Viewers trash Peter Falconio documentary and claims he is alive and faked his own death

Viewers have rubbished a new UK documentary on the murder of Peter Falconio featuring witnesses that claim they saw him alive, and he faked his death.

A BRITISH documentary on the murder of Peter Falconio has been trashed by viewers, who have questioned claims that he was alive.

The UK’s Channel 4 aired a four-part documentary called Murder in the Outback this week, revisiting the 2001 the murder of Falconio while he was on holidays in Australia.

In the program, witnesses claimed to have seen Falconio alive in Bourke, New South Wales, more than 2000km from where he disappeared.

Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of Falconio’s murder in 2005, but has never revealed the location of his body.

Falconio and his girlfriend Joanna Lees were driving through the Northern Territory in their VW van near Barrow Creek when Murdoch allegedly tied up Lees and shot Falconio.

Peter Falconio and his girlfriend Joanne Lees.

“If you’ve just watched #murderintheoutback, no, you’re not getting those four hours back,” a viewer said on Twitter.

Another wrote of Murdoch’s lawyer Andrew Fraser, who also appeared on the show.

“Don’t play cluedo with this. Fraser, can you imagine his guesses ‘I’ve been studying this cluedo board for 10 years with my mate from advertising and we reckon it was colonel mustard who did it with a bar of soap in red rooster’,” the viewer wrote.

Bourke residents Robert Brown and Melissa Kendall claimed on the program — as they did at Murdoch’s 2005 NT Supreme Court trial — they had seen Falconio, 28, in their shop in the town after he was reported to be dead.

Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of Falconio’s murder in 2005. Picture: Patrina Malone

“I’m 200 per cent sure it was Peter Falconio, I was a metre away from him,” he said.

“I was reading the race results in the paper and I heard the door squeak, and (partner) Melissa was on the other side and she’s yelling out to me.

“She yelled at me again and then the next minute she turned the paper over and on the front page there was a picture of a gentleman down in the bottom right-hand corner and she tapped it.

“I put the paper down and walked around the corner and then bang I am looking straight at this bloke I saw in the paper. I was sort of in shock.”

The program also aired claims from an anonymous source that said Falconio had faked his own death for a dodgy insurance payout.

A gun that was found in a septic tank not far from the area where Falconio disappeared in the Australian outback near Barrow Creek, NT. Picture: Supplied

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However, some viewers were outraged at the claims, saying they would be distressing to his family and questioned whether they were accurate.

Police in Australia had dismissed the claim.

Murdoch, 61, was convicted after a DNA match was found on Lees’ T-shirt.

Mr Fraser also chimed in on the program, adding his voice to the insurance claim.

Mr Fraser, who was jailed for six years over a cocaine importation bust, had aired similar claims in a 2011 report on Channel 7’s Sunday Night program.

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Originally published as Viewers trash Peter Falconio documentary and claims he is alive and faked his own death