Original subtitles

This programme contains very strong language from the outset.

ENGINE STARTS INDISTINCT CHATTER

The purpose of this re-enactment today

is an attempt to reconstruct the events of an incident

which occurred in this location

on the evening of Saturday 14th July 2001.

Joanne, for the purpose of this video,

can you tell me how you came to be at this location?

"Police in Australia say they fear the worst

"for a British tourist who disappeared after being attacked in a remote part of the Outback."

"Peter Falconio was shot by a gunman

"who attempted to abduct his girlfriend, Joanne Lees."

"The search for Peter Falconio goes on."

"A jury unanimously found Bradley John Murdoch guilty of murdering Peter Falconio."

Bradley Murdoch will spend at least 28 years in prison. That's who did it.

"I definitely did not do it. I'm not a fucking murderer."

This was a real Agatha Christie thriller.

No-one really knew quite what had happened.

He says, "Shut up and I won't shoot you."

Why didn't she see the body? How do you even know he's dead?

No-one doubts me. It's only media.

We will find the key to this.

The answer to this case lies in the police file.

People that think they know the story probably don't.

Bang, I'm looking straight at this bloke I just seen in the paper.

That's him, all right. Bad news, that bloke.

I couldn't believe this had never seen the light of day.

This case never goes away, it just sleeps for periods of time.

Things like this just don't happen.

Somebody knows what happened that night. Really knows.

There is so much more to this story than people ever imagined.

As matters stand, Brad Murdoch is going to spend the rest of his life

in jail with no prospect of parole for the murder of Peter Falconio.

Joanne Lees claims that Brad Murdoch shot Falconio,

appeared at the side of the Kombi van,

bound and tried to gag her,

she escaped...

..he couldn't find her,

he left the scene

and then she was, some hours later,

rescued by Vince Miller, the truck driver.

This is a one-witness case.

It revolves around Joanne Lees' version of events.

When there's only one witness to any event,

the credibility of that witness is everything, it's paramount.

Because if you can unpick at that witness, the Crown case falls apart.

Part of the reason the case is still being discussed 18 years on

is because not everybody believes what happened.

Nobody could find Peter.

The whole story was almost unbelievable.

In 2001, in the Northern Territory,

I was the police media manager.

Northern Territory was known as the crime capital of Australia.

Stabbings were quite common.

Bodies were found.

And we had accidents,

tourists being eaten by a crocodile,

two Germans kidnapped and tied up to a tree,

all of those things were part of my time at the Northern Territory Police.

But certainly the Falconio case was the biggest.

When I first heard about the Falconio attack,

it was about five o'clock in the morning.

There were lots of media starting to call already.

Some of our colleagues say to us, "Just wait until the British press arrive.

"Then you'll be totally overwhelmed."

For 23 years, I was an Australian foreign correspondent

for the UK tabloids.

I was just putting the key in the door of my apartment

when I got a call from the Mail On Sunday, "Go to Alice Springs."

When I got to Alice Springs, we were getting very little information

about what was a fantastic world story

and still no body, no Peter Falconio.

One of the things that wasn't understood in London by the editors

was that the search area alone

was six times the size of Britain.

Having been sent by an English newspaper all that way

to the middle of Australia, you were expected to get results.

It was very frustrating for all of the press

that we were not able to get an interview with Joanne Lees.

Just like the police, we had nothing.

My first encounter with Joanne Lees

didn't exactly run smoothly.

I was trying to get her to actually talk to the media.

She was not interested at all.

We were responding to media morning and night.

Denise, can we... PHONE RINGS What?

It was just non-stop.

Denise, when you talk to Joanne, what reason does she give for not wanting to talk?

I think, in all honesty, she's just daunted by the whole thing.

Denise, she shouldn't be daunted by it. We're all very nice people.

I don't think she trusted anybody

because she was quite adamant about what she wanted to do without taking any advice.

At this point, there is no photo shoot of Joanne,

but she is going to supply a photograph

of her and Peter in the van.

At three o'clock, we are praying for.

HE LAUGHS

I remember she threw a photo at me and said,

"Just give them that. That'll be enough."

She had a strong interest in finding Peter Falconio,

but she didn't seem to wanna help do that herself.

Although the Falconio family, they did everything possible

to help us find Peter.

