Episode 52 - Peter Falconio & Joanne Lees

0:15 Welcome back to Chrome Besties. We are here for another episode.

0:18 Meg, how are you doing? Ah, we're kicking along Yeah,

0:22 we're getting there. We're getting there.

0:23 What a week it's been and and for you 2 so.

0:26 Yeah, we've had sickness go through our house.

0:28 I think it's just been through everyone's houses in the last

0:31 week or two. There is so much going around

0:34 and so much going around the school.

0:36 We had notification there's influenza going around and

0:39 you've got a kid on camp at the minute and apparently there's

0:42 been a bit of an outbreak there. Just been waiting for the phone

0:46 call to drive like an hour and a half two hours away to go and

0:48 pick someone up. It was a bit funny yes.

0:50 So we had phone call message from one of our friends saying

0:52 they were going going down to pick him up, you know, and she

0:55 she said. So let me know if any of you get

0:56 a phone call, old carpool and bring the old back back too.

1:01 At least that's something that might have saved you a.

1:03 Drunk I thought wouldn't be the worst.

1:05 If she's on her way back and you get the phone call, go on my way

1:09 to now. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess if

1:13 your kids feeling sick note though, they probably.

1:15 Want, they want them out there. Yeah.

1:17 It's just one of those things, isn't it?

1:19 Like entirely. It's just, I don't know, it's a

1:22 hard one because of course the kids wanna go on camp, but if

1:25 you're sick, you're sick. Yeah, that's exactly right.

1:29 Oh my goodness. I wonder how many of the grade

1:31 fours will be at school next. Week.

1:32 Oh, I know, I mean, I was actually my youngest has got to

1:35 buy for basketball this weekend. Oh, that's fucky.

1:38 Which I was like, oh, wish it was Mason for that reason.

1:41 Yeah, but actually it's not it's well, it's not as bad as it in

1:45 terms like because he's always the the earlier game.

1:47 Yeah, that I thought, oh, at least though Mason can sleep in

1:50 on Saturday morning. We're not rushing out to get to

1:52 that early game and he can play then at like 11:00, whatever

1:55 he's playing. But then it's 40 on Sundays.

1:57 It's like can't have early mornings, you know, can't, can't

2:00 sleep in. You've got early morning still.

2:02 So yeah, we'll see who's there on Monday.

2:05 Yeah, that's it. That's it.

2:07 We'll see it. Yeah, that's just that time of

2:09 year, isn't it? It's just.

2:10 Horrible. Yeah, and then I've been seeing

2:13 posts from people who are like over in Europe and having

2:16 beautiful. Times.

2:18 Excuse me, that's just rude. Keep it to yourself.

2:20 Yeah, I think one of our friends is heading to the great to

2:23 Greece very soon. Yeah, I'm a bit jealous,

2:26 totally. Jelly.

2:27 Yeah. I mean, Oh yes, I could.

2:30 I could. I would love to spend a day just

2:32 sunning myself anywhere warm. Wouldn't that make you feel

2:35 better? I think so.

2:36 I think so. A bit of vitamin D never went

2:38 astray. Yeah, I mean, look at the sun is

2:40 out, it's out here, but it's oh, very chilly.

2:43 Yeah, yeah. It is, it is.

2:45 It's very cold. Aside from that, have you had an

2:48 OK week? Yeah, well, yeah, with sick ones

2:50 at home and stuff, I feel like I've had like one of those weeks

2:52 where I just haven't achieved anything I needed to and just

2:55 running around after others. But yeah, pretty good week.

2:58 Yeah, just kicking along. As I say, it's all got it all.

3:01 We can do it this time of year, I reckon.

3:03 Yeah, I think we're hanging a bit for those school holidays.

3:05 Well, I know I am because I get the time off.

3:07 But yeah, at least it's it is actually a break for me, whereas

3:11 I know other people it makes it even harder.

3:13 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, some things about

3:15 school holidays are easier. I love not having to make a

3:17 lunch. Box.

3:18 That is my favorite thing on that last day show and packing

3:21 up the lunch boxes and putting them away.

3:23 Yes, absolutely. This morning, because I haven't

3:26 been all that well. Normally I do lunch boxes the

3:29 night before, but I haven't been.

3:32 I just haven't had any energy. And this morning only Oliver

3:36 went to school. Lucas is homesick as well.

3:39 And Oliver was like, Mum, don't worry, I'll take care of my

3:43 lunch box. I'm like, oh, I feel like I need

3:45 to supervise this because otherwise it'll be like Skittles

3:49 and twisties and. Whatever else.

3:51 Oh things. Cause no, he'd be putting in

3:54 there some pretty delish things. Alright, well, so this is what

3:56 he ended up with. Yeah.

3:57 He had cucumber for brain food. Nice.

4:01 And then he had olives. Just olives.

4:03 Normally I do olives and bocconcini and a cherry tomato

4:07 on a stick. That's like he just.

4:09 Did olives because he couldn't be bothered getting the other

4:11 things out. OK, fine.

4:14 And Mandarin. He decided to give himself some

4:17 hot dogs. Like, look, you know, those mini

4:19 cocktail Franks which had been in the freezer for God only

4:21 knows how long, but he found them.

4:23 I'm like, OK, let's hope that works out.

4:25 All right. Yeah.

4:27 And then he had some cheese, a few, like, packet things, like,

4:31 I don't even know what it was. In the end, I'm like, oh, that's

4:34 actually not too bad. It's not bad.

4:35 He did all right. Yeah.

4:37 And I didn't have the energy to care, really.

4:39 No, not. Much about it so.

4:42 I know I often do the whole like I should do like be like that

4:45 parent and do like a thing of like you need to have an option

4:48 of one of these or an option of one of these, you know, kind of

4:51 thing and fill your lunch boxes and they can fill them

4:53 themselves, but they've got to meet that criteria of, you know,

4:56 and I'm like, oh God, if I had the time to fucking make.

4:59 And then? Supervise, You know, a fridge

5:00 magnet thing with that. Exactly.

5:02 I'd love to do that and have the boys doing their own lunch

5:04 boxes, but at this point in time it's just fucking easy for me to

5:06 do it myself. Absolutely.

5:09 Yeah, he did make me breakfast this morning because he was

5:11 making something that he thought I might like.

5:13 And he was actually it. Was actually delicious.

5:16 It was he made like yogurt. Yogurt granola bottles.

5:20 Yum. Fresh raspberries and passion

5:23 fruit like syrup. You know there's.

5:25 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

5:27 It was absolutely delicious. Oh, so nice.

5:30 When's he making my breakfast? Yeah.

5:32 So, well, maybe I need to be sick more often.

5:34 I'm liking. It totally.

5:36 Oh my gosh. Chef Oliver to the rescue.

5:38 Yeah, yeah, I see it. He's so curious.

5:42 Gosh, that's so good. It's funny.

5:45 Yeah. Yeah.

5:45 Well, you know. Make it through the episode

5:47 though, you reckon? Make it through.

5:49 I just said to you before we started though, if I have to

5:52 blow my nose I'm so sorry but I cannot help it.

5:55 I just took an antihistamine before we started because I was

5:58 hoping that might dry things up. That's not.

6:00 That's not a bad idea. So we'll see how I feel like it

6:02 might actually be working. So, and maybe with all the

6:05 talking, I know the nose will stop.

6:07 I don't know. Oh, good.

6:08 We'll see how we go. Oh good, we can edit out nose

6:11 wiping. You're not gonna start every,

6:14 you know, edit with me with the tissues shoved up my nose.

6:17 Well. Try not to.

6:20 I do have a couple of shout outs for today.

6:22 So I've got Donna Lesko and Michelle Walker who both bought

6:26 us coffees in the last week or so.

6:28 Thank you to everybody who does that, to everybody who's

6:31 subscribed, followed, commented. We've actually had a record

6:35 number of comments this week on Spotify.

6:38 So people who comment through the app that really helps our

6:42 our show be then recommended to more people.

6:46 Like I noticed we've had had a few extra listeners based on

6:49 that this week. So yeah, all of those things

6:51 really, really helps or keep it coming.

6:53 And we love the things that people are introducing.

6:55 We've had people with case suggestions, people like just

6:59 with comments on episodes wanting to catch up and and say

7:03 hi, like do it. We love it.

7:06 We absolutely love it. So good, I know.

7:08 We actually had a recommendation last night.

7:10 Well, no recommendation is such almost just when are we going

7:13 to? Because I said yes, we will

7:15 definitely do it because that's the Karen Reed case.

7:18 Oh yeah. Which yesterday came out with a

7:20 not guilty verdict for her finally.

7:23 And I'm like, Oh yeah, that is a a great one.

7:26 But we need to let us settle a little bit because there's many

7:28 interviews. We're going to get information.

7:31 I want the jury. Yeah, the jurors over there can

7:34 come out and talk as well. So that'll be interesting, but

7:38 more so even really just is there gonna be any follow up for

7:41 this? Because obviously if she didn't

7:42 do it, then who did? Yeah.

7:43 That's it. Where are we going from here?

7:46 I think which the. FBI need to get involved surely?

7:49 For sure now now there's no excuse for them if I.

7:52 Judge, holy crap, so biased so much.

7:56 It's a it's oh God, yeah, it's not good.

7:59 It's. It's a very interesting judicial

8:02 system, isn't it? Yeah, it's, yeah, it's bizarre.

8:05 But anyway, we will do that. We will absolutely cover that

8:08 case. Yeah.

8:09 The other one that's been really in the media here is the

8:11 mushroom. We I know we talked about that

8:13 in last week's episode. I thought we'd have a verdict by

8:15 saying like, well, by now we may actually in reality of like when

8:18 this is. Released where I would say.

8:20 Our recording of this week, well, I think we'll have one

8:22 early next week. I think that's my guidance.

8:24 I think so too. So we're recording this on the

8:27 20th of June, so let's just wait and see.

8:29 I'm hoping. I'm sure by the time this comes

8:32 out we'll have a verdict. Sure, and because that's another

8:34 one that definitely will be speeding up the list to cover

8:37 when that, Oh yeah, is done and dusted.

8:40 Oh. Yeah.

8:41 Oh wow, that one. Interesting one.

8:43 I love it. Yeah.

8:44 I love the daily, the daily listen.

8:46 To that one, and I'm a little bit behind at the moment, which

8:48 crazy. I shouldn't be because it's all

8:50 happening, it's all finishing. I was all wrapping up and

8:52 everything. And then I'm like, oh God, I

8:54 want to hear what the closing arguments have been.

8:57 They've been really, really good.

8:58 Like the prosecution's closing? Argument, I swear.

9:00 Well, theirs was fairly short and sweet really in that they

9:03 were very succinct, whereas the defense one has gone on for

9:06 days. Yeah, because they're trying to

9:09 introduce as much conjecture and yeah, possible.

9:15 Ohh. What's the word I'm looking for?

9:17 Like, well, reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt.

9:19 Yeah, as much as possible. But anyway, we'll see.

9:22 We'll see. Comment below.

9:23 What do you think? Yeah, it hasn't already come

9:25 out. Or if it has come out, let us

9:26 know. Do they get it right?

9:28 Yeah. Do they?

9:28 Yeah, This is it. Yeah, Yeah.

9:31 Oh, so interesting. Yeah, so today we're covering

9:34 the case of, well, the disappearance and presumed

9:38 murder of Peter Falconio. Yeah.

9:41 By Bradley John Murdoch. And so Peter Falconio's

9:45 girlfriend was with him at the time, Joanne Leigh's.

9:48 Do you remember when this happened, like, as in your

9:51 living memory? Absolutely.

9:53 I'm the same. And I remember at the time, I

9:56 was so fascinated by so many aspects of this case.

10:00 And then revisiting it now to like, you know, probably, what,

10:04 20 years later? Yeah.

10:06 To research for today. It really brought back a lot of

10:08 things that I thought I knew. And then now it's also raised,

10:13 like, different ideas and different things for me.

10:17 Did you find that too? Definitely.

10:19 Actually really weirdly enough, I think for when this happened,

10:23 like obviously I remember it being a little bit, you know,

10:25 like, oh, who did it, who did it, like kind of stuff.

10:28 And and then I, but I remember that there was a kid, someone

10:31 convicted. And in my mind I was coming at

10:32 this of like, you know, someone's been convicted and

10:34 Yep, Yep, done. And now doing all the research

10:38 in it, kind of and taking into account everyone's perspectives.

10:42 Yeah. And, you know, I mean, just

10:44 intrigued to hear where you land after all that, that I hadn't.

10:46 I hadn't realized just how much conjecture there was around this

10:50 conviction, you know, and that people do have opinions.

10:54 I knew everyone had an opinion on her, and I knew that that was

10:57 a thing. But I didn't realize how to what

10:59 extent people have a strong opinion on this being one way or

11:04 the other when there's been someone convicted of this.

11:07 Yeah. It's really interesting and I

11:11 feel exactly the same way. I thought the same thing.

11:13 I thought, well, this is gonna be one of those things where

11:15 it's open and shut with there's no.

11:17 I thought we'll just tell the case today, yeah.

11:18 That's right. There's not gonna be a huge

11:20 amount to discuss about it. Really.

11:21 Yeah. Turns out not quite.

11:23 Yeah, there's lots of things to be looked at here and see what

11:28 people's thoughts are where you land.

11:30 Yep, Yep, for sure. And it also depends like who

11:34 you've listened to and what you've watched in relation to.

11:37 So many of this where like the little, little bits around it

11:39 that you go, oh, there's that. And then you hear someone else's

11:42 perspective and then someone else and someone else's.

11:44 And everyone's got a different story on it.

11:45 For example, the T-shirt she wore.

11:47 Yeah, which seems so insignificant.

11:50 And it really is, at the end of the day, but the amount of

11:53 different people's different opinions on who made those

11:56 choices, yeah, is really interesting.

11:58 Yeah. All right.

11:59 Should we get into? It let's get into.

12:00 It okay, so the cases of missing and presumed murdered backpacker

12:06 Peter Falconio. So he was a British tourist and

12:11 he disappeared in a remote part of the Stewart Highway near

12:16 Burrow Creek in the NT of Australia on the 14th of July in

12:19 2001. He was travelling with his

12:22 girlfriend Joanne Leigh's at the time and he was 28 years of age.

12:28 So he came from a very sort of loving working class family.

12:33 His, you know, his brother has been quite prominent.

12:36 One of his brothers has been quite prominent in the media.

12:40 And I think he's probably a face that's recognizable to a lot of

12:43 Australians and British people in particular, who were, you

12:46 know, probably the biggest consumers of of all of this,

12:49 even though this made worldwide news.

12:51 Yeah. And I mean, we look at it from

12:53 obviously from the Australian perspective.

12:55 We think it's a big case here. Apparently in in the UK, it's

13:00 massive over there. Like, they really, like, they

13:02 really did soak this story up and there was a lot in in the

13:06 media over there. I think part of that was because

13:10 there were several backpacker incidents and murders that had

13:14 happened in Australia around the same time.

13:16 So there was the Port Arthur massacre, Yep, that had recently

13:22 taken place. And then the Childer's Palace

13:25 backpackers hostel fire, which was deliberately lit.

13:29 And that's another category we will absolutely cover.

13:32 So people, of course. Ivan Millat would have he begun.

13:36 Yes, he had. Yes, he had.

13:37 Yeah, Ivan Mletic begun his, you know, serial killings.

13:42 Another case we need. Oh yeah, we will go there.

13:45 That'll be a. More.

13:46 That'll be probably more than one episode.

