AUSTRALIA: Bradley Murdoch is charged with murdering English backpacker Peter Falconio. Padraig Collins reports from Sydney
The Stuart Highway, like every highway in Australia's Northern Territory, has no speed limit. Not that you would want to stop, so bleak and desolate is much of the terrain it passes through.
But on July 14th, 2001, English backpacker Peter Falconio did stop his Kombi van on the Stuart Highway, 310km north of Alice Springs. He has never been seen since.
Bradley Murdoch (47), a mechanic and former truck driver, who is accused of his murder, allegedly drove beside Mr Falconio's vehicle on that night and pointed to the back, indicating something was wrong.
Mr Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne Lees (32), told the murder trial at the Northern Territory Supreme Court in Darwin this week that she had begged him not to stop. "Pete was going to stop and I asked him not to," she said.
But Mr Falconio did pull over and got out to talk to the stranger, who said sparks were coming from the exhaust. "Pete said, 'Cheers, mate, thanks for stopping'," Ms Lees said.
Mr Falconio asked her to rev the engine. While doing so she heard "a bang" and thought it was the van backfiring. Moments later Mr Murdoch appeared in front of her, pointing a pistol at her head, she testified.
However, under questioning from Mr Murdoch's barrister, Grant Algie, Ms Lees said she did not feel heat from the gun barrel when it was put to her forehead.
"Any smell from the barrel of the gun, like gunpowder?" Mr Algie asked.
"No. I didn't smell anything," said Ms Lees.
On the opening day of the trial last Monday the court heard that Ms Lees had made plans to split temporarily with Mr Falconio just days before he disappeared.
She also admitted having had an affair in Sydney before she and her boyfriend left the city to drive across Australia. Ms Lees said she and a man called Nick "overstepped the boundary of friendship".
Ms Lees said Mr Falconio (28) never knew about the affair. She said Nick was "a friend, a good friend and we became close and we were intimate at one time".
She told the court Mr Falconio had made arrangements to go to Papua New Guinea after Australia, but she did not want to go with him and had made plans to return to Sydney.
The court also heard that Mr Murdoch was a drug-runner whose DNA was found on homemade handcuffs used to tie up Ms Lees and on a T-shirt she was wearing. DNA consistent with Mr Murdoch's was also found on the gearstick of the couple's van, said prosecutor Rex Wild QC.
Mr Wild told the jury there was no direct evidence that Mr Murdoch murdered Mr Falconio because Ms Lees had not seen him killed.
But Mr Wild said the circumstantial evidence in the case would lead the jury to the inescapable conclusion that Mr Murdoch had murdered him.
After Mr Falconio was shot, Ms Lees was punched and bound before she escaped into the bush, spending five hours cowering before stumbling back to the highway and flagging down a truck, Mr Wild said.
Ms Lees identified Mr Murdoch in court last Tuesday.
Asked "Do you see that man today?", Ms Lees turned to look at Mr Murdoch and said "Yes, I'm looking at him".
Mr Murdoch, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Falconio, assaulting Ms Lees and depriving her of her liberty, shook his head. Ms Lees nodded back at him.
Ms Lees told the court of struggling violently with the accused. "I just kept thinking this was not happening to me . . . I kept shouting for Pete and thought I was going to die," she said through tears.
"I was more scared of being raped than being shot by the man," Ms Lees said. "The realisation hit me that he might have killed Pete. I just got some energy from somewhere, some inner strength. My focus was just escaping, and that is what I concentrated on, just getting out of there."
On Thursday Ms Lees was bound with a man's tie and sat on the Supreme Court's floor to demonstrate for the jury how she slipped her bound hands from behind her back to her front as she hid in bushes after escaping.
Ms Lees said she eventually flagged down a passing truck.
Truck driver Rodney Adams told the court yesterday that when he removed cable ties from Ms Lees's wrists they were so tight he was worried he would cut her skin.
Mr Adams was asleep in the back of a "road train" truck driven by another driver, who stopped suddenly because a woman had run on to the road.
Mr Adams said Ms Lees was distraught and in a state of panic.
The trial, which is expected to take several weeks, continues.