Back in the Dock

A new C4 series re-opens the Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees Outback Murder case – but is it justified, asks Ginny Dougary

In the summer of 2001, a young English couple, Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees, were in the red heart of Australia, on a backpackers’ trip of a lifetime. Travelling in their bright orange Kombi-van, they were flagged down at around 7.30pm by a driver who said there were sparks coming out of their van’s exhaust. Falconio went to look; there was a loud bang and then the driver came to the front of the vehicle, shoved a gun in Lees’s face, pushed her onto the tarmac, bound her hands behind her back, attempted to tape her feet and mouth, and deposited her in his truck while he left to dispose of her boyfriend’s body and the Kombi. Lees managed to get out of the van, running into the bush, where she hid for around five hours before flagging down a passing truck driver who took her to safety.

Her next ordeal was about to begin, one which continues to this day. In December 2005, 47-year-old drug dealer Bradley John Murdoch was found guilty by the Northern Territory Supreme Court of murdering 28-year-old Falconio, and of attacking Lees. Murdoch has always professed his innocence and in 2006 was granted permission to appeal against the conviction, but the appeal court found the case against him “overwhelming”.

It’s doubtful anyone who has lost a loved one in such a grotesque way and then faced the scrutiny Lees has can just get on with their life without a backward glance, but she is undeniably hampered by what seems to be an enduring fascination with the case. This week, a new Channel 4 series re-examines the evidence, talking to the same people who have been spoken to many times over the two decades since Falconio was murdered, and casting doubt once again on Lees’s reliability as the sole witness. Part of Lees’s unpopularity with the press was her reluctance to be interviewed, which was construed by some as an indication of guilt.

There are, of course, other reasons why someone wouldn’t wish to be grilled again, particularly after so many hours’ questioning by the police. At any rate, when she published her own version of events in her book No Turning Back in 2006, The Times was offered an interview and I was the person dispatched to do it. I found her a pleasant young woman, equal parts tough and vulnerable. Her take on the mistakes she made (wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words Cheeky Monkey at a press conference among them) was, “Hindsight’s a great thing, isn’t it? There is no manual that comes with this: ‘Oh, you’re a victim of a violent crime? These are the rules of behaviour…’ And I’m a private and quite shy person. I’m not an actress, I’m a support worker.”

Lees was naive in some ways, savvy in others. Her unwell mother, whom she had cared for growing up, died soon after Falconio’s death. If you believe her innocent – as two court cases have, and I do – then Lees has been through one of the most terrifying ordeals imaginable. She refused to be a victim of the predator on that night and she refused to be a victim of the press after the event. I liked the way she handled moments in the interview where she didn’t want to be led in a firm but unofficious way – for instance, when she didn’t want to talk about her birth father. It was difficult trying to talk about that horrific night and its aftermath, for me as well as for her. “It’s because it’s such a personal story,” she said. “And private, and painful.”

I’ve watched all four hours of the Channel 4 series with a more than passing knowledge of the case, as well as a first-hand impression of Lees. Also, having lived in Australia during the years of the Lindy Chamberlain trial (her self-contained demeanour after the disappearance of her baby daughter Azaria near Uluru in 1980 was often interpreted as guilt, in the same way as Lees), and travelled in the Northern Territory, I know just how huge that area is and how difficult it must be to find a body. So I may have a different perspective on this series to the average viewer. What, then, can be made of a public broadcaster’s decision to return to this f murder? The series consultants are disgraced former criminal defence lawyer Andrew Fraser, who was jailed for five years in 2001 for supporting cocaine smuggling, and his business partner, Victor Susman. They drive the narrative of the investigation, with the hand of Channel 4 almost visibly descending from time to time with counterpoints in an attempt at balance. As Susman said back in 2011: “This is just a great story. We see a book deal in this as well as the factual documentary. This is a fantastic opportunity.” What is the justification of dragging Lees back into the frame, as well as the Falconio family, both of whom declined to appear in the series?

Danny Horan is Channel 4’s Head of Factual and part of the team that commissioned the series from an independent Australian television company, CJZ. Horan acknowledges that the consultants are “completely flawed characters. They would probably say that about themselves and also are unreliable in some ways. Andrew Fraser has quite a dodgy past, which he talks about.”