13:49 So, you know, this was a time where, I don't know, people were

13:56 maybe slightly more cautious of coming to, to Australia to do

14:00 the, the typical UK backpacker type of thing.

14:04 That is a very well trodden path for British people because it's

14:08 easy for them to get a working visa in Australia.

14:11 The conditions have changed a little bit now in terms of what

14:14 type of work they have to do in order to qualify for the visa.

14:18 But back then, I think they could get a visa for up to two

14:20 years and travel around and work wherever they needed to for that

14:24 time. So yeah, it's, it's a, yeah, it

14:29 was a very well of so many British backpackers are around.

14:32 And I mean, even even to this day you can go to, you know, we,

14:36 we recently travelled to Outback SA and we found British

14:42 backpackers everywhere working in hotels and pubs and that kind

14:46 of thing. So that, you know, it's still

14:48 something that people are doing to this day.

14:50 Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

14:52 So Peter Marco Falconio was born on the 20th of September in

14:56 1972. He was the third of four sons to

15:01 his mum and dad. They lived in Hepworth, West

15:04 Yorkshire, in England in 1993. Sorry.

15:09 In 1996, he started a relationship with Joanne Lees.

15:12 I met in a nightclub. Yes, as as one as you used to

15:16 back then she did No Tinder, no Tinder.

15:19 Joanne Lees was born on the 25th of September in 1973.

15:23 So her father was actually Australian, but she lived the

15:26 first so. She didn't know him.

15:27 She didn't know him, no. She lived the first of her

15:30 eleven years with her Jenny and her stepfather Vincent I believe

15:35 his name was, and then they then went on to have a son I believe.

15:41 So she had a stepbrother on 1/2 brother.

15:44 No, sorry. Vincent had a son already.

15:46 Named that he passed the. Road.

15:47 So yeah, a stepbrother, yeah. And they lived in Huddersfield

15:52 in Yorkshire, in England as well.

15:56 Joanne, I think, did OK at school.

15:59 I don't think that, you know, she was all that scholarly

16:03 necessarily. When she finished school, she

16:06 worked as a barmaid for a little while.

16:07 She worked in a bacon factory. Bacon factory?

16:10 Yeah. But then packaging.

16:12 Packaging bacon. I'm like, Can you imagine how

16:14 bad you'd smell at the end of the day?

16:16 I used to work at Subway. Yeah.

16:18 And I would come home breaking of that.

16:22 Bread. Fasting subway smell.

16:24 Yeah. It was one of those things that

16:26 you could never, you couldn't wash it out.

16:27 No clothes. No.

16:28 Oh God no Sir. Can you imagine the bacon fat

16:31 that like or the bacon smell you?

16:32 Wouldn't I never love bacon? Like I've said before, I could

16:36 be vegetarian as long as I can eat bacon.

16:39 But to do that, no, I wouldn't eat bacon ever then.

16:43 No, I don't think it would just turn your stomach.

16:45 Yeah, yeah. Anyway, she did that for a

16:49 little while, but then she actually stumbled upon a job

16:52 working for a travel agency and she actually really developed,

16:56 number one. She developed like really strong

16:59 skills in that field and I think she was quite well regarded and

17:05 it really developed a passion for travel in her.

17:09 You know, she was planning lots of other people's holidays and

17:12 decided that this was probably a good time for for her to start

17:16 planning some holidays of her own.

17:18 Yes. And she'd been with Peter for a

17:20 while, maybe a year or something.

17:22 I think it could be even longer, maybe even.

17:23 Longer three, yeah, OK yeah. And he went down to Brighton to

17:28 study and she ended up getting a transfer from her job in

17:32 Yorkshire down to or up to, Yeah, I know the geography.

17:36 There down South, Brighton's right in the bottom right.

17:40 Down to Brighton to work in the travel agent.

17:45 Same travel agency, but down. There.

17:47 So it was a serious relationship in that they were, she was

17:51 moving herself all that way to maintain that relationship and

17:55 they, you know, live together there.

17:57 And so they were very much, you know, on a path together, that's

17:59 for sure. They were absolutely on a path.

18:01 So they decided that they were going to spend about 12 months,

18:05 I think, travelling and then the idea was that, I mean, Joanne

18:08 thought that while they were in Australia she was going to get

18:11 proposed to. Well, yeah, she sort of had this

18:12 idea that they would most likely stop off on the way home and and

18:16 get married. Yeah, yeah.

18:18 Or at least be engaged by the time they went home.

18:20 Yeah, kids and marriage were what their life plan was.

18:24 Absolutely. Yeah, but they wanted to get

18:25 this year of travel out of the way first, which is completely

18:28 fair because travelling with children is no joke.

18:31 Forget. That.

18:33 Well, it's a very different type of holiday.

18:35 You wouldn't be able to, oh God no.

18:36 Buy yourself a combi van and drive around.

18:38 No. Outback of Australia with young

18:40 kids, yeah, I think they well. Especially not the combi van

18:44 they got. Oh for sure.

18:46 Oh for sure. Which we'll get.

18:48 To part of I guess this world trodden path of UK backpackers

18:52 is, you know, travelling through Southeast Asia first.

18:55 So they had gone to Thailand, Singapore, Nepal, I think done a

18:59 bit of trekking around Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia and

19:03 Cambodia. And they ended up landing in

19:08 Sydney in Australia and base themselves there.

19:11 So this was a chance for them to sort of settle for a little bit,

19:15 replenish some money because they obviously be, I think by

19:18 this stage they've been travelling about 3 months

19:20 throughout those other countries.

19:22 And because they were allowed to work in Australia, it was a good

19:24 opportunity to do so. So we spend more than you plan

19:27 to, so always travelling. Good opportunity, expensive even

19:31 if you are back packing. Yes, I think they ended up

19:34 renting a little apartment or a room in a in an apartment while

19:38 they were in Sydney for for their well, what was originally

19:41 planned to be 3 months. They ended up staying about 5.

19:44 Yeah, and Joanne worked at a Dimmick's bookstore as a sales

19:50 assistant and met some really, really good friends, like one in

19:53 particular, one girl in particular who she really hit it

19:57 up off with and and really became very good friends.

19:59 Yeah, she was living life in Sydney.

20:01 She really enjoyed the lifestyle of where they what they were

20:04 doing there and people she'd met.

20:06 Yes. And the type of things that they

20:08 were doing in their off time. So she liked, and I think this

20:11 is the attraction to Sydney in particular or anywhere along the

20:15 coast. She loved that Beachy lifestyle

20:19 and the nice weather, nice people, very friendly people.

20:25 She dabbled in the party scene when she was there.

20:30 Not so much Peter, he wasn't really into that.

20:33 And I guess that caused maybe a little bit of tension in their

20:38 relationship and. He was keen to keep moving on

20:42 the travels and he was happy to. Stay there for the three months

20:45 and move on where she really wanted to extend the stay in

20:48 Sydney. But we found out later on she

20:51 was keen to extend the stay in Sydney.

20:53 But we found out later on that, like, I was actually during the

20:56 trial for this case, that she'd actually had an affair with a

21:00 man by the name of Steph at the well, well.

21:02 We don't know the extent of the affair as well.

21:05 His name was Nick, yeah, but used this pseudonym, Steph.

21:09 So he set up an e-mail address so that she could continue

21:12 contacting him after she left Sydney without Peter knowing who

21:17 that he was. She was contacting a guy.

21:20 It looked like she was just emailing a female friend.

21:23 But that's not what the case was, no.

21:26 And they did maintain contact after they left Sydney.

21:28 Yeah. When when we say affair, I don't

21:31 think it was like a torrid thing.

21:32 I think it was in the in the party scene.

21:36 She'd met this. Guy, he's an Irishman.

21:39 Yeah, they they apparently just got along very, very well.

21:41 Who can resist an Irish? Accent.

21:43 Absolutely. I know.

21:44 Yeah, actually from what she says of it, like, yeah, there

21:49 was an attraction there, but she was.

21:52 And look, from this, I sort of take this a little bit of like

21:55 she was in a relationship where, yeah, the path was marriage and

21:57 kids and she hadn't had a whole lot of other relationships prior

22:01 to Peter and neither had Pete. So I think that this was a

22:05 little bit of a test of their relationship of like, OK, am I

22:09 this if you know, is this someone I want to explore things

22:12 with or am I just enjoying some attention from someone?

22:16 Which because once you get into a relationship after a period of

22:19 time, you kind of like it's not new and fresh anymore.

22:22 And yeah, you're in a bit of a, you know, it's more of routine.

22:25 So I do get a feeling it was a little bit of like, oh, I like

22:28 this, you know, like fresh new feeling.

22:31 But is it something I actually want to pursue or do I or am I

22:33 serious with Pete? And I, I get the feeling that

22:37 she was, the plan was that she was like, you know, I'm enjoying

22:39 this, but I, I'm here for Pete. I I fully agree.

22:43 Yeah, I fully agree. I mean, for the fact that she

22:46 left for the rest of their trip. Yeah, Peter, I think, you know,

22:51 I I think that says everything. She enjoyed the bit of the flirt

22:53 with it, you know, I really do. I don't know.

22:55 There was all there's any more to to it really than that.

22:58 Yeah, I agree. I mean, like, I've got friends

23:00 who they met at like 16 and stuff and they ended up

23:02 splitting up, you know, at one stage, you know, everyone was

23:05 like, wait, what? Like they were just gonna be the

23:08 couple that were together forever.

23:09 Yeah. And they split up for all of

23:10 about 3 months and go back together and yeah, they married

23:12 kids now and like solid as a as a Rock, You know, and you're

23:14 like, well, yeah, people just need to need to know for sure.

23:18 Sometimes that like I'm yeah, I'm this is he's the person for

23:21 me. Yeah, Other people are

23:22 intriguing and you know, it's nice to feel like that.

23:25 But yeah, my long term partner is it, you know, is that 1?

23:28 So I think she was just, I don't know.

23:31 Yeah, I don't think. Peter ever found out about it or

23:33 anything like that, so it never became a source of of conflict

23:37 between them. No.

23:39 So they after the five months they jumped in there.

23:43 So Peter as part of like towards the end of their stay in Sydney,

23:47 it was his job to procure a vehicle.

23:50 He. Was quite knowledgeable in cars.

23:51 I think he was very handy in general, like he was a

23:54 construct, like he was into construction work and that kind

23:57 of thing. So he, I think he was very

23:59 handy, Yeah. And he went to some used car

24:02 market in some, I don't know, some like car park in Sydney.

24:06 I'm like, yeah, people even find out about this.

24:08 But I guess yeah. Well, he talk among.

24:09 Exactly. He'd been told basically like

24:11 what he was doing was going through at the time was like,

24:13 you know, the trading post, you know, the old school trading

24:16 post sort of situation like and going and looking at these cars

24:18 every other way every weekend, like looking at multiple cars.

24:21 And someone said to him, don't do that, like go to the actual

24:24 like auctions where they're all the ones spate one time and you

24:28 can go and look at, you know, multiple cars at once and you

24:30 might find something. So yeah.

24:32 And he found this one particular one which was for sale for $3000

24:36 and had done a massive trip already around Australia.

24:38 And the owners were like, look, it's really reliable.

24:40 You know, we've, we didn't have, you know, issues and things.

24:42 And he did the once over it and he really liked it and was very

24:45 set on it, but walked away and renegotiated the cut the price

24:50 and ended up getting it for $1800.

24:52 That's like significant. That's like nearly half.

24:54 Past Well done, good work. That's that's quite a few beers

24:58 at the at the pubs along the way.

25:00 Especially when you're backpacking.

25:01 I mean that kind of money like to better, you know, manage

25:03 that. So and like he knew the car

25:04 wasn't perfect, but he knew he was handy enough to, you know,

25:08 manage it kind of thing and see where it goes.

25:10 So Joanne wasn't overly keen on the car because it was bright

25:15 orange combi van. You know that they were going to

25:18 be able to sleep in if they needed to, if they had to park,

25:20 pull over on the side of the road and have that kind of

25:22 facility. But it was pretty along the

25:25 road. They knew that there was going

25:26 to be stretches of Rd. Where they would have to go a

25:30 lot slower than the speed limit because the roads are very awful

25:34 in some patches along that those big highways I.

25:37 Think it had a top speed of 80 kilometres an hour, yeah, and

25:40 you can go 110 plus yeah in the Outback, so.

25:44 When there's no one else around surround.

25:46 But the car was certainly not gonna be able to do that.

25:48 So she and she did comment that, you know, there was a few

25:51 occasions where it did backfire. So it was, you know, a fairly

25:55 rusty old combi, that's for sure.

25:58 Yeah. But it was, I mean, heap of fun.

26:00 Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, in the middle of, I

26:03 have to say, I've done a bit of travel around these sorts of

26:06 parts and through the Kimberley particularly, and I don't know

26:09 if I'd want to go in it. Yeah.

26:11 Because when you're out there, there's nothing else like.

26:14 I think that's the thing that people don't it's it's almost

26:18 unfathomable. You've got to be out there.

26:20 You've got to go out there to understand.

26:22 There is literally, yeah, nothing around.

26:25 You can't. I mean, it's flat.

26:26 It's it's not like you know you're looking at would

26:28 breakdown, but walk a few K yeah, and you'll find a town or

26:31 something. Hundreds.

26:32 No, no, no. Not thousands of kilometres

26:34 away. Yeah, you're looking at you're

26:36 dead. Yeah, it's, it's not.

26:38 So I think recommendations when you're driving in that area is

26:41 to have at least five to seven days of food and water with you

26:45 at all times, because it actually literally can be that

26:48 long between other people. Between towns potentially.

26:50 Finding. You.

26:51 Yeah. And obviously carrying fuel on

26:53 board because again it can be 1000 like up to 1000 K's between

26:57 fuel stops. Yeah.

26:58 So you have to be really, really well prepared.

27:02 And then the other recommend. A lot of the other

27:03 recommendations are to drive only during daylight hours.

27:07 Definitely there's. So much wildlife out there.

27:09 Like when I know I'm harping back to when we've, but it's

27:12 just so, so in so much in my recent memory.

27:14 Yeah, when we went to South Australia into the app back

27:17 there, you know, there are emus, wild emus and Kangaroos.

27:21 And at dusk and dawn, that's when they're out.

27:23 And the amount of roadkill we saw now roadkill when you're

27:28 driving a big 4 wheel drive is bad enough if when you're

27:30 driving a fucking dinky little combi.

27:34 Any cart you're any, you know, in a very good, you know, 4

27:38 wheel drive. Yeah, well equipped 4 wheel

27:40 drive, a kangaroo can take you out, absolutely.

27:43 And. Like, they are so muscular.

27:45 Yeah. And like, you think a kangaroo

27:47 is like this cute little thing? No, no, no, no.

27:49 They're huge. They're muscly.

27:51 They can do so much. I mean they kill people all the

27:53 time in in these situations in Rd.

27:56 Accidents, yeah. In Rd.

27:56 Accidents, yeah. People will often come off

27:58 second best. Yeah.

27:59 So, you know, the expanse of where they were travelling was,

28:04 was crazy. Yeah, They left Sydney, headed

28:07 down for Melbourne in their little combi, had a bit of a, a

28:11 tour around Melbourne and then headed towards SA.

28:15 Yeah. And they were driving, you know,

28:18 stopping at backpackers hostels and and little motels and stuff

28:23 along the way. I'm trying to keep this, you

28:26 know, as cheap as possible, I guess.

28:27 Yeah, campgrounds and that kind of thing that they could stay at

28:30 as well and sleep in the back of the combi.

