RedHanded - Episode 157 - The Disappearance of Peter Falconio

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

In 2001 on a remote stretch of highway in Australia’s Northern Territory, British backpacker Peter Falconio vanished. His girlfriend, Joanne Lees, told police that they had been attacked by a strange man. The subsequent investigation saw local drug runner Bradley Murdoch jailed for life - but questions still linger, especially around the truthfulness of the story that Joanne told... References   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. This week, we're taking a trip into the Australian outback. The Northern Territory, to be precise. This part of Australia makes up the central part of the northern half of the country. Much of the region is a vast expanse of arid red desert. With just 212,000 people living in almost 1.4 million square kilometres, it is also one of the least populated regions, not just in Australia, but in the entire world.

But despite how few people are actually out there, the Northern Territory has garnered the rather unsavoury title of the murder capital of Australia. Through the vast swathe of desert that makes up the southern half of the Northern Territory, there are a few tracks and back roads snaking their way across the terrain. But the only real main road that exists is a singular stretch of tarmac that runs for almost 3,000 kilometres, all the way from Adelaide to Darwin. It's called the Stuart Highway, and it's a straight shot right up the middle of the desert. This road, while isolated and remote, is frequented by both travellers and locals, known, interestingly enough, I discovered this week,

as Territorians, which is fun. My knowledge of Australia extends exclusively to their MasterChef. That's basically it. Though now we have discovered that gantry is a real thing. Yeah, I saw. Wasn't in your imagination? Yep, so the more you know. Territorians and gantry. We'll add it to the Australian glossary

for when we eventually head down under. But yeah, this road, the Stuart Highway, it is really mainly, though, the realm of the long haul trucker driving what they call road trains. I'd never heard this term before. I guess we can chuck that on the Australian glossary as well. And I looked it up and they honestly do just look like absolutely enormous giant freight trains on wheels. There's no other way to describe it. So good words, good accurate description. And these freight trains, they haul all sorts of goods from the centre of the vast continent to the northern coast and vice versa. Isn't the Northern Territory bigger than the UK?

Oh, much bigger. I think they say in this the area that they go on to search is like six times the size of Britain, but like 1.4 million square kilometres. That's like a million square miles. That is fucking massive, to put it simply. Yeah, large. Oh, I think they said if the Northern Territory was considered to be a country on its own, it would be the 20th biggest country in the world. Jesus Christ.

There's something about Perth being so far away from any other city in Australia that it's actually closer to a city in Indonesia than it is to any other city in Australia. I think it might not be Indonesia, it might be something else, but there's something like that. I can believe it because I spent a lot of this week staring at maps of Australia and I was like, I don't understand the context of this. I feel like they need like little Britons lined up along it

between the cities so I can tell how far they are apart really because I can't tell. It's not to scale in my head. And just for everyone's information, Saruti's wearing a top with tiny dinosaurs on it, which I just clocked. I am. You're welcome. Here you go. It's my dino blog merch. I love it. I love it too. Okay, right, sorry. Enough dinos. Back to Australia that probably has dinos. They've got everything else. And like a lot of things in the outback, dinos included, this road has its perils. Locals avoid driving at night altogether because of kangaroos

that jump out of the dark and into the road. Did you know that kangaroomy is like cheaper than like cow in Australia? I was talking to my friend about it the other day. He was like, yeah, you can just get it in the like supermarket. I was like, that is bonkers to me. But also makes perfect economic sense. Yeah, I can believe it because they like hate them, don they they're like vermin to farmers and shit that can punch you in the face have you seen that picture of that incredibly ripped kangaroo i'm scared of it my sister

made me watch a documentary about veganism the other day well yesterday called the game changes and you know like the number one argument people always have against vegetarianism or veganism is like oh yeah where are you getting your protein from? And they're like, well, a gorilla will fuck you up in two seconds and he's not eating beef, is he? Precisely. The meat is just the middleman. It is. I mean, I'm not a vegan, but it is the most inefficient way to be getting your nutrients and stuff. Just get it straight from the plant. Get it straight from the sun if you can.

But we can't, so I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with that. Or just photosynthesize. Just turn into a blade of grass. Probably be happier. Tiny existential crisis screaming from your lawn. Anyway, so aside from the kangaroos, another problem is that there are only a handful of service stops scattered across the 3,000-kilometre road,

meaning that you could easily find yourself stranded miles and miles from help, surrounded by only darkness and desert. The truckers in their road trains, however, are less worried about night-time driving. I imagine it's probably the quickest and coolest time to do it. And on the night of the 14th of July 2001, at around 12.30am, Vince Miller and his co-driver Rodney Adams were driving from Darwin to Adelaide. Vince was focusing on the road while Rodney slept in the back, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a figure ran out in front of the truck. Vince slammed on the brakes, but the person was nowhere to be seen.

Terrified that he'd hit them, Vince climbed out of the vehicle. As he shone his torch under the trailers he was pulling, the figure appeared again, and it ran towards him and grabbed hold of him. Looking down, Vince realised that the figure was a young woman. She was hysterical. Her hands were tied in front of her with thick black cable ties. She had gaffer tape around her throat and in her hair, and hanging off from around her ankles.

Rodney, awoken by the noise, joined his colleague and the woman on the road. He remembers thinking that he'd never seen anyone look so petrified in all of his life. The woman was pleading with them to help her find her boyfriend Pete and their combi. Another thing I learnt, a combi is a camper van. I don't know if it's a type of camper van, but that's all they call it, so that's what we're going to call it. But for everybody else, it's a camper van. So the two men started shining their torches around the road and looking into the bush to they call it so that's what we're gonna call it but for everybody else it's a camper van so the two men started shining their torches around the road and looking into the bush to see what on earth had happened the woman revealed that she thought her boyfriend pete had been shot by a strange man who had stopped them on the road at the mention of a gun vince was done he knew that

it was too big a risk to go traipsing off into the outback in the dark, especially if there was a man with a gun on the loose. So he convinced the woman to get in his truck, saying that they would drive to the nearest services stop and call the police for help. The woman agreed, although according to the truckers, she kept sobbing and saying, I want Pete, as she sat shaking in their vehicle. The men asked her her name, and she told them it was Joanne Lees. Vince and Rodney drove Joanne to the Barrow Creek pub and roadhouse. It was about 1.30am when they arrived. Barrow Creek is described as a very, very, very small town.

But town is probably quite a grand term. I think Hamlet is a grand term. At the time, apparently Barrow Creek had a population of about 20 people. And I checked today, according to Google, the current population is about 11. The BBC describes it as a petrol station masquerading as a town. Yeah, it's not much. Don't come for us, come for the babe. Yeah, exactly. We're just quoting. We're just quoting.

It seems that the main hotspot in this, air quotes, town is the Roadhouse, not the questionable nightclub in Covent Garden, which if you have ever had the absolute horror to frequent, I can only send my deepest apologies and concerns your way. This Roadhouse was a well-known stop-off for truckers. And some of you in the Facebook group mentioned that it is a scary town and a scary pub. And we can't vouch for this. We've never been there. And we often get told off for generalizing about things we know nothing about. But what we will say is it does have a 3.5

out of 5 score on TripAdvisor. However, even in the advertising pictures of this place, it does make me feel like it's not somewhere I'd want to be with a bunch of strangers in the middle of the night. But Joanne had few other options, so she accepted the offers of tea and the help to clean herself up. The police were at least a three-hour drive away in the town of Alice Springs, so they didn't arrive until the morning of the 15th of July. And when they did get there, Joanne told them that she and her boyfriend Pete had been driving from Alice Springs to Darwin. And this is Joanne's account of what happened that day. She said that her and Pete had set off from Alice Springs at about 3pm.

They wanted to get to the Devil's Marbles, also known as the Kalukalu for sunrise. She said that it was dark and they were tired, but they wanted to plough on. They took turns in driving and they were eating sweets and playing music. They got to Tea Tree Roadhouse a few hours after setting off. And here, Joanne had asked Pete to switch with her and take over the driving. They took a quick break, smoked a joint and bought some sweets and petrol before heading off. Their receipt placed the couple at the Tea Tree Roadhouse at 6.21pm and this confirmed Joanne's timeline. Joanne said that they then carried on driving and passed the Barrow Creek pub without stopping. Soon after though, at about 7.30pm, as they were driving, Joanne and Peter noticed a

vehicle behind them. The headlights were blinding them, the vehicle was close. Then suddenly it accelerated and pulled up at the side of the couple's combi. It was a white ute with a dark green canvas canopy. Right, another vehicular explanation that I think is quite antipodean in nature. Ute seems to be the word used down under for utility vehicle. I didn't understand what people were saying in the Murder in the Outback documentary that I first watched before reading this word written down. They're probably like off-roady type things, surely? Yeah, I think it's like a utility vehicle being like a big fucking four-wheel drive. Right, right, right.

