We know who did this': how solving Peter Falconio's murder changed a detective's life
Fifteen years after the UK backpacker went missing, former detective Colleen Gwynne reflects on a challenging case she will ‘never equal’
British couple Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio
British couple Joanne Lees and Peter Falconio pulled over on a remote outback highway in the Northern Territory in 2001 to help Bradley Murdoch, whose vehicle had broken down. In 2005 Murdoch was convicted of murdering Falconio and abducting Lees. Photograph: Reuters
Johanna Bell
@StoryProjects
Thursday 7 July 2016 23.46 BST
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Six months after Peter Falconio disappeared, Det Supt Colleen Gwynne huddled under a saltbush not far from Barrow Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory. As she watched the tail lights of her police car disappear down the Stuart Highway, Gwynne felt overwhelmed by the stillness of the desert.
She had returned to the place where the British backpacker and his girlfriend Joanne Lees were attacked to try to understand what Lees experienced that night. Crouched in the scrub, she looked out and imagined Lees cowering, her attacker not far away, searching for her.
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“I felt extremely vulnerable out there,” Gwynne says. “I could hear my own heartbeat.
“That’s when it felt really real for me. I understood what this woman had been through and it was terrifying. What she endured and her fight for survival was just remarkable.”
In the darkness, Gwynne recalled the details of the crime: a Kombi van with two British backpackers headed north; a man in a white utility pulled off to one side of the highway, hazard lights blinking; a helpful Falconio coaxed to the rear of the vehicle; male voices discussing something about exhaust pipes and then a gunshot ringing through the night; a terrified Lees pulled from the front seat, stunned by a blow to the head, hands bound, forced into the ute; an anxious killer returning to Falconio’s body; a tiny, wild window of opportunity for Lees to scramble out into darkness and run to this very place, under the saltbush.