EXCLUSIVE Peter Falconio killer Bradley John Murdoch just 'a couple of days' from death - and stubbornly set to take his evil secret to the grave
Bradley John Murdoch has 'only a couple of days to live' but still refuses to reveal where he hid the British backpacker's body, 24 years to the day since he killed him.
Prison insiders have revealed the former hulking brute is now just a shrunken shadow of his former self as he sees out his final hours in his hospital deathbed.
He 'is acknowledging people are there, but very limited in talking,' said the insider.
Murdoch, 67, is dying from metastasised throat cancer and is spending his last hours surrounded by prison guards at Alice Springs Hospital in the Northern Territory.
He was moved from his Alice Springs jail cell to the palliative care unit in late June but is still keeping silent about where he put Mr Falconio's body.
His deathbed is 200km away from the spot on the Sturt Highway near Barrow Creek where he shot Mr Falconio dead and attempted to kidnap his girlfriend, Joanne Lees.
The ruthless drug runner shot Mr Falconio, 28, in the head on the night of July 14, 2001, after tricking the couple as they drove between Alice Springs and Darwin in their VW Kombi campervan
After shooting Mr Falconio, Murdoch threatened Ms Lees before he bound her hands behind her back with cable tie restraints and bundled her into the back of his ute.
But while Murdoch disposed of Mr Falconio's body, Ms Lees managed to escape, running barefoot through the bush where she hid while Murdoch hunted for her with his dog.
Five hours after her boyfriend's murder, Ms Lees eventually flagged down a truck and raised the alarm.
No trace of Peter Falconio's body has ever been found.
The road trip-turned-outback nightmare has been the subject of multiple books, TV programs and documentaries, as well as wild theories about where Falconio's body lies, and the fruitless searches for it.
Murdoch has steadfastly refused to end the mystery of what he did with Mr Falconio's corpse, which remains one of the greatest riddles in Australian crime.
The only trace of Mr Falconio was a small blood stain on the tarmac of the highway where the shooting took place.
Murdoch always protested his innocence throughout a murder trial which saw him convicted in December 2005, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The former mechanic, who drove road trains and trucks across the Outback lodged two unsuccessful appeals, and was refused special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia in 2007.
Mr Falconio's mother broke a long silence about her son's murder in 2022 to beg for information about the location of Peter's body.
Joan Falconio and husband Luciano, 80, issued a heartfelt plea backed by a demand for NT Police to put up a $1million reward to fund a renewed hunt for Peter's body.
Despite several searches, including a five-day operation in 2019 when police emptied an outback well, Murdoch's hiding place remains a mystery.
'His life stopped on a lonely road ... shot dead by cowardly Murdoch, who will not reveal where or what he did with him,' Mr Falconio's heartbroken mother said.
'Our pain is always with us. We want to bring Peter home where he belongs, near his family.'
After Daily Mail Australia exclusively revealed on March 10 that Murdoch was dying of cancer, the Falconios said they had not been informed by authorities of his imminent death.
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