdoch was no angel. He often carried a gun in case anybody tried to rob him.  (Apart from several kilograms of  hashish hidden in  his truck, he would usually carry large amounts of cash).

He also had enemies, including his former partner-in-crime   James Hepi.

The two men fell out over the disappearance of a large amount of drugs and money, leading to a tip-off to the police from Murdoch about what Hepi was up to. They arrested him as he drove into Broome one morning, a large quantity of cannabis stored in a gas cylinder in the back of his truck.

Hepi, a New Zealand maori, knew he was up for a long term in prison so offered to do a deal with police. He revealed he might be able to help them with the Falconio investigation and named his former partner as the guilty party, in exchange for a non-custodial sentence. Hepi told the police that Murdoch had behaved suspiciously on the day he returned to Broome, two days after the Falconio attack.

He had even discussed the best way of burying a body in the  Outback.

Armed with such evidence, police  tracked down Murdoch, who was living in a farmhouse in South Australia. They needed his DNA to establish a positive match with the profile found on  Ms Lees' T-shirt.

Murdoch was already in trouble over the alleged rape of a former prostitute and her daughter, charges on which he was later acquitted.

But it provided police with the perfect opportunity to obtain his DNA.

During the trial the defence pointed out that Hepi had a strong incentive for making up the story implicating his former drugs partner.

Not only would he escape jail but he would also be in line for a A$250,000 ($1.45 million) reward.

Apart from the DNA, much of the evidence against Murdoch was circumstantial, and even  Ms Lees, who was the only witness, did not actually see her boyfriend being shot.

Throughout the case I tried to keep an open mind, although as I watched the young Briton, who is now 32, in court every day, few could have doubted her story.

As she told the judge in a victim impact statement: 'I have suffered the loss of the one person who knew me the best and loved me the most. I have visible scars from the physical injuries I received on that night. They are fading ... the emotional scares, however, remain.

'I am sceptical, untrusting, fearful and heartbroken. It is lonely being me.'

But until  Falconio's body is found, those who have been transfixed by the  twists and turns of this case  will continue  to ask: 'Where's Peter?'

Roger Maynard's book, Where's Peter? is published by HarperCollins



Views to a kill