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The former British government expert who consulted on the search for the remains of the murdered backpacker Peter Falconio says he has now identified a “most likely” potential burial location – an abandoned racetrack only 8km from the scene of the infamous outback attack at Barrow Creek.
In July 2001, Falconio and his partner, Joanne Lees, both from Yorkshire, were ambushed and attacked by Bradley John Murdoch as they drove along a remote stretch of road in Australia’s Northern Territory, about 300km north of Alice Springs.
Falconio was shot and killed at the roadside. Murdoch bound Lees with cable ties in what is believed to have been an attempted abduction but she managed to flee into the darkness and hide in the scrub for hours.
Murdoch was convicted of Falconio’s murder in 2005 but never admitted his guilt or spoke about where he took the backpacker’s remains. He died in prison last year.
This week, 25 years after the attack, the Northern Territory police released a video of an agitated Murdoch refusing to reveal the location before his death.
“I know nothing,” he says.
The decades-long police search for Falconio’s remains has been underpinned by two assumptions. The first is that the search is a “needle-in-a-haystack” effort in an incredibly large area of red dirt and sun-bleached scrub, stretching south for a distance roughly equivalent to a drive from London to Leeds.
The second is that because of that vastness, only Murdoch could ever lead authorities to the site.
Dr Mark Harrison, the UK’s national police search adviser in the early 2000s and a world-leading consultant in “no-body” homicide cases, says this is not the case.
Harrison told Guardian Australia last year that the chances of locating Falconio’s body remained “high” and that he had identified five possible burial locations using a combination of criminal profiling and physical site analysis.
He returned to the outback this year with the retired FBI criminal profiler Kathy Canning-Mello and the pair visited the potential locations. Some of their site assessments were filmed for the documentary Outback Terror: The Falconio Murder.
Harrison revealed to the Guardian that, after working with Canning-Mello, he had revised five potential sites from his earlier reports down to three. But that he believes the most likely potential burial site – the “primary” site for any comprehensive geoforensic search – is a disused racecourse.
“We have a phrase in this type of work, whenever we work on a cold case we say, ‘You must clear the ground from under your feet,’” Harrison says.
“What we mean by that is that the nearest most proximate location must be considered.
“If you had a map of the area, the racecourse is the most likely crime scene near the attack site. The geography is unique to this case. The nearest place to conceal a body is the racecourse, otherwise it’s just a stretch of road”
Into the criminal mind
In the absence of a confession by Murdoch, a psychological criminal profile is arguably the most effective way of getting into the mind of the killer.
The criminal profiling and other evidence that have gone into identifying possible burial sites include an assessment that Murdoch’s intent – when he shot Falconio and bound Lees – was to kidnap and rape her.
Murdoch, a one-time interstate drug runner on the Stuart Highway that connects Australia’s north and south like a scar across the interior, was familiar with the terrain and is assumed to have planned to take Lees to a specific isolated location.
When she escaped, Harrison says it’s likely that same intended location became the burial site.
By this logic, the racecourse stands out.
“What we do know is that he would absolutely know it was there, he was a long-distance driver, he would drive past that for years and one would suspect he would have driven past that when it was an active racecourse.
“He chose the attack location for several reasons. When it gets dark, as soon as it’s past the racecourse he’s got a perfectly straight road. He’s doing that because he can see up the road and down the road in clear sight. He also knows the can get to the racecourse very quickly.
“It provides such good cover from view. The old racecourse buildings, the canopy cover, you’re hidden away.”
Lees told police that, after Murdoch searched for her along the highway, he had given up and driven south, towards Alice Springs. CCTV footage of the killer arriving at an Alice Springs petrol station that night, taking into account the time it would have taken him to drive there, leaves about 90 minutes unaccounted for.
“He’s not panicking, he’s frustrated,” Harrison says.
“He’s drug-affected, he’s frustrated and cross because his plan hasn’t gone to plan. But now he’s going to dispose of Peter. There’s no panicking this man, he’s got time to spend some time in concealing his body.
“This is where people who are uninformed about these cases would think that if an abduction is unsuccessful, the person is going to panic.
“This is not who he is. What he can control now is how he gets rid of this body. That’s going to bring some comfort to him. To make sure he disposes and hides him somewhere and in a manner he is confident no one will find him.”
Northern Territory police searched the racecourse in the aftermath of the killing, after Lees flagged down a road train and was taken back to the Barrow Creek roadhouse. The searches included walk-throughs and officers riding motorbikes.
Harrison says this would not have located a well-concealed body.
Last year Guardian Australia revealed that the recommendations from Harrison’s two reports had never been properly been followed by the Northern Territory police.
The search expert, who consulted on cases including the searches for Madeleine McCann and the Australian children Daniel Morecombe and William Tyrrell, was involved at the expense of the British government and had access to the entire case file.
He says typically his involvement in cases would involve identifying sites, developing a search strategy, then having some involvement or oversight of the search.
But he says the Falconio case was “unusual” because the Northern Territory government took his report “which was highly technical” and did their own searches.
In a statement last year, the NT police said they received the report and attended each suggested site.
“Police resourcing is finite and the entire scope of the report, and suggested search techniques, could not be completed by the NT Police at the time, however ongoing assessment and review of this data continues,” a spokesperson said.
Harrison says advances in technology would allow for a “high assurance” search, including the use of drones, radar and a dog. The process could be conducted for less than the cost of the $500,000 reward for information, which remains in place despite Murdoch’s death.
“What I’m saying is that the most likely site has simply not been searched to a level of confidence you’d require to say he’s not there.
“The racecourse is a potential crime scene that was visited but never searched as you would a crime scene.
“And that site has been almost frozen in time. Normally after such a long time you’d have to contend with changes like urban development or environmental impacts, but there aren’t any.
“Nothing has changed, it literally is as it was. That is such an advantage for us.”
