July 19, 2025 • 35 mins
Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of Falconio’s murder in December 2005 and sentenced to life in prison. Now, there’s been a significant development.
Murdoch died of throat cancer on July 15, 2025, at the age of 67. He had been diagnosed with the terminal illness in 2019 and was released from Alice Springs Correctional Centre last month to receive palliative care at Alice Springs Hospital. Chillingly, his death came just one day after the 24th anniversary of Falconio’s murder.
Despite years of investigation and repeated appeals from police, Murdoch never disclosed the location of Peter Falconio’s remains. His body has never been found.
In this episode, originally published in 2021, Jessie Stephens speaks with former Detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynne — the lead investigator into Peter Falconio’s disappearance and murder, about the details of this case.
This episode first aired in 2019 and marked one of the earliest major cases on True Crime Conversations. We're re-releasing it today for listeners old and new.
CREDITS
Guest: Colleen Gwynne
Host: Jessie Stephens
Senior Producer/Editor: Elise Cooper
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on HI. It's your
host Claire Murphy bringing you an update on one of
Australia's most notorious true crime cases, the murder of British
backpacker Peter Falconio. It's the case you might remember that
inspired the Australian horror film Wolf Creek. Bradley John Murdoch
(00:28):
was convicted of Falconio's murder back in December two thousand
and five. He was sentenced to life in prison, but
now there's been a significant development. Murdoch died of throat
cancy on July fifteen, twenty twenty five, at the age
of sixty seven. He'd been diagnosed with the terminal illness
back in twenty nineteen, and he was released from Alice
Springs's Correctional Center just last month to receive palliative care
(00:51):
at Alice Springs Hospital. But chillingly, his death came just
one day after the twenty fourth anniversary of Falconio's murder.
Despite years of investigation and repeated appeals from police, Murdoch
never discs close the location of Peter Falconio's remains and
his body has never been found. In a statement following
(01:12):
Murdock's death, Northern Territory Police said his silence has denied
the Falconio family the closure they have so long deserved.
They went on to say our thoughts are with the
Falconio family in the United Kingdom, whose grief, they said, continues.
In this episode, originally published back in twenty twenty one,
Jesse Stevens speaks with former Detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynn, the
(01:35):
lead investigator into Peter Falconio's disappearance and murder, about the
details of this case.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It's Saturday night in the middle of July two thousand
and one when Peter Falconio and Joanne Leeds travel down
the Stuart Highway in their Orange Combi van. Peter is
twenty eight and in the driver's seat, His girlfriend, twenty
seven year old Joanne is in the passenger seat. They've
been in Australia for a little over five months, first
(02:04):
arriving in Sydney on a working holiday visa. They'd come
from Brighton in England, prepared for the trip of a lifetime.
On June the twenty fifth, the young tourists departed Sydney
to embark on a road trip across Australia, starting in Canberra,
then on to Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin and Brisbane. The couple
(02:28):
had been in Alice Springs and abound that night for
the Devil's Marbles south of Tenant Creek. The road is
long and the drive notoriously remote. You rarely see another car,
and the road extends as far as the eye can
see kilometers ahead. It's eerie if you stand on the
side of the road, it's so quiet and still, you're
(02:51):
able to hear your own heartbeat. They had stopped at
the roadhouse in Barrow Creek, but once they set off again,
they start to notice something unusual a car. They keep
expecting the car to overtake them, but it doesn't. Along
the expanse of road, a Toyota four wheel drive with
a large green canopy in the back approaches them. The
(03:14):
driver gestures for them to pull over. Something must be wrong.
There's a twinge of fear there alone, more than fifteen
thousand kilometers from home. News had emerged recently in Australia
and internationally of backpacker murders, with tourists like them disappearing
in the Australian outback. They pull the car over and
(03:38):
a man approaches them, and a few hours later, Northern
Territory police get a panicked phone call. I'm Jesse Stevens
and this is True Crime Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring
the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people
(04:01):
who know the most about them. In today's episode, I'm
speaking with former Detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynn, the lead investigator
for the disappearance and presumed murder of Peter Falconio. You
(04:24):
received a phone call one day from a young police
officer who said that you better come into work because
a bloke was missing and his partner said that someone
had shot him when you arrived at work, Can you
remember those early details of the case, those sort of
first preliminary details that were coming out.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I remember it was about eleven o'clock at night and
I got a phone call which was a little bit
different to what you would get in Central Australia. Normally
it's something more akin to a bad car accident or
something that had happened in a remote area someone needed
to be airlifted. But to say that a woman had
claimed that her boyfriend had been was very much out
(05:07):
of the ordinary. So I got myself to work and
it just looked really stressed and chaotic. It didn't seem
to be organized. People were saying that there had been
this claim and they were going to send some people
up to Barrow Creek to interview this woman, but really
there didn't seem to be a sense of organization and
any sort of planning with the idea that this might
(05:29):
be something that would turn into a major investigation for
many years. So yeah, not really what you would expect.
And I guess when you see what happens over the
following few weeks and months, I think that first twenty
four hours was critical and probably did a lot more
damage than what we initially understood.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Can you describe, for anyone who hasn't been to Barrow
Creek and might not know that part of Australia very well,
just what it looks like, what the feel of it is,
because we hear that it's very very remote, but I
think a lot of people don't quite know how remote
this stretch of road actually is.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
The Stretcher Road where the crime scene was. You can
see what appears like kilometers ahead. It's just very straight
that area road and what you have is very hard ground,
low salt brush, so you can see a long way
from If you stand in one area, you can see
three sixty around you. There's no heels. It's probably some
(06:29):
of the remotest area in Australia.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
The two people involved, it was Joanne Lees who had
called the police, and her boyfriend Peter Falconio had gone missing.
They were traveling through Australia, weren't they. What did you
know about their movements before that night.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, they'd spent quite some time in Sydney. Joanne was
working in a bookstore. Peter had bought this comby van
and he was doing some work on it preparing for
this trip through remote Australia. That was his dream is
to go through Australia and kind of sleep rough. And
he wasn't interested in hanging around Sydney and nightclubs and
(07:12):
living it up. He wanted to get out and wanted
to go to places where no one else was around.