So the man driving this ute who had pulled up alongside the couple's combi was apparently gesturing wildly to the pair. He seemed to be pointing to the back of their combi and telling them that there were sparks coming from the exhaust. Joanne told the police that this scared her and she asked Peter not to stop. But Peter ignored her and pulled over to the side of the exhaust. Joanne told the police that this scared her and she asked Peter not to stop.

But Peter ignored her and pulled over to the side of the road. If there was something wrong with the Kombi, they needed to know. The ute also pulled in and parked behind the couple's vehicle. At this point, Pete hopped out and so did the other driver. Joanne stayed in the Kombi and she said that she breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Pete and the man start talking. He seemed friendly. According to Joanne, Pete then came back to the front of the combi to get his cigarettes, and he asked her to move into the driver's seat

so that she could rev the engine so he could see where these sparks were coming from. Joanne said that she moved into the driver's seat, and Pete went to the back of the combi again. As he was walking back, Joanne looked at the rearview mirror and saw the mystery man staring at her. She said that this unsettled her, but she told herself that they'd be off soon. Pete, now crouched out of view from Joanne, yelled for her to start the engine. And she did.

Then suddenly she heard a loud bang. At first, Joanne said that she thought the Kombi had backfired. But before she knew what was happening, the man was stood outside the driver's side door pointing a gun at her. Joanne told police, I yelled for Pete, but he didn't come or make a sound. The armed man opened the driver's side door and pushed Joanne over to the passenger side. She said that he told her to put her head down and her hands behind her back as he pushed the gun into the side of her head. The man tied Joanne's hands together and pushed her out of the car onto the ground. He climbed out and tried to tie her legs together, but Joanne kicked about furiously.

This enraged the man and he hit Joanne across the face. Then he lifted her up and tried to put tape over her mouth. But again, with her moving around and squirming, he just ended up wrapping it around her neck and getting it tangled in her hair. He then pulled Joanne into his vehicle and forced a cloth bag over her head. Before the bag stripped her of her sight, Joanne spotted a dog. It was sat in the front seat of the man's ute, completely ignoring everything that was going on. Joanne was now lying in the back of this man's ute under a canvas canopy, disorientated from not being able to see, and she tried to listen to what was happening. She heard someone walking and what sounded like dragging. She yelled to the

man, what is it you want? Money? The van? Take it. Where's Pete? Are you going to rape me? But the man simply replied, Shut up or I'll kill you. The dragging noises outside continued, and so thinking that the man was distracted, Joanne seized the opportunity. She shuffled over to the edge of the truck,

got herself in position with her legs hanging down, and jumped. She hit the ground and ran. Joanne said that she was tired and scared and confused. She said that after tripping over a few times, she realized that she wasn't going to be able to run far. So she found a bush and hid. Joanne said that she just curled up into a ball

and hoped that she was well hidden. She said she knew if she had kept running the man would certainly have caught her Within minutes Joanne could hear gravel crunching and footsteps approaching She could see the light of a torch swinging through the bush According to Joanne the man came close Passing right by her three or four times Joanne said she tried to control her breathing, scared that the man would hear her pounding heart and heavy breathing. But then, after what felt like an eternity,

she heard what sounded like the man walking away, back to the road. He got into his car. She could hardly believe it. Was he going to leave? But unfortunately, that wasn't the case. And instead, the man moved his car so it was now facing the bush and he turned on the headlights. He was still looking for her. Joanne was frozen in fear but finally the man, unable to spot Joanne, gave up and drove off. Joanne said

that after he left she was still terrified so she stayed put in her hiding place for hours. But the temperature was dropping, and it was now just 11 degrees Celsius. She knew she was going to have to move eventually. And so slowly, she crawled towards the road. It was 12.35am on the 15th of July when Joanne Lees saw Vince Millar's road train hurtling towards her at 90 kilometres an hour. Joanne said that she knew it wasn't road train hurtling towards her at 90km an hour. Joanne said that she knew it wasn't her attacker, it couldn't be, so she ran out into the road. After hearing her story, the police sent Joanne to a police artist.

It is important to note here that it doesn't appear that at this stage Joanne was offered any sort of support or help or even any real medical attention. She wasn't even taken to a hospital to be checked over until a couple of days after the incident. Joanne spoke to the police artist and her description painted the picture literally of a frustratingly generic man. She said that he was maybe 40 to 45. He was wearing a baseball cap. He had a drooping moustache and long hair. He was wearing a flannel shirt with a dark jacket and maybe jeans. In that part of the world, that could have been almost anyone.

Joanne also described the white ute with its green canvas canopy. Again, unfortunately, this is an incredibly common vehicle in the Northern Territory. But something else that Joanne described was far less run-of-the-mill. The gun that her attacker had used. Joanne told police that it was like an old-timey revolver, like something out of a western with an elaborate scrolling on the barrel. While all this was going on, the police went to the scene of the incident to check for evidence. On the side of the road, they found a pool of blood and next to it two smaller pools.

This was later revealed to be about 250 millilitres worth of blood and next to it two smaller pools. This was later revealed to be about 250 millilitres worth of blood. So that's like a cup full, like a regular cup full. It's a large glass of wine. And it was also later revealed that this blood was indeed a match for Peter Falconio. They also found the combi hidden about 80 metres away in the bush. but there was no blood spatter found on this vehicle. Even though, according to Joanne's story, and given the sight of the blood spots on the road, Peter had been shot or attacked right by where the Kombi had been parked when the incident occurred.

So it's weird that there's no blood spatter on the campervan. There was also no gunshot residue on the back of the Kombi, which again would be strange if Peter had been shot as he was lent down looking at the exhaust as Joanne said that she thought he was. Because it's important to note that Joanne never says that she saw Pete get shot. She never even sees the body. She says that she heard the bang and because he turns up with the gun next to her, she assumes that's what because he turns up with the gun next to her, she assumes that's what happened. And because Peter doesn't come to her rescue, he doesn't make a sound after that. She assumes that he's dead. And if you remember in Joanne's account,

she also says she hears dragging. She puts this down to the man moving Peter's body. But the police tested the road using luminol to try and see if there was a blood trail leading away from the blood pools but there was no blood trail. Again it seems odd if Peter had been shot and killed and Joanne heard those dragging noises like a body was being moved then where was the blood? And it's important to note because obviously 250 milliliters of blood is not a huge amount of blood so people do sort of say you know how can that be indicative of like somebody having been shot I think the fact that there's no blood spatter reported is weird there's no gunshot residue is weird but if the shot is fatal and it's to the heart or to the head and it kills you instantaneously,

you may not actually lose a huge amount of blood. And the lack of brain matter or blood spatter could be if the bullet didn't exit again. That could also be a possibility. 250 mils is quite a lot. Like that would be a sizable pool of blood, I would say. If you've ever spilt a large glass of red wine, it's quite a lot. The lack of dragging marks is more concerning to me than the amount of blood that was there, I think.

Yeah, I think the weird things are the lack of spray, though that can be explained with a bullet potentially not exiting the body. The lack of gunshot residue is also quite strange, but we don't know necessarily exactly where peter was and if he was even shot we just have joanne's version saying that there was a bang but another interesting thing that comes from this crime scene is that the police also reported finding and positively identifying only two footprints at the scene and they were both found in the spot Joanne said that she had been hiding. The police did not find Peter alive or otherwise. The clothes that Joanne was wearing on the night

of the incident were also of course tested. Forensics were only able to find one tiny smear of fluid on the back of her top. It contained the full DNA profile of an unknown male. They ran it through the police databases, but infuriatingly, the DNA wasn't a match for anyone Australian police had on file. A few days later, the police decided to do a reenactment. The police were hoping that this might jog Joanne's memory as to something important she'd perhaps forgotten. In the video footage of this reenactment, you can see that at points Joanne is clear and almost clinical in her explanation. But then there are other times where she's highly emotional.

And then there are other times where she seems completely confused. For example, she can't remember which way she ran into the bush after jumping down from the attacker's truck. People point to this and say that she appears to be being dishonest. She's coming across so unsure, so how can it be real? I don't know. If she was lying, I feel like she'd be much more sure and give certain and definitive answers. And also, this is just a flat expanse of nothing. It would be so easy to lose your bearings. I mean, especially if you're me, because I can't tell my ass from my elbow ever.

Everything looks the fucking same. It's dark. I don't think that that is that weird. I don't think it's that weird either. And I think, like you said, if someone is lying, they are actively trying to deceive you. They are going to try and put forth a compelling story. They are going to try convince you of it and they're going to be sure about what happened.

