AUSTRALIA: NT: British backpacker Peter Falconio was seen alive eight days after his alleged murder, a jury heard. Two petrol station workers told an Australian court that the missing 28-year-old visited the store, despite police saying he died 930 miles away.

Robert Brown believes Mr Falconio bought a chocolate bar and soda at the station in Bourke, northern Australia, on July 22, 2001.

But the man who 'killed'? British tourist Peter Falconio was not a crazed gunman, but a cunning, alert and meticulous person, a court has been told.

Accept for the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that he is even dead other than that he was not present at the trial of Bradley John Murdoch the man accused of his killing.

Prosecutor Rex Wild QC yesterday urged the jury to find Broome mechanic Bradley John Murdoch guilty of murdering Falconio, describing the alleged attack in the Northern Territory outback four years ago as premeditated.

Yet he has offered the court no evidence to suggest that Peter Falconio was even killed. No body no weapon and no time of death. Accept for Falconio's strange disappearance!

And his 'Wild' assumptions teeter on Noble Cause Corruption in the hope that anyone can be found guilty of this alleged crime so that the tourist dollars keep flowing in to the coffers, when any scapegoat will do!

The lonely-hearts club?

Wild could not offer a motive, other than that Murdoch may have spotted Mr Falconio's girlfriend Joanne Lees driving the couple's old orange Kombi alone up the remote Stuart Highway, while her boyfriend slept in the back.

Yet she was entwined in her boyfriend's life, having an affair with another man at the same time for the previous 5 years, and about to separate from him. So one would have to argue that both Peter and Lees had more of a motive than any accused stranger in the outback.

Hearsay and this credible police informant?

Bring on the informant...threaten him with jail and get him to say things that you would like him to suggest was true about the accused!

Murdoch was carrying 20 pounds of cannabis and a gun for protection - may have thought someone was following him and "dealt" with them, as he 'allegedly' told a friend in Broome after returning from the July 2001 drug-running journey, Mr Wild said.

Fits in with what the police say nicely? All very sinister though Mr Wild? His friend said? Question is how much did you offer his friend? Did you offer him remission? Immunity from prosecution for his crimes?

Wild: "Bradley Murdoch, 47, also carried a gun, his former drug trade partner James Hepi told the Darwin court."

Mmmm? Like I said, did Murdoch have 20 pounds of cannabis? Did he have a gun for protection? Was this evidence support by handing it up to the court? No! Therefore we have to arrive at that conclusion by assuming that the police could not resist offering the witness a deal that he could not refuse to verbal Murdoch, to get himself out of a jail sentence? At least that is a possibility.

Another possibility, sure he may have dealt in drugs or even carried a gun at some time or another but that does not mean that that was the case of the night of the alleged murder.

So you would not be putting that in the first evidence basket in the grand scheme of things, hey Mr Wild?

So no evidence was produced to suggest a gun had even been used yet wild is quick to suggest that there was a gun?

Defence lawyer Grant Algie

"There was no evidence a gun was even fired, saying no projectile was found and although the camper van was swabbed for gunshot residue, the swabs were never tested because there was nothing to suggest a gun had been fired," Defence lawyer Grant Algie.

So you just make it up?

Despite the massive police investigation launched after Mr Falconio disappeared, Mr Wild said the chances of finding the attacker were "very slim"

"If this was the action of some crazed gunman, he'd be found pretty quickly," he said.

"But this man is not a crazed gunman.

"This man is cunning, alert, and a practised driver, fit, awake with speed, able to move quickly and get away.

"But he's a fastidious man, as you know, and he's concerned to clear that crime scene as best he can, as quickly as he can."

But it seems unbelievable that a man who it was alleged had no compunction executing a man in cold blood using a handgun was not a crazed gunman? Don't you think grasshopper?

This is not a crazed gunman? Yet he suggested to the court that a man drove up behind the victim waved him down and shot him at point blank range in the head?

And it makes you wonder what the RTA call a good driver?

A learner on L's or P's? You certainly are not expected to practice now are you? The road is full of unpracticed drivers?

Or be fit in life? Who wants to be fit? Who wants to live longer? We should all be slobs so we're not accused of being able to commit extraordinary crimes because we're fit?

Therefore the suggestion that he was a practiced driver who was fit ought to be an outstanding compliment to any driver expected to hold a license. For the general safety of other road users.

Mr Wild said the alleged attacker covered a pool of Mr Falconio's blood on the highway with dirt, hid the couple's Kombi van in the scrub, and removed the Briton's body.

