© Words Piers Hernu

It was going to be the holiday of a lifetime. Having packed in their jobs in England, twenty eight year old Peter Falconio and his 27 year old girlfriend of six years Joanne Lees, flew out to Sydney, Australia with plans to travel the world. Five months later, having saved up for a VW Combi, they headed off to discover Australia. Then, one evening at around 8pm, as they headed north to Darwin on the dark, desolate 3000km long Stuart Highway, something happened. That evening was the 14th of July 2001 and Peter Falconio hasn’t been seen since.

 According to Joanne, a white 4WD vehicle pulled up alongside and the driver gesticulated that they should pull over. Peter then walked to the rear of the vehicle whereupon a gunshot rang out. Joanne was tied up and bundled into the stranger’s 4WD which she then managed to escape from, hiding beneath a bush before flagging down a lorry driver five hours later. The next day police found a large pool of blood beside the road and tests showed it was Falconio’s. The holiday of a lifetime had ended in death. Or had it?

Speculation as to what exactly happened that night has gripped Australia, Britain and the world ever since. As murder mystery’s go this one has got the lot – remote locations, strange behaviour, inconsistent accounts, anonymous tip-offs, sex, drugs and lies aplenty. In April this year, what started as the biggest manhunt in Australian history will culminate in its biggest ever court case. But did the suspect do it? Did she do it? Did they do it? Is Falconio still alive? Did he fake his own death? These and many more questions are begging for answers. FHM headed out into the awesome wilderness of Australia’s outback to try and piece together what really happened to Peter Falconio.

The flight from Sydney to Alice Springs really brings home just how huge Australia is. After nearly three hours of sitting in a Boeing 737 over a barren, almost featureless landscape, we touch down having only made it half way across this vast continent. It’s 4pm and nearly 105 degrees as we pull into the Shell garage on the northern outskirts of town. It was here at about this time that Peter and Joanne refuelled their Orange, white roofed VW Combi in preparation for their journey north. Strangely, it was also here, nearly nine hours later and five hours after the attack, that  CCTV cameras captured images of a white 4WD and it’s owner who closely fitted Joanne’s description. “Between 40 and 45, black baseball cap, grey straggly hair and a moustache,” she told police “…six foot and hunched, kind of stooping.”

As we leave the garage and head up the Stuart Highway, trees and greenery give way to parched scrubland and baked red earth. The ramrod straight road disappears in a shimmering heathaze puntuated only by the rottting bodies of dead kangaroos lying by the roadside and the odd dust devil spinning in the distance. Nearly 200k later our first sign of civilisation is the tiny settlement of Ti Tree, home to “Australia’s most central pub”, a service station and a few rooms to rent.
 
It was here, with Peter asleep in the back, that Joanne decided to stop for a break. “We got to Ti Tree just before sunset and pulled into a lay-by,” she explained, “I braked quite heavily and Peter woke up. He rolled a joint and we shared it and watched the sunset. It was a beautiful evening.” In less than an hour their beautiful evening was about to turn ugly. 

With driving after dark strongly discouraged due to the remote, lawless nature of the outback and the danger of hitting kangaroos, we decide to rent a couple of rooms and get our heads down.

The next morning we resume our journey, arriving just before midday at a small ramshackle pub called The Barrow Creek Hotel. It was here, in the early hours of July 15th, that truck driver Vince Millar brought Joanne after she had flagged down his road train some 13 kms north of here. The owner Les Pilton, who in April will take the stand as one of this case’s prime witnesses, is happy to speak to us.

“It was a Saturday night and the British Lions were playing Australia on the TV so we were having a bit of a party,” he recalls as we sit down at a shaded table outside, “then at about 1.30 in the morning a truck driver came in and I could see by how wide his eyes were that something was wrong.”
 
 “I was heading south,” explained Vince Millar afterwards, “and this bird jumped out in front of us. I pulled up and seen this tape on her legs and round her neck and she was a mess you know.” He wasted no time in driving her straight to Barrow Creek. 

 “I went straight outside,” continues Les, “and I could see Joanne sitting curled up in the cab in a foetal position cowering away from the world. We coaxed her out but straight away I knew by her condition that she had obviously been through an incredible ordeal.”