28:33 And they just stop every couple of days to replenish their food

28:36 supply and petrol they were carrying on board to try and get

28:40 them, get them through the next few days.

28:43 So what we know is I guess we get to the day of the incident

28:49 now, really. Yeah, yeah.

28:51 What we know is that on the evening of the 14th of July in

28:56 2001, they set off from the Barrow Creek Roadhouse.

29:02 They'd been there, had a meal, and they were heading towards

29:05 the Devil's Marbles. Now, during the day this they

29:09 sort of headed off. Was it around 5:30 or 6:00?

29:15 I think it was a little bit earlier than that, OK, but a lot

29:17 later than anyone was suggesting they should be.

29:20 Well, so that day they'd been to the Camel Cup races, Yeah.

29:23 So this is something that I mean, I wouldn't want to miss

29:26 that either. No.

29:27 People said to them, like, wait till tomorrow because, like,

29:29 stay for this. It's really, you know, really.

29:31 Well, they had no idea it was there.

29:32 Yeah. And that this was going to be

29:33 happening. And so they were like, well,

29:34 don't miss it since you're here. Yeah, it's actually a really

29:37 cool thing to. Yeah, but they were just really

29:39 keen to get on the road, which in these sorts of conditions, in

29:42 these places, that's just not safe.

29:45 Locals recommending recommending them not to travel at night.

29:50 They ignored those. Unfortunately, ignored those.

29:54 Which they weren't suggesting it for anything other than, you

29:56 know, like Kangaroos, Kangaroos and Amy's and things like that.

29:58 It was they weren't. They certainly didn't have this

30:01 in their minds of what actually went on, I think.

30:03 The other thing that's worth noting is like when it gets

30:06 dark, it gets so this is Outback Australia.

30:09 You think of the Outback and you think it's hot and toasty and

30:12 you know all that. And it is during the day, during

30:15 the day, but at night. So this is in July, so this is

30:18 in winter there. The temperatures can get very,

30:22 very low. Yep, it's I'm talking freezing

30:24 cold. It's really cold overnight.

30:26 So, you know, yes, they've probably had a 35° day during

30:31 the day when the sun's out. But yeah, overnight it can get

30:34 get very, very cold. And so, and also because they're

30:38 on the, so they, they were travelling from Alice Springs up

30:41 the Stewart Highway towards Darwin to get to the Devil's

30:44 Marbles. So they were heading north.

30:47 They were travelling, you know, into the darkness.

30:51 Eventually, sort of maybe they left about 4:30 now that I think

30:55 about. It yeah, I feel like it was.

30:56 It was more like 4:30 in the afternoon, yeah.

30:59 They've travelled out and you know by the time darkness hits

31:02 you would be able to see literally nothing around you.

31:06 The Stars pitch. Pitch Starling, but there is

31:09 nothing else you see like. There is no light, no

31:12 civilization. No.

31:14 Road lights or anything like that.

31:16 In fact, the roads are pretty dusty and well maintained, and

31:21 you might not even see another car for the entire night.

31:24 That yeah, this is it. You may not see another single

31:26 soul like it's, it's, it's so isolating out there.

31:30 You have no idea until I think you're getting there.

31:33 I mean, we thought we were middle of nowhere and you

31:36 weren't sometimes, though, because you can't see what's out

31:39 there. So we are travelling through the

31:41 Kimberly one night and we didn't get as far as we hoped to get on

31:45 our travels because, yeah, the road conditions can really

31:47 affect you. And these are all the sorts

31:48 things you got to take into account that sometimes roads

31:51 with weather and you know, can have floods come through and all

31:54 sorts of things that things can hold you up.

31:56 So we didn't get as far as we were hoping to.

31:58 So we had to like pull over on the side of the road because it

32:00 was getting dark. And we're like, we're sorry,

32:02 we've got to stop travelling and pull over.

32:05 And so we pulled over, just set up campsite on the side of the

32:07 road basically. And we could not see a thing

32:10 that was it gets dark like that. It's real quick too.

32:13 So we were like, oh, we're right, we'll be right here.

32:14 Just quickly set up here, set up camp.

32:16 And as we we then get to bed that night, we're laying in bed

32:18 and all we could hear in the distance was.

32:22 Oh my God, Will you come near a prison?

32:28 Yeah. My girlfriend are laying there

32:33 like we're like totally like going like Oh my God.

32:35 Oh my God, Oh my God, we're gonna die because, you know, of

32:37 course we watched Wolf Creek before we went and everything.

32:39 Yeah, you're. Not idiot.

32:40 Oh. My God, we're gonna die.

32:42 We're gonna die. We didn't get any sleep that

32:44 night to get back on the road the next morning.

32:46 And then, yeah, as we get up to late, we finally got some light

32:48 and opened up the tents. We realized that for probably

32:50 about 200 meters off in the distance.

32:54 So was this prison? Oh yes.

32:58 But they could see us because we had like we had a fire going and

33:02 stuff. So they can obviously see

33:04 something in the distance. And so that's why there were

33:06 people yelling at. Oh my God, that is so scary

33:10 though, because you can't see, you don't know what's around.

33:12 No, you literally. That's when we were there as it

33:15 was getting dark. We just did not see that there

33:18 was this building off in the distance even like we thought it

33:22 was just nothing. Oh my.

33:24 God, well, I'm glad you came back from that experience a lot.

33:28 Funny now, but at the time I've never been so terrified in all

33:31 my life. No, thank you.

33:33 No. Thank you both laying there just

33:34 going Ivan Mullet doesn't live around here.

33:36 He. Wasn't in prison then I'm.

33:39 Trying to think what you're all oh, God, yeah, oh God, it's

33:45 awful, yeah. But yeah.

33:46 So you've really got to time yourself well, and you've got to

33:50 know what's out there. You've got to understand all

33:52 those things because you can put yourself in dangerous positions

33:55 just purely for wildlife temperatures, you know, road

33:59 conditions, all those things. That's, I mean, beyond what they

34:03 encountered. There are so many other reasons

34:06 of why travelling at that time is not ideal.

34:08 Recommended no at all. So according to Joanne's

34:14 account, and she hers is the only account we have of what

34:17 actually happened. What she says happened that

34:20 night is that around 7:30 PM they were travelling on the

34:25 Stewart Highway towards the Devil's Marbles in their orange

34:27 Combi Van Falconios. So Peter was driving and Joanne

34:31 was in the passenger seat and she said she was wearing just

34:34 shorts and AT shirt because it had been hot that day.

34:36 They've been at the Camel Cup races.

34:38 And she was just saying, too, like, pride of them this exact

34:40 moment. Like they did pull over at one

34:42 stage and they did smoke a bit of a joint between them.

34:45 Yeah, because they wanted to keep going to try and get

34:48 further. So have.

34:49 The opposite of her. Yeah, it probably, yeah, that's

34:52 what I would thought, but but I. Mean not.

34:54 Yeah, well, there's sort of conjecture around maybe they did

34:57 have some other things too. Don't know.

34:59 But yeah, she definitely admitted that they'd smoked a

35:01 joint and that was to sort of help them keep going, which,

35:07 yeah, it makes you sleeping a bit like, I don't know, it's an.

35:10 Interesting choice if that's what you're going for, but

35:13 anyways. I guess dependent on how what

35:15 kind of a user of that kind of stuff you are and what you're

35:17 how it affects you, I don't know.

35:19 But yeah, so that had also occurred.

35:22 So we're sort of looking at like 7:30 at night now, so and

35:25 they're still continuing along that road.

35:26 That's it. So since they'd stopped at the

35:29 Barrow Creek Roadhouse, they'd noticed that there was somebody

35:32 following behind them. Now you've got to think we're

35:34 out in the middle of the Outback.

35:36 There are really no speed limits.

35:38 Like people go fast and the combi couldn't.

35:43 So this car was following behind them and Peter made a comment to

35:47 Joanna. I just wish he'd pass us.

35:49 Now, there's a couple of different versions of events

35:51 here about what kind of happened next, but one of the versions is

35:56 that the person who was in the car behind them was sort of

35:59 gesturing for them to pull over. The other account is that the

36:03 car actually pulled up beside them and and sort of made them

36:06 pull over, saying that there were sparks flying out of the

36:09 back of their combi. Now you mentioned before that

36:12 Joanne had stated that the combi had backfired in the past.

36:16 So this wasn't necessarily something that they were I.

36:19 Went shocked if there was something wrong with this car.

36:20 That's exactly. Right.

36:22 But Joanne was a little bit cautious.

36:24 She didn't want Peter to pull over.

36:26 That Peter was like, well, no, if there's.

36:28 Something wrong if? There's something wrong, we

36:29 gotta check it. Out it's just it really shows

36:31 that, you know, different mentality of like male female in

36:33 those moments. Totally, 100%, absolutely.

36:35 Yeah, Joanne stayed in the car. Peter got out and walked to,

36:39 sort of walked to the back of the car and met this person.

36:43 Joanne's account of it is that the banter between between Peter

36:47 and this person who'd gotten out was seemed very friendly.

36:50 That was kind of quite jovial. Peter thanked him for thanks for

36:53 stopping and letting us know so we can fix this up.

36:57 And yeah, they went around to the back of the car.

36:59 Yeah, yeah. Peter then comes up to Joanne in

37:01 the passengers, so she was still in the passengers, said this

37:04 time he comes to the cabin of the Combi and gets out his

37:07 cigarettes and he asks Joanne to scootch over into the driver's

37:11 seat and to start the car when he tells her to do so.

37:14 Because they're trying to obviously figure out what's

37:16 going on with this spark, these sparks or whatever.

37:18 Coming out the back. Person that's reported, she

37:21 turns the car over a couple of times and then on one of the

37:24 times that she's turned the car over, she hears a loud bang and

37:27 it sounds like to her, it sounds like a car backfiring.

37:31 Yeah, With that, she kind of turned to her driver's side

37:35 window and there's a man there with a gun pointing at her.

37:40 So she obviously like in that split second, I think you would

37:44 just put it all together. Yeah, It'd be like, Oh my God,

37:48 that wasn't a backfire. Like that's a gun.

37:49 Like, yeah, yeah. Holy shit.

37:52 Yeah. Where's Pete?

37:53 And I think that was her first words, according to her, is

37:55 where's Pete? What?

37:56 What have you done to Pete? Yeah.

37:58 He then tells her to turn the combi off, and she said she was

38:02 basically paralyzed by fear, as you would be.

38:07 So he then reached over and turned the car off himself.

38:11 He then ordered her to get out of the car.

38:14 Now, there's several different accounts now of what actually

38:18 happened. And I actually think that

38:22 Joanne's account has been consistent across all of her

38:27 interviews, especially her official police interviews.

38:30 And then what she reported in court, where there's been an

38:35 introduction of a little bit of doubt in the story, has actually

38:39 been introduced by other media organizations in miss telling

38:43 the story. And I feel like Joanne from the

38:47 get go was vilified by the media.

38:49 Very much so. I just think of my heart

38:52 absolutely goes out to her so. There was one particular

38:56 headline where, and it was kind of a bit later into this to

38:58 this, but I was like, Oh my God, that's exactly what happened to

39:01 her. And it was called the headline

39:03 was the Linda Fication of Joanne Lee's.

39:06 And like, we're talking Linda Chamberlain, that whole idea of

39:10 immediately she's the one who's done this and jumping on her

39:14 when she's telling her story. Yeah.

39:17 I actually read that article. That you were.

39:20 Talking about And what they said was in this day and age, Lindy

39:24 Chamberlain would never have been convicted because every

39:29 eyewitness account said, yes, a dingo stole her baby like she

39:33 was here. You know, there were so many

39:35 eyewitness accounts, there was so much testimony.

39:37 But the police just decided that Lindy was guilty and she'd done

39:41 something to her baby, and there's no way a dingo could

39:43 have taken her baby. Yeah.

39:46 And. And that sounds really

39:47 unrealistic. Yes, realistic shit happens.

39:51 Absolutely, all of the time. And so they in this day and age,

39:54 obviously we've got better investigative measures.

39:56 And also I think the way we treat victims is very different.

40:00 Yeah. Even back when this happened,

40:02 you know, in 2001 to Joanne and to Peter, there was still that

40:08 sort of victimized. Like they they really the media

40:11 it was trial by media it. Really.

40:13 Yeah. And she'd look she'd do her own

40:15 self any favours either. But we can get to all of that

40:18 We. Can get to all of.

40:19 That yeah, but definitely yeah, the media just made a decision,

40:21 but the police made a bit of a decision too and they.

40:24 They did in the early days. I just feel that they didn't

40:27 have the expertise really. To yes.

40:31 To investigate this appropriately, Yeah.

40:34 And so I don't know that it was, you know, deliberate malice by

40:38 the. Police.

40:38 It was almost like, we know, like, this person has all the

40:41 answers, so they have to have the answers that actually get us

40:44 a result. And when her answers weren't

40:46 enough to give them a result, it was like, well, now you must be

40:49 not telling us everything. Yeah.

40:50 And it's like, well no, that person doesn't know enough to

40:53 give you the answers because she was a victim in this and

40:56 traumatized. Traumatized.

40:57 Yeah. Like, we'll, we'll get to this.

40:59 Yeah, actually. So she then is taken out of the

41:02 car. Yeah.

41:03 By this perpetrator, who she assumes has killed Peter because

41:07 she's calling out to him and there's no response.

41:09 Yeah. He then she tries to duct tape

41:13 her mouth, gets the duct taping stuck in her hair because she

41:17 was. Fighting.

41:18 The entire time so hard he tried he then cable tied her hands

41:25 with a very particular already pre made cable tied handcuffs

41:31 essentially weren't they Yeah. So these were pre made.

41:35 When I say that they were, you can.

41:37 Find photos of them, I'll pop some up like.

41:39 They were already joined together with duct tape and then

41:43 they were ready to go. So they.

41:44 Looked around each other and they.

41:45 Had to just slot their hands in and pull like it was ready.

41:48 To ready to go? Yeah.

41:49 Pre meditated stuff? Absolutely yeah.

41:52 So or there for some reason. Isn't it?

41:56 Yep. I don't know why you'd need to

41:57 have homemade handcuffs in your car otherwise.

42:02 So Joanne is fighting this perpetrator.

42:05 He's trying to then bind her legs as well, but she's kicked

42:09 curiously. So he ended up putting a bag

42:13 over her head, I guess to try and, I don't know, disorient

42:17 her. He couldn't kind of get her

42:19 under his, you know, you know, get her under his will in any

42:23 other way. So he's popped a bag over her

42:24 head and she says she actually doesn't know how, but she ended

42:28 up in the tray of his car. So he was driving a what we now

42:32 know to be a Toyota. Oh God.

42:36 I can find it. Here we go.

42:37 Toyota 4 wheel drive it just says but with a canopy.

42:40 So it had a canvas canopy. So it was a Ute with a hard

42:45 backed Ute Yeah, with a canvas canopy.

42:48 And what the media piece. Toyota Land Cruiser Land.

42:51 Oh, there you go. A 1991 to 1999 white Toyota Land

42:55 Cruiser. Peter, I wonder whether it was a

42:57 79? What does that freaking mean?

43:01 When you've got a land, oh, you would.

43:02 Be yes. Yeah, I wouldn't get it.

43:04 Freeze the dwarf. Wish I did.

43:10 Like I know what. I'm talking about.

43:11 I actually don't. Peter will be like, oh God, it

43:14 wouldn't be a 79, it's a blah blah, blah.

