Bradley John Murdoch claimed he did not kill Peter Falconio – but his insistence defied the facts

Weirdo conspiracy theories would multiply, but there is no doubt Bradley John Murdoch targeted strangers in a Kombi for depravity and death on July 14, 2001.

Bradley John Murdoch, who died on July 15, will not be missed.

He was the lone wolf hunter who killed Peter Falconio in 2001, then refused to say where he dumped the English tourist’s body.

Indeed, Murdoch, who was 67, always claimed that he had not pulled over Falconio near Barrow Creek, in the middle of nowhere north of Alice Springs.

His insistence defied the facts, such as his DNA on the T-shirt of Falconio’s partner Joanne Lees, and his keeping of Lees’ hair tie, which he had threaded around a shoulder holster like a trophy.

Weirdo conspiracy theories would multiply, as is the way with inexplicable stories.

But there is no doubt that Murdoch, the drifter driven by guns and paranoia, targeted strangers in a Kombi for depravity and death on July 14, 2001.

Murdoch’s signature expression projected caged menace.

The crooked mouth and deepset eyes offered an unnerving otherliness which became a snapshot for the character of Wolf Creek’s Mick Taylor.

Murdoch lacked front teeth. His arms were sleeved in tatts. He transported drugs and used them, too, to fuel marathon transport runs, sometimes in his ute loaded with ties, ropes and weapons.

Everyone talked about his stare. He hulked and threatened with his height and heft.

Bradley John Murdoch hulked and threatened with his height and heft. Everyone talked about his stare.

Untroubled, he could be docile, fellow pub patrons would later say.

But those eyes. They were the tell. People shrank when Murdoch stared at them.

He is dead now, from throat cancer, which may lift some burden of grief for Falconio’s loved ones, yet also compounds the near certainty that Falconio’s remains will never be found.

Murdoch’s unprovoked attack still echoes around the world.

It offers a bulletpoint narrative for a horror movie.

Two young backpackers, crossing the country, had watched the sunset at a roadhouse before setting off north for the tourist site of Devil’s Marbles.

On the Stuart Highway, a ute trailed them, then pulled to the side of their Kombi, urging them to pull over.

Falconio got out of the van to inspect the back of the van. There was talking, then a single bang.

Up front sat Falconio’s partner, Joanne Lees. She was confronted by a man with a silver long-barrelled pistol at the window.

He tied her hands and feet, taped her mouth, and punched her head before bundling her into the back of his ute.

He then disappeared, presumably to dispose of her partner’s body.

And she escaped, with a presence of mind which sometimes gets overlooked. (Lees’ account, like that of Lindy Chamberlain and the death of her daughter Azaria two decades earlier, would suffer from a misplaced sense of suspicion towards her.)

An artist's impression of shackles allegedly used on Joanne Lees by her abductor.

Lees pulled her arms under her feet, to walk, run and duck in the scrub for five hours as the killer, and his dog Jack, hunted her in sweeps of torchlight.

She tried lip balm to grease her homemade handcuffs, to no avail, and was still handcuffed when she appeared in front of a passing truck, which had to swerve to avoid hitting her.

A small blood stain on the road, matched to DNA from Falconio’s asthma puffer, was the sole physical clue to Falconio’s death.

Lees described Murdoch as a “droopy looking, Western-type cowboy”, a moustache which went down the sides of his mouth with circles under his eyes.

Joanne Lees in 2005. Now 51, she has never married or had children.

Now 51, living in West Yorkshire, she has never married or had children.

“Pete lost his life on that night but I lost mine too,” she said in a TV interview in 2017. “I’ll never be fully at peace if Pete’s not found, but I accept that is a possibility.”

Falconio’s family have never stopped campaigning for the search for Peter’s remains. In July, on the 24th anniversary of Falconio’s death, his father Luciano told News Corp: “I know what happened but I don’t know where he is. I still hope, yeah I still hope, but I don’t know, if we (will) live long enough”.

Murdoch ignored such pleadings.

In recent weeks, as his death approached, talk mounted of an “explosive” deathbed statement, though it was said that Murdoch would maintain his innocence.

It’s difficult to gauge whether the truth would figure in any such declaration. Decades of silence, tempting to interpret as just another exercise in cruelty, suggests not.

At the Alice Springs Correctional Centre, with no chance of release, he was known for fixing broken things and for being manipulative.

At school in Perth, he had been big and angry, a thug and bully. A fellow student said “he seemed to get pleasure out of other people’s misfortunes”.

Murdoch claimed he was beaten up by Aboriginals as a child, triggering a lifelong hatred of Indigenous people and apparent membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

Once, in Broome, where he later lived, he walked into the pub in a T-shirt that said: “I hate N******.”

From 1995, he spent 21 months in jail after shooting at Aboriginals gathered near Fitzroy Crossing.

His parents were said to be middle-class, honest and hardworking. Murdoch boasted the mechanical skills of his father, Colin.

Bradley Murdoch at age 14. Picture: Supplied

Bradley Murdoch at his wedding in 1984 with his dad Colin and mother Nance.

He married at 21, and his son was born in 1986. He left his wife and son; a judge would say that Murdoch “preferred to be on his own”.

Four hours after he killed Falconio, Murdoch stopped at a service station outside Alice Springs to get diesel, fuel and water. His stop was captured on CCTV.

A security video at a service station in Alice Springs shows a Toyota 4WD Ute fitting the description of the Stuart Highway Barrow Creek gunman's motor vehicle.

He then drove home to Broome, 1800km away, in 18 hours, and told his friend James Tahi Hepi, unprompted, that he was not involved in the Barrow Creek killing which was already all over the news.

Hepi, a Maori, grew and sold cannabis. Sometimes he and Murdoch drove to a block in South Australia’s Riverland district near the Murray River, where Hepi grew cannabis.

Hepi was picked up by police on a return trip to Broome. They found more than 3kg of cannabis hidden in a gas bottle.

Hepi told the police about Murdoch’s demeanour on the night after Falconio died.

Within hours of his attack, after outrunning road blocks, Murdoch was seeking to throw off suspicion.

The LandCruiser ute with canvas ...

... and with security mesh and an aluminium canopy. Picture: James Elsby

He took his ute to a welding shop to replace its canvas canopy with aluminium.

He was cunning, a student of disguise. Soon enough, he had short hair and no moustache. Six months later, he sported a beard.

Hepi identified Murdoch from the service station CCTV, as did some of the men who had worked on his ute.

But the police couldn’t find him.

He was hiding in a granny flat on a property near Hepi’s block in South Australia, injecting amphetamines, and waiting for the police interest to dim.

The property belonged to a mother and her 12-year-old daughter; they thought Murdoch was a friend.

At some point, the monster within Murdoch took hold.

He was said to restrain the mother at gunpoint, handcuff and blindfold the girl, and rape her repeatedly. He was alleged to have dumped them at a truck stop in Port Augusta.

He was picked up by police in a Woolworths supermarket six days later, charged with rape and abduction crimes, and later acquitted by a South Australian jury.

From afar, based on court documents and media court reports, it’s beyond belief that he was found not guilty of these crimes.

But the case did force Murdoch to give DNA, which would be matched to the blood on Lees’ T-shirt.

The chief investigator who brought Murdoch to justice was Colleen Gwynne.

She visited him in jail, where he yelled and spat and stood over her with a rage that reminded her of her own violent father.

Murdoch invokes comparisons with Ivan Milat, and others who have hunted humans as prey.

Gwynne described him as “the devil”.

Originally published as Bradley John Murdoch claimed he did not kill Peter Falconio – but his insistence defied the facts