Joanne's asked me to read a statement out.

"I'd like to ask people to concentrate their efforts

"more on finding Pete than trying to speak to me.

"I also want to say I'm not prepared to sell my story to the media."

I hope you'll find my son. That's all I've got to say.

Because I want to go back with him.

I think it was really hard for them.

Initially, of course, we were looking for a missing person,

so there was hope that we would find Peter.

But as that went on, I think the chance of finding him alive

was harder.

I felt particularly sorry for Luciano Falconio,

the grieving father, who was bereft,

and it was heartbreaking.

I'll just let you wipe your eyes.

I know this is hard. Thank you for this.

You want to make an appeal to the Australian people,

and if I can express, on behalf of them,

we all want them to find your son.

Somebody knows something. But if there is those people,

I think they should come forward.

The English press and the Australian press

were under enormous pressure

to get an interview at all costs with Joanne Lees.

We searched high and low.

We could not get Joanne Lees.

And it didn't do Joanne any favours in her treatment by the press as a result.

Journalists were frustrated about every occasion

where Joanne Lees did something and they were not invited.

"Joanne Lees was to conduct a re-enactment of the crime.

"They shipped in this lookalike white ute,

"placed a lone armed police officer inside

"and got it to trail this Kombi van

"with 27-year-old Joanne as passenger

"and another officer playing her boyfriend."

Joanne said she would do it provided there was no press.

And the photographers did go out there,

but they were kept about a quarter of a mile from the scene.

The media, when they couldn't get any pictures of her,

just chased her every chance they could.

Quite ruthlessly. It was dangerous.

She realised if she didn't do some press,

they were just going to hunt her down, basically.

We finally got the first press conference

where we could talk to Joanne Lees, we thought.

She's quite keen for no journalists to be in there at all.

She doesn't mind if somebody else is asking the questions.

She can't have it all her own way. We're either all in or all out.

They're just not gonna be able to write a story.

She demanded that there would only be one reporter

and two cameras and she selected the questions.

CAMERAS CLICK

When we finally did see Joanne,

she looked like Cleopatra coming out of a movie set.

Such an ice queen.

So the media seem to believe there's a certain way that women should behave after a traumatic event.

They should show emotion.

And she didn't cry.

I always thought afterwards, had she cried, I think things would've been different.

SHE CLEARS HER THROAT OK.

I am feeling positive and strong and believe it's only a matter of time now

before the man responsible for what has happened to Pete and myself is caught.

I am confident that everything is being done

and I'm hoping one of these leads the police are following up will lead to Pete being found.

I am confident that Pete will be found.

I have asked the police to tell me only positive news and remain hopeful of Pete being found.

CAMERAS CLICK

I would like to thank the public, the police and Paul for all of their support

and I hope that people will respect now my privacy... CAMERAS CLICK

..and allow me to get on with my life.

Joanne, what is your reaction to the doubt expressed about your story?

OK. Anyone that's spoken to me

or has been in contact, in contact with me, no-one doubts me.

It's only the media that have questioned...my story.

Why have you been reluctant to meet the press up until this stage?

Because I find it all so overwhelming and intimidating.

Do you have a particular problem with the British press and why is that?

Erm... I've got a problem with all press that distort the truth

and doubt my story,

misquote me

and, erm, making up false accusations and stories.

Well done. Thanks.

All she really talked about was she didn't like any press

and she didn't like anything that was written about her.

We were all stunned by that.

I think that first press conference did lead to suspicions

about whether she was involved.

I don't think people trusted her

and I think even some that did trust her

probably trusted her less at that stage.

The second press conference, she wore a very tight-fitting T-shirt

which had "cheeky monkey" across it.

I told her that she should change.

And she said, "No, this is what I wanna wear.

"It's not about me, it's about Peter."

I'm not sure exactly what the media thought, but they definitely thought it was totally inappropriate.

Joanne's not... That was the instruction, she wasn't going to say anything.

Paul was the spokesperson for the family and Joanne.

Is there anything you'd say to Peter if he could hear you now?

Just hang in there. If you can hear us, just wait,

you know, we'll see you soon. Any other questions?

Thank you very much.

When Joanne looked uncomfortable, wouldn't talk to the press,

it looked as though maybe she did have something to hide.

