The pair, working at The Australian and The Centralian Advocate respectively at the time, found the tiny outback town of Alice Springs thrust into the middle of an international media “pandemonium”.

Toohey described the devastated Luciano Falconio as a “bereft, tragic figure” when he visited the Red Centre not long after his son’s murder.

“I mean, it must have been incredibly hard for the father to come all the way out here, and just go home with nothing,” Toohey said.

In covering the story, Toohey met with a former associate of Murdoch’s, getting an insight into his mind.

He learnt of a man who at the time was becoming wrapped up in the world of drug running.

“(The associate) introduced him to the whole drug running, how to run drugs from South Australia up to Broome.

“And he also revealed the depth of paranoia that Murdoch had about people thinking he was the person in the Shell truck stop up in Alice Springs, which of course he was.”

At the time, Toohey was the national correspondent for The Australian. He quickly found himself enthralled by the mystery of Mr Falconio’s death, one that would go on to become one of Australia’s most famous outback murders.

The public’s reaction to the case also took the reporter back to previous cases from the Red Centre.

“I think all the characters involved made it completely fascinating, and the whole way (the public) turned on Joanne Lees said so much, given they had turned on Lindy Chamberlain in some years before that,” he said.

“The public seemed to me to be very much of the view that she was somehow involved.

“And that’s something I’ve never believed at all, not for a moment.”

Wilton, being the first journalist to interview Mr Falconio’s traumatised girlfriend, believed the same.

“What I was confronted with, and the chat I had with (Joanne Lees), she was a woman in shock; somebody who had been through a massively traumatic experience.

“All she was really concerned about was finding him.”

Inconsistencies between Ms Lees’ comments with Wiltons and her statement to police became the centre of rabid, but wrongful, speculation from the British press.

Wilton said having Alice Springs hosting reporters from across the country and abroad felt “incongruous”.

“It was a massive pandemonium, from the moment we got word of the story.”