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Murderer only came to attention of police after row with partner in drugs racket

Betrayal and revenge finally sealed the fate of Bradley John Murdoch, the outback drifter found guilty this week of murdering a British backpacker on a lonely desert highway.

Murdoch, 47, a confessed drug runner and former mechanic, was sentenced on Thursday to a minimum 28 years in jail for killing Peter Falconio, 29, on the night of July 14, 2001.

He was also found guilty of assaulting and trying to abduct the backpacker's girlfriend, Joanne Lees, 32.

Falconio's body has never been found despite one of the most intensive manhunts in Australian history.

The British tourists were eight months into a round-the-world trip when Murdoch tricked them into stopping in the middle of the desert, shot Falconio and attempted to abduct Miss Lees.

She escaped into the scrub and hid in the darkness for five hours before flagging down a passing truck.

At one point in their eight-hour deliberations, the jury asked the judge if they were allowed to pass a verdict of guilty despite the fact that no body had been found.

'The absence of a body is not a bar to a guilty verdict of murder,' Chief Justice Brian Martin, of the Northern Territory Supreme Court, told them. It was all the assurance the jurors needed. A few hours later they found Murdoch guilty.

A stooped giant of a man nearly 2 metres tall, Murdoch had a reputation in the scattered townships of Australia's tropical north as a cannabis smuggler who was always armed.

But it was not until he had a bitter falling out with his drug-smuggling business partner, James Hepi, 37, that he came to the attention of police.

The pair teamed up together when 'Big Brad', as he was known, was released from prison in 1996. He had served 15 months for firing up to 10 rifle shots at Aborigines celebrating a football match victory in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, barely missing some of the crowd.

The two men began running marijuana from South Australia to Broome, in the remote north of Western Australia. They undertook the 6,000km round trip each month, hiding the drugs in a long-range fuel tank.

But relations between the two men became increasingly strained - Murdoch felt that Hepi, a burly Maori, was not pulling his weight. When the New Zealander was arrested in possession of A$45,000 ($263,000) worth of cannabis in 2002, he was convinced Murdoch had betrayed him.

For months he had harboured suspicions that Murdoch had murdered Falconio. Murdoch had volunteered to Hepi, without being asked, that he was not the killer. He had talked of the best way of disposing of a corpse, in a roadside drain 'where the digging was soft'.

And after returning from a drug run a day after  Falconio's disappearance, Murdoch had cut his hair short, shaved off his moustache and made extensive alterations to his vehicle.

Hepi broke his silence. In return for informing on Murdoch, he had an 18-month jail sentence for marijuana trafficking suspended. Murdoch knew the police were onto him and was hiding out in dusty semi-rural backblocks northeast of Adelaide in South Australia.

He had befriended a 33-year-old woman and her 12-year-old daughter and on the evening of August 21, 2002, walked over to their isolated homestead.

What happened next became the subject of a separate trial. Murdoch was accused of twice raping the girl, bundling her and her mother into the back of his Land Cruiser and holding them captive for more than 24 hours. But he was acquitted of the charges by a court in South Australia in 2003 after crucial prosecution evidence was lost.

As soon as he left the court room in Adelaide, he was re-arrested, charged with the Falconio murder and extradited to the Northern Territory.  Investigators found a perfect match between his DNA and a spot of blood on the back of Ms Lees' T-shirt. It was the 'lynchpin' in the case, the prosecutor, Rex Wild QC, said.

Murdoch was born in Western Australia and spent most of his life in the state. At school he claimed to have been bullied by Aboriginal classmates, giving him a lifelong hatred of Aborigines. He keeps his sleeves rolled up  to show off a tattoo on his arm depicting an Aborigine hanging from a noose.

In 1973 he was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving and received a three-month suspended sentence.

Prosecutors admitted that there was uncertainty over Murdoch's exact motive for killing  Falconio.

Perhaps he had seen Ms Lees in Alice Springs and liked what he saw. He may have seen her driving the Kombi van a few hours later while Falconio was dozing in the back and assumed she was alone.

One thing is certain: Joanne Lees was lucky to escape with her life. More than four years since that pitch-black night in the middle of the Australian desert, the past has finally caught up with Murdoch.



Betrayal that sealed outback killer's fate