'Outback Killer' Bradley John Murdoch dies at 67, leaving mystery of Peter Falconio's body unsolved
Murdoch died on Tuesday night in the palliative care unit of the Alice Springs Hospital, according to a statement from the Northern Territory Department of Corrections. He was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in 2019 and was recently transferred to the hospital from the Alice Springs prison.
His death leaves the mystery of the whereabouts of Falconio's body unsolved. The territory's police did not immediately respond to queries from The Associated Press whether Murdoch had provided any clues before he died.
The 2005 conviction
In 2005, Murdoch was convicted in the territory's Supreme Court in Darwin of the 2001 murder of 28-year-old Falconio, from Huddersfield, Yorkshire, and the attempted kidnapping of Falconio's girlfriend Joanne Lees, then 27.
The crime captured global attention and was one of the inspirations for the 2005 Australian horror movie 'Wolf Creek,' about a serial killer who preyed on backpackers and left a single witness who became a suspect.
Lees, who wrote about her ordeal in her 2006 memoir 'No Turning Back,' complained that police treated her as a suspect in the years before Murdoch was charged.
A court order prevented the movie's release in the Northern Territory during Murdoch's trial, fearing it could influence jurors. Murdoch, who was arrested in 2003 in the case, was not accused of any other killings.
Maintaining his innocence
Murdoch consistently maintained his innocence and did not help authorities search for Falconio's remains.
At the time of the killing, Murdoch was an interstate drug runner, using amphetamines to stay awake for dayslong drives and cannabis to sleep.
On the night of July 14, 2001, he tricked Falconio and Lees into stopping their campervan on a dark and remote highway north of Alice Springs.
Lees watched her boyfriend leave the van to inspect a supposedly sparking exhaust pipe. She testified that she heard a gun shot and never saw her boyfriend again.
Murdoch, an imposing 193 centimeters (6 foot, 4 inches) in height, bound her wrists with cable ties before she managed to escape and hid in the desert scrub for hours. She testified that she watched Murdoch searching for her with a flashlight and his dog.
Lees later waved down a truck and raised the alarm.
Police doubled the reward for information
Last month, police doubled the reward for information leading to the location of Falconio's remains to 500,000 Australian dollars ($330,000), following news that Murdoch was in palliative care.
'Police still hold out hope that someone may be able to provide some vital information to assist in this search,' Police Commander Mark Grieve said. He added that over the years he spent in prison, Murdoch had not revealed the whereabouts of his victim's remains.
Colleen Gwynne, a former police officer who led the investigation at the time of Falconio's disappearance, said Murdoch might have panicked after Lees escaped and in his confusion forgot what he did with the body.
A sentence to life in prison
'Once that panic set in … he may have disposed of a body somewhere he's not entirely certain where that is,' Gwynne told 10 Network News television earlier this month.
In 2005, Murdoch was sentenced to life in prison for Falconio's murder and was ordered to serve at least 28 years before he could be considered for parole. He was also sentenced to six years, to be served concurrently, for assaulting Lees.
The earliest he could have applied for parole would have been 2032, but without providing information as to what he had done with Falconio's body, Murdoch was not likely to have been released. The territory passed laws in 2016 preventing prisoners convicted of murder from qualifying for parole unless they provide police with the location of their victims' bodies.
Murdoch was born in the west coast town of Geraldton, the third child of an automobile mechanic and his wife, a hairdresser.
As a teen, he became involved in biker gang crime and was first sentenced to prison in 1995 for shooting at a group of Indigenous people at Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. He served 15 months of a 21-month sentence.
In sentencing Murdoch for Falconio's killing, Chief Justice Brian Martin said he doubted any words could express the trauma and terror Lees had suffered.
'It must have been close to the worst nightmare imaginable,' the judge said.
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SWEIDA, Syria (AP) — The stench of decaying bodies hangs heavy in the streets of the provincial capital in Syria's southern province of Sweida, where fighting recently erupted. Once bustling roads now lie eerily silent, with only a few people passing by. In some areas, the destruction is overwhelming, with buildings and cars charred black. At a bank branch, shattered glass covered the floor as an alarm blared nonstop. Walls are emblazoned with slogans graffitied by both sides in the recent conflict. The devastation came after violent clashes broke out two weeks ago, sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority. The fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria's fragile postwar transition. Syrian government forces intervened, ostensibly to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Some government fighters reportedly robbed and executed Druze civilians. 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Sweida's Christians also recount near-death escapes Members of Sweida's Christian minority were also caught up in the violence. At a church where a number of Christian families were sheltering, 36-year-old Walaa al-Shammas, a housewife with two children, said a rocket struck her home on July 16. 'Had we not been sheltering in the hallway, we would've been gone," she said. "My house lies in destruction and our cars are gone.' Gunmen came to the damaged house later, but moved on, apparently thinking it was empty as the family hid in the hallway, she said. In recent days, hundreds of people — Bedouins as well as Druze and Christians — have evacuated Sweida in convoys of buses carrying them to other areas, organized by the Syrian Red Crescent. Others have found their own way out. Micheline Jaber, a public employee in the provincial government in Sweida, was trying to flee the clashes last week with her husband, in-laws and extended family members when the two cars they were driving in came under shelling. She was wounded but survived, along with her mother-in-law and the young son of one of her husband's siblings. Her husband and the rest of the family members who were fleeing with them were killed. Someone, Jaber doesn't know who, loaded her and the other two survivors in a car and drove them to an ambulance crew, which evacuated them to a hospital outside of the city. She was then taken to another hospital in the southwestern city of Daraa, and finally transported to Damascus. She's now staying with friends in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, her arms encased in bandages. 'When the shell hit the car, I came out alive — I was able to get out of the car and walk normally,' Jaber said. 'When you see all the people who died and I'm still here, I don't understand it. God has His reasons.' The one thing that comforts her is that her 15-year-old daughter was with her parents elsewhere at the time and was not harmed. 'My daughter is the most important thing and she is what gives me strength,' Jaber said. ___ Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut.
