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British Expats (https://britishexpats.com/forum/)
-   Australia (https://britishexpats.com/forum/australia-54/)
-   -   Murdoch is innocent (https://britishexpats.com/forum/australia-54/murdoch-innocent-343109/)

Jimclevs Dec 17th 2005 8:42 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by Hutch
May I interject for a moment, please Miss Marple.



They were not cable ties, they were crude hand-made handcuffs 'made' from cable ties - a wholly different thing - they are also the same type as the ones they recovered from his van when they were investigating the rape of the child. The handmade handcuffs were also identified as being identical to the ones Mudoch's drug-running buddy Hepi saw him making back in 2000. She got out of them lubricating her wrists with lipbalm, the lid and tube for which were both found at the scene exactly as she'd described them.



WTF? It was the outback, not the fuching Arndale Centre in Luton. He could have dumped the body 200 metres from the bloody road and it would never have turned up.



Where is it alleged that he looked for her for a couple of hours? Don't recall that mentioned during the trial. The woman runs stark-bollock-scared into the bush as fast as her legs can carry her and hides out for five hours until she thinks it's safe. Murdoch (who let's remember is still out of his ****ing brain on amphetemines and booze) not exactly helped by the fact that it was a totally moon-less night, probably did a cursory search and then cut his losses and left the scene.



Not all gun-shots provoke copious amounts of blood - you only get that if you hit an artery and he used a pistol - not a shotgun. He could well have bled to death internally and produced little more than a blush of blood on the front of his shirt - something pointed out by a crime scene specialist interviewed during the trial.



He didn't tie her legs because he had one crude set of 'hand' cuffs and only a bit of tape for the legs. She said numerous times that she was more worried about being raped than murdered and struggled in the light of that. Not everyone gutlessly accepts their fate.



Your choice I guess. Not everyone wants to die like a pussy.



He owned. His own. Home.



What like the DNA, the handcuffs, the positive identifications and myriad other forms of evidence?

However, probably the most damning evidence against Murdoch is the abduction and rape of the child and her mother. Not only did this crime bear a huge number of similarities to the Falconio case, but during the crime, Murdoch spoke about the Falconio Murder. He said (unprompted mind you) "I didn't do that Falconio." He also said he was "tired of being on the run." - since he wasn't in the frame for the Falconio murder at that time, why even mention it?

According to the Independent, when they searched his van they found a high-powered .308 rifle with telescopic sight, Russian-made night vision goggles, almost 800 rounds of ammunition, a knife, a crossbow with 13 bolts, an electric cattle prod, chains and shackles similar to those used to bind the wrists of Miss Lees. They also discovered two long-handled shovels, a jockey whip and five pairs of disposable gloves. And in a hidden compartment in a spare fuel tank in the rear of the vehicle, officers found an empty box for a 9mm semi-automatic Glock pistol and a fully-loaded .38 Beretta semi-automatic pistol was found in a holster within a backpack between the van's front seats.

So yea, the guy's quite clearly innocent of the crime.

:rolleyes:
Agree with all these arguments - the man is an evil b*****d, was found guilty in record quick time by the jury and, most unusually, the judge even said on record that he agreed with them.

From what I understand, one of the main contributing factors was the DNA of Joanne Lees on his clothing - she didn't put it on there on purpose so how did it get there otherwise, assuming no police "interference". Clever stuff - modern day forensics - and this DNA profiling is as good as foolproof.

I really don't think it is rocket science - Murdoch had seen them previously on their travels and had fancied her - he had probably followed them on the open road, was looking for his "leg over" with an attractive young foreign woman traveller, was repulsed and took it out on the boyfriend whilst under the influence of God-knows what drugs. The drug influence also probably explained why he was unable to find her in the bush after she ran away.

Where is the body? Somewhere in 2 million square kilometres of desert.

As good a theory as any other??

Jim

SuperSeagulls Dec 18th 2005 7:17 am
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
I think whoever did it was on the grassy knowle.......

rossifumi Dec 18th 2005 7:42 am
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by SuperSeagulls
I think whoever did it was on the grassy knowle.......
:D

Hutch Dec 18th 2005 9:36 am
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by SuperSeagulls
I think whoever did it was on the grassy knowle.......
Given that it was the Australian outback, wouldn't it be a knowleen ?

:p

SuperSeagulls Dec 18th 2005 6:51 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by Hutch
Given that it was the Australian outback, wouldn't it be a knowleen ?