And they'd saved for many years for this holiday, and
this was their last holiday before they were to marry,
So they had planned to then go on to New
Zealand and onto other countries and then gradually make their
way back to the UK and settle down and have kids.
(07:35):
So they had invested a lot of money in this
trip and had saved significantly for many many years.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Where were they going that night when they were on
that road.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I don't think they had a destination in mind at
that point. They fueled up and then had decided to
drive until they had enough for driving. They'd intended to
come up to North Australia and then across to Western Australia,
so they had quite a long trip plan and they
(08:07):
were planning to spend months in that Combe van that
was going to be their home for the next few months.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
When Joanne first did speak to police, what was her
version of events? What did she say had taken place
that evening?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Her story didn't change a great deal. There was some
confusion in some of the detail, but basically her account
was that her and Peter were driving along at some
point they realized there was a car behind them, and
then that vehicle, which we now know to be Bradley
Murdoch in his land Cruiser, had pulled up alongside them
(08:43):
and was pointing towards the rear of their vehicle as
if to indicate that something was wrong. So at that point,
Peter had pulled over and he got out of the car.
Joanne was then asked to move over to the driver's
seat and rev the engine, and what she then heard
(09:04):
was allowed bang. Her immediate thought was that was a
vehicle backfiring, but we now believed that was the gun shot,
the fatal shot that killed Peter. She was then confronted
by Bradley Murdock. He appeared at the driver's side door,
pointing a gun that she described at the time as
a Western type revolver. He pushes her over to the
(09:28):
passenger side and instructs her to bend forward and put
her hands behind her back. So Joanne through this whole idea,
She just fights for her life continually, and she refused.
He then put a gun to her head and she
subdued into compliance. She really thought that at this point
he was going to kill her. Who was going to
(09:48):
shoot her in the head. He then tied her hands
using the manacles that are now quite well known and
talked about, and forced her out of the vehicle. Murdock
straddles her and attempts to bind her feet, and she
just starts kicking, he gives up. She's tough. She just
keeps fighting and he punches her to the side of
(10:10):
the head and he lifts her and frog marches her
to the vehicle and then grabs her head and prevents
her from looking around. So clearly she's at that point
she's looking for Peter. She's wondering where he is, so
he deliberately forces her head forward and places her in
(10:30):
the back of his Yet she's very confused at this day.
She's probably can cast. All of this has happened very
quickly from the time that they first pull over to
this happening, and she's calling out, asking Murdoch what he'd
done with Peter, and he doesn't respond. She actually also says,
(10:51):
are you going to rape me? And at one point
he opens the back of the canopy and he just
says be quiet, or he would suit her. She realizes
that if she doesn't escape now, then she probably wasn't
ever going to survive this, so she slips down the
rear of the canopy and as soon as her feet
(11:13):
hit the ground, she runs towards the bush. She just runs.
She doesn't really know what direction she's running in, so
she hides behind a relatively small saltwush tree and curled
up in a ball with her knees tucked under her chin,
and then tried desperately to control her breathing. The fact
that she was able to hide there was probably a
(11:37):
miracle if you've seen that area, She was very, very fortunate.
After some time, she hears Murdoch's startner combee and drive
it north. He actually drives it off and hides it
in the bush, and she listens really carefully and she
can hear the gravel crunching and something being dragged or hauled,
(12:01):
she believed to be her boyfriend Peter. She then is
the second vehicle start then drive away. She's then left
under that salt bush, wondering basically what will happen next.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
And how did she escape? How did she find anyone,
because as you say, this is such a remote area.
Did she manage to flag down a car?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
So she sat there for some time, It was about
four or five hours. Because the biggest dilemma for Joanne
is anyone that may come along that road might either
be Murdoch or an associate of murder. So once she
heard what appeared to be the sound of a large truck,
which we now know was a road train. She thought
(12:49):
that that was safe or more likely to be safe
to come out, and she ran out and flagged the
road train down.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And so when she spoke to police and she's described
this series of events, was she able to describe what
the map and looked like who had attacked them.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Joanne's initial description was pretty spot on. She describes him
as a tall, white man. She describes his hair down
to quite remarkable detail, and she says that his hair
kind of had bright flecks in it. That was quite
interesting for me when I had initially read that, because
(13:31):
I had never seen someone describe that in my years
of policing, that someone had kind of these shiny patches
in their hair, and I thought, well, maybe that's bits
of gray that the offender had. It's interesting to note
at this point when I first met Bradley Murdoch, that's
one of the things I noticed if he had this
little it's kind of like his hair had this shine
(13:52):
to it, and that's what Joanne noticed. So in terms
of her ability to be able to pick up on
such minute detail when she's under such enormous dress, shows
what a remarkable woman she was.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
When police received that call, they then went to the scene.
Was there any evidence left behind from either the perpetrator
or any sign at all of Peter.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
What they find is blood that is on the road
and on the verge of the road. But you can
clearly see where someone's tried to cover that blood up
by pushing their gravel from the side of the road
on top of the blood that was on the road.
But there was certainly quite a bit of blood there
and off to the side of the road when you
looked along the fence line, it was the Combi van,
(14:41):
so it was clear that that was the scene of
the crime.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
When Joanne came with her series of events, she was
the only real witness who had seen this that you
knew of. Was there any suspicion cast over Joanne herself
in those early days, weeks and months, the.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
First few weeks of this investigation, If you look back hindsight,
there were some things that we've done well. There were
some things that weren't done particularly well. But in any
homicide such as this or suspicious murder or death, you've
always got to keep an open mind, particularly if the
offender is not evident immediately. Now it's a valid avenue
(15:26):
of investigation to look into the complainant or that person
that is closest to the victim or the decease in
this case, and of course that they looked at whether
she would have any motive to want to harm or
kill her partner at that point. So was she a
(15:47):
person of interests? Probably not, But did they keep an
open mind and consider that she could potentially have some involvement, Yes,
they did.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
There was an early press conference where Joanne fronted the
media wearing an unfortunate T shirt. What did the shirt say?