But Joanne openly says a lot of the time, I don't know. And maybe you could say that's indicative because she doesn't know what physical evidence the police have found and she doesn't want to trap herself by giving too definitive an answer. But I don't know. I don't know. Unfortunately for Joanne, this was just the beginning of growing suspicions against her. As usual in such cases, the police desperately wanted

Joanne to do press conferences and talk to the media, but Joanne flatly refused. And it wasn't until the 25th of July, 11 days after the incident, that Joanne finally agreed to give her first press conference. But she stipulated that she didn't actually want the press to be there. She only allowed one reporter and two cameras in the room and she pre-approved all of the questions. The media were getting incredibly pissed off with her. This was a huge story and so the reporters were under huge pressure to get access to Joanne and hear new information. And remember that Peter and Joanne are both British. So you know the British tabloids were all over this like a rash

and the bacterial infection they are. And anyone who knows anything about them knows that they are ruthless. And I think that by taking on the press the way that she did, Joanne made a huge mistake. In her first press conference, the one that she gave 11 days after the incident, she told the press that she was refusing to give interviews because they just distorted the truth, misquoted her and made up false stories. She's incredibly like adversarial towards them. I just think that she doesn't really do herself any favours. And because the journalists weren't getting anything from her, and now she was also calling them out for being like scumbags, essentially, they turned on her.

And many started publishing articles questioning Joanne's version of events. The police also seemed to have their doubts about Joanne. Based on the interview that she gave on July 15th 2001, so the night after the incident, the police had a scan report compiled. And here scan stands for scientific content analysis notes. And scan reports are apparently a really common investigative tool used by like the military and law enforcement. And essentially what it is, is the analyst will study statements and break down content and language to try and see if there is deception. And Joanne's scan report concluded that her account of what had happened that night was a deceptive story.

And according to the analysts, the scan report found, quote, these statements are all indicative of a false account. There is missing time and information and there is no commitment to an account. The analysts pointed in particular to the fact that Joanne starts talking in the present tense when describing the attack. And they said that this is a strong indicator of deception. I suppose it probably points to someone thinking on the spot, if you're using the present tense, I would assume. That's what they're saying. Yeah, they're saying essentially it indicates the fact that this person is sort of fabricating it, making it up as they go along, telling it like a story so that they can

come across in a convincing way. This scan report is terrible news for Joanne, and you can understand why the police suspected her. But I do think like that is a traumatic thing to happen to anyone. Like surely she can be forgiven to a certain extent. I don't know. I feel for her, man. Like, I don't know what I think overall but I think this is all quite harsh really I have gone through so many iterations of what I think of this case and what I think of Joanne Lee's and what I think really happened I don't know that I have a definitive answer but I'm going to save it for the end but I started thinking oh that's that case where the girlfriend was maybe involved then I started I watched the documentary and I was like, oh, she did it. Then I did some more reading and I was like, maybe she didn't.

And I did some more reading and I was like, oh, I really don't think she did. So I'll save it for later. But yeah, it's a lot, this case. Yeah. So let's put our feelings about Joanne into the violin cupboard for a second because we're going to have to come back to it later. After her second press conference, 27 days after the incident, Joanne once again did herself very few favours with the media or with the public. If you know this case even slightly, you will know what I'm

about to say next because to this press conference, Joanne wore the now infamous pink tight-fitting vest top with cheeky monkey written across it. Now, a lot of people get very up in arms about this particular press appearance. Joanne sits there in this frankly cringe top. She refuses to speak, deferring instead to Paul Peet's brother. And the entire time, she never comes close to shedding a single tear. Instead, she has this defiant and pissed-off look on her face. During a lot of the kind of interviews she does with the police and with the press,

she does just look really pissed-off and petulant. And there are reasons behind that that we will go into. But, like, I think you'll also have to remember that Peter Falcone was 28 when he vanished. Joanne Lees was just 27. They are still very young, and they've also, we'll go on to talk about their childhoods, they've also grown up in quite, like, a small town in the UK.

I just don't think they've had that much exposure or life experience up until this point. And also, she can read. Like, she knows what these people are saying about her. You know, I can't say that that's how I would act because I think I'd just be a gibbering wreck, but, like, I can kind of understand why. She's like, why would I cooperate with you?

All you're doing is accusing me, and I haven't even spoken to you. Precisely. She's like, I'm not going to give you any more fucking rope to hang me with. She's like, fuck you all. so let's break this down though because there are some things that we do have to understand about what's going on firstly the cheeky monkey top was it the wrong thing to be wearing at a press conference for your vanished boyfriend yes absolutely I think we can all agree on that. But the police had basically taken all of Joanne's stuff from her at this point. Because remember, they're travelling from place to place. All of her clothes were in the combi, which is now part of a crime scene.

They've all been taken. So she's not got like a massive wardrobe selection to choose from. But saying that, I do think that she was incredibly naive as to how this choice was going to make her look to a public already being primed to dislike her. It's all about optics in cases like this. We see that time and time again. And even if Joanne had just got someone to go out and like find her a boring black top to wear, that would have been a better idea. That would have been a good idea rather than just wearing this fucking top that she wears. But I think like we said, at this point

Joanne was just starting to get incredibly frustrated. The media were pumping out articles calling her a liar. And by this stage, the police had also re-interviewed her, digging into the lack of physical evidence at the scene to back up her story. I think she felt attacked from all sides. And so she goes into kind of like, fuck you mode. I also think that she's incredibly protective and scared of what people are going to think, particularly Peter's family, because they're now there in Australia with her. And the media are writing about her being a liar. And I think her only support system there were his family.

And she's going to be like, what the hell are they going to think of me? And she's in a foreign country too. Like it's not like her mum can just come and get her. Do you know what I mean? But this attitude did not help Joanne at all. After this conference, the media quickly labelled her an ice queen, throwing further fuel onto the idea that Joanne was lying about what had happened to Peter. A lot of people say that Joanne was being persecuted because she's not acting how the

world expects a woman to act. She wasn't emotional enough. She wasn't crying. And that's why the police and the press started to suspect her. And we are not going to say that this kind of profiling doesn't happen. Of course it does. It's total trial bar media shit. We see it all the time. But I really don't think it's as clear cut here. The press went after Joanne because they didn't like her. She was calling them liars and vultures, so they turned on her. They weren't getting the juicy info from her, so they decided to punish Joanne and sell papers all the same.

She simply helps them with her demeanour and wardrobe choices. When it comes to the police, on the other hand, Joanne, by all accounts, was cooperating with them openly at first. Then they noticed inconsistencies in her story. They realised that the story she was telling didn't seem to be backed up by their findings of physical evidence at the scene so they started to put her under a microscope. And this is important because I don't personally care too much about how the person is appearing. Are they crying? Do they seem sad enough? I think that's all a bit of a nonsense really because people who have been through traumatic experiences are going to respond differently to that trauma. And also, people can act, you know, like we've looked at the Tracy Andrews case, for example,

similar in the sense that she said there was a road rage attack, someone stabbed her fiance to death, turns out it was her. She cried all the fucking time. She was hysterical. It doesn't mean that she didn't do it because she bloody well did. You know, so people can act to varying degrees of convincingness. But Joanne doesn't do that. And also, the other important thing to note is that we as humans are actually really terrible at telling if someone is being dishonest or not. We look at people like Joanne and we think, if she's telling the truth, then she's acting very strangely. and it's not how I think I would act in that situation so I'm going to think that she's lying. We have that real sort of empathy gap almost between how we think we would behave and how that person is behaving. So let's leave

that for the time being because the point we're trying to make is that when someone's story doesn't match up to the physical evidence, questions must be asked. They must be treated as a viable suspect or at least as someone who is being deceptive. And so I think it's dangerous because you see a lot of this on the internet when you see people sort of discuss the case. They say they were only going after her because she wasn't acting how they wanted her to. She wasn't being emotional enough and it's because she's a woman and she's being cold that she's being persecuted. I think it's dangerous to conflate the idea that Joanne is being persecuted for not being emotional enough,

because there are valid questions to be asked about her version of events from the night that Peter vanished. Because, like we said, it just doesn't match what the police were reporting to have found. But it is also incredibly important to consider the reason as to why Joanne's story and the physical evidence found don't match up. Does it not match up because A, Joanne is lying, or does it not match up because B, the police have made mistakes and bungled the investigation and the handling of the evidence and the crime scene? We'll come back to this, but let's consider a couple of things now that do make me question the police's behaviour.

