Re-Issue: The Falconio Mystery Continues - #120

Summary

Australian True Crime – Episode #120: Re-Issue: The Falconio Mystery Continues Podcast Host: Meshel Laurie | Guest: Robyn Bowles (Author, "Dead Centre") Release Date: July 24, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode takes a deep dive into one of Australia’s most enduring true crime mysteries: the 2001 disappearance and presumed murder of British tourist Peter Falconio in the Northern Territory. With the 2024 death of convicted killer Bradley John Murdoch, new attention has turned to the many lingering questions and controversies surrounding the case. Host Meshel Laurie interviews Robyn Bowles, investigative author of Dead Centre, who retraces her own journey through the evidence, reenactments, police files, and personal interviews—including with Murdoch himself. The episode scrutinizes inconsistencies in witness testimonies, the enduring doubts about Joanne Lees' story, and the broader questions of justice and media coverage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Bradley John Murdoch: Life, Death, and Prison

• Murdoch’s Background: Known for his imposing size and a violent criminal history, including shooting at a crowd and facing past kidnapping and assault charges ([01:31]).
• Personality in Prison: Despite his crimes, Murdoch was described as a complex figure: a "gentle giant" by family, a manipulative gossip in jail ([01:31]).
• Deathbed Confession?: Hopes that Murdoch would reveal the truth before dying were unfulfilled. Falconio’s remains remain undiscovered ([01:31]).

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Robyn Bowles’ Investigation and On-Site Reenactment

• Doubts About the Official Story: Bowles explains her skepticism of Joanne Lees’ account, prompting her to physically retrace Peter and Joanne's route for her own reenactment ([05:53]).

  “How could a young Pommy girl elude an experienced bushman in that sort of countryside?... Joanne Lees story just didn't ring true with me.”
  — Robyn Bowles ([05:53])

• Reenactment in the Outback: Bowles and her team recreated Lees’ supposed escape under similar conditions, discovering severe physical difficulties and environmental hazards (spiderwebs, sharp grass, wildlife) that seemed to contradict Lees’ relatively unscathed appearance ([09:04]–[11:10]).

  “I was covered in Pindan and spiderwebs and scratches, so I was a real mess... when Joanne came in she had no scratches on her, she had very little marks…”
  — Bowles ([11:10])

• Conclusions from the Reenactment: Bowles believes that while Lees was traumatized, the specific details of her survival seem inconsistent with what they experienced.

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Joanne Lees’ Story and The Anomalies

• Lees’ Account: According to Lees, after pulling over on the highway, a man accosted them (Murdoch), shot Falconio, assaulted her, tied her up, threatened her with a gun, and she then made an elaborate escape ([11:47]).

• Key Inconsistencies Identified by Bowles:

  • Lack of physical evidence (no scratches or dog hair on Lees, despite the escape route and proximity to Murdoch’s dog) ([16:13]–[16:44]).
  • The supposed crawl-through escape from Murdoch’s truck contradicts the physical structure of evidence regarding his vehicle ([16:44]–[18:15]).
  • Unlikelihood of Lees’ composure and agility during an abduction ([18:15]).
  • Police initially identified 16 anomalies in her story and even attempted hypnosis to clarify her recall, which was unsuccessful ([18:40]).

  “There are a lot of other areas that I can canvas... the police identified 16 anomalies in her story.”
  — Bowles ([18:40])

• Media Scrutiny and Public Perception: After the attack, Lees initially tried to return to a normal life but was hounded by the media. She later did exclusive interviews and published her own book, No Turning Back ([20:49]–[21:56]).

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The ‘Lindification’ of Joanne Lees

• Parallel to Lindy Chamberlain: Lees’ stoicism and media reticence drew comparisons to Lindy Chamberlain (wrongfully convicted of murdering her baby, famously claiming "a dingo took my baby"), and the police were desperate to avoid a similar public relations disaster ([25:18]):

  “There was a phrase that was coined... 'the lindification of Joanne'... the last thing [the police] wanted... was another Chamberlain on their hands.”
  — Bowles ([25:32])

• Press Conference: Lees eventually made a public appearance wearing the infamous "Cheeky Monkey" shirt—an event cited for its affect and media impact ([27:43]–[28:09]).

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The Truck Stop, Murdoch’s Crimes, and Character

• Murdoch’s Movements: Bowles spent years interviewing Murdoch and believes he lied about his whereabouts the night of the crime due to "consciousness of guilt" ([31:54]).

• Lifestyle and Tactics: Murdoch was a methodical man—using drugs to stay awake, constantly altering his vehicle’s appearance, and keeping to himself while running drugs across the outback ([36:18]).

• Dog Mismatch: Notably, Murdoch’s dog Jack was a Dalmatian, while various witnesses described a cattle dog, further muddying identification ([37:23]).

  “He said, 'Yes, I have got a dog... his name's Jack... and he's a Dalmatian.' So far we've heard several different descriptions of the dog, but not one of them was white with black spots.”
  — Bowles ([37:23])

• Murdoch on Accusations: Murdoch insisted he hadn’t killed Falconio, highlighting his own physical strength as inconsistent with Lees’ account of being punched (no marks on her) ([37:57]).

  “That bitch reckoned I punched her in the face. He said, if I'd punched her in the effing face, I would have broken her effing jaw.”
  — (Murdoch, via Bowles) ([39:19])

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The Trial: Testimony, Lies, and the Search for Justice

• Shifting Testimony: In a dramatic courtroom moment, Lees changed her account regarding how she was put into Murdoch’s vehicle, shifting to match evidence about the rig’s structure—a surprise to those who’d followed the case ([40:42]–[43:26]):

  “She said, and then the man... lifted up the side flap and pushed me into the side of the vehicle, into the tray. Now... that was a new part of the story. We'd never heard that before...”
  — Bowles ([43:20])

• The 'Steph' Email Bombshell: Defense unearthed emails showing Lees was corresponding with "Steph" in Berlin, suggesting a secret romantic interest; she initially lied under oath about this, impacting her credibility ([43:28]–[47:45]).

