Mechanic to stand trial on Falconio death

Published on Wednesday 18 August 2004 12:58

A MECHANIC was ordered today to stand trial for the alleged murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio in the Australian Outback three years ago.

After a five-week preliminary hearing, magistrate Alasdair McGregor found there was enough evidence against Bradley John Murdoch, 45, for him to stand trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court charged with the murder of 28-year-old Mr Falconio on July 14, 2001.

Murdoch also will be tried for deprivation of liberty and unlawful assault of Mr Falconio’s 27-year-old girlfriend, Joanne Lees. No date was immediately set for the trial, but it is expected to be held next year.

Murdoch, who has yet to formally enter a plea to any of the charges, said he was innocent.

"I am not guilty of any of these allegations, your honour," he said when the magistrate asked if he wanted to say anything in his defence.

The court heard from more than 50 witnesses over five weeks, including Ms Lees and Mr Falconio’s brother Paul.

The prosecution alleges that Ms Lees and Mr Falconio were travelling in a camper van along a remote desert highway shortly after dark when Murdoch flagged them down on the pretence of a mechanical problem with his pick-up.

He is alleged to have shot Mr Falconio and bound and gagged Ms Lees before she managed to flee into the desert night after a brief struggle and raise the alarm, sparking one of the biggest manhunts in Australian criminal history.

Aboriginal trackers and hundreds of police scoured an area the size of France in the days after Mr Falconio’s disappearance, hunting for his killer or a trace of the backpacker’s body - which has never been found.

Murdoch was eventually arrested months later and hundreds of miles away in southern Australia. He was initially arrested on an unrelated rape charge of which he was later cleared, before Northern Territory police arrested him in connection with Mr Falconio’s killing.

The committal hearing heard evidence that Murdoch carried a weapon and ties similar to the ones used to truss up Ms Lees in his pickup, and that he altered the truck’s and his own appearance in the weeks after Mr Falconio’s disappearance.

Meanwhile, court officials said a man charged with murdering another British backpacker Caroline Stuttle will go on trial in Queensland on September 27. Ian Douglas Previte is charged with pushing the 19-year-old tourist from York in northern England off a bridge in Bundaberg, 220 miles north of state capital Brisbane.