A backpacker’s killer dies leaving unanswered questions in his wake

Bradley John Murdoch, the convicted killer of British backpacker Peter Falconio, has died overnight in the palliative care unit of Alice Springs Hospital.

In 2001, 28-year old Peter Falconio and his girlfriend, Joanne Lees, were exploring Central Australia together in what was supposed to be a memorable outback holiday.

One would never return and the other would become subject to intense media scrutiny and the trauma of reliving her attack during the trial of her boyfriend’s murderer.

Although Murdoch was convicted for the murder in 2005, key questions about what happened to Peter Falconio could now never be answered, including the location of his body.

Here’s what happened.

How holiday of a lifetime turned into a nightmare in the outback

Early on the evening of July 14  2001, the couple were travelling north in their Kombi van on the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory when the driver of a ute, Bradley Murdoch, pulled up alongside Mr Falconio and gestured at him to pull over.

The two men met and spoke at the rear of the Kombi and Ms Lees heard them talking about sparks coming from the engine.

Mr Falconio asked Ms Lees to rev the engine and as she was doing it, she heard a loud bang.

Murdoch shot Mr Falconio and then turned the gun on Ms Lees.

He then assaulted Ms Lees, bound her wrists with cable ties and electrical tape, and forced her into his car.

Ms Lees managed to escape into nearby bushland,  waiting until Murdoch drove off into the darkness.

She was rescued by two men driving a road train who attempted to help her search for her boyfriend.

But Peter Falconio was never seen again.

A media storm erupts in search for the killer

Mr Falconio’s family and Ms Lees were thrust into the spotlight in both Australia and the United Kingdom, with Ms Lees subjected to particularly intense scrutiny.

It partly inspired the 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek.

In 2016, former chief investigator Colleen Gwynne told the ABC said she could still vividly recollect the call made from Barrow Creek Roadhouse, 280 kilometres north of Alice Springs.

“As soon as the information started filtering back I knew this was something big and this wasn’t going to be a small investigation,” Ms Gwynne said.

Ms Gwynne was in charge of the police for the Alice Springs region at the time but after four months of limited progress on the investigation, she was promoted to lead detective on the case.

Operating in such a remote place presented major challenges.

“We had over 600 persons of interest at that time and 700 vehicles of interest.”

And the media storm that engulfed the case, which would go down as one of Australia’s most notorious crimes, added pressure.

The British and Australian press began to point fingers at Ms Lees, treating her as a suspect.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald for her 2006 book No Turning Back,  Ms Lees described her reaction to media coverage at the time.

“Hindsight is a great thing, isn’t it? If I’d known what I now know . . . but I didn’t have a media adviser and I wasn’t given any practical advice or support by the police. I was completely on my own, without friends or family. The friends that did come to support me were encouraged to leave by the police.”

Police continued to interview multiple potential suspects.

Ultimately it would be another frightening case one state over which narrowed their hunt for the killer.

Paranoid mechanic spotted in a newspaper becomes focus for police

In November 2003, Bradley John Murdoch had just been cleared of rape and abduction charges unrelated to Mr Falconio’s disappearance.

He had been facing charges of raping a woman and her 12-year-old daughter in South Australia.

The South Australia District Court heard he had told the pair he was “on the run”, according to reporting at the time.

“He believed, for whatever reason, the police were after him for this well-publicised murder trial,” prosecutor Liesl Chapman told the court.

The investigation into Mr Falconio’s death had been ongoing for two years.

When Murdoch was arrested for the rape case, police allegedly found a newspaper clipping about Mr Falconio in a guest house where their suspect was staying.

He had first been interviewed by police in Broome in November 2001, as the owner of one of three dozen Toyota LandCruisers identified by tip-offs.

Almost a year later, Ms Lees saw a photo of Murdoch alongside an article detailing his arrest in the rape case.

She immediately recognised him.

“In a statement given on the same day, Ms Lees said that she picked the offender from the photo board [of 12 photos],” Judge Brian Ross Martin wrote in his findings.

“It would not matter what the person did to his appearance, she would always recognise him.”

A jury ultimately found him not guilty on charges of rape, false imprisonment, indecent assault and common assault of the 12-year-old and her mother.

He spent just minutes as a free man – police were waiting outside the Adelaide courthouse to arrest him.

Murdoch’s car matched the one seen in CCTV at a nearby service station shortly after the attack on the British backpackers, and his height matched that of the driver.

His DNA was found on a pair of homemade handcuffs used in the attack, on Ms Lees’ T-shirt and on the gearstick of the van the couple had been driving.

Still he denied responsibility.

Trials, appeals and a simple hair tie

The trial of Bradley John Murdoch for the murder of Peter Falconio and assaulting and attempting to kidnap Joanne Lees began on October 17, 2005.

Before the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory in Darwin, Murdoch pleaded not guilty.

The trial captured such attention, the court building was renovated at a cost of $900,000 with special areas for the large media contingent covering the case.