And how do you think she came across?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, that's some footage that I often used in education
for detectives, particularly around how to use the media to
elicit information in relation to a major crime. Some real
mistakes were made there. So Joanne obviously didn't have any
clothes with her, so one of the things that the
(16:34):
police initially did was to assist her in buying some
clothes to get her through. And that shirt she chose
herself and then wore in that very important first media interview,
and I think it probably wasn't the best choice in
terms of clothing, and I think that's where the severe
(16:58):
judgment of Joanne Lee's first started. In these matters, the
public will always be suspicious, They will always judged victims,
and it happens time and time again, and we as
police really need to ensure that we provide the best
advice to protect victims from that sort of public scrutiny.
And I think in this case they failed Joanne in
(17:20):
allowing her to wear a shirt that says cheeky monkey
when she's pleading for the public for information that may
lead to the whereabouts of Peter or the identity of
the personal persons who are harmed him.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jesse Stevens.
I'm speaking with former detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynn about the
disappearance and presumed murder of Peter Falconio. It was February
(17:59):
two thousand and two, that's about six months after Falconio's
disappearance when you were promoted to superintendant, which was the
head of crime in Alice Springs. Where was the case
at at that point?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Externally, if the public were looking at it, it probably
seemed to be that it was going through a progress
of excluding persons of interest based on investigative avenues and
process of elimination going through what was thousands of lines
of inquiry. But once I was promoted and I was
assigned this investigation, I went through a process of actually
(18:38):
just listening and watching and looking at what was going
on with the team at the time, and it became
really clear to me fairly quickly that the investigation lacked leadership,
and it lacked direction, and it lacked any valid and
thorough investigation plan that would increase the chances of identifying
(19:01):
the offender in this. So you know, there were some
things that I had to do immediately to try, and
I guess, improve our chances of finding Peter dead or
alive and finding out who was responsible. My first three
priorities was to look at the team and understand who
in that team actually was engaged and had belief in
(19:23):
Johanna as the victim, and who was there for the
right reasons and wanted to see this to the end.
The other part is to look at the detail. And
I'm not a details person by any means. I'm the
worst person for detail. But I had to go into
the detail, and I sat there day and night and
read case note entry after case not entry to understand
(19:45):
what they had done, where they were at, and really
what direction the investigation should go into. And I started
to set priorities. And one of the things I also
did was to try and limit the amount of influence
that the senior police had on the investigation. And my
(20:05):
priority was to let the investigators do the investigating and
they could get on with managing the police force. And
that was probably one of the hardest discussions I've ever
had with the Deputy Commissioner at the time, but to
his credit, he accepted that and let us get on
with doing the job.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
You also chose a team who had varied skills, one
of whom was renowned for being incredibly good with detail.
A key to the case was the DNA found on
Joanne's shirt. Can you talk us through the breakthrough that
came from that and how you managed to actually obtain
(20:42):
DNA that led you to this key suspect.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It's like in any case. Now, look, this is nearly
twenty years ago and DNA was the round, but it
was still fairly new. So we had some DNA profiles.
We had one on joanne shirt, had one on the
gearstick of the combie, and one on the steering wheel.
So we had a profile, but the profile didn't match
(21:07):
anyone on our DNA system. If you think back twenty
years ago, the National DNA database was still relatively new,
so there wasn't the number of profiles that they would
have now. And so we had the profile, but we
didn't have a match. So we looked through our persons
of interest and one of them was Bradley Murdoch. Very
(21:31):
early on in the investigation, he became a person of
interest and then as other things transpired, he became a
suspect and we needed to get his DNA or close too.
So we understood that he had had a fooling out
with his brother and we needed to seek his consent
(21:55):
for a sample for the purpose of analysis. So the
youngest detective on our team was a very quietly spoken,
articulate and I thought that she was the best person
to speak to Gary Murdoch. So off she went and
spoke to him, and yeah, she explained our position that
(22:15):
we were in and the fact that his brother was
a suspect, and we were able to obtain a sample
for the purpose of analysis. And once that came in,
we knew we had our guy.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
You say that Bradley Murdoch was a suspect. What did
police know about him up until that point because he
had been engaged in criminal activity? What was known about
him and what brought him onto your radar in the
first place.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
When the investigation commenced. Once I took over, there's one question,
I asked, give me your top five to ten suspects.
If you got ten, Gray, give me who you have.
And at that time, Bradley Murdoch was second or third
on that list, and so I said, right, what we
are going to do is have a look at these
that require further attention. And once we looked at Murdoch
(23:07):
and we understood more about him, we realized that there
was so much circumstantial evidence connecting him to this particular crime.
One of those things was he was in all of
Springs at the same time. So to be in Central
Australia when you actually live in Western Australia or you
(23:28):
live in South Australia, that is an enormous coincidence. We
then started to find out a little bit more about
Bradley Murdoff, who would often go from South Australia to Broom,
taking five to ten pounds of drugs each trip, and
he would do that in the vehicle that fitted the
(23:50):
description that joe Anne Leeds had given. So we knew
that he still had this vehicle, but he had made
some significant changes to it immediately after this crime had occurred.
Thing he'd done is he'd completely changed his appearance. He'd
shaved his hair, he'd shaved his facial hair off, his
(24:13):
behaviors changed, He kept a much lower profile. And when
we released the truck stop video, we had a phone
call that the person in that video looked very similar
to Bradley Murdock. The final piece was the fact that
his drug associate, James Heppy, was also talking about Murdock
(24:35):
as the potential murderer in this case. So things were
starting to unravel for Bradley Murdock, but the circumstantial evidence
around him was just mounting up. And then when you
add the DNA, you're pretty much there.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
How did you eventually arrest him?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, well, this is another interesting coincidence. So during our investigation,
I sought to get a criminal profile of the offender.
