Bust-up led to arrest of Murdoch for desert killing

It was betrayal by a New Zealander and a thirst for revenge that finally sealed the fate of Bradley Murdoch.

A shambling, stooped bear of a man, 196cm tall, Murdoch had a reputation in the scattered townships of Australia's tropical north as a hard man who drove big trucks and smuggled cannabis.

He regularly carried firearms, including a pair of 9mm pistols, a .357 Colt and a .308 high-powered rifle.

"Big Brad", as he was known, was feared for his quick temper, a trait only intensified by his habit of taking amphetamines to stay awake as he criss-crossed the continent.

But it was not until he had a bitter falling out with his drug-smuggling business partner, a 37-year-old Maori named James Hepi, that he came to the attention of police.

The pair teamed up when Murdoch was released from prison in 1996 after serving 15 months for firing a rifle at Aborigines celebrating an Australian rules football match victory in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia.

They developed a profitable business, running marijuana from Hepi's base in South Australia to Broome, a former pearling town popular with tourists in the remote north of Western Australia.

It was a 6000km round trip which they undertook each month, the drugs hidden in a long-range fuel tank.

But relations between the two men became increasingly strained - Murdoch felt that Hepi was not pulling his weight with the long desert drives.

When the New Zealander was arrested in possession of A$45,000-worth of cannabis as he drove into Broome in 2002, he was convinced Murdoch had "dobbed" him in.

For months he had harboured suspicions that Murdoch had murdered Mr Falconio. Murdoch had volunteered to Hepi, without being asked, that he was not the killer. He had talked of the best way of disposing of a corpse, in a roadside drain where the digging was soft. Hepi had seen him making handcuffs out of black plastic cable ties.

After returning from a drug run a day after Mr Falconio's disappearance, Murdoch had cut his hair short, shaved off his moustache and made extensive alterations to his vehicle.

Hepi broke his silence. In return for informing on Murdoch, he had an 18-month jail sentence for marijuana trafficking suspended.

He also hopes to claim the A$250,000 reward offered by the Northern Territory Government in 2001 for information leading to Mr Falconio's killer.

The deep antagonism between the two men was apparent when Hepi walked into court to give evidence.

"You're a ****ing liar," Murdoch said to his ex-partner. "**** you," Mr Hepi replied.

By the middle of 2002, Murdoch knew the police were on to him and he was hiding out in dusty backblocks north-east of Adelaide.

He had befriended a 33-year-old woman and her 12-year-old daughter and on the evening of August 21 went to their isolated homestead to drink tea and smoke cannabis.

What happened next became the subject of a separate trial.

After police arrested him at gunpoint at the homestead, Murdoch was accused of twice raping the girl, abducting her and her mother, and chaining them to the back of his truck during a 27-hour ordeal.

The woman said he was smoking cannabis and "snorting" amphetamines while he held them captive, driving around for more than 24 hours.

When police later searched his vehicle they found a loaded Beretta .38 calibre pistol, a rifle, knives, chains, an electric cattle prod, rolls of tape and two bags of amphetamines. They also found a newspaper article about the Falconio disappearance.

But he was acquitted of the charges, despite the graphic accounts given by the child and her mother.

The prosecution's case was weakened by the fact that the woman waited five days before going to the police, and threw away the clothing her daughter had been wearing.

As soon as Murdoch left the courtroom in Adelaide, he was re-arrested, charged with the Falconio murder, and extradited to the Northern Territory.

Most damningly, investigators found a perfect match between his DNA and a spot of blood on the back of Miss Lees' T-shirt.

It was the "linchpin" in the case, the prosecutor, Rex Wild, QC, told the court in his summing up last week.

The prosecution admitted that uncertainty remained over Murdoch's exact motive for killing Mr Falconio.

Perhaps he had spotted Miss Lees in Alice Springs. Or he may have followed the Kombi a few hours later, when she was driving and Mr Falconio was dozing out of sight - an apparently lone female driving on a lonely desert road at night.

Whatever the reason he attacked the couple on the night of July 14, 2001, one thing is certain: Joanne Lees was lucky to have escaped with her life.

More than four years on from that dark night in the middle of the Australian desert, the past finally caught up with Bradley John Murdoch.