• Forensic Challenges and Legal Dead Ends: New laws prevent parole for convicted murderers who won’t reveal a victim's location—meaning Murdoch will never be released. Meanwhile, doubts about the forensic evidence linger, but a retrial appears impossible ([47:54]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the credibility of Lees’ account:

  “What I think in summary is that something bad did happen to Joanne Lees... but whether it happened the way that she said, I have grave doubts.”
  — Robyn Bowles ([11:44])

• On Murdoch’s denial:

  “He said, well, no, I didn’t. And how do you know he’s even dead?”
  — Bowles recounting Murdoch ([37:25])

• On media treatment and trauma:

  “Her life has been blighted by this. I accept that.”
  — Robyn Bowles ([22:49])

• On changing testimony:

  “The whole court just went like that. Because we knew that that was a new part. That was a new part of the story. We’d never heard that before...”
  — Robyn Bowles ([43:20])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Murdoch’s History and Death – [01:31]
• Bowles' Motivation and Reenactment – [05:53]–[11:10]
• Detailed Recounting of Lees’ Story – [11:47]–[16:13]
• Major Anomalies and Evidence Issues – [16:13]–[18:40], [31:54]–[37:23]
• Media & Public Perception of Lees – [20:39]–[28:09]
• Police and Media Management – [25:18]–[28:09]
• The 'Steph' Email and Its Fallout – [43:28]–[47:45]
• Possibility of Retrial and Ongoing Doubts – [47:54]–[48:37]
• Bowles' Final Theory – [48:37]–[49:52]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode paints a portrait not only of the Falconio case’s enduring ambiguities, but also of the psychological, social, and legal labyrinth that surrounds notorious crimes. The rigorous fact-checking and personal experience of Robyn Bowles challenge the simple narrative of “solved case, evil man.” Instead, listeners are left to grapple with forensic uncertainties, contested testimonies, and the raw human fallout still echoing decades on.

Final word: The episode does not deliver definitive answers but raises essential questions about justice, trauma, and the quest for truth in the shadow of one of Australia’s most shadowy mysteries.

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Resource:
Robyn Bowles’ books and further reading can be found via the link in the show notes.
For support services, Australian listeners are referred to Lifeline (13 11 14) and 1-800-Respect ([49:52]).

Transcript

[Host]

Before we begin today's episode of Australian True Crime, I want to tell you about a new project we've been working on behind the scenes. It's called she Matters. It's a new podcast from award winning journalist and femicide researcher Sherrelle Moody. Each week, Sherrelle speaks with families of women and children killed in Australia, sharing who they were, the joy they brought and the love they left behind. She Matters isn't a true crime podcast. It's about lives lived, lives loved and lives lost. She Matters is produced by Dash made Podcasts in association with bravecasting Media. She Matters is available wherever you get your podcasts. The following podcast contains content of a graphic, violent nature and is not suitable for children.

[Robyn Bowles]

She looked at the jury with, you know, her great big eyes and a little pathetic face and she said, he punched me right here. And she put her finger on her temple and you could almost hear the jury go, oh. But in fact, they interviewed the doctor subsequently and he said, she didn't have a mark on her face, number one. But well before that, when I interviewed Murdoch the first time, he put his elbow on this table where we were and he made a fist and his fist was the size of a rock melon. He's a big man. And he said, that bitch reckoned I punched her in the face. He said, if I'd punched her in the effing face, I would have broken her effing jaw.

[Host]

One of Australia's most notorious convicted killers, Bradley John Murdoch, died recently while serving a life sentence for the 2001 murder of British tourist Peter Falconio. He was also convicted of kidnapping and assaulting Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne Lees. It's been said that during his time in prison, Murdoch was friendly with male prison guards, but despised their female counterparts. He was apparently a keen gossip, known for turning other prisoners against each other when the mood took him. And they say he kept a copy of Joanne Lee's autobiography, no Turning Back, in his cell before his conviction for Falconio's murder, Murdoch faced charges of kidnapping and raping a 12 year old girl in South Australia. And he served time in Western Australia for shooting into a crowd of football fans in Fitzroy Crossing. Upon his death, though, his family described him as a proud poppy and a gentle giant with a heart of gold. There were hopes and even suggestions that he might drop a bombshell about the Falconio murder on his deathbed. But it wasn't to be. Peter Falconio's remains have never been discovered and police say they believe the body is somewhere between Alice Springs and Broome, a distance of some 1700 kilometres. Joanne Lees vividly recounted the events of the night she and her partner encountered Murdoch on a lonely stretch of highway in the Northern Territory. Her testimony was a turning point in the trial, but there are still those who don't quite believe her version of events. One of them is author Robyn Bowles, who went to extraordinary lengths to fact check Lee's story. She wrote a book about it called Dead Centre, and she joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about it. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation.