43:16 Anyway, sorry, Peter in advance. So what The thing is, is there's

43:22 a hard back on it. So there's no way to get from

43:24 the cabin of the Ute into the tray of the Ute?

43:27 Yeah, some media reported that Joanne stated that she crawled

43:33 in from the cabin of the Ute which is where she was placed

43:36 into the tray of the Ute. But what she says happened is

43:42 that he basically lifted up the canvas and put her into the

43:45 tray. So people are like, well, which

43:48 one was it? Well, no, no, no, Joanne never

43:49 said that she went in from no. And also she was freaking

43:53 traumatized. And this is the thing that never

43:55 gets taken into account. Like, you know that, Yeah, like,

43:57 somehow, somehow I was moved from here to here.

44:00 Like but she's fighting and like at the same time and trying to

44:03 remember what happened over. Her head, she doesn't can't sit

44:05 like it won't be and it's pitch black.

44:07 Yes. Anyway, yeah, so she actually

44:11 ends up escaping and she says. Slides herself down the back of

44:15 the the tray of the unit the the Ute sorry and climbs out.

44:20 And then she just bolts it. So she again not knowing, I

44:25 think she was able to kind of be able to see get the.

44:28 She managed to get the bag off because her hands were bound,

44:31 but in front of her. And whether or not in the back

44:33 of the Ute whether they were done behind her and then in the

44:36 back of the she's managed to get them around, you know, pull her

44:38 feet up and and under and over and get them in front of her.

44:40 I'm not sure. Or whether he just did bind them

44:43 in front of her or were they behind her?

44:45 No, they were behind her until she got to the Bush.

44:47 She got the books. That's right.

44:48 Yeah. So yeah, she's got them because

44:50 I know they were. Behind her I think she's like

44:52 been able to like use a shoulder or something to unhook, like to

44:55 basically get the head. Back this hedge and whatever and

44:59 get it off, yeah. She then ran into absolute pitch

45:02 black darkness. Now there's a lot of salt scrub

45:05 around. It's very low levels.

45:06 When we're talking Bush, we're out in the Outback.

45:09 That doesn't mean that it's like bushland, bushland or doesn't

45:12 mean that it's overgrown either. Like as in like it's quite

45:15 sparse. Like there's there are little

45:17 bushes everywhere, but, and they're not tall.

45:19 They're not, so it's to hide in. This would not be easy,

45:23 especially. In the pitch black, not being

45:25 able to see where. You're not seeing where you're

45:27 going, but also knowing this person potentially could pull a

45:29 light out, which does, you know, to try and hide in.

45:33 This is not easy. It's very barren.

45:36 Yeah. It's not lush.

45:38 It's not gonna cover you. Exactly.

45:40 There's not. Really many places to hide but

45:42 she manages to find somewhere. So I read somewhere that she

45:45 ran, She ended up only being about 35 meters back from the

45:49 road, but she'd run so much further because she went

45:53 diagonally. Yeah.

45:54 And so she thought she'd run like at a 90° angle and was

45:59 running away but. She actually disorientated.

46:02 Of course, yeah, but she ended up stumbling upon a.

46:06 Bush, salt Bush. A salt Bush that she felt like

46:08 she could kind of hide behind. Buried herself in there and got

46:12 as small as she possibly could. Yeah, she tried to control her

46:14 breathing because she knew that she was so that.

46:16 I mean, you're gonna hear the smallest amount of noise because

46:20 there is just nothing out there. So she said she was really

46:23 careful of her breathing because she knew that if someone walked

46:25 near her, they would hear her, you know, breathing that she was

46:29 like, I've got to stop. I've got to like calm like so

46:31 that I can stay quiet and not make a sound.

46:34 Having the presence of mind to do that, oh man.

46:36 And being so extremely terrified when the perpetrator put her

46:41 into the tray, she was asking him questions and saying things

46:45 like, are you going to rape me? What happened to Peter?

46:48 Did you murder Peter? And she reports that she heard

46:54 dragging sounds. So once she's been sort of

46:57 situated in the salt Bush, she heard dragging sounds like

47:01 something being dragged along the gravel and then a torch

47:07 being shown in her direction. And the perpetrator had a dog

47:12 with him. And she said that the dog was

47:17 looking for her and not doing an amazing job of it.

47:21 But we kind of know now why the dog that.

47:25 So we'll we'll say that, you know, Bradley John Murdoch was

47:29 eventually charged for this. Joanne said that the gun that

47:34 was pointed in her face was like a Western style gun.

47:37 This person was very tall. He had a like a Mexican style

47:41 mustache A. Loop down like mustache?

47:44 Yeah. And he was quite imposing.

47:47 She also mentioned things about his hair that the detectives

47:52 actually found really fascinating.

47:54 They said that his hair, she said that his hair was kind of

47:56 sparkly. And I can imagine like he did

47:59 have salt and pepper type hair. So he had quite a few Grays in

48:03 there that I imagine in the moonlight, one of them sparkly.

48:06 So she had like quite a quite a convincing and fairly detailed

48:14 account of what had gone on. Well, even though it's not just

48:17 like the so the picture they come out with when she describes

48:20 who the perpetrator was is as much as everyone looked at it

48:24 and went that could be half the people who live out this way.

48:27 It was actually very accurate to the person who end up being

48:30 convicted of this. That's right.

48:32 So as much as. Yeah, like it might look like

48:34 every other one out there. Yeah.

48:35 She was very accurate, too. Yeah.

48:37 So. She described the dog as being

48:39 she wasn't quite sure but she said it had spots and she said

48:44 maybe like a cattle type dog. But then.

48:46 There's a few issues with the the dog that which we can get

48:48 to. But yeah, one being that when

48:50 she was asked that question, the police officer said to her, oh,

48:53 like, like that one over there and appointed to a particular

48:56 type of dog, which wasn't the kind of dog that probably John

49:00 Murdoch had. And she just went yeah, yeah,

49:03 yeah, yeah. Like that, like kind of like

49:05 that, which I mean spots in those sort of moments.

49:07 Yeah, it had spots. But she was like, yeah, kind of

49:10 like that. Like, I guess, you know, and you

49:12 know, that's she might have been thinking that he was inferring

49:15 to the size of that dog, not the breed of the dog, you know, or

49:19 the colouring or I mean, there's a lot of combinations that make

49:23 up a kind of dog. So whether in the moment she's

49:26 gone. Yeah, yeah, it was kind of that

49:28 size when he's taken it as you know, Oh, that exact breed, that

49:32 exact looking dog. So it's it's that that throws

49:36 off a few things. I think the dog, but.

49:38 It does, but yeah, they, I don't think that can really be used in

49:41 evidence because she was. She was, she was

49:44 inappropriately, you know, yeah. Suggested in places.

49:46 So yeah, it wasn't great policing, no.

49:49 Yeah, in that moment we also know that.

49:52 So Brad Bradley Murdoch had a Dalmatian cross dog, which is

49:58 not really a cat. The.

49:59 Kind of dog you normally see out that way, not in the Outback.

50:02 They're not known for being good hunters or trackers or anything

50:06 like that. They're not.

50:06 So they're just brightest of dogs.

50:07 No, I think they're gorgeous. No, yeah, absolutely gorgeous,

50:11 but not known for their intelligence or their tracking

50:13 abilities. So the fact that the dog didn't

50:15 find Joanne? It's not shocking, isn't

50:17 shocking. And I think that just goes even

50:20 further to the fact that this was him.

50:23 Yeah, well, apparently other people also commented on saying

50:25 like his talk was really dumb. Yeah.

50:27 So he probably would have left it in the in the car and like,

50:29 you know, that wouldn't have even bothered getting it out

50:31 some in some ways because it wouldn't have done any good.

50:35 Yeah. Apparently when Murdoch was

50:37 looking for Joanne with the torch, she she that like he did

50:44 shine the torch near the Bush that she was hiding behind and

50:47 he didn't see her. How that happened I do not even

50:51 know. Like she in some ways is just so

50:54 lucky for that sequence of events.

50:57 The torch then goes, she hears a car turn on and she from the

51:01 sound of it, she knows it's their combi van that's being

51:04 being turned on and being moved. The combi van is turned off so

51:09 she hears a drive away from her N so the way they were

51:14 travelling and then she doesn't hear anything and then she hears

51:19 somebody coming back and another car turning on and then using

51:24 the headlights like moving the car so that the headlights of

51:27 the car look out to where she is.

51:29 Obviously this perpetrator is looking for her again.

51:33 He finds nothing, and he. Drives eventually he drives away

51:37 he sort of like fakes it a little bit and like and waits

51:39 for it to come out he turns everything off as if he's

51:41 disappeared but he hadn't to see if he can kind of like, I think

51:45 coax her out sort of to kind of go oh, you know, she thinks I've

51:48 gone she'll walk out yeah but she didn't she just stayed there

51:51 and I to be honest, she can she stayed there until and waited

51:54 for until she heard the noise of another car coming by well

51:57 because. She heard, she heard the noise,

51:59 yeah, of the car. And she thought, well, that

52:01 might be somebody using cahoots with him, or might be him again.

52:05 And so she actually waited until she heard the sound of a Rd.

52:08 Train, Rd. train because she knew then it would be different.

52:10 It was a different, you know, vehicle that and like Rd.

52:12 trains, if you haven't seen one, they are huge and they make a

52:16 lot of noise. There is no mistaking them.

52:18 And so she's obviously experienced enough in terms of

52:21 these roads of what she's been on to understand what that would

52:23 be. And there's plenty of them that

52:26 run up down that route. And so to hear one of those, she

52:29 could have very easily known that that was what it was.

52:31 And the lights coming off of them as well.

52:32 There's a lot of lights. Very well.

52:34 Yeah. Because for the reason of, like,

52:35 they are very dangerous. They're not easy to stop.

52:38 They once they're a bit like a real train, like on train tracks

52:41 that they are so heavy, yeah, that to put a brake on and slam

52:44 brakes on and stop isn't quite that easy.

52:47 They they just keep plowing through.

52:49 So you do, they do need to have, you know, breakdown, you know,

52:52 using gears, et cetera, to better do that.

52:54 So there. She says that she was waiting in

52:57 that Bush for about four hours, yeah, before the road train

53:00 came. And so we're sort of heading

53:01 into. Was it about 2:00 in the

53:03 morning? I.

53:03 Think I think 1 o'clockish, yeah.

53:06 So she's run out onto the road, flagged down the driver of the

53:10 train, saw her yeah and alerted his Co driver who was asleep in

53:14 the. Well, he actually says he

53:15 doesn't, he saw something and didn't know what it was.

53:17 He actually, he actually it wasn't even to the point like he

53:20 saw a woman. He was like, there's some figure

53:22 he was because he's so high up off the road too that he saw

53:26 this thing on the road that he's like, Oh my God, like what the

53:29 hell is that? And did slam the brakes on and

53:32 broke, broke down and he actually assumed that he had

53:34 driven over whatever it was that had come out onto the road.

53:38 So he jumped out to thinking. He immediately then looked under

53:40 the truck because he was like, I've, I haven't been able to

53:42 stop him. I've run over.

53:43 It it took him a kilometre to stop.

53:45 Yeah, yeah, that's how how long it takes, yeah.

53:47 Kilometre to come to a complete stop.

53:49 Yeah, by that stage, Joanne was running towards him.

53:53 Yeah. And yelling out towards him.

53:55 He sounds like the loveliest bloke but if you shouldn't be

53:58 stopped they can stop any road train.

54:01 This is the guy to have had jump out of that truck because I have

54:04 absolutely Rodney Vince there was also there's 2 so there's

54:08 obviously Vince. Vince was no, no, Vince was one

54:10 driving. OK, Rodney was asleep.

54:12 So he always drive with two because they do they drive in

54:14 shifts and they don't stop really like they just keep

54:16 going. Rodney's asleep in the canopy at

54:18 the back. We actually don't know his

54:19 surname. Vince is has been public and and

54:22 so we do know his surname, but I can't think of it off the same.

54:25 But yeah, so Vince was, he was, he's been, he's in.

54:29 He's interviewed in a number of places.

54:31 Yeah. God, so lovely.

54:32 I remember like watching, thinking like at the time going,

54:35 oh, God, Paul, Joanne Lee's like, what's she gonna get

54:37 coming out of this truck now? I'd be terrified.

54:40 But then when I saw him interviewed, I was like, Oh my

54:42 God, what a beautiful man. And even it sounds to me like,

54:46 not that we've seen Rodney, but he was very similar of, you

54:49 know, ilk of obviously very similar men.

54:51 Just really, they were so lovely to her to the point where I kind

54:56 of a bit concerned for preserving evidence of the

55:00 scene, unfortunately. But I thought they were doing

55:02 the wrong. Absolutely.

55:03 Because they they saw that he looked under the truck to try

55:06 and find whatever hell he'd run over.

55:08 And he said all of a sudden across from the other side of

55:11 the truck, this body appeared and ran towards him under the

55:14 truck. So you can literally walk under

55:17 them, they're that high up. And she did, she came from

55:19 underneath to him, just fell into him.

55:22 She was terrified. So he just like was like, my

55:25 God, like this random woman out in the middle of nowhere.

55:28 What the hell? And he's taking one look at her

55:31 and knowing that there's something awful has happened.

55:33 She's got cuts and bruises all over her.

55:35 I mean, she is bleeding, she's got her knees are all gums

55:38 scratched up and her legs and everything.

55:40 And then her hands are bound in front of her.

55:43 And this point, Rodney is woken by the noise and things of

55:46 what's going out and he comes out as well.

55:48 So they do, they cut off her, the the ties around her arms,

55:53 which and then they also come take off of her.

55:55 The the duct tape that had got she.

55:57 It wasn't over her mouth because he couldn't get it on her

56:00 because she kept moving so much, but it was stuck around her neck

56:03 and it was on so tight that he had to like get his little

56:05 finger in there to try and get it.

56:07 So he didn't cut her. And he, because he's even said

56:09 this, Rodney, he was like, I was so scared I was going to create

56:13 more injuries to this poor woman who'd clearly been through hell,

56:17 like. There was duct taping her hair,

56:19 too, like there was just so much going on.

56:22 Yeah. They ended up driving her to the

56:24 Barrow Creek Motel Hotel. There's absolutely no service by

56:29 the way out where they were. So there wasn't like they could

56:31 just jump on the, on a radio or anything and contact somebody.

56:35 They had to get to the nearest, you know, town.

56:38 I. Think Barrow Creek has a

56:39 population of 11 people at the minute.

56:42 I think had a population of 20 back then.

56:44 Yeah. So it's barely a hamlet, really.

56:47 Yeah. Yeah, but it was the nearest

56:49 sort of waypoint, so they've taken Joanne there and called

56:54 the Alice Springs police. Who hung up on them?

56:58 Twice because they thought it was a joke.

57:02 Because it didn't sound believable.

57:05 Anyway, they eventually managed to convince them that this was

57:09 real, and so they sent detectives out.

57:12 The next day, yes, so early the next morning, but they weren't

57:16 exactly like on foot immediately.

57:19 They arrived at about 4:30 in the morning.

57:22 So we're talking, they rang them, I believe the contact was

57:24 made at about 1:30 in the morning.

57:26 And so they weren't rushing out their kind of stuff from their

57:29 nearest point. They didn't start the search out

57:33 to the actual site until 7:30 in the morning.

57:37 I guess they. Needed daylight I I can kind of

57:39 understand that they've come to Bear Creek they've.