:p
Haha, I'm not sure what a knowleen is but I guess it sounds more plausible than a grassy knowle in the outback!!

SS

Vash the Stampede Dec 18th 2005 8:00 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by Hutch
They were not cable ties, they were crude hand-made handcuffs 'made' from cable ties - a wholly different thing - they are also the same type as the ones they recovered from his van when they were investigating the rape of the child. The handmade handcuffs were also identified as being identical to the ones Mudoch's drug-running buddy Hepi saw him making back in 2000. She got out of them lubricating her wrists with lipbalm, the lid and tube for which were both found at the scene exactly as she'd described them.
Interesting that you should say this, as I have read nowhere that she actually got out of them (got a source for that, by the way?) - only that she managed to get her hands round from behind her back to her front.

WTF? It was the outback, not the fuching Arndale Centre in Luton. He could have dumped the body 200 metres from the bloody road and it would never have turned up.
Like so many people, you appear to believe that the outback is some sort of mysterious place where things magically vanish the moment they are taken a few metres from the tarmac.

In fact, the outback is flat as a pancake and sparsely decorated with small, low-lying foliage. If he'd dumped the body a mere 200 metres from the road, the Aboriginal trackers would have found it in no time at all. (Were you forgetting that they searched the entire area?)

Where is it alleged that he looked for her for a couple of hours? Don't recall that mentioned during the trial. The woman runs stark-bollock-scared into the bush as fast as her legs can carry her and hides out for five hours until she thinks it's safe. Murdoch (who let's remember is still out of his ****ing brain on amphetemines and booze) not exactly helped by the fact that it was a totally moon-less night, probably did a cursory search and then cut his losses and left the scene.
OK, so she hid out for five hours; he didn't search for her that long. My mistake. (Still, why hide out for five hours if Murdoch had already driven away?)

But she didn't run "into the bush", since there was no "bush" to run into. We are not talking about masses of forest here; we are talking about mid-sized scrub and trees at the very most.

Here's the scene:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...arrowcreek.jpg

That patch of greenery on the right would have been her safest bet - but it's not exactly impenetrable, is it? Particularly when your quarry is scared out of her wits and probably breathing like a steam train.

Where's the evidence to show that he was "out of his brain on amphetamines and booze"? This is the first I've heard of it.

And if he was so "out of his brain on amphetamines and booze" as to be incapable of finding Lees in the scrub, how exactly did he get it together for long enough to stop the couple, murder the boyfriend - taking care to clean up so well that only a tiny drop of blood and a few scraps of DNA could be found, which he successfully achieved despite the obvious visual challenges of a moonless night - tie up the girlfriend, manhandle the girlfriend into the back of his ute, and dispose of the boyfriend's body, leaving no footprints, drag marks or signs of a struggle?

Quite a feat.

Not all gun-shots provoke copious amounts of blood - you only get that if you hit an artery and he used a pistol - not a shotgun. He could well have bled to death internally and produced little more than a blush of blood on the front of his shirt - something pointed out by a crime scene specialist interviewed during the trial.
Fine, but how did Murdoch move the body to its hiding place unaided? He must be one impressive bloke to lift a dead weight and carry it across the road to a ute (or whatever he did with it.) And seeing that this would have brought him into close proximity with the body, how did he avoid getting more blood on himself than he did?

He didn't tie her legs because he had one crude set of 'hand' cuffs and only a bit of tape for the legs. She said numerous times that she was more worried about being raped than murdered and struggled in the light of that. Not everyone gutlessly accepts their fate. Your choice I guess. Not everyone wants to die like a pussy.
She actually claimed that he attempted to tie her legs. He would not even have bothered if he didn't have enough tape to do it with in the first place.

It has nothing to do with "gutlessly accepting your fate" or "dying like a pussy"; it has everything to do with a realistic response to a dangerous situation. How many people would realistically struggle against a man with a gun who'd just shot their boyfriend?

The only explanation I can come up with is that he didn't threaten her with the gun at the time, or wasn't armed with it when he went to tie her legs.

Oh, and...
  • You will recall of course, that Ms Lees described the gun as a silver weapon and we've heard at the moment from Mr Hepi that the weapons he saw were two dark coloured weapons.

Source.

He owned. His own. Home.
Did he really, indeed? You mean he owned it outright? With no mortgage whatsoever? Not a penny owed on it? Because that would be the only condition under which this little snippet could possibly have any relevance to the topic at hand.

