Falconio murder accused 'offered to sell gun'

A man accused of shooting to death British backpacker Peter Falconio on a lonely Outback highway tried to sell a woman a gun a month before the alleged murder, the woman told a court today.

Julie Anne McPhail told the Northern Territory Supreme Court that Bradley John Murdoch fired the small silver gun into bushes at the side of a remote road in South Australia state and then offered her a shot, in June 2001.

Murdoch, 47, has pleaded not guilty to murdering 28-year-old Falconio and assaulting and abducting Falconio’s girlfriend Joanne Lees on July 14, 2001.

“He pulled out a gun and offered me a shot and said that I could buy it if I wanted it,” McPhail testified.

“I didn’t feel comfortable with it so I hopped back in my car and kept going.”

McPhail said she met Murdoch less than 24 hours earlier at a remote fuel station as she drove across the barren Nullarbor Plain, from the west coast city of Perth to Adelaide in South Australia.

She said she had approached Murdoch to thank him for overtaking her and “lighting up the road,” as she followed him, and they agreed to keep driving together.

After that they made frequent stops during which Murdoch would share cannabis and speed, the latter helping her “get through such a big drive quickly,” McPhail said.

In earlier testimony, witnesses have told the court that Murdoch regularly ran drugs between Broome in north-western Australia and Sedan, in South Australia, in 2001.

Police say Falconio was shot after being pulled over on the remote Stuart Highway north of the central Australian city of Alice Springs, but no body or murder weapon has ever been found.

The trial is expected to continue into December.