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[Robyn Bowles]

How could a young Pommy girl elude an experienced bushman in that sort of countryside? I just. Joanne Lees story just didn't ring true with me. So I persuaded my husband to put his pen down and hop in a car with me. So we decided we would follow Peter and Joanne's journey from Adelaide north on the same days and the same locations until we reached the spot where the alleged incident occurred. So this involved going via Adelaide to the Bolivar Caravan park, where we actually discovered that it was likely that Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio stayed at the caravan park at the same time as Bradley John Murdoch and his dog. Which made me quite excited because I thought, wow, there's an opportunity for his DNA maybe to have gotten her T shirt, which had nothing to do with the incident. Then we went up to Alice Springs and we signed on our film crew, Chris Tangie and his cohorts, and we also had a couple of his mates who were sort of riding shotgun for us to keep an eye on us as we were doing this proposed reenactment. Got the cable, tyres, the infrared camera, went and interviewed the police to find out exactly where it happened. They told me that there were actually still pink markings on the road where they indicated where all the cars and things were at the time. They were still there. Two years later, the night before our adventure, I went to a pub to interview someone and I had a seafood salad, which is a big mistake in Alice Springs. It's a long way from the sea. And so I got very sick and I had to actually be in hospital all night on a drip. The nurse said to me, oh, this is terrible. She said, it's going to give us a bad reputation. Alice Springs, Prince Charles got seafood poisoning as well. And I said, well, it was nice of him to let me know. So I was feeling particularly shaky when we headed off, but we went to the Camel cup where they run camels round and round the track. Ugly looking beasts they are and bad tempered. It's fun. Yeah, but it was hot and we. Anyway we left at 4:30 and we then we drove to the first stop that Peter and Joanne said they made which was the Tea Tree Road house. We stopped to have a coffee. We didn't have a bong, which she said that she and Peter had. And that was only an hour or so before the incident happened. So you know, I've often wondered whether that influenced what she remembered. So we got to the spot and then I got out, hands behind my back, tied up with cable ties. We had a gunman, that was Chris, he was wanted to play that part. And then we had watches on the road to count the cars that went past to see what sort of traffic we had on that particular night and that particular time it was dark as pitch, no moon, no stars even and terribly quiet. And it's very hard to explain the silence. And if you just step on a twig it makes this huge snap noise. And so I said to Chris, give me a few minutes start because I'm older and fatter than Joanne and I took off into the bush, running through, across the pindan and the gravel and then across the spinifex grass which is very sharp and pointy. And you'll often see workers in the territory who are wearing shorts but they also wear gaiters so they don't get cut about by the spinifex grass. That's the reason.

[Interviewer]

What are gaiters?

[Robyn Bowles]

Are they those like cricket pads, you know? Yeah, to protect your lower legs when, when you're walking through the spin feast because it can give you nasty scratches. I was wearing shoes because I'm a bit scared of snakes, but Joanne had sandals on. So anyway, I hardly got any distance at all. I ran between two mulga trees and I ran straight into a spider's web wrapped itself around my face which was really scary, but I couldn't get it off because my hands were behind my back. So I just sort of spat it out and kept going. So I crashed through the mulga which made a lot of noise because the tree branches fall off when they die. They just fall down of course. And then I heard my gunman coming behind me, you know. Then I hit a fence. On the other side of the fence there was this very large bull. I thought I'm not going over there. So I did a little sort of angle back and found somewhere because he was getting closer and I just crouched down. Now the thing about the fence and the distance I ran was that from the side of the road. We went back and measured it the next morning. From the side of the road there was 10 meters of pin down and gravel, then there was about 10 metres of spinifex and then around about 10 metres of mulga before the fence. So it was approximately 30 meters in from the road, which isn't very far. It's 30 big paces for a man. So whatever happened that night, the gunman, if he was looking for Joanne, he would have had the same obstacles in his way and when he got to the fence he would have doubled back as well. If Chris had doubled back to his right instead of his left, it might have taken him longer to find me because he'd just go back to the road and then back down and back the road. Well, he actually turned left like I did, so he found me very quickly. Then we called in the camera crew and they filmed all that sort of thing. And then we got back in the car and we went to the Barracreek Hotel which we'd booked into for the night. We call it the Pilton Hilton because Les Pilton is the owner of the Barrack Creek Hotel. So Helen was his partner and she just looked at me and she said to Les, now that's how that girl should have looked that night. And I was covered in Pendan and spiderwebs and scratches, so I was a real mess. So.

[Interviewer]

So she meant Joanne?

[Robyn Bowles]

Yeah, well, she meant Joanne of course. And of course when Joanne came in she had no scratches on her, she had very little marks. I've seen her clothes, they took her clothes the next day, so she had very little pin down or dirt on them and she didn't have any injuries. So that little experiment to me proved quite satisfactorily in my own mind that what she said happened that night could not have happened the way she said it. I've never doubted that something bad happened. Of course, Peter's vanish, she's traumatised, but whether it happened the way that she said, I have grave doubts.

[Interviewer]

Wow. What, according to Joanne Lees happened that night?

[Robyn Bowles]