Les and his wife Helen looked after Joanne until armed police arrived at around 4.30am having driven straight from Alice Springs. Later that afternoon that they drove her back for physical and mental checkups, statements and to face what by now was an eager press.

“This’ll do just here,” says Les peering through the passenger window, “this is where it happened.” The tyres scrunch to a halt. We get out of our air conditioned car and stand there in silence by the side of a very straight, totally deserted road in 110 degrees of heat. Head down, Les studies the white line running alongside it. “That’s the spot!” he exclaims pointing at a slightly reddish patch, “You see this is whitish and there its stained?” He’s right. We are standing  where, at daybreak the following morning, under a mound of red soil, police discovered a pool of Peter Falconio’s blood.



Joanne’s chilling account of what happened that night send shockwaves around Australia. “Peter told me he was going to stop and I asked him not to,” she said describing what happened when the driver pulled alongside. Ignoring her advice, he pulled over and went to the back of their Combi with the other driver who claimed that there were sparks flying from their exhaust. Peter then asked her to rev the engine and she heard: “a bang, like the sound of a vehicle backfiring. I turned around to look through the window and saw a man standing there with a gun.” He bound Joanne’s feet and mouth with tape, secured her hands secured behind her back with Zip ties, placed a sack over her head and bundled her into the passenger seat. When he then drove their Combi off into the bush (presumably to avoid it attracting attention), Joanne managed to slip out of the back of his vehicle and hide under a bush. On his return he searched for her with a torch and his dog. “I curled up as much as I could,” she explained, “I could hear him…the crunching of dried grass and branches….I wasn’t even breathing, trying not to.” Eventually her attacker drove off and five hours later Joanne plucked up the courage to flag down a passing road train.
 
Police released an identikit picture of the suspect, conducted a thorough aerial search and set up road blocks but to no avail. Then, as the hours turned to days, doubt began to set in. 

 “I flew out there immediately,” said Frank Walker, Chief Reporter of  the Sun Herald when we visited his office in Sydney before flying out to Alice, “She was immediately hostile to the media and refused to do a press conference which would have been her best ally in finding her boyfriend. She didn’t behave in the way you’d expect a grieving woman to behave.”

Joanne’s refusal to cooperate coupled with a lack of police information led the media to speculate that she was hiding something. Had this cold, unemotional woman simply murdered her boyfriend, dumped his body in the desert and then fed the police some elaborate cover story? Reluctantly she agreed to answer preset questions but of the fifteen submitted she approved only three – all of which bizarrely, were about her attitude to the press: “I’ve got a problem with all press that distort the truth and doubt my story,” she replied to one of them.
 
Les shows us the area where police discovered the couple’s combi hidden deep in the bush and as we head back to the car, I ask him about Joanne’s behaviour that night. “I believe it was genuine,” he says, “there were little things that not even a good actress would know how to do. I never got any bad vibes from her whatsoever and owning a pub you learn to judge people pretty quick.”
 
Joanne’s cause was not helped by two infamous cases still fresh in the public’s minds. In Australia Lindy Chamberlain was accused, convicted and finally aquitted of murdering her baby which she claimed had been taken by a dingo. Whilst in Britain in 1996, Tracie Andrews fooled the public by crying crocodile tears during a televised appeal to hide the fact that she had savagely stabbed her boyfriend to death herself.

With little progress apart from having detected a tiny spot of foreign blood on Joanne’s shirt, the police also began to have doubts. How had she got from the front to the rear of the vehicle when they had found no vehicles that allowed someone to do that? Why could the police trackers not find any of her pursuers footprints in the bush? Why did she say her hands were bound behind her yet when she waved down the road train her hands were bound in front of her? These and other inconsistencies led police to ask Joanne to undergo hypnotherapy for two days followed by a third day of intense interrogation.

As we drive the 13 kms back to the Barrow Creek Pub the talk turns to all the negative publicity Joanne has received. “Unfortunately its human nature that people will make judgements,” he continues, “and they do so without really knowing the situation or being out here to see what this place is like. That’s why it’s good you guys have actually come out here to write about it. People say how could she have hidden in the bush, why didn’t the dog find her, why can’t they find his footprints – well you can see for yourself!”
 
