Outback-Killer Bradley John Murdoch dies: riddle about Peter Falconios body remains unresolved

Outback-Killer Bradley John Murdoch dies: riddle about Peter Falconios body remains unresolved

Melbourne, AP - Bradley John Murdoch, known as the "Outback Killer", died. He was convicted of the murder of the British backpacker Peter Falconio, who disappeared 24 years ago in the dry central Australia. Murdoch was 67 years old.

According to the Ministry of Justice in the Northern Territory, Murdoch died on Tuesday evening in the palliative care unit of the Alice Spring Hospital. He was diagnosed with incurable larynx cancer in 2019 and most recently moved to the hospital from Alice Springs prison.

unclear fate of Peter Falconio

his death leaves the mysterious disappearance of Falconios body unclear. The police of the Northern Territory initially did not respond to inquiries from the Associated Press, whether Murdoch had given evidence of the whereabouts of the missing person before his death.

The condemnation of 2005

In 2005, Murdoch was guilty of murdering the 28-year-old Falconio from Huddersfield, Yorkhire, in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory in Darwin. He was also convicted of the attempted kidnapping crime by Falconio's friend Joanne Lees, then 27.

The case caused a sensation worldwide and inspired the horror film "Wolf Creek" from 2005, which is about a serial killer who hunts backpackers and leaves a single witness that is suspected.

lees, who made her experiences in the autobiography "No Turning Back" in 2006, complained that she was treated as suspect in the years before Murdoch's indictment.

persistence on innocence

Murdoch always emphasized his innocence and refused to help the authorities in the search for Falconios.

at the time of crime, Murdoch worked as a drug courier and used amphetamines to stay awake on several days of trips, and cannabis to be able to sleep.

In the night of July 14, 2001, he tricked Falconio and Lees so that they were on a dark and remote motorway north of Alice Springs.

LEES watched her friend left the van to check a supposedly smoking exhaust pipe. She heard a shot and never saw her friend again. Murdoch, whose height was 193 centimeters (6 feet 4 inches), captivated Lees with cable ties before she was able to escape and hid for hours in the desert fold for hours. She reported that she was looking for a flashlight and his dog.

later Lees was able to stop a truck and alerted the police.

reward doubled

"The police continue to hope that someone can provide valuable information to support this search," said police commander Mark Grieve. He added that Murdoch had not revealed any information about the whereabouts of the remains of his victim in the years of his detention.

Colleen Gwynne, a former policewoman who led the investigation at the time of Falconios disappeared, expressed that Murdoch might be panicked after Lee's escape and had forgotten what he had done with the body.

lifelong prison sentence

"As soon as the panic set up ... he could have disposed of a body somewhere, the whereabouts of which he is no longer quite sure about," Gwynne told 10 Network News.

Murdoch was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Falconios and had to serve at least 28 years before he was able to apply for probation. In addition, he was sentenced to six years in prison that were at the same time being served because of the assault against Lees.

The earliest possible time for an application for probation would have been 2032. However, since he was not able to reveal any information about Falconios body, it was unlikely that he would have been released. In 2016, laws were adopted in the Northern Territory that ensure that convicted murderers can only be considered for a probation if they provide the authorities the residence of their victims.

Murdoch was born in the western coastal town of Geraldton as the third child of an automotive mechatronic technician and a hairdresser.

Already in his youth he got into criminal machinations of motorcycle gangs and was sentenced to a group of indigenous people in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia for the first time in 1995. He served 15 months of a 21-month prison sentence.

When convicting Murdoch for the murder of Falconio, the highest judge Brian Martin criticized that words could hardly be horrified and expressed the trauma that Lees had suffered.

"It has to be close to the worst nightmare you can imagine," said the judge.