Well, the story she told the police the next day and she's hardly varied it except during the trial, which was a huge surprise to everyone who was there. But perhaps come to that later, she said that she and Pete had left Tea Tree after smoking a bong. It was 6:21pm and they'd driven to where the incident took place. Combie did about 80ks an hour. So that's how it's Placed there at around about 7:30ish, that sort of time. She said after they pulled out from Barrack Creek, they passed a fire on the side of the road and Peter wanted to stop and try and put it out, but she didn't want to because she thought it might be some sort of trap. And at the time I thought, why would anybody want to trap a couple of young backpackers? You know, they're not usually loaded with dough. But anyway, that was what she said. Then they drove on and they saw headlights behind them and then a man pulled level with them with the interior light of his car on, which again was very surprising to me because you don't drive out in the pitch dark with the interior light on. And sitting next to him in the drive in the passenger seat was a brownish black cattle dog. And he gesticulated to Peter to pull over and said his combi was blowing sparks. Now, they had had trouble with the combi. The engine had been an issue all the trip and in fact someone, and we never found out who, but someone did a repair on it on the journey and fixed up part of the fan belt and, and so on and tied it up with the stocking and some hundred mile now tape, which was a very typical way that a bushman would repair something temporarily. And I often wonder whether it was actually Brad Murdoch at the, at the caravan park, whether he in fact was the one who, who did that bit of running repair for them. But he says he's never met either of them, he's told me that. So, you know, it's only my speculation that says that. So then Peter pulled over, he got out of the car, he walked to the back, came back to get his cigarettes, told Joanne to sit in the driver's seat and rev the car. And so she was revving the vehicle and she said she heard a bang. She thought it was the back firing, so she wasn't concerned at that time. She could see them both at the time in the rear vision mirror of the combi. Then suddenly, she said the man appeared at the window pointing a silver revolver at her head and told her to turn the car off, move over. She said she was so frightened that she couldn't do anything, she couldn't move. So he opened the door and pushed her across, turned off the vehicle. He took her glasses off and then he pushed her outside of the car onto her stomach and tried to tie her up with her feet and her hands behind her back. She said that she kicked and kicked and kicked so he wasn't able to tie up her feet. But he did tie up her hand. Said that he punched her in the, in the temple. Then she said that he got her up and put his hand behind her neck and sort of frog marched her to his vehicle, which was a white four wheel drive vehicle, and opened the passenger door. It's very important at that point, opened the passenger door and there was a dog on the seat which just quietly moved across to let her get in. So she climbed in and she said he put a bag over her head, a canvas bag. So I'm picturing Murdoch now getting into the combi with a roll of duct tape that he put around her face, which fell down and around her neck, the cable ties, handcuffs, another roll of tape for her feet, a canvas bag. And as one of Murdoch's friends said to me much later when he was telling me this story, he said he must have been a neffing octopus. So anyway, we have him with all these things in his hand and then putting her in the car. So then she said he went away. And while he was away, she was able to wriggle through a crawl through space between the two seats, bucket seats, across a sort of bed like area, because Murdoch actually used to sleep in the back of the ute from time to time and still with her hands behind her back, wriggle over the back tray and drop down and run into the bush and hide. And then the gunman came after her. So that was her story at the time.

[Interviewer]

Where was he while she was doing this?

[Robyn Bowles]

We don't know.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so he's put her in the car while he's holding on to all of these things and then he's disappeared, I guess. I don't know where he's disappeared. And while he's gone, she's managed to do that, correct, with the bag still over her head?

[Robyn Bowles]

No, the bag came off sometime, I don't know when, because she was able to tell the police artist later on about what the interior of the back of the truck looked like. But there are a few other anomalies which I think are quite important. And it's one of the reasons that I doubt what she said. The first thing is I spoke to a guy called Luke Hoora who trained Blue Heelers for the show and he owns Blue Heelers as well. And I asked him if they shed and he said they shed abominably.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I've got a red heeler and I tell you he sheds enough hair every day to make another whole dog.

[Robyn Bowles]

Well, there you go. When the police Saw her the next day at the Barrow Creek Hotel. They bagged all her clothes, of course, that she'd been wearing. Not one single dog hair was found on any of her clothing. Now, Jack also allegedly slept on the bed where Murdoch used to sleep when he got sick of sitting in the passenger seat. And there was no dog hair on Joanne from wriggling with her hands behind her back across that, across that bed either. So that's the first thing that made me a bit surprised. The second thing was I later found out, and I got photos taken within seven days of the alleged incident of Murdoch's rig, that he actually had one of those aluminium mesh canopies that you can lift the sides up and then he used to cover that with canvas. So sometimes he had blue on the outside, sometimes he had green just to disguise his vehicle a bit. You know, that was all to do with the drug running. But at the back it was solid. And the reason that the canopy was solid was to stop the Pindan dust coming up and into his sleeping area, because it comes up thrown up by the, the rear wheels of the vehicle. So I don't know how she could have climbed into the back and wriggled across and dropped down when there's a solid back on the, on the vehicle. Another thing is that he had a commercial sized tow bar on the back of the vehicle, which meant she would have had to push herself way out. To jump out with her hands behind her back and not falling over would be quite a difficult feat. And she's not. They're all that athletic.

[Interviewer]

It certainly suggests. All of this suggests an incredible presence of mind under pressure to think this quickly and this clearly in the middle of an abduction. I mean, from the moment that she's sat in the ute and has a bag placed over her head and the minute he shuts the door and walks away, it's like she's on.

[Robyn Bowles]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

In her escape attempt. And that's like something out of a movie.

[Robyn Bowles]

Well, you know, look, we know, none of us know how, how we would perform under those sort of stressful circumstances. And adrenaline does kick in. I'm quite conscious of. I think really what I'm saying here is that something bad happened that night, but not what she said. And, you know, there are a lot of other areas that I can canvas if you, if you want to hear them, but there are lots of small things. In fact, the police identified 16 anomalies in her story. Before they let her leave Alice Springs, they sat her down with a police psychologist and a senior police officer and put those questions to her. There's actually some footage on YouTube of this exact interview. And you see suddenly that it's dawning on her that the police think that maybe she actually had something to do with Pete's disappearance or death. And she becomes very defensive and refuses to be treated like a suspect. And so the interview wasn't very. A very big success. I also, with Murdoch's help because he ended up with all the boxes of material that the police. The whole case, because his lawyer arrange for him to get those. He told me the name of the hypnotherapist that the police brought up to the territory to hypnotise her to see if they could get more information about what she might have forgotten as opposed to what she was trying to remember. And that wasn't successful. And the hypnotherapist said that she was not actually hypnotised. She. She failed in. In hypnotising her because she resisted so much, not, you know, she didn't want to be hypnotised and you have to actually go along with it. It can't be hypnotised against your will.

[Interviewer]

I guess the thing for me that suggests that she's telling the truth more than anything about her entire story is it's not like she then went home and disappeared. I would assume that if I were lying about any of this and got away with it, I would go home and never come back and be very quiet about it for the rest of my life. But Joanne keeps coming back to Australia and keeps doing television and keeps, you know, doing media appearances and all that kind of stuff.

[Host]

So.