But human blood was found on the road where Peter Falconio was allegedly shot. DNA was extracted from that blood sample and used to identify Peter Falconio by comparing it with the DNA extracted from the Asthma "Puffer" identified as belonging to Mr Falconio, found at the scene of the crime. This comparison in itself does not prove that the blood is that of Peter Falconio - it only proves that these two blood samples are from the same person. Has the blood sample found on the road ever been compared directly with a known sample of Peter Falconio's blood/hair/tissue OR compared to his real parent's DNA for conclusive identification?

Why has the blood sample taken from the road been found to contain DNA from animals? Since no road kill animals were ever found at the crime scene, how did the animal contaminate blood get mixed with Peter Falconio's blood?

Was the purpose of mixing animal blood with human blood used to prove that a murder occurred at that particular place? It would be extremely difficult to demonstrate to police detectives that a shooting indeed took place but where no traces of blood were in evidence to corroborate such a story. A sufficiently adequate spillage of blood would be required to justify such a story. However, there appears to be a distinct lack of spillage of human blood at the crime scene so was the scene engineered to look like a shooting had taken place?

Mr Wild said the lynchpin of the prosecution case was the smear of blood - that matched Murdoch's DNA - found on the back of Ms Lees' t-shirt.

He said the DNA profile - 150 quadrillion times more likely to have come from Murdoch than someone else - was damning evidence.

"The Crown relies on the DNA which is found on that t-shirt as being the most single significant piece of evidence in this case," he said.

"It ties this man to this woman on this day."

DNA tests 'dangerous'

"DNA found on handcuffs used to tie up backpacker Joanne Lees was 100 million times more likely to have come from the defendant than anybody else were "dangerous" and "pushed science to the limits", a forensic expert, "said today.

Dr Katrin Both said she did not accept the technique used to link Bradley Murdoch with the attack on Miss Lees and the alleged murder of her boyfriend Peter Falconio as a valid scientific method.

www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005550743,00.html

150 quadrillion times?

What about 150 quadrillion, quadrillion million zillion times? Now that would have seemed a bit too far fetched aye! Sounds like that game we used to play at school to see who was the best exaggerator.

Mr Wild was delivering his closing statement to the jury in the Northern Territory Supreme Court trial into the alleged murder of Mr Falconio in July 2001.

Murdoch has pleaded not guilty to murder, and to assaulting Mr Falconio's girlfriend Ms Lees and depriving her of her liberty beside the outback Stuart Highway, near Barrow Creek.

Ridiculous suggestion?

Mr Wild rejected as "ridiculous" suggestions by Murdoch's defence team that the DNA may have got on the t-shirt either by primary or secondary transfer from a chair or wall at a takeaway chicken shop both Murdoch and the English couple both visited in Alice Springs on the same day.

"The Crown says that's the remotest possibility that has been discussed in this court," he said.

"Just to say it makes it sound ridiculous in my submission."

But it was only after Murdoch was arrested in SA on 'sex charges' that police, citing 'DNA evidence', alleged he was linked to the Falconio case???

To avoid further delays in having the murder case heard, Mr Prescott dismissed charges against Murdoch regarding firearms offences that were currently before the Adelaide court.

Bradley John Murdoch will face a court in Darwin tomorrow, charged for the first time over the murder of British tourist Peter Falconio.

An Adelaide magistrate today ordered Murdoch, 45, to be extradited to the Northern Territory where he will be formally charged with murdering Mr Falconio and attempting to abduct Mr Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne Lees.

Murdoch's extradition follows his acquittal earlier this week on 'unrelated sex charges' and his immediate rearrest.

Handcuffed and flanked by prison officers and Adelaide Magistrates Court staff, Murdoch showed no expression as Chief Magistrate Kelvyn Prescott dismissed arguments that his arrest was unlawful.

www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/13/1068674292650.html

He also reminded the jury that specialist testing found DNA consistent with Murdoch's on the gearstick of the couple's Kombi, and deep within the layers of cabletie restraints used to bind Ms Lees.

Mr Wild said if the police had wanted to plant evidence in the case, which has been suggested by Murdoch's lawyer, they would have "done a better job of it".

But the BIOLOGIST who testified in defence of Lindy Chamberlain at her murder trial has criticised forensic biologist Joy Kuhl's role in the Peter Falconio murder investigation.

Emeritus Professor Barry Boettcher, who retired as head of biological sciences at Newcastle University in 1993, failed to debunk Mrs Kuhl's crown evidence that foetal blood was found in the Chamberlains' car following the disappearance of baby Azaria.

Mrs Chamberlain was found guilty in 1982 but was later exonerated after Mrs Kuhl's evidence was found to be wrong.

Prof Boettcher has now locked horns again with Mrs Kuhl, 20 years later.

He has analysed a video tape of Mrs Kuhl's examination of the campervan Mr Falconio was driving on July 14 last year before he was apparently shot by a gunman north of Alice Springs.