Three weeks after the incident, the police released CCTV footage taken from a petrol station in Alice Springs. It showed a man, strikingly similar to the description Joanne had given of her attacker, filling up a ute that again bore a strong resemblance to the vehicle Joanne had described. And what is very important to consider is that the police actually acquired this footage the day after the incident, but they didn't release it to the public for three whole weeks. This footage would have gone a long way to backing up Joanne's story and it wasn't until a year into the investigation that the fact the police had sat on this potentially vital tape for three weeks was leaked and at first they denied that they'd done it. They have since admitted to not releasing it but still haven't really provided

a reasonable answer as to why they did it. And eyebrow-raisingly, there was even more to come out. Northern Territory police finally revealed, again a year into the investigation, that three passing motorists had seen two vehicles parked on the roadside the night Peter disappeared. And all of these three motorists described an orange Kombi and a white Ute. The first witness saw the Kombi on the side of the road with a Nissan or Land Cruiser utility vehicle parked behind it. The second witness saw the ute drive off, leaving the Kombi behind, and the third witness saw the Kombi parked in the scrub and a torchlight flickering around in the bush. These three accounts that

were not revealed at the time, for whatever reason, all back up Joanne's side in the bush. These three accounts that were not revealed at the time, for whatever reason, all back up Joanne's side of the story. On top of that, police also revealed that three young British tourists in a Kombi were threatened in Queensland two weeks before Peter Falconia went missing. The man had been in a vehicle similar to the one described by Joanne. They kept all of this under wraps and allowed Joanne's story to be heavily criticised by the media. And the only reason I can think

that they kept all of this quiet at this point was because they were still looking at Joanne as a suspect. But even still, I mean, I don't know what the policy is for releasing stuff to the press, but you would think when it's a missing person and you're putting all of this pressure on her to do press conferences and stuff and you've got CCTV footage and witness accounts, why are you not getting that out there?

I really don't understand, especially take into consideration two things. One, this is a huge continent. This is a huge area that they're searching. Every day that they allow to pass, potentially that person gets further and further away and they expand the area that they're now looking for this person in. Secondly, also, if they are just keeping hold of this information and keeping it under wraps because they're seriously pursuing Joanne as a suspect, I don't know why you can't follow two lines of inquiry. Why couldn't they still look for this ute that had been spotted by three witnesses independently of each other and still question whether Joanne was being fully honest? It's a very weird thing

that they do here. So as we said, it's really important to hold in mind why Joanne's story doesn't match the physical evidence. Is it just because they fucked it up or is it because she's lying? I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy.

You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space

aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Three weeks after the incident, the police released the CCTV footage from the Alice Springs

petrol station to the public. And aside from the three witnesses that we just heard about, 2,500 reports came flooding in on vehicles and persons of interest. But despite these reports, the police weren't able to identify the truck or the man, and the pressure was growing daily. Six months into the investigation, two million Australian dollars had already been spent. It was a search of unbelievable proportion. As we said at the start of the show, the area in which they're searching is like unimaginably large. Six times the size of Britain is what I saw quoted. And speaking of Britain,

remember, Peter was a British national, so diplomatically this was also a very high-profile case that needed a conclusion. Australia also worried that tourism would be affected, because after the likes of Ivan Malat, the backpacker killer I'm sure you guys have all heard of, also the Childers Palace backpackers Hostel fire in 2000, which I had actually never heard about. But it's a case in which this drifter, who just fucking hated backpackers for some reason, set fire to a hostel and killed 15 people. And also in this area, in the Northern Territory, you've got a bunch of rogue crocs that have been going around eating tourists. And of course, not to mention the Port Arthur massacre. With all of that happening, this was the last thing that the country needed.

I know we shouldn't laugh and they're all very serious things. But when I first read rogue crocs, the image that came into my mind was giant foamy sandals eating people. Or maybe they trick you into thinking that they're cool and then you have to buy them and then they get stuck to your feet and you have to walk forever like Rumpelstiltskin dances to death. Just eternal Crocs.

Tell me if I'm wrong, people of Australia, do you wear Crocs? I feel like they leave your foot quite exposed, especially at the back. And then there's a lot of things that just want to bite you. So don't wear them. I think the only acceptable time to wear a croc is if you are a chef working in a kitchen i think

that is probably the only time that i will allow it i agree cue everyone posting pictures of their crocs to the facebook group would you rather only ever allow to be able to wear Crocs for the rest of your life or you have to wear a giant foam finger on one hand forever? Oh, I think the giant foam finger might make editing quite difficult. So either I just get really adept at one hand editing or maybe just one foam finger. Okay, let's say you only have to wear the foam finger in public. When you're at home, you can take it off. Oh, God. I honestly think I'd have to go foam finger. I don't think I could do it.

I think I'd take the Crocs, but I would just be like, I don't know what you're talking about, every time anyone ever mentioned them. They have, like, quite cute Mary Jane versions. I feel like I could do those, but the original Crocs, I just fundamentally disagree with on a, honestly, on an almost philosophical level i disagree i agree i don't know what purpose they were made for i'm sure someone will tell us so yeah basically like we said this is the last thing that australia needs

and as time passed and no new leads were coming in the northern territory police were being battered in the court of public opinion and And if you guys remember the Lindy Chamberlain case, the Dingo Ate My Baby case, that also happened in the Northern Territory. So this is the same police force. So, you know, they've not got a glowing reputation, let's just say. But with no new breakthroughs, the case of Peter Falcone went cold for almost two full years. And back home, Peter's family were devastated. Peter was from Huddersfield here in the UK. He'd been born into a close-knit, working-class family. He was popular, ambitious, and hard-working. Everyone who knew him knew just how driven Peter was. In 1996, at a local night

club, Peter met Joanne Lees. They hit it off right away and they were soon in a relationship. Joanne, like Peter, had come from a family that didn't have much financially, but her mum tried hard to make sure that Joanne had a happy childhood. She was more of a social butterfly than the ever-ambitious Peter, but their differences seemed to balance out. After finishing school, Joanne quickly got herself a job with a travel agent. Peter, who had been working and even bought his first house at just 25, decided that if he wanted to move up the career ladder, he had to get a degree. And so Peter left Huddersfield and headed to the University of Brighton. But his ambitions never dampened his feelings for Joanne,

and within months he asked her to move down to Brighton and live with him. The couple were happy, and with Joanne's job at the travel agents a whole new world of exploration had opened up to them. By this point they'd been together for years and they started to think about marriage and a family. They decided to have a big adventure before they settled down so they started planning an around the world trip. In 2000 they started in Asia and planned to head to Australia and then end up in New Zealand. In January 2001, they arrived in Sydney and they had already spent months by this point in Asia. So they decided to stick around in Sydney for maybe three months or so to work, save up a bit of money and then continue on their way. So Peter got a job building

furniture and Joanne got a job in a local bookshop. And quickly they built little lives for themselves there. They had their jobs, they started making friends, they were really going to enjoy their time in Sydney. But soon the pair seemed to take very different directions. It's super duper normal for British people to go and like do a few years in Australia. Like it's really easy to get a visa. I think I know over 10 people who've done their two years. British people just love Australia because it's sunny. They don't have to learn a language and it's easier to get into than America.

So it's like, hey, let's go. Let's go work there for a few months. And so that's what these two guys do. And also in Sydney, they can earn good money that's going to like go a bit further for the rest of their trip. I would argue that, like, I've got a couple of Australian friends and a brand new Australian housemate. I would argue that the quality of life in Australia is higher than in the UK, I think. It's more expensive, but you earn more.

I think that's a fair assessment. So, yeah, they're absolutely, like, having a great time, especially Joanne, because she was loving life, particularly her social life. And she started going out regularly with her new colleagues, partying, and she even started experimenting with drugs. Peter, on the other hand, was getting bored in Sydney. He wanted to get going. There was loads more to see and do. But Joanne really wanted to stay. And so the original three months became five. Peter kept planning the next part of their trip, though. He bought the Kombi and started fixing it up.

They were going to have to do a lot of driving, so the van needed to be in the best shape he could possibly manage. And finally, on the 25th of June 2001, Peter and Joanne left Sydney. Their plan was to head down to Melbourne, then Adelaide, and then on to Darwin. And from Darwin, they were planning to fly to New Zealand. On Friday the 13th of July, they were scheduled to leave Alice Springs, which is almost exactly in the middle of Australia, halfway between Adelaide and Darwin.

They had spent a few days there, but now they had another big drive ahead of them. All of the advice had been that they should get going from Alice Springs early because you want to drive while it's light and cover as much ground as possible. But that day, the famous annual Camel Cup races were taking place in Alice Springs and the couple decided to stay and watch it before heading off. I googled the annual famous Camel Cup races that everybody had talked to them about and convinced them to stay and massively delay their schedule. It's actually people riding camels.

Have you ever ridden a camel? I have in Dubai. I just like sat on it for a bit and then walked it around. It's really uncomfortable. It's scary fucking shit. They're so high up. It's awful. I hated it.