[Robyn Bowles]

Okay. Well, yes, it's interesting that you have that view about going home and trying to hide, because, in fact, that's what she did.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Robyn Bowles]

She went back to her hometown and she tried to drop out, disappear. First of all, she went back to Sydney from Alice Springs with Peter's brother Paul, who flew out from England to support her, and she went back to Dimmocks where she had worked and tried to resume her former life for a short period, but it didn't work out. And her boss, Gary, told me that his brother had a beautiful seaside mansion on the harbour and he was overseas. So they let Paul and Joanne live there for a few weeks and then Paul went back to England and Joanne was just besieged by the media. I mean, the media is good and bad in all of these things. In this case, they really hounded her. I remember talking to one guy from Fleet street who said to me, after she'd been caught out in a lie, which I can cover later. But he said, right, she's lied to Fleet street, now we're going to get her. They hounded her in Sydney. She couldn't go in or out of Dymocks without, you know, people on the steps camped out trying to get photos and interview her. So she went back to England and did try to disappear.

[Interviewer]

Oh, right, okay.

[Robyn Bowles]

Then she was offered a lot of money, I understand it was about £50,000 by Martin Bashir from Granada Television to do a one on one with him. And she told her boss Gary that she accepted because he was the one who interviewed Princess Diana and she thought he'd be kind to her. So it was really an effort by her to make all the other media go away and just say, look, I'm doing one interview and this is it. She did do that interview and it had mixed reception. So having done that, she was then offered a book deal. I heard, I'm a writer, so you hear this gossip. I don't know if it's true, but I heard that she had a $500,000 advance for. So she wrote a book which was basically a bit of a fairy story, I think, about standing on balconies and looking at the sunset and how horrible the DPP was to her and so on. And on a number of occasions during the committal and the trial process, she told Rex Wild, who was the dpp, and I know this because he told me himself that occasionally she'd just jack up and she'd say, look, that's it, I'm not coming back to Australia. You've got no case without me, so you can get stuffed. I'm over it. So she did try, I suppose, to, you know, go away and lead a normal. But her life has been blighted by this. I accept that. And, you know, she's never married. I don't even know if she's been in a close relationship since that time. And she's tried different jobs and with varying success. I believe she's remained friends with one of the police officers who was her chaperone in Alice Springs in the early days. And I'm still quite in touch with Libby as well. And I was interested to see Joanne come out not long ago for two things. She found out she had a half sister in Australia who looks uncannily like her. So you couldn't really argue that they were sisters because her father was Australian.

[Interviewer]

And they're quite friendly, aren't they?

[Robyn Bowles]

They are. I believe they are. I don't I don't know for sure. I don't know. I don't. Not privy to that information, but.

[Interviewer]

Well, I read an article where they were in a women's magazine where they were photographed together and they did the interview together.

[Robyn Bowles]

Oh, yes, they got, you know, they certainly got together. Whether they've remained friends since then, I'm not sure. But. But the other reason she said she came out was to put a memorial for Pete on the. On the highway, which I think, really, why would you do that? Why would you come out of hiding to go and do something like that? I don't know. Anyway, I don't think it went ahead because the Alice Springs council said they knew nothing about it. So.

[Interviewer]

Well, I suppose we talk to a lot of people who have a missing loved one and if we take it right back to that level and say that she is a woman who had a missing partner and they talk about that unresolved grief and wanting to lay that person to rest in some way have some kind of marker that makes sense.

[Robyn Bowles]

Absolutely. You know, they want some sort of finality that they can say, right, well, that's. Now I can walk away from that part of my life and move forward. And I think Joanne hasn't really been able to do that. And it's not only because it's not her fault necessarily. It's because she really hasn't been given that opportunity by anybody, including me, including media, including anyone that was involved in the original story, because nobody is satisfied with the story that she told the.

[Interviewer]

Touch of the Lindy Chamberlains and that she didn't cry, she wouldn't cry, she's very, very stoic. That always makes people uneasy.

[Robyn Bowles]

That's true. And I actually spoke to Lindy during my research for this book because there was a phrase that was coined by Paul Touhey, who was one of the journos in Alice Springs, and it was the lindification of Joann.

And she then started to take on this Lindy Chamberlain aura. And of course, that was horrific for the police because the last thing they wanted in the world was another Chamberlain on their hands. And Dalby and other police, Cole Hardman, a few others, very senior police, said to me, you know, we just don't want another Chamberlain. We couldn't handle it. So, you know, they tried very hard. And in fact, Brian Bates, who was the police commissioner at the time, flew down from Darwin to Alice Springs to sit with Joanne and try to persuade her to do a press conference and go on the radio or TV just so that everybody could move forward because the media was starting to get quite cross with her. And of course, most of them didn't even know what she looked like. So, of course, she could have been walking around Alice Springs and they would have missed the shot. And I know that people bought those little cheap cameras, you know, at the chemist, and there was a going rate of about 20 grand for a photo of Joanne Leeds because nobody knew what she looked like at that time. You see, these are the days before.

[Interviewer]

Instagram where they could just go and pinch people's photos from Instagram and Facebook.

[Robyn Bowles]

Exactly. She was eventually persuaded to do one appearance. And then I was talking to Fleur BITCON from Channel 9 and she said, robyn, please don't call it a press conference, because the media had to put together a list of questions that they wanted to ask her. In the end, she answered three. But she also said that she just wanted one reporter in the room and she would do, you know, face to camera for one reporter and a cameraman. Well, of course, they didn't want to buy that. So then there was arguments about that. And Denise Hurley, who was the police PR person at the time, who I'm still in touch with as well, very nice woman. You know, she tried really hard to persuade Joanne to just do one conference. Anyway, in the end, she got up early, 7 o', clock, went and got her hair done and then put on a new T shirt, the pink cheeky monkey T shirt that everybody remembers so well. She walked in with Dalby and Paul Falconio, and Paul read out a written statement from her, really, and she basically said in there that she didn't like the media believe her story and they made up stories against her, which of course got everyone really well on side. And then she left. So that was the press conference and then she went to ground again.