The tape of Mrs Kuhl's and forensic officer Senior Constable Bill Towers' work was made by Alice Springs filmmaker Chris Tangey at a police compound soon after the tragic ambush.

Prof Boettcher found that a blood test applied to the driver's door appeared to reveal a partial handprint.

"Such a conclusion is a reasonable conclusion, but one that is not certain," Prof Boettcher said.

Mrs Kuhl is heard to say: "It can't be blood. I went right over that this afternoon."

"It is surprising that Mrs Kuhl and Bill Towers appeared not to show any interest in the brightest luminescence found during the taping of the tests on the Kombi," Prof Boettcher said of the potential handprint.

"Had they considered it to be a strong false positive reaction, I would have expected them to have chatted about such a strong false positive reaction rather than simply to have dismissed/ignored it.

"I conclude that the possible handprint luminescence on the driver's door of the Kombi was something that Mrs Kuhl and Bill Towers did not want to be brought to attention.

"The situation was one of a puzzling apparent murder, and since the investigators were taking unusual pains with the investigation, it seems inappropriate that the brightest luminescence result was dismissed in such an apparently casual manner."

Northern Territory Police Commander Col Hardman said at the time Mr Tangey made his tape public in February that the examination taped by Mr Tangey did not identify anything of additional forensic value.

Mt Tangey has submitted his tape and Prof Boettcher's comments to an independent review of the Falconio investigation.

Unsolved- Barrow Creek saga

www.personsmissing.com/barrowcreek4.html

DNA

DNA cannot be reliably dated and it could have got on Lees' shirt at almost any time before (secondary transfer at chicken shop), during (if Murdoch is Barrow Creek Bill) or after (police planting evidence or lab contamination) Falconio was allegedly murdered.

That's the real problem with forensic DNA, - especially trace DNA testing like LCN - it can only establish some sort of probable connection (though the 150 quadrillion to one match odds claimed here is a mathematical deceit that does not truthfully reflect the possibility of a chance match to Murdoch).

Wild's ridiculing of the secondary transfer hypothesis is completely without substance of course. It has been shown experimentally that secondary transfer of DNA can happen under circumstances very similar to those described and the dry heat you usually get out there would provide optimum conditions for the shedding of cells onto touched surfaces and the preservation of any DNA traces deposited.

It is no less likely than the secondary transfer that resulted in a rape victim's DNA being found on Jaidyn Leskie's clothes in the VFSC a couple of years back.

Perhaps Mr Wild would like to apply the same logic to the evidence of Peter Thatcher's DNA on the cable ties. Does this mean that the director of the NT forensic lab has also been linked to Lees "on this day"? If so, why isn't he in the dock with Murdoch?

Related:

Lees' evidence proves Murdoch not guilty: lawyer

He said there was no evidence a gun was even fired, saying no projectile was found and although the camper van was swabbed for gunshot residue, the swabs were never tested because there was nothing to suggest a gun had been fired.

More: melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/12/100964.php

Murdoch nowhere near murder scene: defence

Closing submissions have begun in the trial of 47-year-old Bradley John Murdoch.

More: melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/12/100852.php

Expert baffled by Falconio evidence DNA contamination

The court also heard swabs taken from the back of the couple's Kombi van were not tested for gunshot residue because there was no evidence of a gun being used or a cartridge being found at the crime scene.

www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/99220.php

Outback DNA evidence 'contaminated'

During cross-examination by Grant Algie, defending, Ms Eckhoff said she did not know how his DNA came to be on the exhibit.

More: adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/9340

Unfaithful Lees admits taking drugs, court told

NT: Key witness Joanne lees, has testified in the Northern Territory Supreme Court to smoking Marijuana on the night her boyfriend Peter Falconio went missing.

Yesterday she told the court how unfaithful she was to her boyfriend and that she'd even had an affair. But for some reason Lees wasn't a suspect in her own boyfriends killing?

More: www.geocities.com/publik18/archive05/2005d55.html

No Murder Weapon, No Body, No Place or Time of Death

NT: Joanne Lees ought to be the main suspect in this show trial. There is no body and no weapon to be found and Joanne Lees had a clear and present motive. She knew him, she travelled with him, she was unfaithful to him and she said that she was the last person to see him on the night she was stoned out of her head. So where does Bradley James Murdoch fit in?

More: www.geocities.com/publik18/archive05/2005d52.html

Trial of B J Murdoch

The trial of Bradley John Murdoch may be sensational - but for the wrong reason. This trial has had serious flaws in it - decide for yourself

Pride and Prejudice versus facts and truth. Trial of Bradley John Murdoch

More: www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/97709.php

Rex Wild QC: 150 quadrillion times more likely to have come from Murdoch?