Now I had learnt a lot about criminal profiling, and
I was a big believer in her, and I knew
there was a superintendent at the time in South Australia
(25:18):
who had been FBI trained, and so she undertook a
profile of the offender in this matter and had made
some conclusions about who the offender is, and she was
pretty close in terms of her predictions. It just so
happened that during that time between the time she did
(25:38):
the profile and the time we started to actively look
for Bradley Murdoch, that she was the district superintendent in
charge of the area where he had committed another crime.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
What was that crime?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
So that was the rape and abduction of a woman
and her daughter from a town in South Australia where
he had abducted them. He had chained them to the
back of his land cruise a ute and he had
driven around with him for a couple of days and
tormented and tortured them and finally letting them go. Then
(26:15):
there was a man hunt for him and Superintendent Pillmyer,
who had done the profile, was in charge of that.
And I'll never forget her ringing me and saying I
think I've got your guy.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
You met Bradley Murdoch in his cell and we hear
often that he is tall and quite dominating. What was
he like? What was his presence? How would you describe him?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
He's a big man. I can see why women would
think him intimidating. He was quite erratic. He was angry.
And he stood face to face with me in a
room at Yetler Prison in South Australia. And I was
with my male counterpart, a detective who was older guy,
(27:06):
a bit of a bushy himself. But he wasn't interested
in even looking at him. He just looked at me
and he stood up close to me, close enough that
I could feel his spit on my face as he
was raising his voice at me and telling me that
I had the wrong guy. And he tried everything to
intimidate me, and we stood face to face for quite
(27:28):
some time. I didn't take a step back. It was
kind of it became a game after a while. But
finally he stood back from me and I got him
to sit down and we talked for some time.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
What did he say during that time? Was he still
trying to convince you of his innocence?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Oh? Absolutely. One part of this case that became quite
controversial was the late release of some footage from the
truck stop in Ella Springs. Now, the police at the time.
Took a number of weeks to release that footage because
they were trying to enhance it to increase the possibility
that someone may recognize the car or the person in
(28:10):
the footage, when an actual fact, they probably should have
just got it out there. So his focus was on
that footage and saying that it's not me and your
footage because I use the other pumps. And he pointed
to the front of his teeth and said, I've got
no fucking teeth, so how could it be me. His
(28:34):
focus on that footage was quite considerable, But the whole
time he was certainly arguing his case that he was
innocent of what he'd been accused of.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
You mentioned the profile that was developed. What kind of
man was Bradley Murdoch and what were his motivations.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
There's a number of things with Bradley Murdoch. He had
a history of using violence and generally when he didn't
get his own way, he liked to be in control.
Kilmi said this crime was committed with sex in mind.
She believed the target was Joanne, not Peter. Peter was
(29:15):
in the way, so he needed to be removed. There
is some belief that maybe he had seen Joanne when
they were both in Alice Springs. It could have been
that he was at the Recco on the Highway the
same time that she was at Red Rooster waiting outside
for Peter. Now we know that she is the sort
(29:35):
of woman that Bradley likes, and he may have decided
at that point to follow her and pursue her. Now,
that day, the fourteenth of July is significant for Bradley
Murdock because it also signifies the day that he was married.
Now that marriage broke down and he was never had
(29:57):
any contact with his ex wife or his son, and
he carried some anger and animosity about that, So we
thought that perhaps that date had some significance.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
You traveled to the UK to speak to Joanne, who
was at this point pretty wary and distrusting of police
after her experience. What did she tell you and did
you feel you were able to regain her trust?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
The first morning was very difficult. She had never met me,
She didn't have a lot of trust of the Northern
Territory Police. She didn't have a lot of faith in
the Northern Territory Police, and it probably took a good
hour and a half two hours to really gain that
trust and to get her to open up. But once
(30:47):
we did, it was a really productive conversation. She was
able to explain certain parts of her statement which many
were suspicious of, and some of the ambiguities were really
just around the amount of stress that she was under
at the time. Also, what became clear to me is
(31:10):
that the initial police had tainted some of her evidence
by introducing some influencers in the first twenty four hours.
And what I mean by that is she said that
Bradley Murdock had a dog, and the police officer said, oh,
was it a dog that looked like that one? And
pointed out a blue healer. So by introducing such influencers,
(31:35):
it really taints their evidence and it confuses a witness
or a victim, particularly when they've been under such stress.
They can often get confused by things that happened immediately
after an event that's caused that trauma. So there were
some things that the police had really I guess tainted
(31:57):
in the first few hours.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Another key piece of evidence ended up being a hairtie.
Can you talk us through this significance of that?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, that was critical. So when we seized Bradley Murdock's
vehicle from South Australia and all his belongings. He was
actually going to hide. He was going to hide in
somewhere very remote and we probably would have some difficulty
in finding him because he knows those back roads like
(32:31):
the back of his hand. He's driven up them all
his life. He's been a drug runner. So we got
him at a time that he had everything with him.
So once we seized all his belongings and brought them
to Darwin, we were about to go through a process
of itemizing everything he had and looking at what could
(32:51):
possibly be evident for the Northern Territory matter. And one
of the detectives who had this an amazing attention to detail.
She said, no, I think the best way for us
to do this is one person spent as long as
it takes, and goes through it piece by piece by piece.
And so she started dismantling the back of his vehicle
(33:15):
and what she found around his gun holster was a
Lady Jane hairtie. And Joanne had reported that she'd lost
it in the struggle, and we thought, is it a trophy?
Why would he keep it knowing that that would connect
him to the crime, But there it was. It was
(33:36):
around his holster, and when he was shown that in
the trial, he almost recalled off the back of his
chair because he realized that that was the last piece
of the puzzle. So it was such a significant find
in terms of the overall circumstantial case.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Did he ever confess?
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Never? Never?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And what was he convicted of in the courtroom?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
He was convicted of the murder of Pflcneo and the
assault and attempted abduction of Joe Anne Lee's.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Finally, I wanted to ask if Peter Falconio's body or
remains have ever been found.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
No, we have undertaken a number of searches. We've used
experts from the UK. Whenever there is any information, the
police act on that. That would be something just for
the family. I know would assist them. I don't think
Bradley will ever disclose the whereabouts. I think he will
(34:41):
take that to his great I guess you know. We
feel quite proud in having achieved a conviction without a body,
but to find Peter's remains would certainly add some real
closure for the family.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Colleen Gwinn is a detective superintendent who led the search
for Peter Falconio. She was in the police force for
thirty years before reaching the rank of commander. It was
during this time that she brought Peter Falconio's killer to justice.