[Interviewer]

She literally puts her nose in the air and looks down her nose, I remember, you know, at the media, and she's wearing this pink singlet that says cheeky Monkey. And it's like she's daring people to.

[Robyn Bowles]

Impeccably made up, by the way.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, and beautiful hair. And she's daring people to not believe her story or to not, I don't know, sympathise with her, what she's been through. It's a really strange performance.

[Robyn Bowles]

It is. And I think, to be honest, I really do think it was sort of a sort of PTSD kind of thing. She had been traumatised by something terrible.

[Interviewer]

Did she feel that we weren't treating her with the respect that we were.

[Robyn Bowles]

We weren't loving her, you know. And when I spoke to Lindy, she said, look, I got in touch with Joanne and I offered to go over and help her, give her a bit of counseling and so on, but she refused. And she said, the thing is, the police told me to talk to the media, and so I did and look what happened to me. And so maybe she was told by the police not to talk to the media, or someone said, don't talk to the media because look what happened to Lindy Chamberlain. So she's not talking to the media. And there were, there were about 100 journos in Alice Springs at the time, from all over the world, and they were very much in evidence at the trial as well.

[Interviewer]

Well, I've said this before, there's a reason the McCanns and those families don't talk to the media. I'm terrified of the media.

[Host]

I get it.

[Robyn Bowles]

Yes.

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[Robyn Bowles]

Well, when I used to run a PR company, I used to say to my clients, if you don't want to see it in print, don't say it.

[Interviewer]

Because no matter what you say and what you mean, it can be used.

[Robyn Bowles]

Any way you like.

[Host]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

And it's more fun, honestly, if it's used to make you look terrible.

[Host]

If you'd like to talk to someone about abuse that's taken place in your life, no matter how long ago it happened, your GP is always a good place to start. If that's not going to work for you, you can contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or via their website, 1-800-Respect.org au or you can call Lifeline's 24 hour phone counselling service on 13, 11, 14.

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[Robyn Bowles]

I do know they. They put an awful lot of effort into trying to identify that truck stop person. I put a bit of effort in myself. But I spoke to the manageress of the shell stop, and she said that the fact that the police were saying that they'd been enhancing photos, the photos and so on, couldn't have been correct because they had only recently put in a new system. So they had a new security system, but same old cameras. And she said you can't enhance a bad photograph. So was it Murdoch Truck stop? I spent 50 hours or more interviewing Murdoch over the two or three years that this took me and all that time in various prisons. And I. I really feel that he always told me the truth about anything I asked him, but I was never confident that he told me the truth about the truck stop. And there's a number of reasons for that. And he knows that I have that belief that it was him there. But there's a term in legal parlance called consciousness of guilt, which means that if you're in a place or a situation which could place you near a crime that you didn't commit, even, but it places you in a difficult position because you're near. Sometimes people lie about it. They say, no, no, no, I never went to the Bourke street mall that day because they don't want to be perhaps called as a witness to the bombings or, you know, something like that. So it's a Sort of consciousness of guilt issue. And I just think that because he was only three hours drive from the incident on the same night, it suited him not to be the man at the truck stop.

[Interviewer]

Because we know that for years he had been driving that route. That route. I mean, his lifestyle at that time was unbelievable, wasn't it? The, the trafficking of marijuana up and down that route, driving incredible distances. He was using amphetamines. Was that right? To be able to keep driving?

[Robyn Bowles]

He never shot up. He said he only ever put it in his tea.

[Interviewer]

In his tea.

[Robyn Bowles]

In his tea. And he drank a lot of tea. Sure.

[Interviewer]

I'm not mad at him for drinking.

[Robyn Bowles]

Te he used to do, sometimes he could drive for, you know, 40 hours straight, just keep driving.

[Interviewer]

Sexual assault of at least one child.

[Robyn Bowles]

Yeah, but he was not convicted of that.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Robyn Bowles]

That was an accusation that was shown to be completely false.

[Interviewer]

Okay, okay. So he doesn't have. What convictions does he have?

[Robyn Bowles]

Long time before this incident, he had a conviction for discharging a stolen firearm in public because he owned a rifle that was stolen and he purchased it. He didn't steal it, but he purchased it as a stolen rifle. And he was drunk and he got angry at a group of Aboriginal footballers who had parked their vehicles on a bridge which was on his way home to where he was working on a property up in far north Western Australia. So he drove round the bridge through the river, I think, and then stood on the other bank and fired at the vehicles. He didn't know that there was a woman asleep in one of them and a bullet missed her by inches. Otherwise he would have been in prison for a long time. But he did go to prison. I think it was about nine months he got. But then after that he went up to Broome and he had no other convictions. He didn't want to go back to prison. But when I met him, he'd been running drugs from a little town in South Australia called Sudan, which is sort of north east of Adelaide, across either across Oodnadatta Track or across the Tanami Track up to Fitzroy crossing and then across to Broome. And he was doing that with a mate of his called James Heppy, who actually owned the business. And Murdoch drove for him. They were doing about $20,000 a run. So I can tell you, if I ever give up being a writer, I could successfully run drugs from Sedan to Broom. I know all the tricks in the book. He would paint the Bull Bar black sometimes or he'd have it chrome. He'd change the color of his Canopy and he said, you know, and he had number plates that he had interstate number plates and he also used to use black tape to change an F into an E, for example, and stuff like that. So anyone seeing him going by wouldn't. It was the same vehicle each time because he used the same route a lot.

[Interviewer]

And he was sort of very much about keeping to himself, wasn't he? He was living a lifestyle where he was very anti social and very much about keeping himself to himself. And he was in his car and driving. That was his life.