I hated it. I was really uncomfortable and it was really high up and it wasn't fun. They're racing these camels. How? I don't know. I guess maybe that would be compelling enough to make me stay and be like, fucking start driving in the night, basically. Yeah, I did a three day trek on the back of a camel and I've never been the same. And they're nasty. They don't want to be doing it. They certainly don't. And they are less complicit to their slavery than horses are. Yeah exactly. They're the rebel army. Eventually the couple left town at about 3pm and within hours Peter would vanish. So coming back to the investigation, two years had now passed since the incident

and the police were under mounting pressure to solve the Falconio case. But there were so many issues. One of the main ones being that Joanne Lees was back in the UK and no longer communicating with the Northern Territory Police. And to be honest, given all the stuff that they hid, I can't really say that I blame her for that. Why should she trust them at this point? But the frantic police were giving everything a try by this stage. They even employed mediums and water diviners to help find Pete. What is happening? What?

I don't know. Do they have a state-sponsored, like, union of water diviners? Like, is that, oh, hold on, let me just flick through the approved medium handbook. I really, really do not understand where they even sourced that. But, unsurprisingly, the mediums and the water diviners didn't do much at all. But, earlier in the investigation, the police had also engaged local Aboriginal trackers to assist them in their investigation. That's who you want. Yeah, exactly.

Fuck Mystic Meg. Yeah, absolutely fuck Mystic Meg. But unlike the psychics and fucking wet stick wavers or whatever they are, the Aboriginal trackers are very much the real deal. And I didn't know this, but they have actually made a remarkable contribution, especially to rural crime solving in Australia. So two Aboriginal trackers were sent to the scene a week after the incident including a man named Ted Egan a very well known and very highly regarded local tracker. And this is where it gets interesting. Ted Egan said that the police had made his job a lot harder

by a. calling him in so late, because they call him in a week after, and B, by walking all over the crime scene before it had been gone over properly. And this is so important because it comes back to the point we raised earlier. Did Joanne's story not match up with the physical evidence because she was lying

or because the police botched the handling of the case in the crime scene? For example, the police said that no footprints were found at the site except Joanne's, totally undermining her story that the attacker had searched for her for hours. And when we first heard that one, we were convinced that Joanne was a wrong-in and she was lying. But Aboriginal trackers who visited the scene said that it wasn't the absence of footprints that was the issue. The problem was that there were too many footprints because the police had walked all over the place. And is this why the police were only able to positively find and identify two of Joanne's footprints and no one else's? Presumably, if she'd been hiding under a bush, they're going to be quite out of the way.

Exactly. And also, it's desert. It's like red dirt. Like surely that's quite easily blown by a very fast, massive car coming through or like one of the road trains or whatever. It's not snow that's been completely not touched. Definitely. And I think the argument that people make that, oh, well, they only found two of Joanne's footprints under the bush,

but no one else has proved she's lying that someone was looking for her. If there was a trail of her footprints from the road to that bush and no other footprints, I could believe you. They didn't even find any other footprints of Joanne's. So how did she get to that fucking bush? She didn't float there.

Yeah, just everyone's been levitating this whole time and they've just left it out of the story. No, they literally, the police got there and stamped all over the crime scene and then they were like, shit. And the only footsteps they got were these two that were relatively protected and hidden away because it's where Joanne said she was hiding.

Ted also told the police that the gunman had a flat tyre, but the police didn't do much with this lead. Again, we will come back to this, but if they had narrowed their search on day one to a utility vehicle with a flat tire, it's quite possible they would have had more luck. But then finally, the police thought that they had something. In 2002, in Broome, a man named James Heppey was arrested for possession of four kilos of marijuana. He was facing some serious jail time. I think drug penalties in Australia are no fucking joke.

But Heppi said that he had vital information and he claimed to know who had killed Peter Falconio. It was his former business partner, Bradley Murdoch. Heppi said that he and Murdoch ran marijuana between Broome in Western Australia and Sudan in South Australia. And Heppi claimed that Murdoch had gone on one of these 3,000-kilometre business trips in early July 2001. According to Heppi, Murdoch returned to Broome on July 16th, two days after Peter Falconio had disappeared. And apparently, Murdoch told Heppi

that it hadn't been a good trip. He said, quote, there'd been a few dramas. Apparently Murdoch had suspected that somebody had been following him and he told Heppi that he had to deal with it. And Heppi also said that in 2001, so the year that Peter Farconia vanished, Murdoch had randomly started talking to him about the best way of disposing of a body in the desert. Apparently, it's to dispose of it in a spoon drain beside a road. I really tried to understand what a spoon drain is. I think it's just like a ditch on the side of the road in deserts. And yeah, like no one's going to find anything if you stick it down there. Heppi also claimed that it was definitely Murdoch

in the CCTV footage from the Alice Springs petrol station. The police now needed DNA to test against the smear they had found on Joanne's top. So they found and asked Murdoch's brother Gary for a DNA sample. And bingo, it was a familial match. But Gary had called Murdoch and warned him that the police were coming after him, so Murdoch vanished into the bush. It wasn't until the 22nd of August 2002 that Murdoch would reappear. He was arrested for the rape and abduction of a mother and her daughter.

It was alleged that two weeks after Peter Falconeau had disappeared, Murdoch had kidnapped these two women, bound them with chains and subjected them to a 25-hour ordeal of rape and torture. But in the end, a jury found Murdoch not guilty. In court, a wild scene erupted because Northern Territory police had been waiting for their chance to get Murdoch and as soon as the verdict was read, they pounced. Murdoch was taken in and you guessed it, the DNA from the tiny smear of fluid on Joanne's top was a match. Following this in 2002, Joanne was shown a photo line-up of 12 faces and she easily identified Murdoch as her attacker. There is footage out there of this.

If you've watched the murder in the outback documentary it's included in there if not i'll try find it on youtube and link it below but basically what you see when you watch this footage is it's quite something she's so sure it's him they show her these 12 men she sort of glances at it there's no hesitation and she just points straight at him it's pretty damning but something well worth pointing out is that following Murdoch's arrest, some news outlets had actually released photos of him on their websites and in their papers, perhaps most notably the BBC. If Joanne saw these photos, which let's be honest, how could she not have? This photo ID evidence is complete nonsense. Also what's worth noting is that she was initially shown the CCTV footage from the petrol station.

She had said the man in the footage wasn't her attacker. She said that he looked too old. But after Murdoch's arrest, given his resemblance to the man in the CCTV, it's interesting that she changed her mind and said that it was in fact him. The police were buzzing. The DNA from Joanne's top was a match. Murdoch looked like Joanne's description. He drove a ute that matched her description. He was known to carry guns during his drug runs and he had a dog. So let's talk about the dog because he comes up a lot. Joanne described the dog originally as brown and white or black and white as a short-haired Australian cattle dog. Murdoch's dog was a Dalmatian blue heeler mix. Blue healers are a type of Australian cattle dog. People say it looks more like a Dalmatian than a heeler and it does but if you just google blue heeler lots of dogs come up

that look to have black and white spots. And this is the thing. When you Google this, the Daily Mail and places like that report that Murdoch's dog was a purebred Dalmatian and she had said that it was a castle dog. It's fucking not. It's fucking not. It's a Dalmatian blue Gila mix. And like Hannah said, when you Google blue Gila, some of them look like they actually just have black and white spots on them so yeah like I don't know this is just constantly picked over but I just think there is enough doubt there that I can't commit to feeling one way or another about it the other

thing that is constantly picked over with this case is about the presence of the dog on the night let's you know not even bother with thinking it's Murdoch. Let's just say it's an attacker with a dog. The problem is that there were no footprints, or sorry, paw prints, recovered at the scene of the incident. So people say, how could there have been a dog there? People also state that how could a dog and a man with a torch not have found Joanne hiding in the bush? The thing is, originally, Joanne seems to indicate thinking that the dog

was out of the truck and searching for her with the attacker. But at trial, she said that the dog was not with him. And it's hard to say either way. Either the dog wasn't searching for her with its owner, i.e. the alleged attacker, or it was and the paw prints were destroyed by the police walking all over them. If you're going to say, how could the dog not have found Joanne? If you remember, Joanne's original testimony said that the dog just sat in the front, not responding at all to what was happening

when she was being tied up and forced into the back of the truck. That's a lot of commotion going on and this dog is still silent. Dog experts have said that if this dog didn't perceive Joanne as a threat to its owner, it wouldn't have barked, it wouldn't have alerted, it would have just like ignored her because she's not a threat. And also, if we come to the idea that it is Bradley Murdoch and it is his dog, Bradley Murdoch and all of those who knew him describe his dog Jack as quote loopy maybe he's not the kind of dog you want to take out with you if you're hunting for somebody hunting for a victim in the bush if this dog runs off then he's gonna have to go and search for the fucking dog as well

so maybe he did just leave it in the truck and also quite a lot of Dalmatians are blind so maybe he would be no fucking use anyway exactly so maybe yeah this dog is just completely useless in helping look for her and either he was there and the paw prints were destroyed anyway or he wasn't like i don't think that really stands up to much for me and as for her description of it again i feel like it's quite easily explained oh totally and like you know she never says she hears the dog she says she sees it in the seat. There's absolutely nothing to say that the dog actually came out of the car at all. But it's reported everywhere that she said that the man and the dog were looking for her. But I've read the court testimony and in there she says in court that the dog wasn't with him.