True Crime Conversations is a Mother of Maya podcast hosted
(35:16):
by me Jesse Stevens. Sound design is by Ian Camaliari,
and our producer is Gia Moylan. If you'd like to
find out more about the show, don't forget to join
our online community. Just search for True Crime Conversations on
Facebook and make a request to join
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on HI. It's your
host Claire Murphy bringing you an update on one of
Australia's most notorious true crime cases, the murder of British
backpacker Peter Falconio. It's the case you might remember that
inspired the Australian horror film Wolf Creek. Bradley John Murdoch
(00:28):
was convicted of Falconio's murder back in December two thousand
and five. He was sentenced to life in prison, but
now there's been a significant development. Murdoch died of throat
cancy on July fifteen, twenty twenty five, at the age
of sixty seven. He'd been diagnosed with the terminal illness
back in twenty nineteen, and he was released from Alice
Springs's Correctional Center just last month to receive palliative care
(00:51):
at Alice Springs Hospital. But chillingly, his death came just
one day after the twenty fourth anniversary of Falconio's murder.
Despite years of investigation and repeated appeals from police, Murdoch
never discs close the location of Peter Falconio's remains and
his body has never been found. In a statement following
(01:12):
Murdock's death, Northern Territory Police said his silence has denied
the Falconio family the closure they have so long deserved.
They went on to say our thoughts are with the
Falconio family in the United Kingdom, whose grief, they said, continues.
In this episode, originally published back in twenty twenty one,
Jesse Stevens speaks with former Detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynn, the
(01:35):
lead investigator into Peter Falconio's disappearance and murder, about the
details of this case.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
It's Saturday night in the middle of July two thousand
and one when Peter Falconio and Joanne Leeds travel down
the Stuart Highway in their Orange Combi van. Peter is
twenty eight and in the driver's seat, His girlfriend, twenty
seven year old Joanne is in the passenger seat. They've
been in Australia for a little over five months, first
(02:04):
arriving in Sydney on a working holiday visa. They'd come
from Brighton in England, prepared for the trip of a lifetime.
On June the twenty fifth, the young tourists departed Sydney
to embark on a road trip across Australia, starting in Canberra,
then on to Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin and Brisbane. The couple
(02:28):
had been in Alice Springs and abound that night for
the Devil's Marbles south of Tenant Creek. The road is
long and the drive notoriously remote. You rarely see another car,
and the road extends as far as the eye can
see kilometers ahead. It's eerie if you stand on the
side of the road, it's so quiet and still, you're
(02:51):
able to hear your own heartbeat. They had stopped at
the roadhouse in Barrow Creek, but once they set off again,
they start to notice something unusual a car. They keep
expecting the car to overtake them, but it doesn't. Along
the expanse of road, a Toyota four wheel drive with
a large green canopy in the back approaches them. The
(03:14):
driver gestures for them to pull over. Something must be wrong.
There's a twinge of fear there alone, more than fifteen
thousand kilometers from home. News had emerged recently in Australia
and internationally of backpacker murders, with tourists like them disappearing
in the Australian outback. They pull the car over and
(03:38):
a man approaches them, and a few hours later, Northern
Territory police get a panicked phone call. I'm Jesse Stevens
and this is True Crime Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring
the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people
(04:01):
who know the most about them. In today's episode, I'm
speaking with former Detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynn, the lead investigator
for the disappearance and presumed murder of Peter Falconio. You
(04:24):
received a phone call one day from a young police
officer who said that you better come into work because
a bloke was missing and his partner said that someone
had shot him when you arrived at work, Can you
remember those early details of the case, those sort of
first preliminary details that were coming out.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I remember it was about eleven o'clock at night and
I got a phone call which was a little bit
different to what you would get in Central Australia. Normally
it's something more akin to a bad car accident or
something that had happened in a remote area someone needed
to be airlifted. But to say that a woman had
claimed that her boyfriend had been was very much out
(05:07):
of the ordinary. So I got myself to work and
it just looked really stressed and chaotic. It didn't seem
to be organized. People were saying that there had been
this claim and they were going to send some people
up to Barrow Creek to interview this woman, but really
there didn't seem to be a sense of organization and
any sort of planning with the idea that this might
(05:29):
be something that would turn into a major investigation for
many years. So yeah, not really what you would expect.
And I guess when you see what happens over the
following few weeks and months, I think that first twenty
four hours was critical and probably did a lot more
damage than what we initially understood.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Can you describe, for anyone who hasn't been to Barrow
Creek and might not know that part of Australia very well,
just what it looks like, what the feel of it is,
because we hear that it's very very remote, but I
think a lot of people don't quite know how remote
this stretch of road actually is.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
The Stretcher Road where the crime scene was. You can
see what appears like kilometers ahead. It's just very straight
that area road and what you have is very hard ground,
low salt brush, so you can see a long way
from If you stand in one area, you can see
three sixty around you. There's no heels. It's probably some
(06:29):
of the remotest area in Australia.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
The two people involved, it was Joanne Lees who had
called the police, and her boyfriend Peter Falconio had gone missing.
They were traveling through Australia, weren't they. What did you
know about their movements before that night.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, they'd spent quite some time in Sydney. Joanne was
working in a bookstore. Peter had bought this comby van
and he was doing some work on it preparing for
this trip through remote Australia. That was his dream is
to go through Australia and kind of sleep rough. And
he wasn't interested in hanging around Sydney and nightclubs and
(07:12):
living it up. He wanted to get out and wanted
to go to places where no one else was around.
And they'd saved for many years for this holiday, and
this was their last holiday before they were to marry,
So they had planned to then go on to New
Zealand and onto other countries and then gradually make their
way back to the UK and settle down and have kids.