[Robyn Bowles]

He had been married, he's got a son. But he. You see, one of the reasons that I just don't think that Murdoch was involved in the way that Joanne Lees is that I got to know him quite well in that time. He was a bit sort of distant when I first went to meet him, but by the time we'd spent 50 or 60 hours together in prison, it was, you know, we were quite. I could almost say we were good mates. But he's not a good man, you know, he's done bad things and you'd certainly freak out if your daughter brought him home for lunch. But he basically came across to me as being a very organized, very careful person and not someone, because he's so big, not someone who needed to use a gun. He could use his fists and. Or just his power of intimidating because he's such a big person. And he's got four missing front teeth, which was omitted by Joanne Lees in her detailed description of the gunman. I might say no distinguishing features, she said, and he had tats right down to his wrists and four missing front teeth, apart from anything else, but which.

[Interviewer]

Give him a very distinctive mouth. Actually, they do, I would say he's got a very distinctive face.

[Robyn Bowles]

He can snarl very nicely.

[Interviewer]

He looks like an Easter island statue.

[Robyn Bowles]

Yeah, he does, rather. You're right. So look, I got to know Murdoch quite well the first time I went and saw him. I was a bit nervous myself, to be honest, but I had to ask him the question because when you go and visit these people in prison, sometimes they won't let you come back. You've got to be on their visitor list. So I thought, well, if he doesn't want me to come back, I've got to get this one out. So of course we hardly said hello. And I said to him, well, did you. Did you kill Peter Falconio? And he said, well, no, I didn't. And how do you know he's even dead? Which was a fair question at that time. It was only like, a bit over 12 months since the disappearance. Another thing that he said to me was, which sort of struck me, this interview was what set me going back to Melbourne and saying to my husband, put your pen down, we're going on this trip. Because I said to him, have you got a dog? And he said, yes, I have got a dog. And he said, He's 4 years old, his name's Jack, he goes everywhere with me, and he's a Dalmatian. So I'm a bit gobsmacked here because so far we've heard several different descriptions of the dog, but not one of them was white with black spots. And I said, where is he? And he said, oh, some people are keeping him up near Sudan. I'll tell you where he is. You can go and take his photo if you like. He said, the cops have already been. I did go and have a look at Jack, and he was a Dalmatian. There might have been a bit of something else in him, but definitely looked like a Dalmatian. Another thing that Murdoch said to me was that Joanne told the court in the trial that the gunman had punched her in the temple. And in fact, she looked at the jury with, you know, her great big eyes and a little pathetic face, and she said, and he. He punched me right here. And she put her finger on her temple. And you could almost hear the jury go, oh. But in fact, they interviewed the doctor subsequently, and he said she didn't have a mark on her face, number one. But well, before that, when I interviewed Murdoch the first time, he put his elbow on this table where we were, and he made a fist, and his fist was the size of a rock melon. He's a big man. And he said, that bitch reckoned I punched her in the face. He said, if I'd punched her in the effing face, I would have broken her effing jaw. And I believe him. So there were no bruises or anything on her. And I actually ran after the doctor after he'd given evidence. I ran after him down the driveway of the Supreme Court. I really wanted to check that point. People will tell you stories, and it's one of the reasons I never pay for interviews, because people sometimes say, oh, if you pay me, I'll talk to you. And I say, no, I don't. Because when you pay people, they usually want to please you, because you paid them. And they tell you what you want to hear. Not, you know, necessarily what might be the actual facts. And I always check. I check everything.

[Interviewer]

And there is a big groundswell within Australia of people who believe there's been a miscarriage of justice in this case against Bradley. John Murdoch, as you say, that he's not necessarily a great person, but that he is innocent of this crime. And I know that you don't like to make judgments in your books about people's innocence or guilt or put forward theories yourself.

But how about now? How about in people's podcasts? I mean, after having spent so much time with Murdoch, do you think, let's talk about the court case. Do you think that the truth came out, the whole truth? Do you think there's been a miscarriage of justice in this case? Do you think there's more to it?

[Robyn Bowles]

Well, a few things I'll say about the trial.

[Interviewer]

Well, the first thing you said earlier was that Joanne changed her story sensationally in the trial. How did she change it?

[Robyn Bowles]

And she also lied under oath and eventually corrected that. The thing that I always say about trials is that the jury only gets to hear what is considered evidence as opposed to what I find out, which is gossip, innuendo, speculation and luckily from now and then, a few facts. So I have a much broader background of knowledge of these things. And sometimes, dare I say it, I know more than the police and I know more than the lawyers because a lot of people that talk to me won't talk to the police. And so I'm sitting there listening to what the jury hears and it's very sort of sanitised in lots of ways. There's certain rules around evidence, of course, that you can't break in a trial. I have to say that the jury probably in this case made the decision that most people would have made if they'd been on that jury. However, one of the things that all of us who'd been involved in the story from the beginning, I'm talking about right back to the Alice Springs incident. Way back there were a huge number of media in Darwin as well for the trial. Of course you could hear the intake of breath in the court when Joanne changed her story for the jury because in the interim period the police had conducted a search around Australia for white four wheel drive vehicles with crawl throughs between the front seats. Any white four wheel drive that was owned by a 40ish old man was inspected by a police officer. In the whole of Australia there were a few, over 4,000 I believe, and not one single vehicle had a crawl through. So obviously the police had told Joanne this was a bit of a sticking point in her story because if the defence brought that up, you know, well, how did she get into the back of the vehicle? So she was sitting there being taken through her paces by the dpp. And so she said, and then the man was. Put a bag over my head and he took me to his vehicle and he lifted up the side flap and pushed me into the side of the vehicle, into the tray. Now, we were sitting in the court, the people who could fit in, because it was a very small court and there was this noise. The whole court just went like that. Because we knew that that was a new part. That was a new part of the story. We'd never heard that before, but of course that's what the jury heard. Now, that's totally impossible because Murdoch had these flaps that you lifted up. They're aluminium, so you could lift them up and prop them so you could sit under them if you wanted to stop and make cup of tea or, you know, this sort of thing, like an annex.

