The death of Peter Falconio continues to fascinate more than a decade after he and Joanne Lees were fatefully flagged down on a desert highway
NO body; a killer who swears he's innocent; and an enigmatic girlfriend - the case of Peter Falconio is still haunted by unknowns.
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ALMOST 13 years ago, one dark chilly night in the Outback, an Englishwoman stumbled on to an isolated desert highway, battered and her hands bound, screaming that her boyfriend had just been murdered.
The woman was Joanne Lees. Her partner was Peter Falconio - and his body has never been found, even though a man has been convicted for the killing.
The mysterious events of July 14, 2001 have haunted Outback Australia ever since.
British twentysomethings Mr Falconio and Miss Lees were living the dream of many their age, roughing it around Australia as backpackers - until it all went wrong.
It was the stuff of tele-dramas. It immediately caught the public imagination in both Britain and Australia.
Miss Lees' harrowing story set the countries on the edge of their seats - even as her unusually calm demeanour and enigmatic behaviour unfairly drew critical attention and hostile speculation.
Then, after four years of gruelling investigations and no body, police tracked down and arrested truck driver Bradley Murdoch. He was convicted of murder and is still in jail, though he has just initiated yet another appeal and steadfastly maintains his innocence.
The air of mystery and controversy has never fully lifted. Here we look at the key points.
WHAT HAPPENED?
It was an idyllic scene. Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees were driving their Kombi along the starlit and remote Stuart Highway to the north of Alice Springs.
Mr Falconio, just 28, saw no reason to be concerned when a vehicle flashed its lights at him to pull over at a lonely spot near Barrow Creek.
Even that name, Barrow, is ominous: It's an Old English name for an ancient grave mound.
Miss Lees, then 27, said the drama began when the driver of a white four-wheel drive told them something was wrong with the Volkswagen campervan's exhaust.
Mr Falconio naturally got out of the car to have a look. Miss Lees said she heard the men talking as she sat in the passenger seat.
Then a gunshot rang out from the rear of the Kombi.
Miss Lees was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the four-wheel drive by the assailant.
As their attacker returned to Mr Falconio's body, Miss Lees clambered out the back of the utility vehicle. She sprinted and hid amid the darkened shadows of the scrub.
The rest of that night was fear. Miss Lees slipped from shadow to shadow, convinced a madman was hunting her down.
Eventually she gained the courage to step out in front of an oncoming truck and call for help.
It took one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history to put drug-runner Bradley Murdoch in Alice Springs jail.
There were a few clues.
There were Miss Lees' testimonies and descriptions. Her clothes were taken away and vanished.
And details of travellers passing through the region were collected and stored away for future reference.
In the end, Murdoch was convicted on the basis of trace DNA evidence from blood found on Joanne's T-shirt. The speck of blood had got there in her furious fight to escape his grip.
So why do doubts still remain?
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Whatever the armchair detectives feel, an Australian court-of-law agreed with Miss Lees and determined the DNA evidence was enough to convict Bradley Murdoch. He was put behind bars on December 13, 2005, then aged 47. There he will stay for a minimum 28 years. But questions remain - relevant or not.
RELATED: Joanne Lees - facing her Outback nightmare
GALLERY: Peter Falconio investigation
MORE: Dark secrets on a lonely highway
ACCOUNT: Joanne Lees - my story
1. Falconio's body: This is the greatest remaining mystery and the lynch-pin of Murdoch's defence. "Show me the body" is his constant challenge to judges and police. But police commander Colleen Gwynne, the chief investigator into the murder, told media that finding Mr Falconio's body would "be like finding a needle in a haystack." And she does not expect to find out from Murdoch. "Bradley Murdoch will, I have no doubt ... retain his stance that he is an innocent man and, therefore, the hope of him telling us that is almost zilch really," she told the ABC.
2. The mysterious Miss Lees: It was not long before Britain's tabloid media began to turn against Joanne Lees. The backpacker had worn a T-shirt with the words "Cheeky Monkey" emblazoned over the front shortly after the tragedy. And her press conferences had been carefully stage-managed. In the eyes of the UK press she did not fit the stereotype of a distraught female victim who had just lost the love of her life.
