Falconio murder accused took drugs to stay awake
The man accused of killing British backpacker Peter Falconio on an Outback highway took amphetamines for days to stay awake and carried a gun as he ran marijuana across Australia, a court was told today.
Bradley John Murdoch, aged 47, has pleaded not guilty in the Northern Territory Supreme Court to murdering 28-year-old Falconio and assaulting and abducting Falconio’s girlfriend, Joanne Lees, 27, on a central Australian highway on July 14, 2001.
James Hepi, a former drug trade partner of Murdoch, told the trial that in early 2001 the pair would take turns in making the 1,900-mile drug run through the central Australian desert between Murdoch’s home in Broome in Western Australia state and Sedan, South Australia, where the marijuana was grown.
Hepi, a New Zealander, said Murdoch appeared “scattered” after returning to Broome from a drug trip in July 2001.
“He’d been on the gear (amphetamines) for four or five days racing around the country and was fairly scattered,” Hepi said.
Murdoch shaved off his moustache and cut his hair short to change his appearance, and was sick after the trip, Hepi said.
When Falconio’s disappearance and apparent murder was reported in the media, Murdoch volunteered: “It wasn’t me,” Hepi said.
Hepi said Murdoch always carried a handgun hidden inside his pickup truck which he drove cross-country with marijuana hidden in a fuel tank.
Hepi told the court he found Murdoch making handcuffs out of cable ties in his backyard shed before Falconio disappeared.
“He was making the handcuffs with heavy duty ties ... there had been several sets made there,” Hepi said.
At the outset of the trial, Lees told the court she and Falconio were driving in a camper van when Murdoch flagged them down.
She heard a gunshot after Falconio stepped from the van and she never saw him again.
Lees told the court that Murdoch then dragged her from the van and bound her wrists with makeshift handcuffs before she escaped and fled into the desert night.
Hepi said shortly after the crime, Murdoch mentioned that the drainage trenches on the sides of many Outback roads were the best places to hide a body in the desert.
“Brad claimed it was a fairly good place to put a body, the digging was easy in a spoon drain ... this conversation came from nowhere,” Hepi said.
Hepi told the court he later had a falling out with Murdoch after drugs and money from one job “never turned up”.
Under cross-examination, Hepi denied he had made up the story to get a lighter sentence when he was arrested with marijuana in his vehicle in Broome in May 2002.
The case continues.