57:41 It would mean daylight at 4:30 like would mean enough light at

57:44 4:30. They've listened to Joanne's

57:46 story and then they've obviously had to go out and, and find what

57:49 whatever it is that they were looking for, which I guess they

57:53 didn't really know. But even that this was all

57:56 botched, I I can kind of understand the the time between

58:00 four, 1:30 and 4:30 for them to get there because they had to go

58:03 from Alice Springs to Barrack Creek, which is like 3 odd 100

58:07 kilometers. That's a long way to go.

58:09 Yeah. So I can understand the time

58:11 there. I don't really understand why

58:16 they didn't go out and secure the scene straight away, even if

58:19 they couldn't process anything. Yeah.

58:21 But then the other thing was though, Joanne wasn't 100% sure

58:24 exactly where it all took place, but the truck drivers, they were

58:28 they, they, they, they would travel up and down there for

58:32 they basically knew exactly where they picked her up from.

58:34 Yeah. So yeah, that that I find.

58:38 Yeah. And we should say too, that when

58:39 they obviously got to Borough Creek, they cleaned her down

58:42 like they cleaned her off, which again comes into play in terms

58:46 of I guess the fact of like that the the police at this point

58:49 when they get to the scene and they see her, they don't find a

58:52 lot of evidence of anything of these things.

58:55 Because, yeah, potentially, potentially any DNA or anything

58:59 of like that sort of thing or blood maybe from the perpetrator

59:02 is potentially being washed off in that process of them doing

59:05 that. That's what I mean by when I

59:06 said they were so lovely, these guys, but that I don't know.

59:09 They preserved a scene, unfortunately.

59:11 So I. Think they were trying to care

59:12 for her, yeah, all the blood off her and yeah, all of that kind

59:15 of stuff. But I think I'm.

59:17 I'm sure. Evidence, I think that evidence

59:18 was lost in that unfortunately, black people like then cliched

59:22 really, really clutched to the fact of like, oh, there was no

59:24 evidence on her. There was, you know, that we

59:26 find very minimal, you know, that on her there was no, you

59:29 know, if she was fighting so much and all this sort of thing

59:31 and kicking around like surely he touched her and surely he

59:33 left, you know, hair or something on her.

59:36 But if it was, it could have been washed off, you know, in

59:39 that process, so. So she'd spent 4 hours in the

59:41 freezing cold Bush Yeah you know, God only knows what

59:46 actually happened to any evidence that was on her Yeah

59:48 would have been potentially wiped off.

59:50 Who knows? So yeah, they they start to

59:55 process the scene. They interviewed Joanne and

59:59 trying to figure out what happened.

1:00:02 What they found when they got to the scene were three small pools

1:00:07 of blood. Yeah, around about 250 mills of.

1:00:10 Blood, yeah, it wasn't that. It's not an insignificant

1:00:12 amount, but I guess if you're thinking somebody's being shot,

1:00:15 that seems like not a lot of blood, but especially if they've

1:00:18 been shot in the head. But it's but to me, if you've

1:00:20 been if you they're shot and then you can maybe answer this.

1:00:23 If they've been shot dead one shot like in the close range

1:00:27 kind of shot that would have happened, would that mean

1:00:30 there's no blood pumping around the body?

1:00:31 So not a lot of blood. Maybe would be.

1:00:33 Present and also like if the bullet hadn't exited his body,

1:00:37 yes, like there's no. Exit wound.

1:00:39 Had, you know, then there's not a lot of space for blood to be

1:00:42 coming out. Yeah.

1:00:44 And then he. Might how?

1:00:45 Quickly he got him into the back of his Ute as.

1:00:49 Well, because my other thought was too in terms of that of the

1:00:53 blood evidence. So, OK, yes, he had a gun when

1:00:57 she came, he came to the the door like, you know, to her.

1:01:00 But is there anything saying that it was definitely a

1:01:02 gunshot? I mean, if you've never heard a

1:01:03 gunshot before, which Joanne Leigh's had not and she she

1:01:07 mistake mistakenly thought it was even the the combi

1:01:10 backfiring. I mean, we're only concluding

1:01:13 that we are assuming there was a gunshot.

1:01:15 Could it have been that he was smacked over the head with

1:01:18 something and the bang was actually that then hitting the

1:01:21 combi? You know, like, say he had, I

1:01:23 don't know, a plank of wood or something, and he smacked him

1:01:25 that hard over the head and that, yeah, killed him.

1:01:28 But that may not leave then an injury.

1:01:30 It's crushed the skull, what have you, but it may not include

1:01:34 much blood. Absolutely.

1:01:36 I mean, we don't know. Nice.

1:01:38 To this day, I guess it's worth noting that Peters body has

1:01:42 never been found. Yeah, so we don't.

1:01:44 Actually know what? Is what happened.

1:01:46 What his cause of death was that to me there's we're still

1:01:50 leaving ourselves open here of like you.

1:01:52 Can still fire a gun up in the air if, you know, if you want a

1:01:55 gunshot sound to, yeah, be heard or whatever.

1:01:58 I mean, I don't know. But, you know, you could also, I

1:02:01 guess, shoot down into somebody's body.

1:02:04 Oh, true. I hadn't even thought of that.

1:02:05 Yeah, and he was a tall man. He could have definitely done

1:02:07 that. And then not, not have as much

1:02:10 blood. Blood necessarily.

1:02:12 I don't know. Yeah.

1:02:14 I mean, we, we don't know. Yeah, there's so many.

1:02:16 There's many possibilities. Yeah.

1:02:18 I mean, a lot of, again, a lot of people say, you know, there

1:02:19 wasn't enough blood to think that he'd been killed.

1:02:22 But I think there's plenty of reasons to think that.

1:02:25 I don't think that's the thing. Yeah.

1:02:26 DNA testing was done on the blood and it was definitely

1:02:29 Pedophile Conio's blood that they found on the side of the

1:02:31 road. And if you'll lose, if you do

1:02:33 lose 250 mils of blood, I mean, it's significant.

1:02:36 Like it would be a. Lot of blood, I mean.

1:02:37 It'd be enough to what to say, you know, that person could be

1:02:39 dead. Like, it's not like we're saying

1:02:41 like there was only a couple of drops.

1:02:43 There's no way that person would be dead from that.

1:02:44 Like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they found the combi had

1:02:48 been like driven up the road and parked off to the side of the

1:02:52 road. Yeah, about 80 meters into the

1:02:54 scrub, it had been moved in in there, which is a bit of an odd

1:02:56 one, like what's still visible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:03:00 When you could have moved it probably 100 kilometers into the

1:03:03 Yeah, and you still would have seen it, the bright.

1:03:05 Orange Combi. Absolutely.

1:03:08 Yeah. So there's the pool of blood.

1:03:09 And the other thing that that was noted was that they

1:03:11 obviously they found Joanne Lisa's footprints in that Bush

1:03:15 where she'd hidden for like 4 hours.

1:03:18 So that's, you know, she's been there in a one spot, you know,

1:03:22 really putting her feet in there, you know, planting

1:03:24 herself to like for safety. So not shocked that you know,

1:03:27 you would find footprints there. However, they noted that there

1:03:31 were no other footprints that they would they found in the

1:03:34 scene where they were like, oh, if someone was searching around

1:03:37 that space, you'd see footprints of the dog or this person

1:03:40 walking around. Now The thing is you don't also

1:03:44 find Joanne Lee's footprints of her running towards this this

1:03:48 salt Bush either. So the dust and everything about

1:03:52 there, a bit of a wind could have come through and like and

1:03:54 it could have blown away any, any of those footprints.

1:03:57 Yeah, they would have been there when they first you first walked

1:03:59 there. But it would wouldn't take much

1:04:01 for them to disappear so. Yes, to me that's a moot point.

1:04:05 Like it's. Same.

1:04:06 Footprints weren't there either. Like why?

1:04:08 Why is that even a? Because.

1:04:09 People latched onto the fact that that his footprints weren't

1:04:12 there and the dog's footprints weren't there.

1:04:14 Well, neither were Joanne's. The only ones that Joanne's were

1:04:16 found were where she planted her feet for four hours.

1:04:21 Yes, they would have been dug into that ground, you know,

1:04:23 like, yes, of course they were there.

1:04:25 The others not being there does not indicate that this didn't

1:04:28 happen and and that she's telling any lies.

1:04:31 Yeah, I think it actually backs her story that she hid there for

1:04:35 a very long time. Yeah.

1:04:37 Yeah. And why would you do that if no

1:04:39 one was chasing you? Yeah.

1:04:41 For. Sure.

1:04:41 Mm. Hmm.

1:04:42 For sure. All right, all righty.

1:04:46 So the police are processing the scene, I guess.

1:04:51 And Joanne, because all of her belongings, everything she had

1:04:55 was in that combi and it was now a crime scene.

1:04:58 Yeah. She had no access to any of her

1:05:00 things. And I'm talking no money.

1:05:02 Like her bag, her wallet, everything, Everything she

1:05:04 owned, every worldly possession she had in Australia was in that

1:05:08 van. Yeah.

1:05:09 Clothes, toiletries, everything. So the police organized for her

1:05:16 to be able to go and do some shopping so that she could get

1:05:18 just, you know, some essentials. Yeah.

1:05:21 And she went and bought what she needed with a police officer.

1:05:26 So with two things on it, because I know where you're

1:05:28 getting with it. One of those things, though,

1:05:30 that I'll just say beforehand was that she was photographed

1:05:32 doing that. And even in the media was then

1:05:34 like, oh, she's out shopping when her boyfriend's missing.

1:05:39 Hello. Freaking hell, she needed

1:05:41 things. What?

1:05:42 There wasn't many places to go shopping where she, you know,

1:05:44 they were out in the middle of nowhere, you know, like, so

1:05:47 she'd got. Yeah, she'd gone shopping to go

1:05:49 and get things because she desperately needed something.

1:05:51 She needed things. I mean, it just blows my mind

1:05:56 how cruel the media were. Agreed.

1:05:58 Yeah, she bought some clothes. Now I'm gonna just put it out

1:06:02 there and assume that there wasn't a lot in her size to

1:06:05 choose from. I'm giving her to the benefit of

1:06:07 the doubt here because one of the things she chose to buy it

1:06:11 was this pink cheeky monkey T-shirt that has now become

1:06:15 infamous. On the front of it, I'll put a

1:06:17 photo up, it says yeah, it said Cheeky monkey right across the

1:06:20 chest of it. And this is the the T-shirt that

1:06:23 she well chooses, I'll put in, you know, chooses to wear she.

1:06:27 Did choose to wear it. She had more than one tee.

1:06:29 She'd have more than one and look, and apparently, according

1:06:31 to the the lead investigator for this, who gonna get her name

1:06:36 right, Colleen Gwen. Now she, I should say she came

1:06:39 on board as the lead investigator about six months

1:06:40 into this, but she was part of the team from the get go.

1:06:45 Now apparently she remembers, even though at the time when

1:06:48 they were walking out to this media press, turning to Joanne

1:06:51 Lee's and saying to her, you sure you want to wear that

1:06:54 T-shirt? And she just went, yeah, I'm

1:06:56 wearing this. She's.

1:06:57 Like, OK, apparently someone said to her, I've got a black

1:07:00 T-shirt you can borrow. And she was like, no, this is

1:07:02 fine. Yeah, which I mean in her, like

1:07:05 I in some ways I get it in that she was probably like, what are

1:07:09 you talking about? What's wrong with my T-shirt?

1:07:11 She wasn't thinking straight. She was not in any way.

1:07:16 I don't know then. Then wouldn't you be like, Oh

1:07:18 well, if they're telling me not to wear this T-shirt?

1:07:19 From but I don't know how forceful they were with it.

1:07:22 You know what I mean? I'm not sure what I mean.

1:07:24 It was definitely mentioned. Yeah.

1:07:26 But to what degree, I don't know.

1:07:28 Yeah. And this is where that Colleen

1:07:29 Gwen, she actually says she uses it now in in her teachings of

1:07:34 young up and coming constables and things of, you know, the

1:07:37 media and how that can be portrayed and that they do more.

1:07:41 They are far more vigilant in maybe helping people choose

1:07:47 appropriate clothing for those kind of events because it can

1:07:50 really change the, the spin the media have on a case where the

1:07:54 police are wanting to take it in a completely different way.

1:07:57 So they, they, they do apparently do have better

1:08:00 protocols around that now. I mean, not that you're going to

1:08:03 be telling someone not to be who they are either.

1:08:07 I have an issue with people dictating how what other people

1:08:09 wear. So I know I fully really that.

1:08:13 I fully agree with that. But yeah, I also think the

1:08:16 optics of that, I can see why people took that the wrong way.

1:08:21 Yeah, but she was a 7 year old girl.

1:08:24 I don't know I I see from both perspective.

1:08:25 It's totally her partner's missing.

1:08:28 She probably was like who gives a fuck?

1:08:29 Who gives a shit on what I mean? Doesn't actually matter.

1:08:32 No, and I think that's I mean, unfortunately, I think that's

1:08:34 what him where her mindset was at.

1:08:36 Yeah, probably. And no and no, in no way, shape

1:08:39 or form did she have in her mind, oh, the media might look

1:08:42 at me and think about me in a certain way for wearing this

1:08:46 T-shirt. Although the media had already

1:08:49 started to hound her and write not very nice things about her.

1:08:54 Awful, horrid. So by this stage, Paul Falconeo,

1:08:59 Peter's brother, had come out to well, I guess it's almost as a

1:09:04 bit of a family spokesperson and to support Joanne.

1:09:09 And when they fronted this press conference, the media thought

1:09:13 they were going to hear from Joanne.

1:09:14 But I mean, I guess they did. But it was Pete, it was Paul who

1:09:19 read a statement from Joanne. Yeah, The media were asking

1:09:23 Joanne lots of different types of questions.

1:09:26 And she, well, in a lot of the things that I've read and you

1:09:29 can watch these press conferences on YouTube.

1:09:31 So have a look and see what you think.

1:09:34 But there's some media reports where she's like looking down

1:09:37 her nose at people and, you know, she's very aloof and not,

1:09:41 not engaged. I mean, I think she was still in

1:09:44 shock at this point. I think she was so traumatized

1:09:47 by the events that she'd been through.

1:09:49 She just had to get through that.

1:09:51 She was participating in these, in this, you know, media circus

1:09:56 essentially for to try and find what had happened to Peter,

1:10:01 whether anybody could come forward with any information or

1:10:04 whether anybody knew anything. She was doing her best.

1:10:08 But at the same, I think at the same time as like there's the

1:10:11 media and how they're treating her, but there's also the hell

1:10:15 the police were treating her, which I think she was already

1:10:19 feeling not she wasn't being treated like a victim.

1:10:22 She was being treated like a potential perpetrator.

1:10:25 And so she was already defensive of like by how the police were

1:10:27 treating her. And then to walk out into the

1:10:29 media and feel like, well, if the police are treating me this

1:10:32 way, am I being placed in a position of like, you know,

1:10:34 being put for put up for this, you know, and now there's

1:10:37 cameras that mean I'm not used to that.

1:10:39 I can only imagine how she would be feeling.

1:10:42 I mean horrible. But just like if the police

1:10:45 thought she was involved, what did they think had happened like

1:10:48 that? Nothing's come out about that as

1:10:50 in they, their theory, I think very quickly did turn to what

1:10:59 eventually went to trial or how it eventually went to trial.

1:11:03 But I just can't. I mean, I understand you've got

1:11:06 to look at the people closest to the victim first.