Miss Lees admitted during Murdoch's trial to a holiday "fling". An Irishman named Nick Reilly had caught Miss Lees' eye - and they had secretly met several times for sex before she and Mr Falconio set forth on their Outback adventure.
3. Impossible escape? One of the points used to weaken Miss Lees' story of escape was the manner in which she slipped out through to the rear of the four-wheel drive utility. In court, she admitted her original account may have been wrong - she may have been pushed into the back of the vehicle through canvas awnings at the side.
Plus the issue of her "impossible" escape from the cable-ties used to restrain her hands behind her back. In court, she quickly slipped her necktie-bound hands back to her front - instantly putting that particular question to rest.
4. Was it Murdoch? Former drug-runner Bradley Murdoch has a distinctive appearance, from his tattooed arms to his missing front teeth. Yet many of these features were not seen by Miss Lees. In the grip of a life-and-death struggle, would Miss Lees even have noticed such details on such a dark night? The fact remains that police have placed Murdoch in the region that fateful day. He had bought fuel at Alice Springs.
But Murdoch continues to claim innocence. The very difficulty in hiding a body in the rugged terrain of Barrow Creek is in itself a contributor to the ongoing conspiracies. Murdoch insists that the winter-chilled ground was simply too hard to quickly dig a deep enough hole to hide a body. Besides, the disturbed soil would stand out for miles …
5. Is Falconio still alive? There was also the story told by Melissa Kendall and Robbie Brown, who worked at a service station in the town of Bourke. They say they served a man who matched Peter Falconio's description a week after the events at Barrow Creek. They were stunned to see him walk through the door as his picture was in that day's newspapers. He had entered the shop with another man and a woman. One of them matched the photofit pictures issued by police, they said. The Bourke "Falconio" departed with some chocolate.
But he left behind a conspiracy which grew with whispers of money troubles back home. And it's a conspiracy that won't go away: In 2011 a Melbourne lawyer convicted for involvement in a large cocaine importation ring said he "knew" Falconio was still alive. He offered no evidence to back his assertion, but insisted Murdoch had been framed.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Joanne Lees: Now 40, Miss Lees reportedly lives alone in a terraced house in the town of Huddersfield, 300km north of London. She has had various jobs - including working at a travel agency and supporting the disabled. She has also studied sociology. After publishing a book on her experiences in 2006, No Turning Back, Miss Lees says she's trying to put the past behind her. "There comes a time when you feel you have said what you want to say," she said at the 10-year anniversary of the attack. "I'm sorry. It's always difficult for me."
Bradley Murdoch: Prisoner number 257128 resides in Alice Springs Correctional Centre. The 55-year-old former drug courier insists he was framed. "The police have had all the time in the world to find Falconio - 10 long years to search while I, according to their case had just hours to hide him," he told journalist Richard Shears in 2011. "They haven't found him. Yet they've convicted me of murdering him." Now, Murdoch - who in his younger years was convicted of causing a death by dangerous driving and served time for gun offences - is appealing again on the basis of alleged misconduct by the Crown prosecution in his original trial.
WHERE TO NEXT?
Finding Peter Falconio's body will certainly help resolve any unanswered questions. Or, it may open many more.
Northern Territory police have expressed annoyance that Channel Seven had not contacted them before airing claims of knowing where the body of Peter Falconio had been dumped down a well. The Today tonight show claims to have interviewed a man who says his body is down a well at Neutral Junction, only a kilometre from the scene of the 2001 crime.
it is only now, almost 13 years after the event, that the man has come forward to tell of seeing a four-wheel-drive utility parked near the well soon after the attack.
Despite the ongoing debate and this claim of a potential breakthrough, the court's verdict still stands.
Bradley Murdoch remains convicted on the basis of Miss Lee's testimony and DNA evidence.
Despite the morbid fascination with the minutiae of this case, it remains a horrible tragedy.
A young man was shot and murdered for apparently no reason whatsoever.
And Miss Lees. the Falconio family and even Murdoch still live with the trauma, tragedy and consequences of that cold Outback night in 2001.
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