(07:35):
So they had invested a lot of money in this
trip and had saved significantly for many many years.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Where were they going that night when they were on
that road.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I don't think they had a destination in mind at
that point. They fueled up and then had decided to
drive until they had enough for driving. They'd intended to
come up to North Australia and then across to Western Australia,
so they had quite a long trip plan and they
(08:07):
were planning to spend months in that Combe van that
was going to be their home for the next few months.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
When Joanne first did speak to police, what was her
version of events? What did she say had taken place
that evening?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Her story didn't change a great deal. There was some
confusion in some of the detail, but basically her account
was that her and Peter were driving along at some
point they realized there was a car behind them, and
then that vehicle, which we now know to be Bradley
Murdoch in his land Cruiser, had pulled up alongside them
(08:43):
and was pointing towards the rear of their vehicle as
if to indicate that something was wrong. So at that point,
Peter had pulled over and he got out of the car.
Joanne was then asked to move over to the driver's
seat and rev the engine, and what she then heard
(09:04):
was allowed bang. Her immediate thought was that was a
vehicle backfiring, but we now believed that was the gun shot,
the fatal shot that killed Peter. She was then confronted
by Bradley Murdock. He appeared at the driver's side door,
pointing a gun that she described at the time as
a Western type revolver. He pushes her over to the
(09:28):
passenger side and instructs her to bend forward and put
her hands behind her back. So Joanne through this whole idea,
She just fights for her life continually, and she refused.
He then put a gun to her head and she
subdued into compliance. She really thought that at this point
he was going to kill her. Who was going to
(09:48):
shoot her in the head. He then tied her hands
using the manacles that are now quite well known and
talked about, and forced her out of the vehicle. Murdock
straddles her and attempts to bind her feet, and she
just starts kicking, he gives up. She's tough. She just
keeps fighting and he punches her to the side of
(10:10):
the head and he lifts her and frog marches her
to the vehicle and then grabs her head and prevents
her from looking around. So clearly she's at that point
she's looking for Peter. She's wondering where he is, so
he deliberately forces her head forward and places her in
(10:30):
the back of his Yet she's very confused at this day.
She's probably can cast. All of this has happened very
quickly from the time that they first pull over to
this happening, and she's calling out, asking Murdoch what he'd
done with Peter, and he doesn't respond. She actually also says,
(10:51):
are you going to rape me? And at one point
he opens the back of the canopy and he just
says be quiet, or he would suit her. She realizes
that if she doesn't escape now, then she probably wasn't
ever going to survive this, so she slips down the
rear of the canopy and as soon as her feet
(11:13):
hit the ground, she runs towards the bush. She just runs.
She doesn't really know what direction she's running in, so
she hides behind a relatively small saltwush tree and curled
up in a ball with her knees tucked under her chin,
and then tried desperately to control her breathing. The fact
that she was able to hide there was probably a
(11:37):
miracle if you've seen that area, She was very, very fortunate.
After some time, she hears Murdoch's startner combee and drive
it north. He actually drives it off and hides it
in the bush, and she listens really carefully and she
can hear the gravel crunching and something being dragged or hauled,
(12:01):
she believed to be her boyfriend Peter. She then is
the second vehicle start then drive away. She's then left
under that salt bush, wondering basically what will happen next.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
And how did she escape? How did she find anyone,
because as you say, this is such a remote area.
Did she manage to flag down a car?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
So she sat there for some time, It was about
four or five hours. Because the biggest dilemma for Joanne
is anyone that may come along that road might either
be Murdoch or an associate of murder. So once she
heard what appeared to be the sound of a large truck,
which we now know was a road train. She thought
(12:49):
that that was safe or more likely to be safe
to come out, and she ran out and flagged the
road train down.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And so when she spoke to police and she's described
this series of events, was she able to describe what
the map and looked like who had attacked them.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Joanne's initial description was pretty spot on. She describes him
as a tall, white man. She describes his hair down
to quite remarkable detail, and she says that his hair
kind of had bright flecks in it. That was quite
interesting for me when I had initially read that, because
(13:31):
I had never seen someone describe that in my years
of policing, that someone had kind of these shiny patches
in their hair, and I thought, well, maybe that's bits
of gray that the offender had. It's interesting to note
at this point when I first met Bradley Murdoch, that's
one of the things I noticed if he had this
little it's kind of like his hair had this shine
(13:52):
to it, and that's what Joanne noticed. So in terms
of her ability to be able to pick up on
such minute detail when she's under such enormous dress, shows
what a remarkable woman she was.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
When police received that call, they then went to the scene.
Was there any evidence left behind from either the perpetrator
or any sign at all of Peter.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
What they find is blood that is on the road
and on the verge of the road. But you can
clearly see where someone's tried to cover that blood up
by pushing their gravel from the side of the road
on top of the blood that was on the road.
But there was certainly quite a bit of blood there
and off to the side of the road when you
looked along the fence line, it was the Combi van,
(14:41):
so it was clear that that was the scene of
the crime.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
When Joanne came with her series of events, she was
the only real witness who had seen this that you
knew of. Was there any suspicion cast over Joanne herself
in those early days, weeks and months, the.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
First few weeks of this investigation, If you look back hindsight,
there were some things that we've done well. There were
some things that weren't done particularly well. But in any
homicide such as this or suspicious murder or death, you've
always got to keep an open mind, particularly if the
offender is not evident immediately. Now it's a valid avenue
(15:26):
of investigation to look into the complainant or that person
that is closest to the victim or the decease in
this case, and of course that they looked at whether
she would have any motive to want to harm or
kill her partner at that point. So was she a
(15:47):
person of interests? Probably not, But did they keep an
open mind and consider that she could potentially have some involvement, Yes,
they did.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
There was an early press conference where Joanne fronted the
media wearing an unfortunate T shirt. What did the shirt say?
And how do you think she came across?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, that's some footage that I often used in education
for detectives, particularly around how to use the media to
elicit information in relation to a major crime. Some real
mistakes were made there. So Joanne obviously didn't have any
clothes with her, so one of the things that the
(16:34):
police initially did was to assist her in buying some
clothes to get her through. And that shirt she chose
herself and then wore in that very important first media interview,
and I think it probably wasn't the best choice in
terms of clothing, and I think that's where the severe
(16:58):
judgment of Joanne Lee's first started. In these matters, the
public will always be suspicious, They will always judged victims,
and it happens time and time again, and we as
police really need to ensure that we provide the best
advice to protect victims from that sort of public scrutiny.