I think she had clearly gone through a traumatic incident.

People didn't believe it because they didn't see how such a bizarre story could occur.

The Falconio case went on for such a long time,

we were relieved to hear when they caught somebody.

I always thought that Joanne Lees was telling the truth

and Murdoch was guilty.

When I first started looking at this case,

it just didn't ring true with me.

Once we started digging our way through the police file...

..Victor rang me and said, "Mate, I've got this document here,

"wait till you read it, it'll pin your ears back."

I read it and I couldn't believe its contents.

This document is just extraordinary.

REPORTER: The final chapter in the murder mystery

that's gripped two nations.

Peter Falconio disappeared in the Outback,

shot dead by Bradley John Murdoch in an ambush.

A Darwin judge jailed Murdoch,

saying he's shown no remorse for his crime.

Ten years ago, Brad Murdoch asked me

to re-evaluate his case

to see whether there was any hope of any sort of further appeal.

I had been a criminal defence lawyer for 28 years,

and part of all that experience is your ability to look at evidence,

to speak to witnesses, and you draw it all together.

We have obtained Murdoch's file from his defence team.

We are digging through to see where the holes are in the Crown case.

The reason why we must question Joanne Lees, must,

is that I think what she says

doesn't stack up with what was found at the crime scene.

No body.

No weapon.

No evidence of a firearm being discharged.

They found footprints belonging to Joanne Lees.

Where's Peter Falconio's footprints? Where's Murdoch's footprints?

What you'd normally expect to find

at an incident crime scene like this, well, there wasn't much.

For ten years, we've been working towards a petition of mercy.

It's a document whereby you set out

everything you see wrong with the case.

In my view, the most significant thing we found

is what's called a SCAN report - Scientific Content Analysis Notes.

The SCAN report was based on an interview

the police did with Joanne Lees

on the night of 15th July,

that is the night after the event.

SCAN are experts.

They look at language, the use of words,

for evidence of deception,

to see whether they could reach a conclusion

as to whether Lees... was telling the truth.

I'm reading the SCAN report itself.

The very first thing on page two that strikes me, she said...

The SCAN report says...

The unanimous conclusion of the SCAN practitioners was...

On any assessment, this report is damning.

I've often wondered why the SCAN report was never mentioned at trial.

I would have cross-examined Lees on its contents.

I was a police officer for 21 years

and I work now as a trainer for SCAN.

SCAN is used by police forces

primarily in North America, to a lesser extent in Australia.

The military intelligence use it, crime analysts,

human resources for better vetting,

to determine whether somebody's deceptive or truthful.

The Northern Territory did do a SCAN report

on Joanne Lees' interview.

They concluded that this was a deceptive story.

I did not agree with that

for one moment.

G'day, Bill. I'm Victor. Victor, how are you? Very good to meet you.

I'm Fraser. Fraser, how are you, mate? Good.

OK. I got the report.

From my analysis, I was satisfied that she was telling the truth.

This SCAN report has sat there

since 2001

and has never, ever been questioned.

Now you're saying you think it's wrong. Yeah.

She was telling the truth. With a couple of issues.

One issue I had was when she talked

about being put into the back of the vehicle,

she reverted to present tense.

Now, if somebody relates a story in the present tense,

it's a good indication that they're fabricating the evidence.

And this is one of the big problems with Joanne Lees' statement.

Most of her statement in the interview was in present tense,

which raises a red flag to an analyst.

But it's discovered since that women in particular

who are in violent crimes, particularly rapes,

the event becomes a living memory

and they'll relate it in present tense.

So I was prepared to accept the present tense

on most of her statement. That was my big concern.

Right from the outset, there is a very large question mark

over the accuracy of what happened that night.

That's a legitimate avenue of inquiry,

but not for the SCAN analyst.

I'm only interested, as a SCAN analyst, at looking at the language,

looking at the words used.

I want to make it quite clear that if I had got that report then,

I may have come to the same conclusion

because of the present tense.

What bothers me is that this has been taken as gospel for 18 years

and then Bill bounces along and debunks it.

Yet very fairly, very fairly, you're prepared to say

if you'd looked at this back in 2001,

you may well have reached a similar conclusion

or a similar conclusion on some of the points.

Yeah. Yep. OK. We're happy with that.