Fact: Falconio owed money that he did not have.

Fact: Falconio was very keen to avoid paying that debt.

Fact: Falconio was sufficiently keen to avoid paying that debt, that he actually investigated the possibility of faking his own death and disppearing.

Relevance of home ownership: zero.

What like the DNA, the handcuffs, the positive identifications and myriad other forms of evidence?
Variously: (a) weak, (b) inconclusive, and (c) dismissed as inadmissible by the judge:
  • DNA from Lees' t-shirt could have been from when Murdoch and Lees bumped in to each other while at the Alice Springs Red Rooster fast food restaurant earlier that day.

  • DNA from Murdoch could have been placed on the cable ties when the cable ties were taken to a South Australian prison prior to his arrest. The judge supported this belief, and ruled during the April 2005 Voir dire that the DNA from the cable ties cannot be used as evidence.

  • The black tape and lip gloss was located over 3 months after the crime, and DNA could have been planted.

  • The description initially given to police by Lees did not remotely match Murdoch, his car, or his dog.


  • Murdoch was in Alice Springs, but was travelling to Broome via the Tanami Highway, while Lees and Falconio travelled along the Stuart Highway. Murdoch would not have travelled 280 km out of his way, and then returned to Alice Springs to kill someone he had never met before.

  • The video footage was blurry and could have been of anyone. The person manning the register at the time could not positively identify Murdoch in the court room. The judge has ordered that this is circumstantial evidence only.

  • Defence has argued that the ex-girlfriend is an unreliable witness. The judge agreed and ordered that her evidence be ignored. Defence has secondly argued that Murdoch regularly changed his physical appearance to avoid police capture for his drug running.

  • Defence has argued that the ex-business partner is an unreliable witness. The judge agreed and ordered that his evidence be ignored.

Source.

See also:
  • Joanne Lees still had the cable ties on her when found, several hours after escaping.

  • The DNA laboratories used by the forensics team were below standard, and the tests are "unofficial".

  • The DNA processes used for this case were non-standard.

  • The DNA on the cable ties was confirmed to include DNA from the senior forensics expert, as well as an unknown 3rd person.

  • There is no evidence that a gun was shot in the area.

  • Bradley John Murdoch does not have any front teeth, which were lost in 1997. This was described unanimously as Murdoch's most distinguishable physical characteristic. Joanne Lees did not mention anything about missing teeth when describing her alleged attacker.

  • Ex-drug runner James Hepi was convicted of drug running thanks to Murdoch's evidence in 2002. James Hepi had motive and opportunity to frame Murdoch for this murder as revenge for Murdoch testifying against Hepi in 2002. Hepi's testimony in this case was proven to be false, and the jury were ordered to ignore it.

Source.

However, probably the most damning evidence against Murdoch is the abduction and rape of the child and her mother.
Just remind me, please - when and where was he convicted of any such crime? Because I only know of two convictions for Bradley Murdoch:
  • In 1980, aged 21, Murdoch received a suspended sentence after being convicted of causing death by dangerous driving. [1]

  • In 1995 Murdoch served 15 months imprisonment for shooting at Aborigines who were celebrating at a football match in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. [2]

Source.

See also:
  • Murdoch was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Mr Falconio by police investigating the rape of a 12-year-old girl. In November 2003, he was cleared of charges of rape, false imprisonment and assault of the 12-year-old, but the case had striking similarities to the abduction of Ms Lees and he was arrested soon afterwards.

Source.

The court decided that he is innocent of that crime. The jury reached this conclusion after a mere four hours; three hours less than another jury took to convict him of Falconio's murder.

Not only did this crime bear a huge number of similarities to the Falconio case, but during the crime, Murdoch spoke about the Falconio Murder. He said (unprompted mind you) "I didn't do that Falconio." He also said he was "tired of being on the run." - since he wasn't in the frame for the Falconio murder at that time, why even mention it?
"During the crime"? You're saying that he said this "during" a crime which a court subsequently agreed that he did not commit? Mere hearsay.

And "why even mention it"? The prosecution explained this during the Falconio trial:
  • SA prosecutors allege Mr Murdoch abducted the women – whom he had known for 18 months – while ‘in an extreme frenzy’, because he believed he was the centre of the manhunt for Mr Falconio’s killer.”

Source.


That's why.

