by Sue Williams
Joanne continued to ignore the assembled photographers, however, as she kissed each member of the family before climbing into the black Ford sedan with dark tinted windows that came for her every day. It was a rare show of togetherness from a woman who desperately needed to move on in her life, and a family still entrenched in their own sorrow and for whom, with no body to bury, true closure would be forever impossible.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
JUDGMENT DAY
OVER THE NEXT SIX WEEKS, eighty-two witnesses gave evidence, and more than 350 exhibits, including photographs, were shown to the jury. Many of the parade of men and women had already given evidence at the committal, and much of their testimony was exactly the same. Road train driver Vince Millar, on crutches after suffering a bad accident, talked of coming across Joanne in the middle of nowhere. His co-driver that night, Rodney Adams, described how their new passenger had been distraught and in a state of panic when they rescued her. Barrow Creek Roadhouse owner Les Pilton said she was on the verge of breaking down emotionally, but each time seemed to draw on some ‘inner strength’. As he left the box, he smiled warmly at Joanne Lees and clasped both of his hands over Luciano Falconio’s. Joanne smiled back, Luciano looked close to tears.
Police officers talked endlessly about their fruitless searches for Peter Falconio, their roadblocks that could easily have been avoided by someone who knew the back roads, the gathering of evidence, the crime scene itself, and Peter’s St Christopher medallion which had, poignantly, never been found. They admitted that bungled communications between two groups of searchers meant that a second examination of the area where Joanne had hidden never took place, so that her tube of lip balm was not found until three months later — leading to defence accusations it had been planted there by police. One revealed that searches were still continuing for Peter with the last as recent as two months before. Joan Falconio sat steadfastly through all the evidence until she realised photographs of the pool of Peter’s blood left on the roadside were about to be shown. Unable to bear that, she walked out.
It was the DNA evidence, however, that took up most of the time. Forensic biologist Carmen Eckhoff caused a sensation with her claim that the blood spot on Joanne’s T-shirt contained DNA which was an exact match with that of Bradley Murdoch’s. Pressed for a figure that expressed the likelihood it came from Murdoch, she announced it was ‘150 quadrillion times’ more likely to belong to him than to any other person. Immediately, there was uproar in the press room as everyone raced around trying to work out what a quadrillion actually was. The figure turned out to be 150,000,000,000,000,000; with a quadrillion a million times a trillion. Frantic emails from UK newspapers came flooding in, demanding to know whether it was a British trillion or the different US trillion. Nobody stopped to wonder if it made any difference.
More figures came later from UK DNA expert Dr Jonathan Whitaker, who said DNA deep within the cable ties used to restrain Joanne, and isolated with his Low Copy Number (LCN) technique, was 100 million times more likely to have come from Murdoch. In addition, the DNA on the gearstick of the Kombi was 19,000 times more likely to be the defendant’s, while his presence couldn’t be excluded either from the DNA mix on the steering wheel. Murdoch rolled his eyes disparagingly. His counsel argued that some experts had concerns about the LCN technique, with any contamination likely to be magnified along with the small samples. Some contamination had indeed already taken place, with the director of the lab Dr Peter Thatcher’s DNA being found on the cable ties. Defence lawyer Grant Algie put forward the proposition that the cigarette butts Murdoch’s former drug-running partner James Hepi had been sent from his property could have been used by police to rub Murdoch’s DNA on the cable ties. Whitaker disagreed. ‘The reason why we’ve used LCN is that we have an expectation of finding the DNA profile [of the person] who has transferred DNA through handling and touch,’ he explained. ‘That contamination argument is a remote one.’
At this critical juncture, however, the case nearly came unhinged. One of the British journalists had asked a photographer for some photos of Murdoch’s property seized in South Australia when he was arrested there, pictures that had been suppressed by the judge. The photographer mistakenly released the photos to the British media and another journalist wrote a story to go with them, which in turn was sent over to the Australian newspapers. One newspaper printed both the photos and a similar story. If the report had found its way into the Northern Territory, it would have been difficult to argue against the enormous prejudice it would cause in the minds of the jury. Thankfully, in the end, all copies were stopped coming into the Territory.