A couple of days earlier Frank Walker at his newspaper’s office in Sydney expressed a different view. “She’s not a very likeable person,” he shrugged, “her whole demeanour from the start was the world’s the enemy, I’m pulling the shutters down and you’re not fucking getting to me!”
 
In a bizarre twist to a bizarre case, police received an anonymous tip off from “a friend” of Peter Falconio’s saying that before leaving Britain he had discussed insurance scams and how to fake his own death. To fuel the flames a highly credible couple working at a service station in New South Wales claimed that they had served Peter Falconio a week after he’d been shot dead. “If it wasn’t him, they were twins,” said Robert Brown and his girlfriend who confirmed they’d noticed Falconio’s distinguishing blemish on his lip.  
 
Slowly, with the absence of new leads, the intense media interest subsided and for nearly two years “The Falconio Case” drifted. Then in August 2003 a rape suspect was arrested who had used zip ties to secure his victim and who drove a white Toyota 4WD. Though cleared of the rape charges, police tested his DNA and found it matched the blood on Joanne’s shirt. Finally they’d got their man or had they?

In May 2004 at a specially constructed court in Darwin, committal proceedings began to decide if there was enough evidence to try 45 year old Bradley Murdoch, a renowned hard man, mechanic and occasional cannabis smuggler with a criminal record. The court heard how, having been filmed on CCTV at Alice Springs that night Murdoch, who was known to carry firearms, had driven 1800 km in 17 hours to his home in Broome, Northwest Australia where shortly afterwards he had shaved his hair and moustache off and made moderations to his 4WD. His former smuggling partner also claimed that Murdoch had discussed the best way of burying a body shortly after the incident.



To police and media alike it seemed as if they had an open and shut case. Then Murdoch’s skilful defence lawyer, Grant Algie, took the stand and what followed was sensational. Having cross examined the police about what they admitted were “more than a dozen” points in Joanne’s story that didn’t make sense, he called her into the dock and asked her if she had been receiving secret emails from someone.
“No,” she said.
“Who’s Steph?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Was Steph an adopted name of someone called Nick?”
“Yes” she said.
“Who’s Nick?” Algie probed.
“A friend,” she replied.

The next day under fierce cross examination, having initially denied she was having an affair with a man called Nick in Sydney, Joanne was forced to admit she had been having a sexual relationship with him for several weeks before setting off with Peter around Australia. She also admitted emailing Nick in Sydney the week before Peter’s disappearance suggesting a rendezvous. Then she admitted that on the very day of the incident, she had suddenly changed her plans to travel with Peter from Brisbane to New Zealand and bought a single ticket for her to fly from Brisbane to Sydney instead. She denied that this was to see Nick but admitted she had corresponded by email with Nick after Peter had disappeared and suggested they meet up at a later date. Although the prosecution objected to the line of questioning, Algie argued successfully that it was relevant as Joanne had painted their relationship as being “harmonious and loving”. Under further questioning, Joanne revealed that whislt she had accepted £50,000 for an exclusive interview with Granada, she had refused a photo opportunity in return for the media making a donation to charity.

In 24 spectacular hours Grant Algie had shown Joanne Lees to be a scheming, two timing, heartless, money grabbing bitch with a motive for murder who was more than capable of lying under oath. As the world’s media devoured her every word, Joanne flew back to England knowing she will have to face all this and more when the actual court case begins in April 2005.

Back at the pub we join Les at the bar for a well earned beer. Pinned behind the bar is a makeshift poster appealing for information on a tourist last seen cycling down the Stuart Highway less than a month ago. David Sandman, it seems, may be the Outback’s latest victim.

It’s the custom at Barrow Creek for visitors to sign a banknote and pin it up on the wall and Les points at a five dollar note high above the bar. “Paul + Peter Falconio” it says simply. “Peter’s brother Paul and Luciano came out soon after the incident,” he says with a sad smile, “they came up here to ask me my views, to try and find what on earth happened. That’s when Paul put that five dollar bill up on the wall so that he and his brother could have a drink in spirit at least.” Which begs the question – what are Les’s views? What on earth does he think happened?  
   


