Witnesses contradict Lees over roadhouse stop
abc | 24.10.2005 05:38 | Analysis | World
The manager of the Aileron Roadhouse, north of Alice Springs, told the court that a couple driving an orange Kombi van stopped at the service station
Lees told the court that they did not stop at the Roadhouse
AUSTRALIA: NT: A Darwin court has heard that British backpackers Peter Falconio and his girlfriend Joanne Lees stopped at a Central Australian service station a few hours before he went missing.
The evidence presented in the Northern Territory Supreme Court went against statements made earlier by Ms Lees.
The manager of the Aileron Roadhouse, north of Alice Springs, told the court that a couple driving an orange Kombi van stopped at the service station.
He described the woman as pretty and tanned with an English accent, while her boyfriend had an Italian accent.
He said he was 90 per cent certain it was Mr Falconio and Ms Lees.
Another worker at the roadhouse said it was definitely them, unless they had a set of twins in Australia.
In Ms Lees' evidence she told the court that they did not stop at the roadhouse.
Forty-seven-year-old Bradley John Murdoch has pleaded not guilty to killing Mr Falconio and assaulting Ms Lees in July 2001.
Apology call
Meanwhile, the Northern Territory's Chief Justice has called on two Australian newspapers to apologise for comments published on the weekend relating to trial of the man accused of murdering Peter Falconio.
Chief Justice Brian Martin described articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers as objectionable, saying they portrayed Darwin as a hick town.
He said the articles also suggested prosecutor Rex Wild referred to the judge by his first name.
Mr Wild denied the claim and told the court he was distressed by the suggestion.
The Chief Justice said the articles reflected unfairly on him, the prosecutor, the court and the Territory's justice system.
They were written by a British journalist who has left Darwin after covering the first week of the trial of Bradley John Murdoch.
The Chief Justice also called on the newspapers to retract their stories.
The evidence presented in the Northern Territory Supreme Court went against statements made earlier by Ms Lees.
The manager of the Aileron Roadhouse, north of Alice Springs, told the court that a couple driving an orange Kombi van stopped at the service station.
He described the woman as pretty and tanned with an English accent, while her boyfriend had an Italian accent.
He said he was 90 per cent certain it was Mr Falconio and Ms Lees.
Another worker at the roadhouse said it was definitely them, unless they had a set of twins in Australia.
In Ms Lees' evidence she told the court that they did not stop at the roadhouse.
Forty-seven-year-old Bradley John Murdoch has pleaded not guilty to killing Mr Falconio and assaulting Ms Lees in July 2001.
Apology call
Meanwhile, the Northern Territory's Chief Justice has called on two Australian newspapers to apologise for comments published on the weekend relating to trial of the man accused of murdering Peter Falconio.
Chief Justice Brian Martin described articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers as objectionable, saying they portrayed Darwin as a hick town.
He said the articles also suggested prosecutor Rex Wild referred to the judge by his first name.
Mr Wild denied the claim and told the court he was distressed by the suggestion.
The Chief Justice said the articles reflected unfairly on him, the prosecutor, the court and the Territory's justice system.
They were written by a British journalist who has left Darwin after covering the first week of the trial of Bradley John Murdoch.
The Chief Justice also called on the newspapers to retract their stories.
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Discrepancies
24.10.2005 13:43
The local Northern Territory government earns more than Aus$1,9-billion a year from tourism, hosting about 500 000 international visitors, mainly from Britain, Ireland, Germany and the US.
Chief Justice Brian Martin even moved to delay the local release of a horror film, Wolf Creek, about an outback killer who preys on backpackers, because he thought it too closely based on the Falconio story.
Lees's arrival in Darwin was in stark contrast to her arrival at Murdoch's committal hearing in May, when she was spirited into and out of court covered by a blanket in the back of a government car.
In a stage-managed performance designed to save the prosecution's key witness the indignity of being hunted by the media?
Ms Lees also told the court that in March 2002 she had agreed to take part in an interview with Martin Bashir, for which she was paid £50,000.
Defence lawyer Grant Algie told the Northern Territory supreme court, in Darwin, that Dr Wright's 2001 statement to police said Ms Lees had said she had not been hit on the head or lost consciousness. Ms Lees told the court Bradley Murdoch had hit her on the head.
Ms Lees's injuries, her changing description of her assailant, details from her vehicle and the couple's movements in the hours leading up to the attack are all under the microscope. Mr Algie raised an unexplained 6.5km on the clock of the couple's camper van. They kept a note of their mileage - but when the van was recovered, the reading was too high for the journey along the Stuart Highway.
The last note Ms Lees had made of mileage was at Ti Tree, a truckstop 100.5km south of the crime scene, where the couple stopped to watch the sunset and share a joint of marijuana. The weed - and the mileage notes - were kept on a special shelf which Mr Falconio had installed beneath the Kombi's dashboard.
Mr Algie asked her: "Was there, at any stage, travel of an additional six and a half kilometres?" Ms Lees replied: "No."
Ms Lees said the couple watched the sunset at Ti Tree. The Australian Met says this was at 6.08pm. If, as she first testified, they began their journey from Alice Springs after 4pm, their camper van would have had to smash its maximum speed, 85kph, to cover the 197km in time.
Other questions were blunter. Could a slight woman prevent a heavily built man from tying her legs and gagging her? How did she get lacerations on her inner elbows from bitumen when she was lying face down with her hands tied behind her?
When the police showed Ms Lees a picture of Mr Murdoch, she dismissed him as "too old". Her initial description was of a straggly-haired man with a dog which she identified from a "dogalogue" book as an Australian cattle dog. Murdoch has always had closely cropped hair and his pet is a dalmatian cross.
On the third day of evidence at the Northern Territory supreme court in Darwin, Grant Algie, for Mr Murdoch, asked Ms Lees if she had felt any heat from the barrel of the gun when it was put to her forehead. She replied: "No."
"Any smell from the barrel of the gun, like gunpowder?" Mr Algie asked. "No. I didn't smell anything," said Ms Lees.
Mr Algie also questioned Ms Lees' account of how she had been moved from the front to the rear of her attacker's vehicle.
In her original statement she said she had been pushed through, between the seats, but she had since changed her mind about this, the court heard.
Asked why, she said: "The police told me that there is no such vehicle that has front-to-rear access and that has put doubt in my mind, and I looked at other possibilities.
"All I know is that I got from the front to the back quite easily, that I did not walk around the vehicle.
"Consequently it was after that interview that I began to doubt myself."
Mr Algie asked if she had tried to grab and squeeze her attacker's testicles while struggling on the ground.
"That's what I was aiming for but I just reached his inner leg. It had no effect," she replied.
But Mr Algie read out an extract from her statement to police in which she said: "I grabbed hold of his nuts and I squeezed them. He didn't do anything. It didn't seem to have any effect."
The last, and most damaging, is of an evasive Ms Lees, doing her best to keep the secret she had guarded for almost three years - that she cheated on Mr Falconio, her partner for four years, in Sydney for a month shortly before they set out around Australia on a trip that was to end in his murder.
Nick Riley's working holiday as a 27-year-old British backpacker in Australia in 2001 would have gone unnoticed except for one thing - he was Joanne Lees's secret lover.
Former housemates also remember Ford, who often dossed on a downstairs couch. Although Ford knew Lees was cheating on Falconio, he said in an interview after the murder that they were "the perfect couple".
The affair ended in late June when both continued their journeys. Lees headed off with Falconio to Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Alice Springs. Riley flew to the US to join a Contiki tour before returning to Reading. He has not been back.
Although the physical relationship had ended, the pair stayed in contact through a secret email account.
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