In that courtroom, Ms Lees came face to face with Murdoch again while she gave evidence during the eight-week trial.

The court heard how she managed to hide and survived for hours while she waited for Murdoch to leave.

The court has heard DNA found on Ms Lees’ bloodstained T-shirt worn on the night of the attack was 150 million billion times more likely to have come from Murdoch than from anyone else.

According to prosecutor Rex Wild QC, Murdoch realised his previous idea, that the DNA was planted on Joanne Lees by his own former business partner was crazy.

Instead, he gave evidence the DNA may have gotten on her T-shirt when he visited the same Red Rooster restaurant as the couple that day.

Previously, during the closing arguments for the defence, the court heard it was possible Murdoch’s blood could have been transferred to Ms Lees’ T-shirt then, without them realising.

A vital piece of evidence was a small elastic hair tie.

The hair tie had been taken from Ms Lees during the attack. It was found among the thousands of Murdoch’s belongings confiscated by police.

“He probably didn’t know how significant the hair tie was and had it wrapped around his holster inside his belongings,” Ms Gwynne said.

“I think it was a trophy but no-one will ever know.”

When it was presented in evidence, Ms Gwynne said, Murdoch recoiled and refused to touch it.

The jury ultimately found Murdoch guilty on all charges and he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Mr Falconio and attempted kidnapping of Ms Lees, with a non-parole period of 28 years.

The court heard Murdoch had put Mr Falconio’s body into his ute before dumping it somewhere between Alice Springs and Broome.

During sentencing, Chief Justice Brian Martin described Murdoch’s offending as “nothing short of cowardly in the extreme”.

He said Murdoch’s prospects of rehabilitation were low given his “complete lack of remorse” and prior offending.

In the 20 years he spent behind bars, Murdoch always  maintained his innocence and made two attempts to appeal his conviction.

But he was unsuccessful.

‘No body, no parole’ laws spark fresh pleas for Falconio’s remains

In 2016, the NT government introduced “no body, no parole” laws with the aim of eliciting a confession from Murdoch by removing his right to parole in 2032.

When that didn’t work, the NT police launched a fresh appeal by offering a reward of $500,000 for information on Mr Falconio’s remains.

Acting Commander Mark Grieve said police still held out hope of finding him.

“We recognise the passage of time that’s transpired,” he said.

“However it’s never too late to reach out and start that conversation with police.

“You just never know how beneficial that information that you may hold, may be — essentially you just don’t know what you know.”

At the time, Murdoch had already been diagnosed with terminal throat cancer and was in palliative care at Adelaide Hospital.

Repeated pleas by the police for him to reveal the location of Mr Falconio had proved fruitless.

“There may be someone out there that he’s confided in — whether that’s family and friends — we just don’t know,” said Acting Commander Grieve.

By 2016, police said they hoped people might come forward with “information that they’ve held onto for a very long period of time”.

“Whenever human remains are found it’s one of the first questions we receive from people,” Acting Deputy Commissioner Jamie Chalker said.

In 2017 an anonymous letter sent to newspaper The NT News alleged Mr Falconio’s body had been cut up, dumped and transported across three states.

The newspaper’s article publishing the letter later became the subject of an Australian Press Council (APC) complaint, lodged by Mr Falconio’s mother.

The NT News said it had presented the letter to police before publication, however the complaint was upheld by the council, who said it caused “substantial offence and distress” to the Falconio family.

The Falconio family have repeatedly begged for information.

Mr Falconio’s father, Luciano Falconio, told media he wished Murdoch had “left something for me to find Pete”.

“I wish he left something,” he told a News Corp reporter just hours after learning Murdoch had died.

“The sadness is always there, if you have something done to you wrongly whatever it is, you have got to look after yourself.

“You harden with it.”

In 2022, Peter’s mother Joan Falconio contacted South Australian politician Frank Pangallo, sparking a call for the prize money to be raised even further.

“We want to bring Peter home where he belongs near his family,” she wrote.

“Our pain is always with us.

“Peter has a beautiful niece and two lovely nephews who he never got to see or know.

“I am appealing to anyone with a conscience to help me however small to tell me where he was put.”

Who was Bradley Murdoch?

Born in the West Australian town of Northampton in 1958, Murdoch spent most of his life living in Broome working as a mechanic.

Murdoch had a history of violent crime, serving time in a Western Australian jail in the mid-1990s for shooting at a crowd of Aboriginal football fans.

During the trial, a witness told the court Murdoch also was a drug runner.

He had smuggled cannabis from South Australia to Western Australia and reportedly sipped amphetamines mixed in with hot tea to stay alert on long drives.

Murdoch was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in 2019.

He received chemotherapy at Alice Springs Hospital and was put in palliative care until he died there on July 15, aged 67.

In a statement, NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said: “It is disappointing for the Falconio family that this case remains unresolved and they are still without the closure they deserve.

“We remind the public that the reward for information relating to the disappearance of Peter Falconio has been recently increased.”