1:11:09 I do understand that. But then you've got in front of

1:11:13 you. But also very.

1:11:14 Traumatized. Petite woman little how did and

1:11:18 we don't have a body like what what on earth could she have

1:11:20 done with a body on her own? Like, yeah, how, how you

1:11:24 concluding? Well, there's no one else out

1:11:27 there. It's got to be in her who did

1:11:28 this. What's her motive?

1:11:29 What? Well, their only motive that

1:11:32 they were sort of, I guess could put forward was the fact that

1:11:33 there was this potentially having this affair with someone

1:11:36 in Sydney. Because at this point she does

1:11:38 continue to, you know, communicate with this person.

1:11:41 She does. They do discover that there's

1:11:42 emails between this person and her at this point.

1:11:46 So yeah, Pete's missing, but she's still communicating with

1:11:49 this this bloke, so and saying things like, hey, let's catch

1:11:52 up, you know? But I mean, yeah, let's catch

1:11:55 up. Like, I mean, you've been

1:11:55 through trauma. Like, jeez, someone want to be

1:11:58 there for you who's been a friend to you?

1:11:59 Like that doesn't sound inappropriate in a lot in some

1:12:02 ways to me either. She was.

1:12:03 Also emailing other friends saying exactly the same thing.

1:12:05 Yeah, like female friends. They really sort of spun this of

1:12:08 being like, you know, oh, they were trying like, you know,

1:12:10 rendezvous like, you know, like, yeah, it's like, well, no,

1:12:12 there's just this is her looking seeking for actual support from

1:12:16 actual friends, which the police were not being supportive.

1:12:21 You can see some of the the the recordings of the video in the

1:12:24 interviews with Joanne and they do speak to her atrociously.

1:12:30 It it's really not not good like.

1:12:33 And I'm not just talking early days either.

1:12:35 I can almost in a way, if they're trying to eliminate her,

1:12:38 I can kind of understand, you know, they've got a job to do

1:12:41 and yeah, they need to get to the bottom of what's happened.

1:12:45 But I'm talking months later when they're re interviewing her

1:12:49 and trying to confirm different details.

1:12:51 The way they speak to her is absolutely horrible.

1:12:54 When the that lead investigator then takes over though, the

1:12:57 whole tone does change the investigation.

1:13:00 And she she said she immediately she believed Joanne from the get

1:13:05 go. Like so she as I say, she was in

1:13:07 the team who was there on the first day as a uniformed police

1:13:10 officer. It was just that within the

1:13:13 first six months of this, she happened to be to get a

1:13:15 promotion and this became her her case.

1:13:18 And she was late investigator. So as much as she was now taking

1:13:21 over and she said she didn't really even realise that as the

1:13:23 uniformed police officer in this case, she didn't realise how bad

1:13:28 it was until she moved into that leadership role that she went,

1:13:32 holy crap, this has not been done well, Yeah, yeah.

1:13:35 Which is interesting to see how like from that different

1:13:38 perspective of even the role in the in the case, to have that

1:13:41 whole new, I guess, landscape in front of her of how this case

1:13:44 should be dealt with. Fully agree.

1:13:45 And unfortunately so far into it, I mean, six months down the

1:13:49 track of this, you know, trying to find someone it's.

1:13:52 Joanne had already gone back to the UK by the time she took over

1:13:55 the case and so she went over to the UK to formally interview

1:14:00 Joanne for herself. And she said when she first met

1:14:03 with Joanne back in the UK, Joanne was very standoffish.

1:14:07 But she was so burnt by the media and the previous

1:14:11 interactions with the police that it took a while for her to

1:14:15 come around. But eventually she did.

1:14:17 And I think it was that confidence that she was being

1:14:21 believed and that she was also a victim in this, and this was a

1:14:26 horrific thing for her to have to go through.

1:14:28 Yeah, because when they what they also do is not long after

1:14:32 this occurrence, the police take her out to the scene to re enact

1:14:36 it, which on the surface. Oh, good.

1:14:48 No, you're right. Blow.

1:14:49 My nose while I'm here. Sorry, no, you're right.

1:15:03 You're good. Yeah.

1:15:06 So on the surface, I can understand wanting to do that

1:15:09 because you can get a hell of a lot of information out of doing

1:15:11 and a reenactment of the of what took place to be able to

1:15:13 understand what they're looking for.

1:15:15 And, you know, and the possibility it might spark

1:15:17 something for her that she remembers being in that

1:15:19 position, you know, that that might bring out more information

1:15:22 for them. However, how fucking

1:15:26 traumatizing is that so soon after going through it as well?

1:15:33 I don't know if I could do that. I just.

1:15:36 Don't think there was any consideration.

1:15:38 From and yeah, this is the other thing.

1:15:40 It's the way they speak to her during it.

1:15:42 There's I think if you were going to do it and it was, you

1:15:44 know, you were like, right, we really need to do is

1:15:45 unfortunately, this is how we think we might be able to get

1:15:47 some more information. We're going to do this.

1:15:50 You need to do that with a real lens of we're dealing with

1:15:53 someone who's highly traumatized.

1:15:55 We're gonna need to step carefully.

1:15:57 She's gonna need to take as much time as she needs, you know, and

1:16:01 these two blokes particularly who are running her through

1:16:03 this. Oh my God.

1:16:05 They actually, there's a one point where she's in the car

1:16:08 explaining how he moved her across the seat or something.

1:16:11 And so he's in her face pretending to be the

1:16:13 perpetrator. And he's quite a big imposing

1:16:16 bloke. And he's like leaning over her

1:16:18 going, well, did you turn the car off or did he turn the car

1:16:20 off? And she's like, I, I can't

1:16:22 remember if I, I know he said that, but I can't remember if I

1:16:25 did it or if he did it. And so she's like frustrated

1:16:28 with herself for not being able to remember.

1:16:29 He's getting frustrated with her.

1:16:32 And then she like leans across the car a bit more and she

1:16:35 starts talking more about what happened and she just can't.

1:16:37 And she breaks down, leans forward and bursts into tears,

1:16:42 like, And she's just absolutely beside herself.

1:16:44 And you see these two guys in the camera shot, Oh, like,

1:16:48 rolling their eyes, like, oh, he's separated by it.

1:16:51 Here we go again. She's crying again.

1:16:53 Fuck me. Like yeah, yeah, she's crying.

1:16:57 I think if I had someone that imposing and also like even

1:17:01 dealing, if you've never dealt with the police, but yeah,

1:17:04 that's intimidating as well. Absolutely.

1:17:06 If you had any this police officer in your face and he was

1:17:09 yelling at you basically, like, what was it?

1:17:11 Well, did you do this or did he do this?

1:17:13 I'd be like, oh, I don't know, like I'd be so overwhelmed in

1:17:16 that room. And that's without the trauma

1:17:18 around. It the whole, you know, you

1:17:19 wanna say the right thing, 'cause you wanna be accurate,

1:17:21 you wanna say what was true. You don't wanna say something

1:17:23 that was, you know, that wasn't, it wasn't accurate.

1:17:26 And like, oh God, to have them pressuring you that you're

1:17:29 getting it right. Awful.

1:17:31 You know what that colleague Gwen did do as well when she

1:17:33 first got off, like given these cases hers, one thing that she

1:17:37 did was she took herself out there at a similar time of night

1:17:41 on her own, put herself in that salt Bush where where Joanne had

1:17:46 hid for four hours and really put herself in her shoes.

1:17:50 Like literally put herself in those where her shoes were in

1:17:53 that salt Bush to see how that would feel.

1:17:57 And she said I didn't have someone chasing me.

1:17:59 I didn't have Bradley John Murdoch looking for me with a

1:18:02 torch. But holy shit, it wasn't

1:18:04 comfortable and was definitely not definitely really, you know,

1:18:07 traumatic just sitting there like that because she there is

1:18:09 the strength in that girl to sit through that and get through

1:18:12 that. She had a whole new respect for

1:18:14 her. She said that when she did that,

1:18:16 the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own

1:18:19 heartbeat. Like that's how deathly silent

1:18:22 it is. Yeah, there's no other sound.

1:18:25 No. Oh, God.

1:18:28 Awful. Unbelievable.

1:18:29 Yeah. So I think unfortunately, poor

1:18:32 police work in those initial weeks in terms of securing the

1:18:35 scene, which they didn't do well enough because even by the time

1:18:39 they did bring in Indigenous trackers from the area who are

1:18:42 very good at looking for people and finding, you know, to even

1:18:45 find the body, let alone the person who perpetrated this.

1:18:47 That was something they definitely could have used at

1:18:50 that point. But by the time they even got

1:18:52 them there, there were that many police officers who'd walked

1:18:54 around that scene that even if there were footprints of

1:18:58 someone's to track, they had gone at that point.

1:19:01 So they they had just balls it up, I think, from the get go, in

1:19:05 that sense of just securing a scene.

1:19:08 Yeah, Let alone how they dealt with the victim.

1:19:11 Yeah, agreed. Agreed.

1:19:14 Awful. So in trying to identify the

1:19:18 perpetrator, the police, you know, started compiling a list

1:19:22 of, of different suspects. And when, what's the lead

1:19:27 detective's name? Colleen.

1:19:28 Colleen. When Colleen took over the case,

1:19:30 she says she asked for the top five top 10 suspects.

1:19:35 And that's where she was going to start.

1:19:37 Yeah. Eliminate 1 by 1.

1:19:38 And she said Bradley, John Murdoch was #2 and #3 on that

1:19:42 list for various different reasons.

1:19:46 Physically he kind of matched the description.

1:19:49 He was known to have been in Alice Springs at the time, which

1:19:52 was a little bit unusual for him because generally he travelled.

1:19:56 I mean, it depended. He did have, he did have runs

1:20:00 through Alice Springs, but not always.

1:20:02 He actually lived in Broome in WA and would more often than not

1:20:06 travel down to Adelaide. They.

1:20:09 Would do a drug run from Adelaide to Darwin quite

1:20:11 regularly too, yeah. He was, I mean, he had prior

1:20:18 convictions for. Certain things, yes.

1:20:21 Which I've got. Do you not get into that now?

1:20:24 Yeah, we can talk about who he is before we before we came

1:20:27 across him in this. Bradley John Murdoch was born on

1:20:31 the 19th of February 1958. He is currently serving life

1:20:37 imprisonment for the murder of Peter Falconio IS.

1:20:41 It is it 28 years he was. So he'll be eligible for parole

1:20:45 in 2032, right? Which is a little too soon for

1:20:48 my liking. Absolutely.

1:20:50 I I agree with that, yeah. Although I believe he's got

1:20:53 throat cancer and I think he's not not meant to survive the

1:20:56 year. Oh.

1:20:57 Really. Yeah, that'd be interesting.

1:20:58 About a couple of months ago. They don't think he'll survive

1:21:01 2025, so OK, let's just hope that is true.

1:21:05 Yeah, maybe. Now, his previous criminal

1:21:08 charges in 1980, when he was aged 21, he received a suspended

1:21:13 sentence after being convicted of causing death by dangerous

1:21:17 driving after hitting hitting a motorcyclist in Port Prairie in

1:21:22 SA. So reckless driving.

1:21:24 He was doing something stupid. I think he was actually, I think

1:21:28 he might have been intoxicated at the time or under the

1:21:30 influence at the time of killing, hitting and killing the

1:21:34 motorcyclist in November in 1995 S 15 years after that incident,

1:21:41 he started a 21 month imprisonment for the August 1995

1:21:49 incident where he and he was drunk and he shot at people who

1:21:53 were celebrating an Indigenous AFL round of football in Fitzroy

1:21:58 Crossing in the Kimberley region of WA.

1:22:01 He was released after 15 months. Yeah, so he displayed white

1:22:06 supremacist views on a number of things.

1:22:08 He actually has tattoos as well that represent those.

1:22:11 Yeah, absolutely. He apparently these views really

1:22:15 became quite extreme once following the 1992 Marbo

1:22:19 decision. So that really triggered that

1:22:22 for him. And he so definitely got some

1:22:24 real racist views. He, he moved around that top end

1:22:28 area though in the communities from about the late 90s and he

1:22:33 was living in Derby, which I've been to Derby and not much

1:22:36 there, but he was running like sort of he was driving a, a, a

1:22:42 train, a road train. He was driving those.

1:22:46 But in that he was running narcotics at the same time as

1:22:49 doing that job. So he would find any way

1:22:51 possible to sort of, I think slip in his bit of his, his

1:22:54 criminal activities within working a proper job or

1:22:57 whatever. And that was when he sort of

1:22:59 settled in Broome at that point. So he was just in on everything

1:23:05 like. Yeah, he he was a really, I

1:23:08 mean, he's he's not a good bloke.

1:23:10 Some might say piece of shit. Ohh, some.

1:23:12 Might. Some might.

1:23:14 Yeah, Very, very much. I mean, prior to his conviction

1:23:18 of this, he was definitely known as a violent man, you know, and

1:23:22 known for, you know, criminal activity, so.

1:23:25 Domestic violence. So he was married.

1:23:26 He married a woman named Diane, I think in 1980.

1:23:30 Yep. They had a son in 1984 and they

1:23:34 ended up separating because of his extreme perpetration of

1:23:39 domestic violence against Diane and I believe their.

1:23:41 Son And you know what date it was that they separated?

1:23:45 Yeah, it was on the 14th of July, which is the same day.

1:23:49 That Peter Falconio. Peter Falconio went missing,

1:23:51 disappeared, yeah. Presumed dead.

1:23:53 Was he so that's that's that's is that a trigger point for him

1:23:57 of like, because apparently, you know, like the separation with

1:24:00 his wife. He he was not he was not happy

1:24:02 about the. Separation OK with.

1:24:03 It No, not at all. He was not OK with it.

1:24:05 She ended up having to escape him, basically.

1:24:08 Yeah. And I believe they hid for a

1:24:10 while. He didn't see his son for years.

1:24:12 Oh. Because actually that really

1:24:13 pissed me off. I was watching that.

1:24:15 There's a documentary called Murders in the Outback.

1:24:19 No, yeah, the Outback murders. No, which one is?

1:24:21 He's called murder, Murder in the Outback, Murder in the yeah,

1:24:23 Murder in the Outback. And so there's this particular,

1:24:27 he's an ex lawyer who has represented many of the

1:24:34 underworld and all that sort of thing.

1:24:36 He's a defense lawyer from from way back.

1:24:39 And there's a moment in it where he says, you know, oh, I just

1:24:41 really want to help pay to get Bradley get out of jail so he

1:24:44 can be with his with his son. Sorry, what?

1:24:48 No, no, that kid could he could probably really do better.

1:24:51 Like probably not being around him I think.

1:24:53 He's probably doing all right with his.

1:24:54 Son, Yeah, Yeah, I don't know. Yes.

1:24:57 So Andrew Fraser, the the lawyer who he has a very strong view

1:25:03 that Bradley Murdoch did not commit this.

1:25:08 He thinks that there's, there's some holes in, in the, in this

1:25:11 conviction, which many people, you know, do side with that.

1:25:15 And he's got a few very good points, to be honest, in, you

1:25:17 know, in terms of like some aspects of this case that I

1:25:20 think maybe they did get wrong would add up in total.

1:25:24 Don't know about that. But anyway we can get to all

1:25:27 those things. But so he was, he was a very

1:25:29 well well known defence lawyer for a very long time, as I say,

1:25:33 represented in Melbourne. He represented many of our

1:25:35 underworld in court, but he got caught up himself in some

1:25:39 trouble and he was done for. Importing cocaine in artworks

1:25:44 and stuff. They used to stash it behind and

1:25:46 everything. Painting.