Good on you.

In my view, I think we can use the SCAN report

as part of Brad's petition of mercy.

I would have introduced the SCAN report

right upfront as part of Murdoch's defence.

This wasn't put before the jury

and I think it should have been.

It raises the question - did this bloke get a fair trial?

In most crimes, if there's a murder,

police automatically suspect a close member of the family.

Nine times out of ten, that proves correct, it is a husband or a wife

or somebody close to that person who's guilty of the murder.

And, of course, in the Joanne Lees case, they would've had similar suspicions to begin with.

Only one month after the attack,

police had already discovered the inconsistencies

in Joanne Lees' statements.

One of the lead investigators, Jeanette Kerr, put together

a list of improbabilities and inconsistencies in Lees' statements.

So she re-interviewed her.

In Lees' second statement, Lees claims that while she was lying face-down,

she was able to grab hold of her attacker by the nuts.

Originally, Joanne Lees told the police

that her attacker had pushed her between the two front seats,

into the tray at the back. She said...

However, by the time the trial came around,

she wasn't sure how she had got from the front to the back.

Given Lees' demeanour

and her general inconsistencies of her story,

I'm not surprised that Lees was treated as a possible suspect.

My name is Steve van Aperen and I'm a behavioural analyst

and I specialise in how to read people and detect deception.

In 14 years of police work,

I've conducted more than 500, 600 interviews.

I trained with the LAPD,

their polygraph unit and scientific investigation division,

I trained with the FBI, US Secret Service, LA County Sheriffs.

As humans, we all lie. Often what happens is people won't lie to you,

they'll edit the information they supply you with.

So they lie by omission rather than commission.

Some of the telltale signs of lying would be avoidance,

defensiveness, attack.

They might be shifting in the chair, there might be hand to face,

blocking, masking, concealment behaviours,

prolonged eye closure, increased blink rate, changes in tone, pitch, voice modulation.

And their language will reflect doubt and uncertainty

when they're concocting a story that didn't happen.

I was contacted by Andrew Fraser and Victor Susman

and they said, "We're just wondering if you could assist us in a particular case."

So what I did was I analysed two types of footage,

and that is the footage from the initial police re-enactment

and also footage from an interview that Joanne gave to Martin Bashir in the UK

some time after the disappearance.

And the purpose of that was to compare the reactions and compare behaviour.

Usually when I've dealt with victims, they'll tell you what happened and what they felt.

And there'll be things like, "I can't believe I'm in this situation.

"Will I ever see my family again?" They're inconsolable.

During the re-enactment, she was quite robotic in the delivery,

but only focusing on what was happening, not what her feelings were

or emotions were at the time, which I find unusual.

This is the only time that I actually saw her showing any emotion.

SHE WEEPS

She put her head down towards her knees and it sounded like she was crying.

The difficulty there was I didn't actually see her crying because her head was buried in herlap.

Can you tell me...

..what Peter was like as a person?

He's the nicest person I've ever met.

In the Bashir interview,

she once again put her hands up and cried.

OK.

It sounds a little bit like she's crying, but once again, it's hard to tell.

When she removes her hands, I don't see any tears on her face

or smudged mascara or anything like that.

Interestingly enough, I counted 51 occasions

where she would use language of uncertainty.

"I don't know, possibly, sort of, maybe," all that type of ting.

If somebody's gone through a terribly traumatic event,

sometimes people do forget things, but often I've found, in my experience,

their memory hasn't been that changed as a result of it,

they remember things with amazing clarity.

When there's so many changes, it's difficult to believe what's true and what's not.

A lot of the inconsistencies and conflict and contradiction raised a lot of flags.

So it concerned me in that it might be telltale signs of deception.

The question that everybody would want me to ask you... OK.

..did you kill Peter Falconio? SHE CHUCKLES No.

What I'm looking for is how she reacts to that question.

And interestingly enough, what she does is

she smiles, she actually says, "No," shaking her head,

so the body language reflects the spoken word, but there was a smile, which is interesting.

The next question that I see is, "Do you know who killed...?"

Have you any idea who did? No.

This was really interesting. We got the conflict and contradiction in the body language.

And you have to look very carefully.

"No." Just a very slight, just slight head movement,

which was contradictory to what she did in the previous response.