Doesn’t it make him feel uncomfortable, I ask, that someone he admits is unreliable should anchor this re-examination of the case? “Not anymore. Early versions, I did feel that. But I think we undermine their argument quite a lot now.”

Horan believes it’s worth airing issues around his own life and, if he had, whether that policywas cashed. Presumably he didn’t – in which case, why even raise this possibility? Horan strongly believes that different theories about what happened remain: “Even people I know say, ‘She obviously had something to do with it, look at the way she behaved at the press conference.’ It’s literally all that people remember. I think there’s a strong sense in Australia that there was something nefarious going on.

Whether she was involved in drugs, or whatever it may be, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories, that Murdoch is innocent. There are enough people who question this – some sensible people, I think – and that’s partly why we commissioned it.”

I contacted journalist colleagues who work for the best newspapers in Australia to test Horan’s theory and not one of them agreed. In fact, quite the opposite. As Peter Wilson, author and former foreign correspondent for The Australian, says: “The media and the public learnt from Lindy Chamberlain who was convicted by the court of public opinion. We also know from trauma that it may be there are some small gaps in people’s story. My experience is that it is actually more suspicious for victims/witnesses of traumatic events to have perfect recall and stories that add up perfectly.” the trial and conviction because there are some questions that have still not been satisfied: “We didn’t just commission this on the basis that it was a well-known, very big troubling story that we cynically thought would get viewers.”

His view is that the documentary raises important issues about memory, how women are treated by the media, mistakes that can be made by the police, miscarriages of justice and so on. But as a viewer, this was not my experience of the series, at least in the version I was sent. In each episode, there are moments presented as fresh response to an old case but which were, in fact, raised at the time and rejected as invalid.

The series refers in passing to a different rape and abduction charge Bradley Murdoch was acquitted of. Why not, for reasons of transparency and balance, look at that case to highlight similarities in the two?

Falconio’s name is blackened by referencing a colleague who called him “dodgy Pete” and the series looks at the possibility that he staged his own disappearance because he was an expert in insurance fraud, ignoring the quantity of his blood at the crime scene. But they neglected to ask whether Falconio had taken out a policy on his own life and, if he had, whether that policy was cashed. Presumably he didn’t – in which case, why even raise this possibility?

Horan strongly believes that different theories about what happened remain: “Even people I know say, ‘She obviously had something to do with it, look at the way she behaved at the press conference.’ It’s literally all that people remember. I think there’s a strong sense in Australia that there was something nefarious going on. Whether she was involved in drugs, or whatever it may be, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories, that Murdoch is innocent. There are enough people who question this – some sensible people, I think – and that’s partly why we commissioned it.”

I contacted journalist colleagues who work for the best newspapers in Australia to test Horan’s theory and not one of them agreed. In fact, quite the opposite. As Peter Wilson, author and former foreign correspondent for The Australian, says: “The media and the public learnt from Lindy Chamberlain who was convicted by the court of public opinion. We also know from trauma that it may be there are some small gaps in people’s story. My experience is that it is actually more suspicious for victims/witnesses of traumatic events to have perfect recall and stories that add up perfectly.”

Horan says that there have been few programmes since he has been at Channel 4 where its legal team has had to work so hard and “get into the weeds of it” as this one. “I accept it is a tabloid story, and I accept that particularly Andrew and Victor are quite tabloid characters, but I don’t accept that this is a completely tabloid representation.

“It’s always a careful balancing act and I hope that we always get it right, but we don’t always get it right, and that’s always the really hard thing. Is it in the public interest, are we asking the right questions, is it fair and accurate and should we be doing it?”

Today Lees, now aged 46, is living in Australia trying to rebuild her life, having discovered she has a half-sister there. It has been reported that she has enlisted the help of the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory to help her search for the remains of her boyfriend.

Falconio, she’d told me, “always made me feel safe and untouchable when I was with him, and he always encouraged me to be the strongest person I could and to fulfil my ambitions.”

In finding him, however remote that possibility, maybe the world can finally move on, as Lees has been trying to do ever since that terrible night in 2001.