1:25:47 Yeah. And he says that he remembers

1:25:49 the day that he became a criminal was that he was at the

1:25:51 Formula One racing, the first Formula One racing in Adelaide,

1:25:55 and someone offered him a bit of cocaine and he and he had some

1:25:58 and quite liked it. And that was his demise from

1:26:01 there. Yeah, unfortunately he became

1:26:03 very much addicted and and then got in to, you know, importing

1:26:06 it because, you know, I thought, well, I've got to feed this

1:26:09 habit in terms of money wise and that can pay for it so cheap and

1:26:13 cheap even for a lawyer. So yeah, that's.

1:26:17 And so he ended up spending some time in jail and and he's now

1:26:21 obviously out of jail, but he's had his license for being able

1:26:25 to be a lawyer anymore, has been revoked convicted felon.

1:26:29 Yeah. So he can't be a lawyer anymore.

1:26:31 But he still heads up a crew of other lawyers because obviously

1:26:35 he has skills in this, but he just can't actually, you know,

1:26:38 practice. So he has other lawyers in a

1:26:40 team of that he works with that have a really pushing and really

1:26:44 hard trying to get this case really looked at.

1:26:48 But we can, Yeah. I mean, yeah, Bradley Murdoch

1:26:53 swears to this day that he is innocent.

1:26:56 But why wouldn't he? Well, exactly.

1:26:59 Once he got to lose. Aside from, well, we'll get to

1:27:02 that in a SEC too. So he was also in 2003 charged

1:27:05 with two counts of rape against a 12 year old girl.

1:27:08 Yeah. Oh what the actual fuck.

1:27:10 Like what a piece. What a total and utter piece of

1:27:13 shit he was. Acquitted of it.

1:27:15 Now there is a couple of ideas here or actually Andrew Rule

1:27:18 that I was listening to who explained that Andrew Rule

1:27:22 loving, but he believes that and has had you know little, you

1:27:26 know birdies and easy as he tends to have who potentially

1:27:30 think that his arrest for that was more so to get ADNA sample

1:27:37 on file because he was acquitted of it.

1:27:40 Yeah, so I have heard that. Too.

1:27:43 Yeah, I. Just think he's a total piece of

1:27:46 shit and where there's smoke there's fire in this case

1:27:48 because didn't he attempt to abduct her mother or something

1:27:52 as well? And then?

1:27:53 There was a mother and daughter that he had he abducted and he

1:27:56 had, he had them apparently in the back of his Ute for like

1:27:59 days on end and was like just raping them and putting them

1:28:03 back in the Ute and raping them. And so that wasn't this case.

1:28:07 That was this case, yeah. So what the fuck?

1:28:10 Yeah, like, to me, that happened.

1:28:11 I. Don't I don't I don't know how

1:28:13 he was acquitted of it. So the only.

1:28:14 Why wasn't he charged with the rape of the mother?

1:28:16 Yeah, he raped apparently both of them and yeah, but apparently

1:28:19 yeah. But I don't know how he how he

1:28:20 got off that. I really don't, but he did.

1:28:23 I don't understand that at all and so the only sense I can make

1:28:26 of it is that. Yeah, they needed his.

1:28:29 DNA, they needed his DNA and so they, they, they got him without

1:28:32 enough evidence. They you know what I mean?

1:28:34 What I understand though, is from Colleen is that because

1:28:38 they they were sort of, as they were investigating and

1:28:41 eliminating other suspects, it became more and more clear that

1:28:46 he was probably the perpetrator of this crime.

1:28:50 And they found out through the Grapevine that Bradley and his

1:28:54 brother were not talking. They were not in good.

1:28:56 So one of the the main people who sort of a person came

1:29:00 forward who was an ex like business colleague of his.

1:29:05 I want to go ex drug runners runner who he'd got into trouble

1:29:09 in with. You know, the law as these

1:29:11 things happen. And so he had said well to try

1:29:14 and get himself a bit of a lesser sentence.

1:29:16 I've got some information for you.

1:29:19 You know, if I give you that, will you give me less a

1:29:20 sentence? So, and what he came out with

1:29:22 was basically saying that he believed fairly strongly that

1:29:26 Bradley Murdoch was the culprit of the stuff that went on in

1:29:30 Barrow Creek. And with with Peter Falconeo,

1:29:32 due to the fact that of his behaviour at the time, he'd

1:29:35 acted really oddly. He believed that the kidnapping

1:29:38 and things of those women were actually, it was actually him

1:29:40 hiding out to try and avoid getting caught up with the stuff

1:29:44 that was was going on with with. Changed his appearance.

1:29:47 It changed his appearance of all these things that he said.

1:29:50 He changed the appearance of his car.

1:29:53 Yeah, which he tended to do a fair bit anyway in terms of his

1:29:56 drug runs. Yeah, that's fair.

1:29:58 But yeah, but apparently he stopped doing a lot of that as

1:30:01 well because he didn't want to become conspicuous in any way.

1:30:04 Yes. So this guy had that

1:30:06 information. So that was when the cops went,

1:30:07 OK, well, we've got to look at him.

1:30:09 Yeah. And that's.

1:30:10 Yeah, when they were like, right, well, we need to get some

1:30:12 DNA. It was.

1:30:13 Barry the brother. No, I don't know.

1:30:15 He had two brothers, but I don't know which one.

1:30:17 Yeah. Went to one of them they went to

1:30:19 one of them. They he was more than happy to

1:30:21 hand over. A DNA?

1:30:21 Yeah, it was. Sure.

1:30:23 What do you want? I'll give you whatever you want.

1:30:26 And it came back that it was so when they obviously took all of

1:30:30 Joanne's clothes and all of that on the night of the, you know,

1:30:35 of the event of the suspected murder, forensically, they

1:30:41 obviously looked at everything. And they found a tiny, tiny,

1:30:45 tiny blood spot on Joanne's T-shirt.

1:30:48 And it pulled a DNA profile of a person unknown.

1:30:53 Yeah. So it wasn't, it wasn't Joanne's

1:30:55 and it wasn't Peter. 'S yeah, they know they had

1:30:58 Peter's DNA profile, not only from the blood on the ground,

1:31:01 but they had other items of his that they were able to obtain a

1:31:04 profile from. Yeah.

1:31:05 So they had this third unknown DNA and it was blood.

1:31:10 The source was blood. So when they got the DNA sample

1:31:16 from Bradley's brother, it came back as a familial match.

1:31:22 So they're like. Fucking it's got to be him,

1:31:24 yeah. Fucking bingo.

1:31:26 In order to actually confirm that fully though, they needed a

1:31:30 DNA profile from Bradley, which is what they got when they

1:31:32 arrested him for the rape of the 12 year old girl and, and I

1:31:36 think her mother. But but and in doing so they

1:31:41 they 100% got a match that the blood on Joanne's T-shirt

1:31:44 matched Bradley John Edwards and it was like 150 million to 10

1:31:50 Murdoch. Oh my God.

1:31:51 Wrong criminal, wrong one. They're too similar to the name.

1:31:56 Oh it. Is it is doing my head in?

1:31:58 Actually, I need to have it in front of me so I remember and

1:32:02 also my brain's a bit. Black.

1:32:03 Martha, at the moment. So having this DNA match meant

1:32:07 that they could arrest him for the crime.

1:32:09 Yeah, they had enough circumstantial evidence and even

1:32:14 though they didn't have a body, which no criminal at that point

1:32:20 in Darwin had ever been convicted of a murder without a

1:32:23 body yet he was the first to undergo a trial with.

1:32:27 Nobody. Yeah, that's.

1:32:29 Incredible. It's incredible.

1:32:30 Well, it's I think also though that they did they, they always

1:32:33 had bodies like they was like. I mean, all they knew what

1:32:37 happened. Yeah, as in like they were fed

1:32:39 to a crocodile. Yeah, Darwin's like the murder

1:32:43 capital of Australia. Everyone thinks it's Adelaide,

1:32:44 but it's actually Darwin. But that's because there's so

1:32:48 many interesting characters. People.

1:32:49 If you want to escape from somewhere, you go to Darwin.

1:32:51 It's have you been to Darwin before?

1:32:53 No, no, it's very interesting place.

1:32:56 Yeah. Yeah.

1:32:56 Because you're either, you're either in the military up there,

1:32:59 like you're either in the army or you're coming through on a

1:33:03 holiday if you live there, usually because you're escaping

1:33:07 something like. Yeah, yeah.

1:33:09 They're very, very interesting people.

1:33:11 Very interesting. Very interesting group of

1:33:13 people. Yeah, collection of people.

1:33:15 Yeah. So yeah, we're at now at the

1:33:18 point where we're going to. Also yeah, but when they

1:33:22 arrested him too, interesting. What they found on him at the

1:33:25 time was they found that he had a gun holder and wrapped around

1:33:30 the gun holder was a hair tie. Now, in the kerfuffle of Joanne

1:33:37 Lee's escaping him, she had lost her hair tie.

1:33:40 And she said that in her original statement.

1:33:43 In her original statement, her Mary Jane hair tie, Lady Jane,

1:33:47 Lady Jane's Yeah, Lady Jane hair tie had been had been lost in

1:33:52 the the fight and everything of her getting away and then and

1:33:55 then oddly enough, on his gun holder wrapped around it was

1:33:59 this Lady Jane hair tie. To me, that's the.

1:34:02 Clincher yeah, yeah. And everyone overlooks.

1:34:05 That yeah, that's the thing to me that makes me go, oh, they've

1:34:08 absolutely got the right guy. Oh.

1:34:10 That was his little truth. Yeah, because the other that's

1:34:12 the other thing with the blood on him as well like that, that

1:34:14 how did that droplet of blood get there on her and hit match

1:34:17 him entirely people, Exactly people.

1:34:20 Who support him? Their excuse is that he was in

1:34:25 Alice Springs on the same day as Peter and Joanne, and they both

1:34:31 went to the same Red Rooster. Yeah, for lunch.

1:34:34 Now we know they were there hours apart.

1:34:37 Two hours between. The two hours apart and it's not

1:34:42 like anyone cut themselves. Or they're like, oh, so he must

1:34:45 have had a cut on his hand. And.

1:34:47 Pulled a chair out say and then and sat down with it and then

1:34:50 she's come along 2 hours later. Brushed up against.

1:34:53 And the Red Rooster, where I'm sure there's many other people

1:34:56 that between that those two hours had maybe been in that

1:34:58 same restaurant had then she's then sat in that same exact

1:35:01 chair that he pulled out. And that's how it's got on the

1:35:03 back of her T-shirt as she's laid back on the chair or

1:35:07 something. This droplet of blood has got

1:35:08 on. Wait, what?

1:35:09 It didn't dry in those two hours.

1:35:11 That small amount of blood, she didn't see it to like go, oh,

1:35:14 yuck. I'm not sitting on this chair

1:35:15 like, oh, I don't know. Then what?

1:35:18 Miraculously, she's done that and then gone off on her merry

1:35:23 way and had this incident occur where she has described that

1:35:31 exact person who happens to match that blood that she

1:35:35 randomly brushed up against at a restaurant as being the

1:35:39 perpetrator of that event. But then then the supporters for

1:35:42 Bradley say that she had seen him around town in Alice

1:35:48 Springs. And because he was such an

1:35:51 imposing figure, 'cause he's really tall, he's like 6.

1:35:53 Foot five, yeah. He's really tall, so she's

1:35:56 noticed him there and then that's the image that was in her

1:36:00 mind when this all happened. 'Cause you do look at him and

1:36:02 go, you're a fucking murderer. Yeah, I mean he looks.

1:36:05 So scared. There's these shots of him being

1:36:06 like put in a car at the court where they where he gets sort

1:36:11 of, I think it's when he was arrested and they're trying to

1:36:14 shove this huge man into this tiny little police car.

1:36:18 The look on his face, he's angry as hell.

1:36:20 He's not happy. He's not happy, but he's like,

1:36:23 he's like giant lurch in this car.

1:36:25 Like, you know, like and the the cops trying to get him to move

1:36:27 over so that someone else can sit next to him on the back

1:36:29 seat, but he takes up like the entirety of the back seat of

1:36:33 this car. Tall, but he's broad, he's big,

1:36:35 he's big. Yeah.

1:36:37 Oh, he's an imposing man. Like he would.

1:36:39 I mean, to come across him in the dark night of terrifying

1:36:43 that area, Oh my God, absolutely.

1:36:45 How she got away from him just oh geez.

1:36:47 God only knows. What would have happened?

1:36:51 Before she didn't. Yeah.

1:36:52 I, I can't buy into any of the this stuff around that, that

1:36:57 blood got there, you know, inadvertently, nor can I, I just

1:37:01 no, sorry. That was that's no, no, no, no.

1:37:05 Even in court when he was asked in the trial, well, can you

1:37:09 explain how the blood, how your blood, you know, matches onto

1:37:12 the T-shirt and he just went no. Yeah, that's right.

1:37:14 He's got. Me Done.

1:37:15 No. OK, All right.

1:37:21 Oh, my God. So he was arrested in WA, wasn't

1:37:24 he? And then extradited to the NT

1:37:27 for their trial? Yeah.

1:37:28 So that began in April of 2005. Yeah, it was.

1:37:35 It was very, very interesting this trial because I guess his

1:37:42 defence tried to just put in any type of reasonable doubt that

1:37:45 they could. The judge presiding was Brian

1:37:49 Ross Martin QC and he was the Chief Justice of the NT.

1:37:55 Murdoch pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering Falconio

1:38:00 and assaulting and attempting to kidnap Joanne.

1:38:07 So Joanne had actually identified in the lead up to the

1:38:10 trial, had identified photographs like had identified

1:38:16 Bradley John Murdoch through photographs.

1:38:19 Although so one particular that's so she, there was one

1:38:23 particular one where she had, she was back in the UK at this

1:38:26 point when they actually arrested him.

1:38:28 And so they arrested him and then and she saw something on

1:38:31 the news, right? So she's like, oh, they finally

1:38:35 got someone, Sicily or something, right?

1:38:37 Isn't she? I think when he was arrested.

1:38:39 Yeah, if someone sort of gone like, hey Joanne, they've got

1:38:42 someone for Peters murder and everything and she goes and

1:38:45 looks at a new sees a news story and there's a photo of Bradley

1:38:49 Murdoch on that in that story. So then when she's brought out

1:38:53 here to Australia, obviously to then like be part of this trial,

1:38:56 she was given pictures to say, you know, do you think you know,

1:38:59 the line up kind of picture style of, you know, to identify

1:39:02 potentially Murdoch as being the guy?

1:39:04 And she points to yes, Murdoch, but she had seen the photos of

1:39:09 him in that. New story, she said when she saw

1:39:10 the news story, her friend says. And I guess it's her friend, but

1:39:14 you know, her friend says as soon as she saw it, she went.

1:39:16 That's him, yeah. Yeah.

1:39:18 So I mean, I but in terms of it being being able to have

1:39:21 submitted to courts in terms of her like it's I, I do understand

1:39:25 a defence put picking that apart and going, well, she didn't

1:39:28 identify Murdoch. She identified the guy she saw

1:39:30 in the news story. I do get that because.

1:39:33 But I do believe also that her friend saying that.

1:39:36 Yeah, yeah, it was it matched who she saw on, you know, they,

1:39:39 they matched all the descriptions of who he was at

1:39:43 the time. He changed his appearance since

1:39:44 and that sort of thing. But yeah, he he matched who she

1:39:48 described. They also found Murdoch's DNA on

1:39:51 the handcuffs. How can?

