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Life in prison for the drifter who brutally ended lovers' dream
WESLEY JOHNSON

DRIFTER Bradley Murdoch was today jailed for life for murdering British backpacker Peter Falconio in the Australian Outback.

The jury at the court in Darwin also convicted him of abducting and assaulting Mr Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne Lees.

Murdoch, 47, had denied killing Mr Falconio on an Outback highway in July 2001. It took the 12 members of the jury eight hours to find Murdoch guilty after a 37-day trial which saw a total of 85 witnesses give evidence.

Murdoch was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the minimum term to be set at a later date.

He flagged the couple down in their orange camper van on the Stuart Highway, about 200 miles north of Alice Springs.

He then shot Mr Falconio dead, before threatening Miss Lees, 28, of Brighton, with a gun to her head and tying her up with her hands behind her back.

She managed to escape and hide in the bush for more than five hours before being rescued, but Mr Falconio, also 28, of Hepworth, Huddersfield, was never seen again and no body has been found.

The trial had heard how a catalogue of mistakes by police and forensic scientists hampered the hunt for the killer.

FULL Story Scotsman

Telegraph
(Filed: 13/12/2005)

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The conviction of Bradley Murdoch for the murder of Peter Falconio should finally quash any suspicions about his girlfriend's involvement in the killing.

Joanne Lees was the only witness to her boyfriend's murder near Barrow Creek, Australia in July 2001. She was assaulted and bound by Murdoch but managed to escape and hide in the bush.

Suspicion was raised over the credibilty of Miss Lees's evidence after she failed to behave as a stereotypical grieving victim.

She refused to cooperate with the media or pose for photographs and did not break down in court when she was face-to-face with the man who murdered her boyfriend for the first time during last year's committal hearing.
Further speculation was fuelled when Aboriginal trackers failed to find any of the gunman's footprints at the scene.

During the trial, the defence counsel forced her to confess to having a secret affair with a man called Nick Riley before Murdoch had even entered a plea. She was portrayed as a drug-taking backpacker who had cheated on her boyfriend behind his back.

Doubt was also cast on the physical plausibility of how she escaped. But in March 2002, a policewoman recreated how Miss Lees was able to move her bound hands from her back to her front - a move which Miss Lees also showed jurors during the trial.

Mr Falconio's parents have shown their solidarity with Miss Lees throughout the trial.

But with five books and film projects already on the horizon, it seems unlikely that the rumours will be silenced in the short-term.