But, you know, make of it what you will because there is also an explanation now for why the paw prints weren't there. Anyway, in April 2005, the pre-trial hearing began and there was more gasp-inducing news to be revealed. Joanne had cheated on Peter in a month-long affair right before he vanished. While the couple had been living in Sydney, Joanne had met an Irish guy called Nick Riley. Joanne had been emailing Nick even when she and Peter were in Alice Springs, and so that's after they'd left Sydney.

And after Peter's disappearance, the communication didn't end. Joanne was regularly emailing someone called Steph. It turns out that this was Nick Riley. And a few days after Peter vanished, she was emailing him saying that they should meet up in Berlin later in the year. This is not a great look for Joanne. And I feel like if we don't give her a hard time about this, people are going to be upset that we gave John Rutten such a hard time last week. Not quite the same thing, but similar. And I did think after we released the episode,

I was like, oh, would I have more sympathy for a woman cheating? And no, I don't. It's pretty unforgivable, actually. I suppose the difference between these two is... How pertinent it is to the case for me. Yeah, exactly. You know, Joanne's affair wasn't the reason that Peter died. Unless you believe that she killed him because she was having an affair with this guy, Nick Riley. Right.

Which some people say, but I'm like, why would she do that? Why would she bother to do that um I think she makes a terrible decision and she continues to make this terrible decision um she's cheating on her partner of six years it's not great and it doesn't look great for her when she's being dragged through the mud anyway for coming across like a cold fucking ice queen yeah Yeah. It is not a good look. But I am not convinced, no one has convinced me yet, that Joanne cheating on Peter with this guy Nick Riley led to his disappearance. And it doesn't help her even further

because when Joanne was questioned about this in the hearing, she lied under oath about this affair. Personally, you know, I don't think that this is a motive or anything like that to indicate that Joanne was involved in some way in Peter's disappearance. But as the only witness, her credibility was so important and this really, really hurt her. So going into the trial, the police knew

that they only had the tiniest amount of DNA from Joanne's top, which in itself does seem weird. How can you manhandle someone and try to tie them up and get so close to them and you're not leaving more than a tiny speck of DNA? It doesn't really make much sense. Could Joanne have inadvertently washed it all off when she cleaned herself in the loos at the Barrow Creek pub whilst waiting for the police? Maybe. But all of it? Did she wash her clothes? Like that just doesn't really seem to wash with me. It doesn't make sense. And the problem with the fact that they don't find other transfer DNA is just that. They

don't just not find Murdoch's transfer DNA all over her from being manhandled. They don't find anyone else's. Like if they had found another unknown males, you could say, well, it's not Murdoch because look, somebody else was touching her. But the fact that they didn't find anybody's either makes me think she successfully washed it all off if she's telling the truth, or she's not telling the truth and no one manhandled her. And that's why there is no transfer DNA. So the police knew that they needed more than just this tiny amount of DNA. So they sent DNA samples off to the UK. And here, a man named Dr Jonathan Whittaker was pioneering a new DNA technology, low copy number DNA. It allowed much smaller samples of DNA to be analysed and matched. Using this method, Dr Whittaker was able to retest DNA samples taken from the couple's combi steering wheel, the gear stick,

as well as from the cable tie handcuffs. Whittaker was able to establish a DNA profile from these samples and he concluded that it was a match to Murdoch. At trial in 2005, the court was told that there was less than 1 in 13,000 chance that the DNA profile on the gearstick of the Kombi could be from anyone other than Murdoch. And they were also told that there was a 1 in 100 million chance that the DNA profile on the handcuffs was not his.

And finally, they were also told that while the individual DNA components could not be identified on the steering wheel, Murdoch could not be ruled out as a contributor. So let's go over a few things. The DNA from Joanne's top, so from the small smear of fluid, was a full single profile from Murdoch. It's definitely his DNA. But this DNA doesn't necessarily place Murdoch at the scene of the crime. It only places him in close proximity to Joanne or Joanne's top at some point. The other samples, however, so from the combi and the handcuffs, would certainly place him at the scene. But these samples were all the ones

that were sent off to the UK to be tested under this new DNA technology. And they were all found to be complex, low level mixtures. So that means there was more than one DNA profile in the samples. And what was there was in very, very small amounts. Hence why the Australian police couldn't do it and had to send it to the UK. So there's a very small chance that you can safely say whose DNA it was. If Dr Whittaker had compared that DNA sample from, say, the steering wheel to someone else in the general population, there is a chance that he could have implicated them. But at trial, what's important is that the jury were told

it was a match to Murdoch. This language and the way in which it was reported to the jury is definitely misleading. This is what we say all the time. There's the evidence and then there's the way in which that evidence is represented in court and the way in which the jury interpret it. I think this was very misleading. So low copy number DNA is also now not admissible in some courts

because of the risks that it does carry. And interestingly, I discovered today that it was the same DNA analysis that placed Kate and Jerry McCann as suspects in the Maddie McCann case in Portugal. Interesting. There's also another issue with the DNA. The cable tie handcuffs had been taken into an interview room with Murdoch prior to them being tested in the UK. You don't take a bit of evidence that is yet to be tested into a room with the person

you're alleging committed the crime. Whether he touched it or not, it's just terrible practice and those DNA results should not have been used in court. It's the definition of contamination. Are you fucking serious? Let's also consider the CCTV taken at 12.38am on the 15th of July at the Alice Springs petrol station. Like we said earlier, Joanne changed her mind

from saying that this wasn't her attacker to saying that it was. Murdoch is a giant man. He is six foot five. He's absolutely huge and incredibly distinctive in his walk and posture. The CCTV, however, is incredibly grainy and low quality. But it was nonetheless morphologically analysed by an anatomy expert who determined that it was indeed Bradley Murdoch. Again, how have they managed this? Surely this expert could only say that in their opinion it was Murdoch. But no, again, at trial, the judge instructed the jury to accept the expert's testimony and take it as fact

that the man was Murdoch. The judge added that it didn't mean Murdoch had killed Peter, but they were to accept that it was him in the footage. The police also presented at trial a hairband that they'd found in and amongst all of the stuff in Murdoch's car and trailer. It had been tied to the holster of his gun. And when shown this in court, Murdoch went silent. It was reported that he wouldn't touch it and that he visibly recoiled. And it was determined that this hairband did belong to Joanne Lees. So the prosecution had their DNA evidence, their means and opportunity. Now they needed a motive. They claimed that Murdoch had either seen Joanne earlier in the day, they had actually visited the

same restaurant, the Red Rooster, on the day that Peter went missing. So the prosecution claimed that he saw Joanne, he fancied her and wanted to abduct her. I think with the hairband and with the transfer DNA, there is in no doubt in my mind at all that on that day, he was very close to her. Whether he killed Peter or not, I'm still not sure. I mean, the defense go full argument into it later saying that the hair tie was planted, that the DNA evidence was planted, that this is all just a conspiracy. And there's no way to prove that it wasn't. But, you know, if we agree and accept these facts on the face of it, like you said, it just proves that he was near her. The prosecution also threw out the idea that perhaps Murdoch had seen the couple again and again in restaurants and petrol stations.

They had been driving the same highway, after all. And then perhaps he had seen them again on the road that night, and he had become consumed by paranoia that they were following him on his drug run. And this is classic for Murdoch. He was an incredibly paranoid person, so it's not at all far-fetched that he would have been panicking over something like this. James Heppey, his former business partner who turned Murdoch in, also testified that whenever he or Murdoch did their 3,000-kilometer drug runs, they would pump themselves

full of cocaine or amphetamines to keep them driving for extended periods of time. That's probably not going to ease anybody's paranoia. And the paranoia theory was also backed up by Heppey, who claimed that after returning to Broome, Murdoch immediately set about transforming the appearance of both his ute and himself. But the problem with this is, again, the way in which it's dressed up. Because Murdoch was indeed paranoid. And in fact, he regularly altered his appearance and that of his car. He was a very careful man when he did drug runs. He would take all sorts of measures to cover his tracks.

And Robin Bowles, the author of Dead Center, which is a book focused entirely on the Peter Falconeo case, actually spent 60 hours interviewing Murdoch for that book. And actually, a little bit of a plug here, we did an interview with Robin Bowles last week that we're going to be releasing today, if you're listening on the day of release, on Patreon for $10 and up. People, if you want to check that out, it was a really interesting chat. So Robin spent a lot of time with this man. I think we can say that she got to know him fairly well. And she describes him as a tidy and careful person.