And I think in this case they failed Joanne in
(17:20):
allowing her to wear a shirt that says cheeky monkey
when she's pleading for the public for information that may
lead to the whereabouts of Peter or the identity of
the personal persons who are harmed him.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jesse Stevens.
I'm speaking with former detective Superintendent Colleen Gwynn about the
disappearance and presumed murder of Peter Falconio. It was February
(17:59):
two thousand and two, that's about six months after Falconio's
disappearance when you were promoted to superintendant, which was the
head of crime in Alice Springs. Where was the case
at at that point?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Externally, if the public were looking at it, it probably
seemed to be that it was going through a progress
of excluding persons of interest based on investigative avenues and
process of elimination going through what was thousands of lines
of inquiry. But once I was promoted and I was
assigned this investigation, I went through a process of actually
(18:38):
just listening and watching and looking at what was going
on with the team at the time, and it became
really clear to me fairly quickly that the investigation lacked leadership,
and it lacked direction, and it lacked any valid and
thorough investigation plan that would increase the chances of identifying
(19:01):
the offender in this. So you know, there were some
things that I had to do immediately to try, and
I guess, improve our chances of finding Peter dead or
alive and finding out who was responsible. My first three
priorities was to look at the team and understand who
in that team actually was engaged and had belief in
(19:23):
Johanna as the victim, and who was there for the
right reasons and wanted to see this to the end.
The other part is to look at the detail. And
I'm not a details person by any means. I'm the
worst person for detail. But I had to go into
the detail, and I sat there day and night and
read case note entry after case not entry to understand
(19:45):
what they had done, where they were at, and really
what direction the investigation should go into. And I started
to set priorities. And one of the things I also
did was to try and limit the amount of influence
that the senior police had on the investigation. And my
(20:05):
priority was to let the investigators do the investigating and
they could get on with managing the police force. And
that was probably one of the hardest discussions I've ever
had with the Deputy Commissioner at the time, but to
his credit, he accepted that and let us get on
with doing the job.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
You also chose a team who had varied skills, one
of whom was renowned for being incredibly good with detail.
A key to the case was the DNA found on
Joanne's shirt. Can you talk us through the breakthrough that
came from that and how you managed to actually obtain
(20:42):
DNA that led you to this key suspect.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
It's like in any case. Now, look, this is nearly
twenty years ago and DNA was the round, but it
was still fairly new. So we had some DNA profiles.
We had one on joanne shirt, had one on the
gearstick of the combie, and one on the steering wheel.
So we had a profile, but the profile didn't match
(21:07):
anyone on our DNA system. If you think back twenty
years ago, the National DNA database was still relatively new,
so there wasn't the number of profiles that they would
have now. And so we had the profile, but we
didn't have a match. So we looked through our persons
of interest and one of them was Bradley Murdoch. Very
(21:31):
early on in the investigation, he became a person of
interest and then as other things transpired, he became a
suspect and we needed to get his DNA or close too.
So we understood that he had had a fooling out
with his brother and we needed to seek his consent
(21:55):
for a sample for the purpose of analysis. So the
youngest detective on our team was a very quietly spoken,
articulate and I thought that she was the best person
to speak to Gary Murdoch. So off she went and
spoke to him, and yeah, she explained our position that
(22:15):
we were in and the fact that his brother was
a suspect, and we were able to obtain a sample
for the purpose of analysis. And once that came in,
we knew we had our guy.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
You say that Bradley Murdoch was a suspect. What did
police know about him up until that point because he
had been engaged in criminal activity? What was known about
him and what brought him onto your radar in the
first place.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
When the investigation commenced. Once I took over, there's one question,
I asked, give me your top five to ten suspects.
If you got ten, Gray, give me who you have.
And at that time, Bradley Murdoch was second or third
on that list, and so I said, right, what we
are going to do is have a look at these
that require further attention. And once we looked at Murdoch
(23:07):
and we understood more about him, we realized that there
was so much circumstantial evidence connecting him to this particular crime.
One of those things was he was in all of
Springs at the same time. So to be in Central
Australia when you actually live in Western Australia or you
(23:28):
live in South Australia, that is an enormous coincidence. We
then started to find out a little bit more about
Bradley Murdoff, who would often go from South Australia to Broom,
taking five to ten pounds of drugs each trip, and
he would do that in the vehicle that fitted the
(23:50):
description that joe Anne Leeds had given. So we knew
that he still had this vehicle, but he had made
some significant changes to it immediately after this crime had occurred.
Thing he'd done is he'd completely changed his appearance. He'd
shaved his hair, he'd shaved his facial hair off, his
(24:13):
behaviors changed, He kept a much lower profile. And when
we released the truck stop video, we had a phone
call that the person in that video looked very similar
to Bradley Murdock. The final piece was the fact that
his drug associate, James Heppy, was also talking about Murdock
(24:35):
as the potential murderer in this case. So things were
starting to unravel for Bradley Murdock, but the circumstantial evidence
around him was just mounting up. And then when you
add the DNA, you're pretty much there.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
How did you eventually arrest him?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, well, this is another interesting coincidence. So during our investigation,
I sought to get a criminal profile of the offender.
Now I had learnt a lot about criminal profiling, and
I was a big believer in her, and I knew
there was a superintendent at the time in South Australia
(25:18):
who had been FBI trained, and so she undertook a
profile of the offender in this matter and had made
some conclusions about who the offender is, and she was
pretty close in terms of her predictions. It just so
happened that during that time between the time she did
(25:38):
the profile and the time we started to actively look
for Bradley Murdoch, that she was the district superintendent in
charge of the area where he had committed another crime.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
What was that crime?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
So that was the rape and abduction of a woman
and her daughter from a town in South Australia where
he had abducted them. He had chained them to the
back of his land cruise a ute and he had
driven around with him for a couple of days and
tormented and tortured them and finally letting them go. Then
(26:15):
there was a man hunt for him and Superintendent Pillmyer,
who had done the profile, was in charge of that.
