Peter Falconio murder

[durbster]

There was a four-part documentary about this in the UK that I've just finished watching. I think the event itself just predates ARSE but I couldn't see a thread on it, even though it was a pretty big story.

To be honest, it wasn't a great documentary and seemed to care more about creating more mystery than resolving anything, but there were some interesting snippets I wasn't aware of:

• The truck driver claimed to have seen another car shortly before he found Lees, and claimed to have seen two blokes putting somebody in it and driving off.
• The bloke in the video footage didn't seem to quite match Murdoch
• The dog described by Lees was nothing like Murdoch's dog
• A shot cattle dog was discovered nearby which was closer to the description
• Somebody claimed to have been in the Barrow Creek pub with somebody who was overtly talking about how to hide body, and that he'd

It's still one of those stories that is so wrapped up in myth that I doubt the truth will ever really be known. Joanne Lees came across as unreliable (although I think that's partly the press not liking her for not playing to their tune), and the vast majority of the story hangs off human memory which is an utterly unreliable form of evidence (and it bugs me when documentaries don't make this point).

But they didn't really follow any of this up, nor did they explore why they set off down the highway late afternoon which from what I remember, nobody does and we were always advised against. I did once drive that stretch of the Stuart Highway at night when we went to the pub in Ti Tree from the farm we were working at, and I could only do about 20mph because it was just a slalom of kangaroos.

The back of our car was full of massive Tongan blokes, up from Melbourne on some kind of scheme for wrong-uns, so if some lunatic had pulled us over I'd be more worried about his safety

The documentary was following a defence lawyer who was trying to find holes in the case against Murdoch to see if they could appeal, so it may well all resurface if he's able to.

[Sarsippius]

This was big news in this neck of the woods at the time, I didn't realise it was nearly 20 years ago now. It's not a great idea to drive at night because of things like kangaroos and cattle but it's not unheard of.

A bit of a semi related story, I happened to drive that stretch of road once at night driving from Darwin to Alice. By late arvo I'd reached Tennant and a half caste guy asked for a lift to Alice, I was alone and wasn't that keen but agreed. Once it was dark there were swarms of insects, grasshoppers or something and the windscreen was getting covered in them and I was having to duck down a bit and peer through a clear part of the screen. The Aboriginal guy was telling me stories about the kurdaitcha man which is a bit like a boogie man and kept claiming to see snakes laying across the edge of the road, it was all a bit weird and I'm not sure he was 100% there but we made it to Alice, I let him out and lived to tell the tale :P

[smithcorp]

That doco is sensationalist crap. Murdoch's blood was found on her shirt.

[Cursed]

The timing of the making of this lines up with the surge in interest with the "True Crime" podcasts and TV streams. That makes me automatically sceptical.

[Big Kev]

I saw that doco as well. Very interesting but there is definitely something that doesn't really seem to add up.

For me the blood from Murdoch on her shirt should be enough. There aren't really any other plausible ways that could have happened. But equally there were some things that seemed a bit off like the lack of other footprints around, the blood from Falconio being highly localised to just the road, no other human material anywhere, not even the back of their van. I would have expected a lot more DNA evidence on the bindings.

The guy who was 'expertly' calculating the height of the chat at the service station was missing a big factor when matching his height to a known point like the door which was that the guy was standing about a stride in to the building at that point and the parallax effect meant his calculation looked very wrong to me. He did it all assuming the guy was level with the door frame which he wasn't.

Not talking to the press didn't do her any favours cos they're like vultures to the slaughter when things like that happen but I don't think I would either otherwise it's trial by media.
The lawyer they followed though was one of those types hat will try and fault fault in absolutely everything. Especially the description of the gun not looking like any model available. Well jeez it was dark, she'd probably never seen a gun before and there was quite a lot going on (allegedly )

Interesting case though.

[Cursed]

ABC's Media Watch has something on this (I think it is the same doco):

[durbster]

Yep that's the one, thanks. That's a good summary of the doco and pretty much renders it pointless.

I didn't realise some of the stuff they discussed wasn't in the police statements from the time.

Seems like it's not as much of a mystery as presented after all