[Interviewer]

So, A, there's no flap and B, that wasn't her original story that she'd.

[Robyn Bowles]

Told over and over and over.

[Interviewer]

So is the defence not allowed to say woo up? You've said many, many, many times, he sat you in the front seat. Are they not allowed to?

[Robyn Bowles]

Yeah, they do.

[Interviewer]

They do.

[Robyn Bowles]

Oh, yeah, they say that, yeah. And Grant Algae did. He said, your story is now different. And that was at the trial. So that was a huge piece of evidence that, of course the defence. I mean, the jury's going to think, well, of course the defence is going to try and discredit her. And a lot of people felt that actually Grant Elgee didn't go in hard enough. I know Murdoch was disappointed, but he explained to me later that there's no point in trying to discredit a witness that's been schooled so carefully. And she'd obviously had a lot of training on how to answer questions. She. She answered every question to the jury. Now, experienced evidence givers, like forensic people and police and so on, they don't answer the lawyers. They look at the jury when they give their answer, so they look at their lawyer to get the question and then they give the answer to the jury. And people who are inexperienced, oh, there's a little trick you can do. People who are inexperienced are advised to, when you get in the witness box, stand with your feet pointing towards the jury, so that then you have to turn to listen to the question and then it's automatic to look back to the jury when you're giving the answer. So she had given this evidence in the trial. But in the committal hearing, Algie had gone in much harder on her, and he managed to unearth a little bit of a little gold nugget for the media who were salivating over anything, but particularly this particular issue. So before the committal, he had obtained for Murdoch the privilege of having a computer not connected to the Internet, but a computer in his cell and all the boxes of the police files. Normally the police files aren't made available to criminals, but because the police, when they were giving their evidence, referred so often to the file, he was able to then say to the judge, well, look, you know, this has been unfair because we're hearing all this stuff that's in the file and we don't have a copy of the file. So I call for the file. And so the file came forward and it was about like four big cardboard boxes full of 120,000 pages of stu. So Murdoch had nothing better to do but trawl through all this. And in his little researches, I mean, he helped me a lot because he gave me lots of information that, you know, wasn't available to the public because he found all this stuff like the hypnotherapist's address and so on. She nearly had a heart attack when I rang her up in amongst all this. He found out that in the hotel where the police put her up, where she was being looked after by my. Still, my contact, Libby, Joanne was on the Internet to someone called Steph, and quite often on the Internet and talking to this person. He was in Berlin at the time and she was saying, when this is all over, I should meet you in Berlin. And then another email said something like, if we ever have a little girl together, we should call her Stephanie, and this sort of thing. And so of course, Murdoch had found all these emails and this was gold to him. So Algie just asked, he had very soft voice in the court and he stood up and he said, and who is Steph? And she just looked like she'd been shot. Eyes went round, her face just went white and she looked at wild, you know, the deep. And of course he couldn't help her because he really should have brought it out in direct questioning to say, and you had a friend called Steph, but there was nothing in that, was there? You know, but he didn't. And so it was a bombshell and it all happened at about quarter to four, so the media are scribbling like mad, and the judge kind of saved her, she said she didn't, she didn't know, and Then Algie said, is that someone you've been emailing? No, she lied, totally lied about it. And so he hammered that point home and she continued to lie about it and she just looked like she didn't know where to go. Luckily for her, the judge saved her by calling a five minute early adjournment. The media were furious about it, but he got her off the hook for then. And then the next morning when she came back into court, Algie went in again, very politely and softly and asked her to tell us all about Steph. And of course she'd been told by the DPP that she has to tell the story. Then of course, people say, oh, well, you tell one lie, you know, could be it. Yeah, so. So her credibility was a bit lacking in some areas, I think. But having said that, again, I should say that I don't think she was anywhere responsible for what happened to Peter.

[Interviewer]

So do you think there's any chance that Bradley John Murdoch could ever receive a retrial or anything of that nature?

[Robyn Bowles]

Well, actually, no, I don't because there's a lot of, there's a lot of scientific evidence now which shows that some of the forensic material used at his trial was very suspect. I think in summary, Murdoch won't get out of jail because the Northern Territory government has introduced a new law which I call the Murdoch Amendment, which says that if you've committed a. If you've been found guilty of a murder and you don't tell the police where the body is, you're never to be released. So even though he may survive the 28 years that he was banged up for, I don't think he'll survive prison because he keeps saying he doesn't know where the body is. Now that could be true. And so.

What I think in summary is that something bad did happen to Joanne Lees. I think probably her boyfriend was killed either at the roadside or nearby. I think it was probably he was carrying drugs in the Combivan for someone. It was a drug handover gone wrong and she was told to make herself scarce and give whoever did it a head start or the same thing had happened to her and she was so terrified that she just ran into the bush and hid. And she didn't make up the story then don't forget she had all night and a good part of the next day because it took the police three hours to come up from Alice Springs. So she had plenty of time to sort of mull it over. And there are other issues, like in the morning after the event she was taken out to have a look at a four wheel drive that was parked out on the apron of Barrack Creek Hotel and also the driver and also his dog. And those three things formed a very strong resemblance to the description that she later gave the police of the gunman, his dog and the vehicle. So how did she see all that with a bag over her head? You know, it's a sort of story that has now gone round the world and back again. And I think Murdoch will die in jail.

[Host]

Thank you to Robin Bowles. Robyn has written literally dozens of true crime books and there's a link in the show notes to her website where you can explore them. If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13 Young on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.

[Robyn Bowles]

The producers of this podcast recognize the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.

They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders, past, present and those emerging.

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[Robyn Bowles]

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[Host]

Warning.

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