And I'll never forget her ringing me and saying I
think I've got your guy.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
You met Bradley Murdoch in his cell and we hear
often that he is tall and quite dominating. What was
he like? What was his presence? How would you describe him?
Speaker 3 (26:42):
He's a big man. I can see why women would
think him intimidating. He was quite erratic. He was angry.
And he stood face to face with me in a
room at Yetler Prison in South Australia. And I was
with my male counterpart, a detective who was older guy,
(27:06):
a bit of a bushy himself. But he wasn't interested
in even looking at him. He just looked at me
and he stood up close to me, close enough that
I could feel his spit on my face as he
was raising his voice at me and telling me that
I had the wrong guy. And he tried everything to
intimidate me, and we stood face to face for quite
(27:28):
some time. I didn't take a step back. It was
kind of it became a game after a while. But
finally he stood back from me and I got him
to sit down and we talked for some time.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
What did he say during that time? Was he still
trying to convince you of his innocence?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Oh? Absolutely. One part of this case that became quite
controversial was the late release of some footage from the
truck stop in Ella Springs. Now, the police at the time.
Took a number of weeks to release that footage because
they were trying to enhance it to increase the possibility
that someone may recognize the car or the person in
(28:10):
the footage, when an actual fact, they probably should have
just got it out there. So his focus was on
that footage and saying that it's not me and your
footage because I use the other pumps. And he pointed
to the front of his teeth and said, I've got
no fucking teeth, so how could it be me. His
(28:34):
focus on that footage was quite considerable, But the whole
time he was certainly arguing his case that he was
innocent of what he'd been accused of.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
You mentioned the profile that was developed. What kind of
man was Bradley Murdoch and what were his motivations.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
There's a number of things with Bradley Murdoch. He had
a history of using violence and generally when he didn't
get his own way, he liked to be in control.
Kilmi said this crime was committed with sex in mind.
She believed the target was Joanne, not Peter. Peter was
(29:15):
in the way, so he needed to be removed. There
is some belief that maybe he had seen Joanne when
they were both in Alice Springs. It could have been
that he was at the Recco on the Highway the
same time that she was at Red Rooster waiting outside
for Peter. Now we know that she is the sort
(29:35):
of woman that Bradley likes, and he may have decided
at that point to follow her and pursue her. Now,
that day, the fourteenth of July is significant for Bradley
Murdock because it also signifies the day that he was married.
Now that marriage broke down and he was never had
(29:57):
any contact with his ex wife or his son, and
he carried some anger and animosity about that, So we
thought that perhaps that date had some significance.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
You traveled to the UK to speak to Joanne, who
was at this point pretty wary and distrusting of police
after her experience. What did she tell you and did
you feel you were able to regain her trust?
Speaker 3 (30:26):
The first morning was very difficult. She had never met me,
She didn't have a lot of trust of the Northern
Territory Police. She didn't have a lot of faith in
the Northern Territory Police, and it probably took a good
hour and a half two hours to really gain that
trust and to get her to open up. But once
(30:47):
we did, it was a really productive conversation. She was
able to explain certain parts of her statement which many
were suspicious of, and some of the ambiguities were really
just around the amount of stress that she was under
at the time. Also, what became clear to me is
(31:10):
that the initial police had tainted some of her evidence
by introducing some influencers in the first twenty four hours.
And what I mean by that is she said that
Bradley Murdock had a dog, and the police officer said, oh,
was it a dog that looked like that one? And
pointed out a blue healer. So by introducing such influencers,
(31:35):
it really taints their evidence and it confuses a witness
or a victim, particularly when they've been under such stress.
They can often get confused by things that happened immediately
after an event that's caused that trauma. So there were
some things that the police had really I guess tainted
(31:57):
in the first few hours.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Another key piece of evidence ended up being a hairtie.
Can you talk us through this significance of that?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, that was critical. So when we seized Bradley Murdock's
vehicle from South Australia and all his belongings. He was
actually going to hide. He was going to hide in
somewhere very remote and we probably would have some difficulty
in finding him because he knows those back roads like
(32:31):
the back of his hand. He's driven up them all
his life. He's been a drug runner. So we got
him at a time that he had everything with him.
So once we seized all his belongings and brought them
to Darwin, we were about to go through a process
of itemizing everything he had and looking at what could
(32:51):
possibly be evident for the Northern Territory matter. And one
of the detectives who had this an amazing attention to detail.
She said, no, I think the best way for us
to do this is one person spent as long as
it takes, and goes through it piece by piece by piece.
And so she started dismantling the back of his vehicle
(33:15):
and what she found around his gun holster was a
Lady Jane hairtie. And Joanne had reported that she'd lost
it in the struggle, and we thought, is it a trophy?
Why would he keep it knowing that that would connect
him to the crime, But there it was. It was
(33:36):
around his holster, and when he was shown that in
the trial, he almost recalled off the back of his
chair because he realized that that was the last piece
of the puzzle. So it was such a significant find
in terms of the overall circumstantial case.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Did he ever confess?
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Never? Never?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And what was he convicted of in the courtroom?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
He was convicted of the murder of Pflcneo and the
assault and attempted abduction of Joe Anne Lee's.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Finally, I wanted to ask if Peter Falconio's body or
remains have ever been found.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
No, we have undertaken a number of searches. We've used
experts from the UK. Whenever there is any information, the
police act on that. That would be something just for
the family. I know would assist them. I don't think
Bradley will ever disclose the whereabouts. I think he will
(34:41):
take that to his great I guess you know. We
feel quite proud in having achieved a conviction without a body,
but to find Peter's remains would certainly add some real
closure for the family.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Colleen Gwinn is a detective superintendent who led the search
for Peter Falconio. She was in the police force for
thirty years before reaching the rank of commander. It was
during this time that she brought Peter Falconio's killer to justice.
True Crime Conversations is a Mother of Maya podcast hosted
(35:16):
by me Jesse Stevens. Sound design is by Ian Camaliari,
and our producer is Gia Moylan. If you'd like to
find out more about the show, don't forget to join
our online community. Just search for True Crime Conversations on
Facebook and make a request to join
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