A few days later, the backpacker murder movie Wolf Creek opened around Australia, becoming the first local film to top the Australian box office chart in more than two years. Happily, distributors Roadshow Films agreed to a request from prosecutor Rex Wild QC that its Northern Territory release be delayed until after the trial.
But the case still wasn’t out of the danger zone. Hepi, who claimed to police that Murdoch was the Barrow Creek killer, recounted their drug-running partnership and their drives through the outback, and Murdoch’s alleged liking for wearing caps, and his ‘scattered’ demeanour when he returned from the July 2001 trip: ‘He’d been on the gear for four or five days, racing around the country, he was fairly scattered … There had been a lot of gear taken to stay awake for those amount of hours, and like nervous tension, you know.’ He claimed Murdoch had admitted he was the man pictured at the Shell Truckstop, but Hepi said he recognised him anyway. He also recited again the alleged conversation the pair had about burying bodies in spoon drains, and talked about the row that had finished their relationship in the Perth car park.
At that point, tensions between the two men exploded again in the courtroom, with the trading of insults between the pair. ‘You’re a f…ing liar,’ growled Murdoch, while one heated claim Hepi made against Murdoch was immediately suppressed and struck from the record. Algie then said in a closed session of the court that his client had been hopelessly prejudiced in the eyes of the jury by Hepi’s remark, and one TV network made an application to be allowed to report their words. Suddenly it seemed as if the case might again be derailed. But Chief Justice Brian Martin would have no truck with either.
Meanwhile, forensic anatomist Meiya Sutisno, who had compared the Truckstop video to TV footage of the defendant, claimed the man in the video was Murdoch. She was joined by an unlikely alliance of his friends trailing through the court, including Beverley Allan, who also testified it was him. ‘He told me that it hadn’t been a good trip,’ said Allan. ‘He said there’d been a few dramas, he suspected somebody had been following him on that occasion and that he’d had to deal with it.’ She said Murdoch had denied his presence to his father too, and tapes were played of the two men’s phone conversations while Murdoch was in Yatala Prison. ‘They are trying to build a case up with all the lies and all the rest of it,’ Murdoch told his dad, Colin. Murdoch left the court while the tape was being played, Algie saying he was still too upset over his father’s recent death to listen.
He was upset too over the amount of food he was getting each day. His girlfriend Jan Pittman, sitting stony-faced through the parade of ex-friends, then complained to the lawyers about it, after she took note of the trolley stacked with sandwiches, chicken, sushi and fruit being trundled in to feed the jury each day. From that point on, Murdoch was given plenty to eat.
IT WAS THE CASE THAT HAD everything: love, sex, death, betrayal, drugs, travel, friendship … and now the last drama: an earthquake. Just after court had begun for the day on Monday November 21, everyone in the courtroom felt a tremor. ‘There’s lots of history being made during this trial,’ remarked Chief Justice Martin dryly.
BY THE SEVENTH WEEK OF the trial, the prosecution case had finished, yet no-one still knew what the defence case might entail. Algie had proved evasive. ‘It could be a couple of weeks, then again it might not,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to wai
t and see.’ There’d been rumours that he was considering calling Murdoch to the stand, but most onlookers thought that unlikely. Whatever his innocence or guilt, Murdoch wasn’t a particularly attractive-looking or articulate character, and his size and build could appear menacing to the jury. But by the end of the prosecution, Algie appeared to be on the back foot. He’d failed to make much headway with Joanne, his attack on the credibility of the DNA evidence had not dented Whitaker’s confidence, and the line-up of Murdoch’s friends prepared to say it was he on the Truckstop video and describe how he’d changed his appearance and four-wheel-drive after the July 2001 trip had proved overwhelming. So when Algie rose to his feet on the morning of Tuesday November 29, everyone expected a long list of witnesses he might be calling. Instead, he said just three words: ‘Calling Bradley Murdoch.’