He was a drug runner. He avoided risks at all costs. And that day, Murdoch had 20,000 Australian dollars worth of drugs in his truck. It is hard to ignore the question, why would he stop to kill a random backpacker and abduct a woman? So for me, I don't think the abduct and rape theory makes much

sense. But if Murdoch had seen the couple a few times, I could believe that he thought they were maybe following him and he snapped, especially if he was on drugs. It is also worth pointing out that Murdoch hasn't always had a reputation for carefulness. And one such incident that proves this is that in 1995, a drunk Murdoch shot at a group of indigenous people at a football game. Some people do say that he was firing at the cars because of some sort of, like, traffic frustration. But Murdoch is also a massive racist. He even has a tattoo on his arm of an Aboriginal man

hanging from a noose over a fire with the letters KKK underneath it. Jesus Christ. Like, I... I know. That's pretty damning overall. But if he's, you know, being a racist doesn't necessarily

make you a murderer. But I do think that, you know, with a history of violence and also fucking whatever drugs he's taking, amphetamines, I don't think there's no world in which he would just go off on one. I don't think that it would take much to push Murdoch over the edge. I know everyone says he's careful, but if he was paranoid that these two were following him, he may think that killing them or confronting them is part of that carefulness. He needs to stop them because they're following him.

And also, you know, just to come back to the fact that some people do say he was just shooting at the cars. He wasn't actually shooting at the people who were there. Obviously, we've shown you that he's quite the racist. He was involved in a lot of sort of like biker gangs. Obviously, there is a lot of white supremacy in groups like that. But another reason for why I'm not convinced that it was just an accident or a coincidence or a traffic issue was because a particular indigenous man who was in the crowd of people was a man who Murdoch blamed for him losing a particular piece

of land because they had campaigned for sort of it to be given back to indigenous people. So I don't know, it seems like too much of a coincidence and it does seem like Murdoch has the potential to be a loose cannon. We all know very well that in court you need to tell a compelling story and back it up with evidence. If you've got DNA evidence, then good for you. The prosecution had a good story and, of course, they had DNA. So the defence decided to go on the attack. They needed to completely destroy Joanne's credibility.

They questioned how she had no facial injuries despite claiming that Murdoch had punched her in the head. They dragged out the affair with Nick Riley as well as the weird things that had gone down around the identification of Murdoch after his pictures had been released as well as her changing her mind about the dog. They also pointed to the fact that

there was no shell casing, or blood spatter, no brain matter, no gunshot residue, and no drag marks found at the scene of the crime. And of course, the big kahuna is that nobody has ever been discovered. The defence also tried to explain away the one bit of solid DNA evidence the prosecution had against Murdoch by suggesting alternative ways it could have ended up on Joanne's top. It was known that Murdoch and Joanne and Peter had all been through the same red rooster on the 14th, Murdoch at 10.30am and the couple at 1pm. The prosecution suggested that perhaps Murdoch had cut his hand, it wept and then he touched the back of Joanne's chair on his way past.

And then hours later, Joanne sits in the same chair and it gets on the back of her top. I'm no DNA expert, but it's pretty far-fetched. Now, given that they were focusing their efforts on pointing out the lack of any evidence that Peter was dead or had ever even been attacked, other than the word of a woman who had cheated on him, the defence went with the narrative that Peter had faked his own death. And the police, along with James Heppey, had concocted this story and planted the evidence. Which may seem outlandish, but all the defence need to do is plant a little seed of uncertainty. That's their only job. So they claimed that Peter

was in financial distress and that he faked his death to escape and also to cash in on a life insurance scam. An old colleague of Peter's came forward and claimed that his nickname at work had been Dodgy Pete. And that he said there was no doubt in his mind that Peter would do something like fake his own death. The defence also brought forward witnesses, Melissa Kendall and Robert Brown. This couple ran a service station in Bourke in northwest Australia and they claimed that a week after the incident, they saw Peter Falconio in their shop buying a can of Coke and a Mars bar. I mean, I just don't even have the time to get into this couple.

If you've watched Murder in the Outback, they are quite extensively featured in the final episode if peter falconia has faked his own death and he has done it so successfully that he has eluded discovery for the past fucking two decades what is he doing walking into a fucking shop to buy a coke and a chocolate bar a week after he vanished and he's still on the front page of every newspaper. It's just not, I can't, I can't believe it. The defense also pointed out that Joanne was high during the incident because she had herself admitted to smoking a joint that she described as strong an hour before the incident. How could her word be trusted? Another point they raise is the fact that Murdoch's front teeth are missing. How could she have missed this? Because it wasn't in her original description of her attacker and that is a fair point. If somebody

is waving a gun in your face, how do you not notice that they're missing their front teeth? That's a distinguishing feature. Joanne had also originally said that she had gone through the front seats into the back of Murdoch's ute but later she said she wasn't sure how she got into the back. Importantly to note Murdoch's ute you cannot go through from the front into the back so that would have been impossible. It's like an enclosed front bit. The defense also claimed that Joanne and Peter had met with a third man not Murdoch and this man had taken Peter away so that they could, you know, claim that he was dead. And that's why witnesses had seen another vehicle with the Kombi on the

night. There are holes here that the defence have pointed out, but I think that they made a mistake in claiming that police had been evidence planting and that Peter had faked his own death. I just think that that as a narrative is quite a hard sell to a jury. I think they chose the wrong narrative. I agree. I think maybe they would have been better off if they had just focused on undermining Joanne and also just pointing out the flaws in the investigation. But anyway, after nine weeks of testimony, 85 witnesses and over 500 exhibits, the trial finally came to a close. And on the 13th of December 2005, four years after Peter Falconio vanished, a jury unanimously found Bradley Murdoch

guilty of his murder. Murdoch was sentenced to 28 years in jail with no parole. He'll be 74 years old when he's released. So, all right, now that's over with. Theory time. To us, we think that there are four options. Number one, it was Murdoch. Number two, it was Joanne. Number three, Peter faked his death. Number four, it was someone else entirely that no one has ever tracked down or heard of.

I am of the opinion that we can rule out that it was Joanne. If Peter's body was still there, okay, maybe we could talk about it. But how could she have disposed of his body on her own in the middle of the night when she doesn't know where she is? And as for motive, there's obviously the affair, but why did she need to kill Peter? She could have just broken up with him. It's dramatic. What's interesting, though, is that the defence, I think, could have done a little bit more to discredit her.

For example, Joanne's phone records didn't come out at the trial. But they have now been released and they show that she and Nick were making up to 28 calls a day, even after she left Sydney with Peter. Again, it's not necessarily proof of a motive. Maybe they just stayed mates. But she was the key witness and she was downplaying the affair massively. So why wasn't she cross-examined with this information? And the other piece of evidence that Joanne wasn't cross-examined about is the scan report

from her first interview, the report that said pretty definitively that she was being deceptive. Why wasn't that brought up by the defence? And now we know that there's new research that shows women who have been through a traumatic experience do tend to retell the incident in the present tense. This wasn't known or considered at the time, and because Joanne recounted her story in the present tense, she was deemed to be being deceptive. This highlights the dangers of such an analysis.

But I do still wonder that at the time, before we knew all of that, it should be the first thing that Murdoch's defence pointed to was public knowledge. Yeah, I really feel like he has quite inadequate representation. We pointed out that we didn't think the narrative was a good one for them to choose. Also, they leave out these key bits of information. So next, let's consider Peter faking his own death. This just seems way too wild for me. No insurance money has ever been traced. So what would be the purpose of making himself disappear? He was in financial trouble.

The morning they left Alice Springs, he'd actually gone to see an accountant who had told him that he actually owed the Australian government quite a bit of money because he had been working there under the wrong, like, system or whatever. But, like, come on. And then he just decides to go and fucking fake his own death. It doesn't make any sense to me. Also, from every account, Peter was incredibly close to his mum, his dad and his three brothers.

I just cannot believe that he pissed off and left his dad crying on TV the way he is in every single appeal. You would have to be a stone cold fucking psycho to do that. And also like the accountancy thing of like, you know, maybe he's been working under the wrong tax code or some bullshit. He's only been there five months. It's not going to be a million dollars, is it? It's going to be thousands possibly. And it can be worked out. It's not like, oh, I better fucking run away and fake my own death and spend the rest of my life in hiding. No.

Let's say that's a no. So then we come on to it being Murdoch. The police did obviously find the DNA from the smear on Joanne's top. That plus all of the other similarities, like with her description, etc., does make it very compelling. The police also, and again, this wasn't fucking talked about very much, the police also received four tip-offs that it was Murdoch before Heppie ever even accused him.