1:39:53 But did they? Well, I think they did well.

1:39:56 To this day and a this to this day that evidence would not have

1:40:00 made into trial no so that's been debunked that science.

1:40:03 Yeah. But I.

1:40:05 I'm just one like, I, I mean, they found something there that

1:40:09 indicated that it could be his. Yeah.

1:40:11 So to me, I mean, maybe in this day and age, it might be

1:40:13 different and we would have had a definitive answer.

1:40:16 But to me, I'm like, well, yeah. Yeah, well, because I mean, I

1:40:20 know I've heard you say before, you know, I mean, they can't

1:40:23 make up a profile. Like if that profiles there,

1:40:25 it's there. So that in my head I'm like, OK,

1:40:28 well, if they found something, then that's it's strike #2 you

1:40:32 know, if you've already the blood is a foregone conclusion

1:40:34 to me for sure. And then to then find something

1:40:37 that, yeah, that looks, that's his profile.

1:40:40 Even if it's, you know, one in 10 to be his profile, that's

1:40:43 closer than nothing. That's right.

1:40:45 I I have a. It was just because they found

1:40:47 such little DNA there. Yes, the other thing and the

1:40:50 glue, something to do with like the glue of the tape or

1:40:53 something degraded the profile or something.

1:40:56 OK, right. But then also his friend, the

1:41:00 one who dobbed him in. What was his name?

1:41:01 I can't remember him. No, I haven't got his name right

1:41:04 now. He.

1:41:05 Also scumbag #2. He also said that he saw Murdoch

1:41:11 would make these. This is the other thing that's.

1:41:14 Cable tie handcuffs. He had been seen to make that

1:41:17 style of handcuff and when I put the photo up, people say no,

1:41:21 that's not something that everyone does.

1:41:22 No, it's not. It's quite.

1:41:24 Distinct, and you're also not using that to tie up an animal

1:41:27 or anything. No, he's used them before.

1:41:29 Yes, he's and he's made them before.

1:41:32 Absolutely. People have seen them.

1:41:34 Yeah, that was a yeah, Yeah. Oh, there's so much.

1:41:40 Yeah. So he was then, I guess after

1:41:43 the end of the trial he was found guilty.

1:41:45 Yeah, the jury only took five hours to deliberate.

1:41:48 That says a lot too. Yeah.

1:41:50 Yeah. How long do I can?

1:41:51 The mushroom deliberations are gonna go for 30 minutes, 3

1:41:54 seconds. Sorry.

1:41:56 Even Karen Reeds took 21 hours. Yeah, yeah, no, so, so yeah,

1:42:04 guilty was he was found guilty of the murder of paedophile

1:42:06 carneo and also assault and unlawful deprivation of liberty

1:42:11 of Joanne Lee's Yeah. So his sentence of imprisonment

1:42:14 was a non parole period of 28 years.

1:42:17 So I just say he's due. For parole 302032, I think 2032,

1:42:22 yeah. He's expected to die this year,

1:42:25 2025. Yeah, yeah.

1:42:28 Now, Joanne says to like, she sat in that witness box and was

1:42:31 a very good witness at the trial.

1:42:33 And she says that she stared him down the whole time.

1:42:37 She was, you know, I mean, she's incredibly strong person.

1:42:40 But she said the entire time he never looked at her.

1:42:43 Now, I'm sorry, if you were, if you were weren't guilty, he

1:42:46 would have looked at her. He couldn't look at her.

1:42:50 No, that's nailing the coffin in my mind.

1:42:52 I know that's not legal, but yeah.

1:42:54 But I find that very interesting that he wouldn't look at her.

1:42:57 Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree because.

1:43:00 He's looked into her eyes before, like he knows what he's

1:43:03 done. He's appealed a number of times

1:43:07 the the sentencing and the the conviction and been rejected at

1:43:11 every Ave. and unfortunately, as we say, Peter Mark Falconi's

1:43:15 body's never been found. So there's a possibility that

1:43:19 the play this law that is possible to be brought into play

1:43:24 is that nobody no parole. So currently Darwin don't have

1:43:27 that as a rule of that has to be followed like similar to

1:43:30 Queensland who have have actually employed that into

1:43:33 their law for every case which sorry my turn.

1:43:43 OK, so Queensland have got that in place for every case now that

1:43:47 that they nobody no parole however or is it Sydney?

1:43:50 Sorry is it NSW or Queensland have have that now?

1:43:55 No, in NSW it's everyone. Yeah, sorry, NSW, it's everyone

1:44:00 NSW because. Of the Chris Dawson.

1:44:02 Case yes, Chris Dawson So it's it's absolutely applied to every

1:44:04 case. Nobody, no parole.

1:44:05 That's a flat out rule. Every other state I believe in

1:44:08 Australia that can still be used, it's just not an absolute

1:44:12 explicit. So the courts can use that and

1:44:14 decide, well you know what, with no body there'll be no parole.

1:44:18 So the the thought process is that will probably come into

1:44:20 play here if he makes it that far.

1:44:22 If he makes it that far, they have said though that if that

1:44:25 law is chosen to be used on Bradley John Murdoch, it will

1:44:31 be. He will be the first person in

1:44:33 North in the NT to have had that right imposed on his sentence,

1:44:37 that condition imposed on his sentence, right.

1:44:40 But it is likely that that's what they would do.

1:44:44 And but yeah, let's hope he never even sees the light of

1:44:47 day. Yeah.

1:44:48 I mean, if Andrew Fraser's got anything to do with it, he'll

1:44:50 get him out. Don't know that he will before

1:44:52 he's dead still, but good. Yeah, He's real gung ho.

1:44:57 I mean, if you should watch that.

1:44:58 Yeah. Yeah, I actually couldn't watch

1:45:00 all the all of it. I got frustrated.

1:45:02 I was like, oh, I can't have this.

1:45:04 Yeah. Like it's I.

1:45:05 Didn't. It wasn't.

1:45:06 No, it didn't. There was too many holes in what

1:45:08 they were presenting, to be honest.

1:45:10 Like there were little aspects of it that I was like, like the

1:45:12 guy at the servo in terms of maybe not being him, but I'm

1:45:15 still like, still doesn't rule him out.

1:45:17 Yeah. So what you're referring to

1:45:18 there is there was some CCTV footage that was released from a

1:45:22 service station in Alice Springs.

1:45:24 Yeah. And they're saying the police

1:45:28 say that it's. Bradley Braddock Murdoch And

1:45:31 that's evidence that he was in the area did.

1:45:33 He yeah, that's right. But I guess supporters of

1:45:36 Bradley say of Murdoch say that that wasn't him because he the

1:45:40 person wasn't tall enough. See, he only comes up to this

1:45:42 level on the truck and the this level.

1:45:45 Nuts or something. On the wheels there's five and

1:45:48 on his truck there's seven or something.

1:45:49 Something like that. So there's a few things there,

1:45:52 but I mean, whether it's him or not him, people placed him in

1:45:55 Alice Springs in different areas.

1:45:57 So to me, the fact that he was whether he was or wasn't at that

1:46:00 truck stop is a moot point anyway.

1:46:02 Yeah, he was seen at the Red Rooster.

1:46:04 There's CCTV footage of it, the. DNA is at the you know he's at

1:46:07 the scene. Yeah, he's there.

1:46:09 He was there. That's right.

1:46:10 Exactly, and and to boot he has a profile of someone who could

1:46:15 do this. Yes, and it was July 14th.

1:46:19 Yeah, there's so many things that just add up to like it

1:46:21 could not be. Him.

1:46:22 I really, honestly, I do believe it's him.

1:46:24 And I do believe that the right person has been put in jail.

1:46:26 I agree. For life for it.

1:46:28 So rotten hell. Because there's no way I want to

1:46:30 come across him in the dark alley.

1:46:31 No way. He's where he should be.

1:46:33 I really do feel that. Yeah.

1:46:36 Another one that I would suggest people go and watch.

1:46:37 If you in any way I think think that Joanne Lee's is lying, go

1:46:42 and watch the 60 Minutes interview.

1:46:44 Yeah, because I burst into tears a number of times watching that.

1:46:47 If you thought that she came across as heartless or whatever

1:46:49 in the original media stuff and she was, she didn't cry and that

1:46:52 sort of thing in those interviews.

1:46:54 Did Lindy? Chamber no, this is people don't

1:46:56 respond how you think they're gonna respond in trauma.

1:46:58 And we do need to be more careful of that.

1:46:59 But in this 60 Minutes interview, which took place in

1:47:02 2017, the heartbreak for her of like not finding Pete is

1:47:06 genuine. She has never married.

1:47:09 No, she's never never had another relationship.

1:47:11 No, she works as a social worker Yeah, at her local county in the

1:47:16 UK. She is basically a recluse.

1:47:19 Like she this has impacted her life so significantly.

1:47:23 Yeah, you know, fuck off to anybody who says otherwise.

1:47:27 She's. So she's working.

1:47:28 She is such a victim in this. Yeah, definitely.

1:47:31 She is the victim. I mean, I know Peter is

1:47:35 deceased, you know, And I really hope that his body eventually or

1:47:39 his remains can be found. Oh, yeah.

1:47:42 For the closure for his family and for Joanne.

1:47:44 Yeah. But at the end of the day, she

1:47:46 lives with this every single day of her life.

1:47:50 Yeah, yeah. So she's organized a memorial to

1:47:54 be put up in the area as well. And it's this 4 metre high

1:47:57 Falcon which really looks cool. And she wanted somewhere where

1:48:01 people could go and, you know, be out there with that and think

1:48:05 about Peter in that space, but also just somewhere where they

1:48:08 can have a break on that road that can be quite long.

1:48:11 And you know. So that was really lovely that

1:48:13 that's been put there now. But not only that with, as we

1:48:16 said at the beginning, her, her dad who was Australian, which

1:48:19 she knew he was Australian, but she didn't, she had never met

1:48:21 him. She ended up through her life

1:48:24 has discovered that she has a sister and her sister is

1:48:27 Australian. And so she still comes out to

1:48:29 Australia and obviously and visits.

1:48:30 She's actually now got her citizenship here for Australia,

1:48:32 which she, she thought way back when all this took place that

1:48:36 she'd never come back. But now she comes back regularly

1:48:39 and has this real connection here with her sister, which is

1:48:41 just lovely. And her sister's like 8 years

1:48:43 younger than her and they so they do, they look identical.

1:48:47 It's crazy. Yeah.

1:48:48 So I mean, she's really got this big connection out here.

1:48:51 And their sister's so lovely. And she's like, she's, she was

1:48:55 saying that her sister would have been like 18 or 19 when

1:48:57 this occurred, but she wasn't even in Australia.

1:48:59 She was actually travelling around herself.

1:49:01 Like, they're so similar in so many ways like that.

1:49:03 She was travelling overseas at the time.

1:49:04 So she wasn't here in Australia when it, when it happened.

1:49:07 But she's now, like, so regretful that she they hadn't,

1:49:09 they know each other about, know about each other because she was

1:49:12 like, I wanted to be there for all of this for her, you know,

1:49:15 and be there for the trial and be her supporter because, yeah,

1:49:18 she didn't have many people around her in that, you know.

1:49:22 Yeah. Only limited people from Peter's

1:49:24 family could even come out to be there for the trial.

1:49:26 Peter's mum and dad and. One of his brothers, Yeah, the

1:49:30 only. One who came out and so Joanne

1:49:32 didn't really have that close family support.

1:49:35 I mean, I think the Falconios was certainly supportive of her

1:49:38 and. Yeah.

1:49:38 Understood what she'd been through and the trauma that

1:49:41 she'd been through. But it's probably a bit

1:49:43 different than having your own family or your own very close

1:49:47 support network there. Yeah.

1:49:48 And Joanne had to be respectful as well of their mourning and

1:49:52 all of what they were. How would you feel like

1:49:55 thinking? Are they listening to the police

1:49:56 who think that I had something to do with this and that I mean,

1:49:59 they although they never thought that, but you would still think

1:50:02 to yourself of like, you know, but what if they they did, you

1:50:05 know, like, you know, you just trying to manage all that would

1:50:08 be awful. Yeah, just just awful.

1:50:11 So she's been through hell, like, you know, and it's just

1:50:14 say it's impacted her entire life.

1:50:16 It has changed her, her life path that is for sure.

1:50:18 From one minute thinking that on the holiday of a lifetime to

1:50:22 then get the planning and that they're gonna get married and

1:50:25 things in the whole. Future ahead of you.

1:50:27 Yeah, I've also read criticisms of her for taking money for the

1:50:33 6 minutes interview. She's only done, I think 2:00.

1:50:36 She's not done much, that's for sure.

1:50:37 And she did write a book. Yeah, but she there's criticism

1:50:42 for her taking payment for those interviews.

1:50:44 I'm like fuck off. The the proceeds she used from

1:50:48 one of the payments was to pay for that tribute to Peter.

1:50:51 Yeah. And the other one was because

1:50:53 she couldn't work for like I. Was gonna say years she used to

1:50:56 pay for a therapy. I mean she 100% needs very

1:50:59 serious therapy. Absolutely.

1:51:01 Like fuck off people. Yeah, You know, of course she

1:51:04 didn't want to have to profit from this.

1:51:06 No, you know she nobody would want to be in this situation to

1:51:10 then and what I think it was like 50,000 and pounds.

1:51:12 That's not a life changing amount of money that kind of

1:51:14 supported her for a year or two. Like fuck off, fuck off.

1:51:18 Stop. Stop being horrible to the

1:51:20 victim. Yes, 100% Yeah, awful.

1:51:24 I really feel for her and I really feel for Peter's family

1:51:27 and I really hope that one day, I mean, I don't think it'll

1:51:31 happen, but you never know. One day his remains may be

1:51:35 found. Yeah, absolutely.

1:51:36 It'd be really great to have that and just know that, know

1:51:40 what happened, maybe get some answers from that.

1:51:42 I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:51:45 Another long episode. Yep.

1:51:48 Getting longer and longer. I don't know what's going on.

1:51:51 Thank you to everybody for joining us again.

1:51:53 We are very much looking forward to, you know, next week's

1:51:57 episode. Have you looked up to see what

1:51:58 we're doing? I did.

1:51:59 Doctor. Death, Doctor.

1:52:01 Death. Come at us, doctor.

1:52:04 Death. Yeah, this is an interesting

1:52:05 one. I don't know that I know a lot

1:52:07 about this one, actually. Seriously.

1:52:09 Yeah, I honestly, I haven't. Oh, the long formats.

1:52:12 Oh, you're probably a bit late to listen to the Long Form

1:52:14 podcast. Yeah, so good.

1:52:16 But there's also a TV series. Yeah, and it's got Joshua

1:52:20 Jackson, hasn't it? I love it.

1:52:21 So I'll be into that. I.

1:52:23 Love him. Were you?

1:52:24 Were you a Pacey? Kind of a gal, No.

1:52:26 OK, sorry. I'm a bit older than you.

1:52:29 And Pacey, yes, but more so Mighty Ducks.

1:52:32 Oh oh. Quack quack quack quack talk

1:52:36 about this more next week All right thank you everybody for

1:52:41 joining us We look forward to seeing you again next week Don't

1:52:44 forget to like, subscribe comment.

1:52:46 We really, really appreciate it when we.

1:52:47 Share us with a friend That's really that would be amazing.

1:52:51 Excellent. Stay curious, crime besties.

1:52:53 Hi.