The effect was electric. Police Superintendent Colleen Gwynne raced outside to call Joanne who had decided to take a rare morning off sitting in court. Journalists ran from the press room to jostle for space in the courtroom. And Murdoch slowly, deliberately strolled up to the witness box, a faint smile playing around the corners of his mouth at the commotion he’d caused. Ten minutes later, there was a screech of brakes outside, a black sedan pulled up at the courthouse steps, and Joanne ran inside to take a seat in the second row behind the Falconios. It was the moment everyone had been waiting for and, now it was here, no-one could quite believe it.
For the defence, putting Murdoch in the stand was a huge gamble. Apart from his looks, he had a quick temper. He often spoke roughly too, swearing frequently, as had already been heard on the tape of his phone conversations. But while having Murdoch speak for himself was a risk, it was a calculated one. And, of course, if the case were lost, Murdoch might have no-one to blame but himself. His solicitor Mark Twiggs, however, saw it differently. ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he confided later. ‘It gives him the opportunity to tell the jury he didn’t do it. They’ve heard it from his lawyer, but they need to hear it from him.’
Algie led his client through his evidence, and their strategy became immediately clear. Murdoch admitted he was a drug-runner, heading a business with Hepi driving 9–11 kilograms (20–25 pounds) of cannabis at a time concealed in a long-range fuel tank from Sedan to Broome. He also conceded he always carried guns ‘for protection’ — his .357 Dirty Harry-style 10-inch barrelled revolver and a black .38 calibre Beretta pistol. During those long drives, he stayed awake with the help of lines of speed taken in cups of tea, and said he was obsessed with cars and changing them all the time to avoid police suspicion. But there he stopped.
He had eaten takeaway from the Red Rooster chicken shop in Alice Springs on Saturday 14 July 2001, and had been in the Repco store opposite, but had never seen Joanne and Peter, he said. He had not followed them up past Barrow Creek, and had not stopped them. Instead, after he’d finished his business in Alice Springs that day, he’d turned off directly onto the Tanami Track and driven home to Broome towing his new camper trailer behind him, slowly and leisurely, just like a regular ‘Tommy Tourist’.
His voice was gruff, but soft and, while he slouched back in the chair in the witness box, he was careful often to turn to the jury when he answered questions from Algie. It was obvious he was a man dedicated to his vehicles, going into minute loving detail, hopelessly over-technical for many to follow, about changes he’d made to them. ‘Some people call it an obsession, I’ve sort of been lucky that I’ve been around people being able to pull spanners,’ he said in his broad Australian accent, using his hands restlessly to illustrate each point. ‘I’ve always mucked around with my vehicles, putting motors in and out of different four-wheel-drives.’ As for guns, though, he denied he’d ever owned a silver revolver or had shown McPhail a gun as they drove through the desert in convoy, and said Hepi’s old girlfriend Rachel Maxwell was wrong when she’d said she’d seen him with a silver gun. ‘I never had a silver gun, so no,’ he said.
When he’d left Broome for that July 2001 trip, he’d visited his parents, and bought a camper trailer in Adelaide in order to help his disguise. ‘I’d been doing something illegal so I’d chop and change things around to look like Tommy Tourist, going down the road with a bit of a trailer on,’ he explained. Then he left Sedan loaded up, arriving in Alice Springs at about 10.30 a.m. There, he called into Red Rooster. ‘It’s a bit of a spot that we always used to go to,’ he said. ‘I went into there and bought a chicken roll and a box of nuggets for Jack — he was a bit of a liker on nuggets — and a full chicken for the trip.’ He called into Barbeques Galore, into Repco where he bought two jerry cans for water, a dash mat and new mudguards and then into a Bi-Lo supermarket where he stocked up with goods for his trip. He’d previously refuelled at a BP garage, so he had no reason to call into the Shell Truckstop. Then, about 20 kilometres outside of Alice, at about 3.30 p.m., he turned off on to the Tanami, where he took his time driving back, stopping off to camp, fixing problems with his car, and having breaks to allow Jack to run around. He knew nothing about the attack on the two British tourists until he was told about it later.
