Falconio girlfriend describes Outback killer

A British woman who was allegedly assaulted after her boyfriend was gunned down in Australia’s Outback nervously described her suspected attacker today while the man charged with the crimes sat across from her in court.

“He was between 40 and 45. He had a long oval face,” Joanne Lees said. “He was wearing a black baseball cap. He had grey scruffy, straggly hair sticking out from under his cap. He had a moustache which was also grey.”

Lees glanced only briefly at 45-year-old mechanic Bradley John Murdoch as she spoke at his pre-trial hearing in Darwin.

Murdoch is accused of murdering Lees’ boyfriend, Peter Falconio, from Huddersfield – then abducting and assaulting Lees – on July 14, 2001.

Murdoch has not entered a plea to any of the charges.

He faces a mandatory life sentence if he is tried and convicted of murder.

Lees’ testimony had been expected to end last week, but legal wrangling prolonged it.

Media organisations had launched a court challenge to a magistrate’s so-called suppression order, which banned reports on parts of the prosecution’s opening statement because it could be read by potential jurors and then later be ruled inadmissible at trial.

The media challenge was rejected early today by the Northern Territory Supreme Court, allowing Lees to take the stand again for the hearing.

But shortly after she resumed her testimony, magistrate Alasdair McGregor ordered the public and media to leave court while she gave some of her evidence.

“We are going to deal with something now which will be, in my view, most prejudicial and I propose to close the court for it,” McGregor said.

When the court reopened, Lees told how staff at a hotel in the central Australian city of Alice Springs cared for her after she escaped the gunman who had allegedly threatened her, tied her up and dumped her in his pickup truck after apparently shooting Falconio.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Lees said of her time at the hotel. ”I was anxious and I was just waiting for the police to arrive so we could continue to search for Pete.”

She said that at the hotel, she spotted a dog, similar to the one her alleged attacker had in his van, straight away.

“I asked the girl who owned the dog what breed of dog it was because it… was the same breed of dog as the one the man had,” Lees said.

“She told me it was a blue heeler dog.”

Lees told the court a dog of the same breed was in the front seat of the man’s vehicle when he pushed her into his van.

Murdoch, who spent much of the day with his head down reading, stared at Lees with a half-smile, shaking his head as she talked about the dog.

Lees also described how she suffered injuries to her knees and wrists, after she was shown photographs of the wounds.

She said her knees were injured when the gunman pushed her to the ground, while her wrists were cut from handmade handcuffs.

The pre-trial hearing continues.