Falconio: Mechanic accused of tourist's murder
A mechanic was in an Australian court today charged with the murder nearly three years ago of a British man who disappeared from a lonely Outback highway leaving only a pool of his blood on the road.
The disappearance and suspected killing of Peter Falconio, who has not been seen since he stopped his camper van for another motorist and apparently was murdered on July 14, 2001, is one of Australia’s most mysterious unsolved crimes.
Security guards flanked Bradley John Murdoch (aged 45) as he sat in a specially designed court room in the northern port city of Darwin for a committal hearing that is expected to last six weeks.
At the end of the hearing, magistrate Alasdair McGregor will decide whether evidence is strong enough to merit a full jury trial.
Murdoch, wearing a blue open-necked shirt and light pants, was not required to enter a plea to charges of murdering Mr Falconio and abducting and assaulting his girlfriend Joanne Lees. He sat taking notes as prosecutors began outlining their case.
Ms Lees, a travel agent from Brighton in southern England, will be a key prosecution witness at the committal hearing. She is expected to give evidence tomorrow.
Around 40 witnesses will give evidence at the hearing, which is scheduled to run for three weeks before adjourning until August, when it will run another three weeks.
But detail of much of their evidence was expected to be covered by reporting bans to ensure the testimony cannot be read by potential jurors in a trial.
If convicted of murder at trial, Murdoch faces a mandatory life sentence.
Mr Falconio’s brother, Paul, was the first witness, telling the court that he had not heard from his brother since his disappearance.
“The last time I spoke to him was approximately one month before he went missing,” he told the court. “My mother actually spoke to him only a day or so before.”
Murdoch’s defence lawyer, Grant Algie, said yesterday that he expects his client to be cleared.
In the days after Mr Falconio’s disappearance, police in helicopters and on motorbikes helped by Aboriginal trackers searched an area of the Outback the size of France, hunting for the missing man or his alleged attacker – without success.
Police have never publicly speculated on a possible motive for the apparently unprovoked attack.
Police arrested Murdoch months after the alleged killing and hundreds of miles from the scene on unrelated charges he eventually was cleared of at trial.
