Outback killer jailed for life

THE girlfriend of Peter Falconio yesterday urged his killer to reveal what he has done with the British backpacker’s body.

Bradley Murdoch, a drug runner, was found guilty of murdering the 28-year-old in the Australian Outback more than four years ago.

The 47-year-old drifter from Broome, Western Australia, was jailed for life for the murder of Mr Falconio on the Stuart Highway, near Barrow Creek, about 200 miles north of Alice Springs, on July 14, 2001.

He was also found guilty of abducting and assaulting Mr Falconio’s girlfriend Joanne Lees.

“I would like Bradley John Murdoch to seriously consider telling me, Joan and Luciano (Mr Falconio’s parents) what he has done with Pete,” said Ms Lees, 32, a care worker from Brighton, East Sussex.

Luciano Falconio said his family would not get closure until his son’s body was found and said he felt “a little” like he was serving his own life sentence.

The unanimous verdicts, reached after eight hours of deliberation at the end of an eight-week trial, brings to an end a traumatic four years for Ms Lees and the Falconio family.

Murdoch flagged the couple down in their orange camper van and shot Mr Falconio dead before threatening Ms Lees with a gun to her head and tying her up with her hands behind her back, the Northern Territory Supreme Court in Darwin heard.

She managed to escape and hide in the bush for more than five hours on the moonless night before being rescued, but Mr Falconio, of Hepworth, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was never seen again and no body has been found.

The jury in Darwin was not given details of Murdoch’s police record.

Although it was revealed during the trial that he was a drug smuggler, he was also a gun-obsessed thug who repeatedly claimed the police framed him for violence and sex offences.

Murdoch was arrested for Mr Falconio’s murder by police investigating the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

In November 2003, he was found not guilty in a case, which had several similarities to the murder.

Prosecutors had alleged that Murdoch raped a 12-year-old girl before abducting her and her mother while in a state of drug-fuelled paranoia that police were framing him in the Falconio case.

The South Australia District Court heard that Murdoch allegedly denied killing Mr Falconio, but admitted having one of his T-shirts.