“Well,” he says scratching his head, “Murdoch’s vehicle was seen at Ti Tree by some builders a couple of days before the incident. It may have been that he spotted her and thought she was fair game. I think he just wanted Joanne and in order to have her he had to get rid of Peter. You know what?” he says pausing to take a long swig of beer, “people don’t believe Joanne’s story because they don’t realise that truth is stranger than fiction.”
 
Les may be right but I have a sneaking suspicion he’s wrong. Did Joanne’s secret lover Nick murder Peter with her help? Have police, under intense pressure for a result, framed Bradley Murdoch? Did Peter, upset about Joanne’s affair, meet Murdoch through a cannabis deal and arrange for him to fake his death? Less than half a litre of his blood was found by the roadside – considerably less than what people give when they make a donation…

With these questions hanging in the air, it’s time to leave Les and his wife serving thirsty truck drivers in their pub and head back to Alice Springs. Driving through the lonely darkness of the outback, the only thing that’s certain is that there are more twists and turns to come before we discover what really happened to Peter Falconio. 

Timeline: The Vanishing

January 2001
Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees arrive in Sydney Australia on their round the world trip. He works for an office furniture company whilst she works in a book shop to save money to buy a VW Combi.

Early July 2001
The couple leave Sydney, driving to Adelaide before heading north on the 3000km long Stuart Highway to Darwin

14th July 12pm
Joanne changes travel plans and buys a single ticket from Brisbane to Sydney instead of travelling with Peter from Brisbane to New Zealand as originally planned
4pm
The couple pull into the Shell truckstop north of Alice Spring to refuel
6pm
They refuel again at Ti Tree and share a joint as they watch the sunset
8pm
The couple are flagged down 13kms north of The Barrow Creek hotel. Joanne hears a shot from the back of the Combi and never sees Peter again. Having been tied up and bundled into the attackers van she escapes and hides beneath a bush

July 15th 2001
12.45am
CCTV captures Bradley Murdoch as he pulls into the Shell truckstop in Alice Springs and buys diesel, water and ice before travelling 1800 kms in 17 hours to his home in Broome, north-west Australia.
1.10am
Joanne flags down Vince Millar’s road train. He helps her remove zip ties that bind her hands.
1.30am
Vince pulls into Barrow Creek Hotel to be greeted by owner Les Pilton who calls the police.
4.30am
Armed police arrive from Alice Springs and take statements
5.30am
Police discover a 60cm pool of blood (less than half a litre) by the roadside under a mound of dirt. It later proves to be that of Peter Falconios.
4pm
Joanne is taken to Alice Springs for check ups

17th July
Detective use planes, helicopters and aboriginal trackers to help them scour the Outback for clues, a body or the attacker.

18th July
Joanne revisits the scene to help police reconstruct events

21st July
A couple at a service station in New South Wales claim to have sold Peter Falconio a bottle of Coke and a Mars bar. Police receive an anonymous tip off that Peter Falconio was discussing insurance scams and how to fake your own death bfore leaving England

24th July
Detectives rule out 35 year old suspect arrested two days after the ambush and lift the roadblock

25th July
Police dismiss speculation that Joanne is a suspect

26th July
The Northern Territory government offers a £90,000 reward for help in finding the attacker

6th August
Police release CCTV footage of a suspect at a truckstop in Alice Springs taken five hours after the incident.

21st September 2001
Police scale down their manhunt

21st February 2002
With a lack of leads police call in a new team to review the case

August 2003
Rape suspect Bradley Murdoch is arrested. DNA test show that the tiny speck of blood on the back of Joanne’s shirt is his.

17th May 2004
The committal hearing begins to see whether there is enough evidence against Bradley Murdoch to put him on trial. Under cross examination Joanne reveals she was having an affair with a man called Nick in Sydney and exchanged emails with him both before and after Peter’s disappearance.

26th April 2005
Bradley Murdoch stands trial for the murder of Peter Falconio


Used by Kind Permission
Originally Appeared in FHM