Falconio parents say false reports of found remains are ‘too much’

Slain backpacker Peter Falconio’s parents have told of their heartbreaking prediction about the NT outback mystery.

EXCLUSIVE

The parents of Peter Falconio say “hoax” reports his remains had been found in the Australian outback last week were shattering.

Falconio’s father Luciano and mother Joan were initially “encouraged” by news his bones had been unearthed near Alice Springs, two decades on from his death at the age of 28.

But when Northern Territory police dismissed the reports as false, it was “too much” for the couple.

“It was a hoax, it never ends for us with Peter, and it never will until we find the body,” he said.

“But it’s too much for us now. It’s been more than 20 years, I hope each time but it’s better not to hope, it’s pain (sic).”

English tourists Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees were on the trip of a lifetime.

Joan, 73, said like Falconio’s former girlfriend Joanne Lees — with whom she still keeps in touch — she would like closure, but is doubtful.

“We never expect to get closure,” she said.

The NT Police were scathing in their response to the “factually incorrect” reports in Nine newspapers that human remains had been found in a location “consistent with an area where Falconio’s body was suspected to have been dumped”.

Assistant NT Commissioner Michael White rubbished claims a search was underway at the site and said the journalism had brought unnecessary “grief to the family”.

Falconio vanished in July 2001 near Barrow Creek in the NT. Picture: Leon Mead

“NT Police would like to advise the public that speculating on the identity on any missing person causes unwarranted grief and trauma to the family and friends,” the statement said.

Nine Newspapers subsequently retracted the story and “began making further inquiries”.

“During that process, the reporter received new information that cast doubt on the accuracy of the original story,” a statement from Nine read.

“We withdraw the article and apologise for any distress its publication may have caused Falconio’s friends and family.”

The couple was ambushed in their Kombi van but Lees escaped.

Falconio, from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, vanished on July 14, 2001, after he and Lees were ambushed in their orange Kombi van on an isolated outback road near Barrow Creek.

The pair had been touring Australia on what should have been a dream holiday.

Bradley Murdoch was convicted in 2005 of murdering Falconio, whose body has never been found, and assaulting Lees at gunpoint on the remote highway, north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Two searches for Falconio were conducted by the Territory response group in the weeks after his disappearance, several kilometres north and south of the crime scene.

Police conducted another investigation on both sides of the highway towards Alice Springs several months later.

Joan and Luciano Falconio know any hope of closure is doubtful.

The Tanami area, spanning 184,000 square kilometres, was searched but large swathes of the area were not covered.

Murdoch is eligible for parole in 2032, but in 2016 a “no body, no parole” law was passed in the Northern Territory, preventing him from being released on parole, on condition he reveals where Falconio’s body is.

He protests his innocence and has made two unsuccessful appeals since his 2005 conviction.