According to the Independent, when they searched his van they found a high-powered .308 rifle with telescopic sight, Russian-made night vision goggles, almost 800 rounds of ammunition, a knife, a crossbow with 13 bolts, an electric cattle prod, chains and shackles similar to those used to bind the wrists of Miss Lees. They also discovered two long-handled shovels, a jockey whip and five pairs of disposable gloves. And in a hidden compartment in a spare fuel tank in the rear of the vehicle, officers found an empty box for a 9mm semi-automatic Glock pistol and a fully-loaded .38 Beretta semi-automatic pistol was found in a holster within a backpack between the van's front seats.
"According to the Independent"? Pfffft. I'm more interested in "according to the court records." Do the court records actually contain this impressive list of kit? Was it proved and accepted on all sides that this was the contents of his van at the time of the alleged murder?

So yea, the guy's quite clearly innocent of the crime.

:rolleyes:
Who says he's innocent? Not me. I have never claimed that he is innocent of the crime, just as I have never claimed (since I do not believe) that Lees is somehow guilty of it. Yes, circumstantial evidence points towards Murdoch's guilt; no doubt about it. He certainly appears to be the murderer.

All I'm saying is that we have a lot of unanswered questions in a confusing case with a mass of conflicting evidence.

And that's all I've ever said.

phoenixinoz Dec 18th 2005 8:06 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
OMG....are you bored :eek: :D

BadgeIsBack Dec 18th 2005 8:44 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
nice one Vash, I've learnt more from this than many sources. :)

OzTennis Dec 18th 2005 8:50 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Whether Murdoch is guilty or not, I'm afraid that doubts are going to persist on this one.

There's the bit about how she got from the front to the back of the vehicle despite this not being possible; the lack of tracks around the scene; her first return to the crime scene a year later was with £30K in hand from a British tabloid paper; the lack of blood at the crime scene; her involvement with friend 'Steph' (Nick something, the fellow British backpacker who she had been 'seeing' secretly behind the 'love of her life's' back).

Murdoch is certainly guilty of many crimes though. I know it isn't how justice is meant to work but he should be behind bars for the other crimes he has committed.

I liked the quips about the knowle (sic knoll) and knowleen (sic Noelene). :D

OzTennis :)

Vash the Stampede Dec 18th 2005 9:09 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by phoenixinoz
OMG....are you bored :eek: :D
Yes. :D

Vash the Stampede Dec 18th 2005 9:10 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by thatsnotquiteright
nice one Vash, I've learnt more from this than many sources. :)
Cheers mate; karma sent. :cool:

Lewis Lapthorn Dec 18th 2005 10:31 pm
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
[list][*]DNA from Lees' t-shirt could have been from when Murdoch and Lees bumped in to each other while at the Alice Springs Red Rooster fast food restaurant earlier that day.


Vash

I know Hutch could have hurt your feelings by being a little tactless, but come on mate, quotes like this are getting a bit silly.

As for the rape aquital. It was an agreement between the NT and SA, so that he be tried for the more serious crime - in order to receive the harsher sentence.

Vash the Stampede Dec 19th 2005 6:54 am
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by Lewis Lapthorn
  • DNA from Lees' t-shirt could have been from when Murdoch and Lees bumped in to each other while at the Alice Springs Red Rooster fast food restaurant earlier that day.

Vash

I know Hutch could have hurt your feelings by being a little tactless, but come on mate, quotes like this are getting a bit silly.
No hurt feelings here, I assure you; just getting into the spirit of the debate. :)

As for the rape aquital. It was an agreement between the NT and SA, so that he be tried for the more serious crime - in order to receive the harsher sentence.
Got a source for that? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me! :eek:

manxfamily Dec 19th 2005 7:05 am
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Good post but I still dont know where Mr Kipper was in all of this.

Lewis Lapthorn Dec 19th 2005 7:52 am
Re: Murdoch is innocent
 
Originally Posted by Vash the Stampede
No hurt feelings here, I assure you; just getting into the spirit of the debate. :)



Got a source for that? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me! :eek:
I remember seeing an interview with an SA police official about the possibility of handing him over to the NT authorities. Remember an analyst at the time saying that, as they had him bang to rights on both crimes, it would be lunacy to convict him for one that would allow him out after a few years.

That's why an army of sheriffs were waiting outside the court room to arrest him after the acquittal.

By the way, fair play to you mate. That has got to be worth a Brit Expats Forum Golden Gong award for the longest reply ever.


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