Why they didn't follow up on that sooner, I don't know, but it seems pretty damning. He had the means and the opportunity to do it and the timelines fit. Murdoch's ute, he admitted, even had a flat tyre, if you remember back to earlier in the episode, just like the Aboriginal trackers had said the attacker's Ute had. But what's the motive? I think, like we said, he could have either just spotted them repeatedly and become paranoid, or it's something more involved. We do know that Murdoch and other drug runners in

the area are known to use tourists or other sort of innocuous people to move drugs around the country for them. Had Peter and Joanne, perhaps because of their financial troubles, got themselves involved in something like being a drug mover for Murdoch? And then were they perhaps arranging to meet up on the Stuart Highway? Then did something go wrong and Murdoch ended up killing Peter? Did he think he was maybe like an undercover something or other? I don't know. It's a possibility. This theory, it's important to note, could also fit someone else.

It doesn't necessarily need to be Murdoch. It could just be another drug runner. It also may explain Joanne's reluctance to speak to the media. Maybe she was more scared of this drug runner and what they would do to her if she spoke than of the police. So that leaves us with the idea that it was someone else entirely other than Murdoch. A local roadhouse owner even said that on the day in question, he saw Joanne and Peter.

They came and ate at his roadhouse establishment. And during that visit, he saw Joanne speaking to a man who matched her description of the attacker, but it wasn't Murdoch. Could it have been a drugs meet-up chat? But Joanne was adamant that they never stopped at this place, and there's no other way to prove this one one way or the other. Also in 2017, Vince Mellar, the truck driver who found Joanne, said that on the night of the incident and before he got to Joanne something else had gone wrong down on the Stuart Highway. Vince said that he was driving and he spotted what looked like a car in the distance doing weird things like driving round and round

like it was doing donuts and flashing its light on and off. He claims that the light then stopped and when he got closer he spotted a red car parked on the side of the road and there were a few blokes standing around. According to Vince, he pulled up and got out to see if they needed help and that was when he spotted that one of the men looked like, quote, jelly. He was wobbling around all over the place. And when the other men saw Vince, they jumped back in their car and drove off. Minutes later, Vince found Joanne. And now he wonders if the jelly man could have been Peter. Sorry,

again, I know it's serious, but I have that bit in Finding Nemo. He's like, offspring jelly man, jelly man, offspring. Sorry. Keep it together. So jelly man, who is a man and not a turtle on the East Australian current. Vince never told this Jelly Man story to the police in time, though, which is quite odd. You would think as the man who discovered Joanne, he would have been asked to give a play-by-play of the night in question, but apparently not. And just for one final twist today, in 2010, an old-fashioned 1858 Remington, a very old and timey western looking gun that looked very similar to the one that Joanne had described, was found in a long drop toilet about 28 kilometers from where Peter disappeared. But this gun looked like it had been in there for a long time. It's basically been in the septic tank of a toilet. It was incredibly poor condition and it couldn't be tested for

evidence. A lot of people make a lot of this, but what is interesting to note is that this toilet was built years after Peter had been potentially shot. So someone would have had to keep hold of this gun for all that time, then come back to roughly the same area just to dump it? Could it possibly have been dumped at the start of the trial? I don't know. But at that point, why are you getting rid of it when they think it's another man? It's a weird thing.

And there are all sorts of weird stories like this that can't be proven or backed up. The point is that a lot of these stories were just not covered in the original trial by Murdoch's defence. So many of these things could have been brought up to pour doubt on the fact that it was Murdoch's defense. So many of these things could have been brought up to pour doubt on the fact that it was Murdoch and could have at least pointed in the direction of it having been someone else. The only evidence that Murdoch was involved in this disappearance slash murder is a small patch of DNA on Joanne's back and an angry business partner who admitted that the two had even had a falling out. Like, Heppie comes forward and says that we fell out. So he makes it known that he's angry. Oh, and also

just to chuck this in, there was a $250,000 reward. The Heppie made every attempt to get his hands on. What do I think? What do we think? I don't know. I would say that Murdoch is probably guilty, but I definitely do not think that he had a fair trial. I think I land in the same place as that. I think it wouldn't have been particularly difficult for him to get away with it if it was him, if he had the right defence counsel. And so since he was imprisoned, Murdoch has had several appeals dismissed. And now that the Northern Territory are considering bringing in a law of no body, no parole, meaning that unless the person who is in prison for a murder tells the family where the body is, they will have no chance of getting parole.

This is an issue because if Murdoch is innocent or if he continues to claim that he is innocent, he is most likely going to die in prison. That's Helen's law in this country, isn't it? Helen McCourt? Yeah. Yeah, it's a tricky one, that law, because, you know, there is no question that there are people incarcerated for murders that they didn't commit. So it's tricky.

Absolutely. So, yeah, that is the story of the disappearance of Peter Falconio. It's a lot of information that we've gone through. There is stuff that we haven't been able to include. I know we could go on about it for ages. There is a documentary out now. I think it's out now in Australia, but it's definitely out in the UK on 4OD. If you guys just get a VPN, you can watch it now on 4OD.

Just make up a fucking registration. And it is a four-part series. It is interesting. I think I saw a lot of criticism of it saying it's very one-sided i saw on reddit the people saying it should be called the case against johan lee's and i agree it should be called that what i found when i watched that documentary was this is the defense narrative that murdoch should have had this entire documentary is what his defense should have been. So if you watch that and leave with nothing else, then did it leave you

beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it? That should have been the defence argument and he probably shouldn't be in jail. But that's it, basically. And if that information wasn't enough for you,

if your brain holes are still hungry for more, you can hop on over to Patreon where we interviewed Robin Bowles who wrote the book on this case, which is called Dead Center. She was great. So that will be out today if you are a patron. And these people are already patrons, too. Gemma Carr, Chipico Malicano, Whitney McKinnon, Lydia Baines, Marie Ella, Michelle McFall,

Rachel Davies, Luca Linnea, Geron Lawson, Charlotte, Brialian Rowney, Megan, Lex Antonucci, Samantha Sankey, Jamie, Bobby Stark, Ashley Smith, Grace Gonzalez, Jessica Briggs, Teresa Zhu, I think, Enya Healy, Colette Berry, Ashley Ruhrland, Katie Parrott, Jen Layton, Alice Clark, Samantha Garside, Carly West, Terran Pendarvis, Georgina McLaren, Joan Tunney, Catherine Machado, Rosalie, Jane Barkow Tara Rapp I am quite scared to read names now in case I get had again like fucking

last time with Mike Litteris fucking out. Do you know what I did hear it and I was like I'm just gonna let it go because like as soon as I soon as I realised it I was like no you've got to tell her that's such a dick move but then it was too late and I couldn't like interrupt it again. And then I thought it was good.

So I just fucked it. I'm really sorry. I did not hear it at all. When we get to the names, we're quite tired. I think that's why we struggle to read them so much. But yeah, anyway, where was I? Lydia Campbell, Andrea Veenstra, Kate Gordon, Vanessa Duncan, Janet Ritchie, Anneli Reinberg, Kayleigh O'Neill, Claire Nicholas, Christine Stephen Daly, or Christine Stephen Daly, Canon, Rob Crossland, PJ Hardy, Felicity,

Lauren Y, Jamie Lynn Larrand, Mike Bailey, Annika Slachat, Kelly Guerrero, Leslie Caldwell, Grace, Karen Romaine, Jennifer Garcia, Alison Lukens, Harpy Queen, Elizabeth Carragher, Erin French, Julie Ryan, Des Reynolds, Hilary Currier, Hannah Thompson, Hannah Thomason, I don't know, Thomason, I don't know, Chris Farrow, Katie Dyess, Joanna Brown, Charlotte N. Mabry, Amanda Poppins,

Kai Kezia, Mikhail Gray, Lindsay Boss, Sian Keddy, Stick Sager, Maggie Westcott, Aubrey Antamara, I had to fully develop a stutter just then. This is the one I always fuck up. Njeggen? Yeah. Emma Moore, Angela Joyer, Talia Binbaum, Misha Wick, Misha Wick, Simil Simon Warren, Sophia James Foster, Fiona Ross, Louise Dixon, Chloe Morley, Rachellen Pisani, Alexandra... Rachel Ann!

Alexandra R. Wright and Thangam Murthy. Oh my God, guys. Alexandra... Rachel Anne. Alexandra R. Wright and Thangam Murthy. Oh, my God, guys. Thank you so much. At least you got to finish off with a good old South Asian one to redeem yourself. I'm pretty sure that's a Tamil name, so I feel like I nailed that. Thank you guys so much.

And we will see you in Under the Deer Bay after this, in the Robin Bowles interview after this, and then just loads of other fucking shit. We'll see you then. Bye. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it.

Lots of people don't. I didn't either. Until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.