Peter Falconio 20 YEARS ON - THE DAY I MET THE DEVIL

FORMER DETECTIVE COLLEEN GWYNNE SHARES HER MEMORIES OF CRACKING THE INFAMOUS CASE

- Michael Crooks

After Colleen Gwynne inherited the outback murder case in 2002, one of the first things she did was visit the English victim at the heart of the puzzling crime. The Northern Territory police officer had just been promoted to region superintendent in Alice Springs, and she was now in charge of a case that had gripped two nations – the presumed outback murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio and the attempted abduction of his girlfriend, Joanne Lees. So far, the investigation had gone nowhere and speculation was rife that Lees was hiding something, and as a result she had grown wary of the police.

“She was very guarded,” says Gwynne of meeting with Lees at a police station, in Brighton, England. “I said to her, ‘We’re here because we believe you, Joanne. We want to find out who did this to Peter, and who did this to you.’ I gave her my word we would see this through to the end.”

It was a promise fulfilled. On December 13, 2005, a jury found mechanic and drug dealer Bradley Murdoch, 47, guilty of Falconio’s murder and the attack on Lees. In an exclusive interview 20 years after the shocking crime, Gwynne, who left the police force in 2014, takes WHO inside a mysterious case that often divided Australians and Britons. “We got a murder conviction without a body, and that rarely happens,” says Gwynne, 55. “It was a highlight of my life.”

For Gwynne, it began with a phone call in the early hours of July 15, 2001: someone had attacked a British couple near Barrow Creek, 280km north of Alice Springs. The man was missing, and his girlfriend had escaped. “I was intrigued,” says mum-of-five Gwynne, who’s now living in Darwin. “You don’t normally get crimes like this in Barrow Creek. It was like something out of a crime novel.”