Why is she doing that? Maybe she knows something that she hasn't let on.

Having spent 14 years in the police and having assisted and worked on 81 homicide cases

and studied behavioural analysis,

I am not convinced that Joanne's version of events are believable.

It appears that Joanne and Peter did have quite a strong relationship.

They'd known each other for five years.

They were dreaming of this worldwide trip.

When they got to Australia,

there were signs of friction within that relationship,

given what we know now.

In the pre-trial hearing,

there was an unmistakable gasp in the courtroom

when this sudden piece of surprise evidence emerged.

It was a real bombshell, you know. People weren't expecting it.

A murder hearing has ended with a sensational admission.

She's on her way home to England

after revealing she cheated on her boyfriend shortly before he disappeared.

"Her evidence in the committal hearing for murder accused Bradley Murdoch

"ended with a win for the defence, forcing her to admit she'd had an affair.

"Ms Lees agreed it was with a man by the name of Nick during the couple's holiday."

"Seven News understands Nick is a British backpacker

"who worked in a Sydney coffee shop not far from Dymocks, where Lees worked."

Lees was also asked whether she'd e-mailed Nick from Alice Springs

in the days after Peter's disappearance,

making plans to meet him in Berlin.

She admitted she had made that suggestion.

After the incident, Joanne Lees was put in a safe house

and given a police chaperone.

And that chaperone's job was to look after Lees,

but also make minute notes

about everything that was said and done during the day.

That is when we found out about Steph.

Police discovered that she'd been sending e-mails

to a person called Steph, which was a pseudonym for Nick.

She'd been writing to him and suggesting they meet in Berlin on holiday later on in the year.

This was a couple of days after the shooting of her boyfriend.

It cast a new dimension, perspective, on what she was really up to.

How could she have been talking to a former lover,

a lover she'd had an affair with in Sydney earlier,

about getting together a bit later on in the year and meeting up in Berlin?

It didn't add up. And that, of course, was significant evidence,

which really went against Joanne's interest.

So, she's had an affair.

However, Joanne wasn't that keen on fessing up to it.

Well, here's what she says at the committal.

"Were you concerned about the police becoming aware of e-mails

that you'd received from somebody called Steph?"

And her answer, "No."

"Who is Steph?" Joanne Lees, "I don't know."

"Is not Steph the name of the pseudonym false name adopted to write to you through the e-mail

"by somebody called Nick?" "Yes."

"And who is Nick?" "A friend."

"A friend from Sydney with whom you had a relationship?" "No."

She is under oath.

Lie number one. "Who's Steph?" "I don't know."

"Did you have a relationship with him?" "No."

Now, a lie under oath is perjury.

The magistrate said it's hardly a matter of real relevance here,

but you'd be saying to the magistrate, "Hey, I'm asking the questions here,

"and I'm saying it's relevant because it goes to her credit."

"She was asked if she had a particular friend called Nick."

I think the Crown was trying desperately

to downplay the Nick Reilly affair.

And I would have taken a statement from him.

So we keep digging, as we have for years,

and we find Joanne Lees' phone records

in the police file that never came out at the trial.

Now, it has here Nick Reilly on 22nd May.

And you have a look at the list of calls there. 27 calls.

But it's just before they leave Sydney. Correct.

And you can just see, day after day, two calls, eight calls, three calls, eight calls, two calls.

And then we hit 16th June, 2001.

So we're less than a month away from the actual incident.

28 calls.

A few days before Lees and Falconio leave Sydney on their trip of a lifetime,

Lees and Nick Reilly call each other 28 times in one day.

It's clear that the calls continue after they've left.

This is significant because everything she says,

she sort of downplays any relationship.

I think these phone records suggest that this relationship

was more than the one-off fling Joanne Lees would have us all believe.

Joanne Lees has been presented to,

and accepted by, the jury as a witness of truth.

If the jury had seen the SCAN report,

re-enactment, interviewed by Jeanette Kerr, phone records,

you would say to the jury, "You must have a doubt."

There's somebody out there with the key.

Somebody knows what happened that night. Really knows.

Perhaps the police hadn't got the right man.

It's unlikely that that is Murdoch.

There is a list of people of interest.

He made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

200% sure it was Peter Falconio. I was a metre away from him.

Where's Falconio gone?

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