page_title: Murder of Peter Falconio
section_title: Investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Murder of Peter Falconio / Investigation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Toyota Landcruiser Pickup
context_page_description: Peter Falconio was a British tourist who disappeared in a remote part of the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia on the evening of 14 July 2001, while travelling with his girlfriend Joanne Lees.
  In the aftermath of the Backpacker murders, the case quickly attracted considerable public and legal attention both domestically and worldwide. Falconio was 28 years old at the time of the disappearance. His body has never been found and he is now presumed dead. On 13 December 2005, Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of his murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
context_section_description: The Alice Springs Police were called around 1:30 am, arrived to collect evidence and testimonies at around 4:20 am, and (accompanied by the truck driver) commenced a search for Falconio, the vehicle, and the gunman at 7:00 am. Returning to the scene, they found a dirt-covered blood pool and the couple's Kombi hidden some 80 metres into the scrub. It was not until eight hours after the rescue that roadblocks were put in place on the twelve likely roads exiting the district. Police searches of the area in the following months revealed little except Lees' footprints. Four Aboriginal trackers arrived from a nearby settlement within a few days but none of them found evidence of either Falconio or the attacker.
  Given the unusual nature of the attack, and the lack of corroborating evidence (i.e. Falconio's belongings or body), it took the police some days to appreciate the significance of the crime. But in the wake of the Backpacker case, the media were quick to sensationalise Lees' story as one of survival in a crime of unusual horror against all odds. However, inconsistencies in Lees' statements and her demeanour in the following weeks shifted attention to the veracity of her version of the incident (e.g. the perpetrator's facial composite, the actual type of vehicle or dog, and assumed CCTV footage of the suspect in Alice Springs), similar to what had happened in the Azaria Chamberlain case. A $250,000 reward was posted, but the only new evidence in the Falconio case was an unidentified male-DNA trace on Lees' T-shirt, and some related DNA on the cable ties and Kombi gearstick.
  Police were hopeful that the release of the CCTV footage would lead to the person shown coming forward to remove themselves from suspicion. When this did not happen, investigators began to focus on the registered owners of the 1991-1999 model Toyota Land Cruiser 4WD identified, and on the 36 men whom callers had identified in the footage. Based on these results, police interviewed Bradley John Murdoch in Broome on 1 November 2001, though Lees' descriptions did not immediately connect the case to him and no DNA sample was collected. On 17 May 2002, the investigating task force caught Murdoch's drug-running accomplice, who began to relate details of his connections to the case, and a DNA examination of Murdoch's brother also supported his involvement. Murdoch then disappeared, but on 22 August 2002 he was arrested and tried on an unrelated kidnap and assault charge by South Australia Police.
caption: A Toyota Land Cruiser pick-up/ute with canopy similar to the one used by Bradley Murdoch
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