Issue 43: Backpacker Murder of Peter Falconio

Out of all the people to come and backpack around Australia, a large amount of tourists came from England. Backpacking is still common in Australia but it has changed so much in just the last 20 years. One of the events that brought the dangers of backpacking in Australia was the murder of Peter Falconio.

Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio

Prior to July 2001 Peter Falconio had been in Australia with his girlfriend Joanne Lees working and travelling around the country. In January 2001 they had arrived on a working holiday visa. This is a residence permit that allows travellers to undertake employment (and sometimes study) in the country issuing the visa to supplement their travel funds. It was on 25th June they departed on a road trip planned as Sydney to Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin and Brisbane.

Less then a month later on 14th July 2001 when Peter and Joanne were on the Stewart Highway. They were in a remote part of the country in the Northern Territory, headed towards the Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve. It was around 7.30pm that they were travelling late at night, the couple had had become aware that a truck had been following them. The man in the other truck flagged them down. They pulled over to the side of the road, the truck pulling up behind them. The man got out and walked up to the window, explaining that the Kombi they were driving had engine trouble.

Falconio got out of the car and went to the rear of the vehicle to inspect with the other driver, leaving Joanne in the car. As Lees sat there, she assumed it would be a quick inspect to determine what their next move would be. It was then when she heard a gunshot.

It was almost instantly that she found the man was now in the kombi, threatening her with the gun. He tied her up, hands behind her back. The man dragged her to his truck, a white Toyota 4WD with a green canopy. It was as the man was distracted that she took her chance and escaped. She ran into the bushes. With it being the dead of night, it was hard to see anything on a dark road. After presumably removing Falconio’s body to his truck, he looked for Lees, but not finding her left shortly afterwards. Lees hid for 5 hours finally flagging down a road train driver at 12.35am who took her back to Barrow Creek, accompanied by the co-driver.

It wouldn’t be till around 4.20am that police started collecting evidence back at the scene of the crime. The initial search for Falconio did not start till around 7.00am, the morning of the 15th July. What they found was a dirt-covered pool of blood. The couple’s Kombi was hidden some 80 meters into the scrub. It was not until eight hours after the rescue that roadblocks were put in place on the twelve likely roads exiting the district. As the following months went on, the only real evidence that was found was Lees footprints. Because of the remote area Aboriginal trackers were called in to see whether there was anything that the police had missed. Unfortunately, there was nothing.

With their leads drying up the police released the CCTV footage. This did not lead to anybody in the footage coming forward and identifying themselves, removing them from from suspicion. The police then turned their attention to looking at owners of the 1991–1999 model Toyota Land Cruiser 4WD identified. It was from this footage that the name Bradley John Murdoch first came to their attention.

He was interviewed but let go as his likeness did not match the descriptions that Lees had given police and his DNA was not collected. It wouldn’t be to the following year that a break in the case would come.

On 17 May 2002, investigators caught Murdoch's drug-running accomplice. Wanting to lessen his charges, he began to relate details of his connections to the case, and a DNA examination of Murdoch's brother also supported his involvement. Murdoch then disappeared, but on 22 August 2002 he was arrested and tried on an unrelated kidnap and assault charge by South Australia Police. Once extradited to the Northern Territory, he was charged with the murder.

During the trial, which took place in late 2005. Defence claimed that the DNA was due to an accidental blood transfer. Another witness claimed that he had seen Falconio a week after the murder. On 13 December 2005, Murdoch was found guilty by a jury in a unanimous verdict and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 28 years. Falconio's body has never been found ‘despite one of the most exhaustive police investigations ever seen in Australia.’