He said it wasn’t him pictured at the Truckstop and any changes to his hair or moustache weren’t significant as that happened all the time as part of his strategy to avoid suspicion while running drugs. ‘I’ll be cleanshaven, then you let it grow again,’ he said. ‘It’s just another part of our appearances. One minute you’ve got a beard, one minute you’ve got a mo, one minute you’ve got cleanshaven. One minute you’ve got a camper trailer on, one minute you’ve got a boat. When you’re running drugs, you’ve sort of got to.’
As for the DNA, he suspected either Hepi or the police had set him up by putting his DNA on items. And the blood on Joanne’s T-shirt? He didn’t know how it had got there. ‘I didn’t know whether I crossed their paths or not,’ he said.
USUALLY SO MILD-MANNERED, it was a shock when Wild stood up to start the cross-examination after lunch that day. In a scene that could have been straight out of the TV show Law & Order, ‘Mr Murdoch,’ he said, ‘where did you bury Peter Falconio?’ Algie leapt to his feet to object; Murdoch scowled and shook his head. But Wild continued, putting to him Hepi’s account of the conversation about burying bodies, which Murdoch swiftly denied.
It was a bad-tempered session. When Wild queried how, on his timings, Murdoch had spent so long crossing the Tanami, Murdoch bit back at police officer Stephen Hall’s previous evidence that it was quite possible at that time to travel at 100–120 kilometres per hour on stretches of the unmade road. He had, in contrast, driven at a safe 50–65 kilometres per hour, he said. ‘I find that quite ridiculous if a police officer would stand up in this court and say that he’d do 120kph on a gravel road that changes all the time with his wife and his grandchildren in the back,’ Murdoch hit back. ‘I certainly wouldn’t attempt anything like that.’ He was also riled at the way Wild was asking him about all his previous drug runs. ‘Are you trying to put me up over what, drug-running or something, or are you trying to mount up the amount of drugs that I was running?’ he said.
By the next day, Murdoch had calmed down a little. Even when Wild continued to query how long it had taken him to get back to Broome — around 35 hours to drive the 1800 kilometres from Alice and taking five hours to drive one stretch of just 190 kilometres — Murdoch wasn’t rattled. ‘I was just plodding along,’ he replied. ‘I’m going home, I’ve got a trailer and no time that I wanted to be in Broome.’
He admitted his father had rung him to ask if it was him pictured in the Shell Truckstop video, but said he’d reassured him he was never there. The friends who thought the image looked like him were obviously wrong. While he did buy iced coffee, from time to time, he’d never buy single cartons, but five or six at a time, and he rarely wore caps. ‘It wasn’t me at Shell,’ he protested. ‘I keep saying that to you.’
Wild put, one by one, all the allegations to Murdoch: that it was him at the Truckstop, that he did stop the tourists, and that he shot
Peter and tried to abduct Joanne. He denied them all. Then Wild accused him of souveniring Joanne’s hairtie, and using her missing denim jacket to wrap Peter’s head in to stop blood getting on his car. Murdoch said he did not. As he spoke, Joanne wiped a tear from her cheek.
ALGIE CALLED FOUR MORE DEFENCE witnesses: a salesman at Repco who claimed he’d served a ‘cleanshaven’ Murdoch; a DNA expert, Dr Katrin Both who said that she had strong reservations about the use of Low Copy Number testing as the risk of contamination was so high; biological anthropologist Professor Maciej Henneberg who said that Dr Meiya Sutisno couldn’t possibly have accurately recognised Murdoch in the images from the Shell Truckstop as they plainly weren’t him; and Professor Gale Spring who said magnifying the details would have distorted the detail too greatly to justify Dr Sutisno’s claims.
THE DEFENCE AND PROSECUTION summings-up started on the eighth week of the trial, with Algie going first on Monday December 5. His case was simple enough: his client just wasn’t the man who attacked Peter and Joanne that lonely night four years ago. Indeed, no-one could be sure Peter had even been killed: there had been sightings of him since, and there was no blood found in the Kombi. ‘From time to time people do disappear themselves for reasons perhaps best known to them,’ said Algie. ‘Sometimes they turn up later, sometimes they don’t. But the difficulty for you … you will be asked to convict my client of murder and there’s no body.’
