Peter Falconio could be ‘jelly man’, says witness

Truck driver who rescued Joanne Lees hours after boyfriend Peter Falconio was killed gives startling new details about what happened.

Joanne Lees.

The truck driver who rescued Joanne Lees from the side of the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory hours after her boyfriend Peter Falconio was believed to have been murdered has given startling new details about what happened on the evening of July 14, 2001.

Vince Millar has told a television program that he had seen a person dubbed “jelly man’’ — who might have been Falconio — shortly before a distraught Ms Lees threw herself at his road-train truck.

Channel 4 has reconstructed the mystery disappearance of Falconio, a 28-year-old British backpacker, and raised at least six key questions about the ­subsequent life imprisonment of Bradley John Murdoch, who was convicted of his murder in a 2005 court case.

Falconio and Ms Lees, then 27, were stopped on the Stuart Highway en route to Darwin by another driver claiming there were some sparks coming from the back of their vehicle.

Ms Lees heard a gunshot at the back of the car and was then bound at gunpoint. She escaped and hid in nearby bushes for hours as the gunman searched for her.

Falconio’s body has not been found and Ms Lees, who was ­vilified for not speaking publicly after her traumatic ­experience, returned to Huddersfield in ­England’s north.

But in the most sensational new development in a mystery that has riveted both Australians and Britons for nearly two decades, Mr Millar has recounted something he witnessed before seeing Ms Lees.

He said he saw headlights “doing circles and lights going on and off’’.

At one point he slowed down his truck thinking two men standing outside a red car on the roadside may have required assistance before witnessing the men bundle a man who looked “like jelly’’ into the car.

“There was something they didn’t want me to see. I am pretty sure that guy in the middle very well could have been Peter ­Falconio,” Mr Millar said.

The truck driver said this was the first time he had spoken about “jelly man’’ because the police had not asked him about events he had seen before Ms Lees ran in front of his truck.

Mr Millar gave evidence at Murdoch’s Northern Territory trial that “this sheila jumped out in front of my truck’’, forcing him to swerve to avoid her.

Her hands were together above her head and she “sort of threw herself” at him.

Mr Millar said Ms Lees wanted to try and find her boyfriend, and they started to look until Ms Lees told Mr Millar that the ­attacker had a gun and had held it against her head.

In the television program, which aired in Britain last month and which will begin on Seven this Sunday, experts raise questions about the DNA evidence used to convict Murdoch and the small amount of Falconio’s blood at the scene.