by Sue Williams
When Luciano Falconio went to pin up a poster for the cameras, he was overcome with emotion, and broke down and wept.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A DEAD BODY
THE BODY WAS LYING ON its front, sprawled in the dirt in a rest area some 30 metres off the Stuart Highway, 60 kilometres south of Alice Springs. Two Aboriginal men noticed it, and contacted the police the next morning. The area was sealed off and police chiefs raced to the scene. The body was male, Caucasian and in the right age range. At last, police hoped, they had found Peter Falconio. The decomposing corpse was wearing different clothes to those Peter had on when he’d gone missing, but that didn’t matter. Anything could have happened in the interim.
Back at the police station in Alice Springs, Superintendent Kate Vanderlaan took the call and the atmosphere turned electric. ‘We certainly thought it could be the body,’ she says. ‘I was just busting my guts to see the images of him sent through.’
When the photographs of the body came through later that day on Sunday 5 August 2001, however, there was a sigh of disappointment. But two murders within the space of just three weeks couldn’t be a coincidence. This could well be the same killer, leaving his own personal calling card. Forensic officers performed a post-mortem, trying to ascertain the cause of death, the man’s identity, and whether or not the cadaver held traces of another person’s blood or DNA. The first signs weren’t promising. This man had been stabbed several times in the neck, a completely different style of execution to Peter’s probable killing. But, as the police put out the news of this next death, appealing for information as to his identity, the press also rushed to the conclusion it was unlikely to be pure chance. The story of Peter Falconio not so much caught fire once more, but exploded.
That rest area was where Peter and Joanne had pulled over with their new Canadian backpacker friends on board, to check the problem with their Kombi’s steering.
BY TUESDAY, THE DEAD MAN had been identified as Stuart Rhodes, a thirty-nine-year-old chef who’d been working in Alice Springs. He was a popular man, gay, and with plenty of friends. He’d hired a white four-wheel-drive Proton Satria hatchback a few days before, and police speculated that he might have picked up a hitchhiker who’d turned killer. On Thursday August 9, the vehicle was spotted abandoned outside the Marla Bore Roadhouse, 450 kilometres south of Alice Springs, 170 kilometres into SA. The keys were in the ignition, and a motel room had been ransacked. Forensic samples from both the vehicle and the motel room were sent up to Darwin to be cross-referenced with samples from the crime scene north of Barrow Creek.
ANDREW HEFFERNAN, THE DRIFTER suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia who’d set off on a journey from the South Australian riverlands to Alice Springs at around the same time as Peter and Joanne, had stopped at a local motel in Alice Springs to ask for a job. He’d just been evicted from a backpackers’ lodge, because he didn’t have any money. He’d filled in the forms, and then sat at the bar at the Gap View Motel for a drink. While there, he got chatting to Stuart Rhodes, who’d just arrived back in town after a time down south. It was Sunday July 29, and Heffernan, twenty-eight, confessed he had hardly any money. He’d sold his car for $400 cash, but was now broke until his disability pension came through. Rhodes felt sorry for him. He’d just checked into room 301, which had twin beds. He asked Heffernan if he wanted to crash on one of them.
Over the next few days, the two men formed a friendship. Rhodes allowed him to sleep regularly in his room — even though he was being charged an extra tariff for him to do so — and lent him $250. There were reports, however, that the friendship faltered after Heffernan overheard Rhodes, who was HIV-positive, telling friends the two men had begun a sexual relationship. Rhodes would have had no way of knowing that Heffernan had stopped taking his medication for his serious mental illness three weeks before.
On the evening of Wednesday August 1 Rhodes had been drinking heavily and was so drunk, he’d urinated in the motel bed. Heffernan says the chef then had the idea of going to visit Uluru, so he loaded him into the white hatchback he’d just hired, piled all the men’s possessions in, as well as a fair few items like a mattress and bedding from the motel, and drove south. He then called into two supermarkets and bought prawns, ham, muesli bars and cigarettes … and a very sharp hobby knife and a coil of thin, blue rope.
When the two men reached the rest area 60 kilometres south of Alice Springs, however, Heffernan pounced on Rhodes from behind, slit his throat, and stabbed him in the neck a number of times in an ‘almost frenzied’ attack. He then tied the rope around one of Rhodes’ arms and one of his legs and dragged him across the cleared ground, under a barbed wire fence protecting a plant life regeneration area, and into the bush. With the body partially hidden, Heffernan then drove down to SA, withdrew $1000 from one of Rhodes’ bank accounts and arrived at the Marla Bore Roadhouse, dirty and barefoot. The next day he disappeared, leaving the car behind, and catching a bus to Adelaide.
At the rest area, however, he’d left a cigarette stub bearing his DNA, and a number of bloodied footprints.
TWO WEEKS LATER, JOHN SHEATHER, the owner of a caravan park in NSW, was lying in bed. He was listening to the radio and wondering, he says, if anything interesting was going to happen that day. After a few minutes, he heard an item on the news about a man wanted in connection with the murder near Alice Springs of Stuart Rhodes. He sat up to hear the name of the man they were searching for. ‘I thought, “Well, I’ll be buggered!” he said. ‘“It’s that bloke a few caravans away!”’
Heffernan had checked in under his own name because he’d applied for emergency assistance from the Housing Department and needed a valid address. But Sheather wasn’t fazed. He calmly stepped into the shower. ‘I knew he wasn’t going anywhere,’ he said. ‘So I took a shower and then I rang the police.’
Two detectives crept into a spare caravan to keep watch then called for back-up. Heffernan was arrested a little over an hour later.
IN SEPTEMBER 2004, ANDREW HEFFERNAN was jailed for life after being found guilty by a jury of the murder of Stuart Rhodes. The judge, Justice Trevor Olsson, recommended a non-parole period of twenty years.
The Northern Territory police were disappointed not to have solved the biggest murder inquiry they’d ever had on their patch, but at least they’d taken another dangerous killer out of circulation. For Joanne Lees, however, there was still no solace in sight. The stormclouds of doubt over her story continued to gather, and grow blacker by the day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A BREATH OF FRESH ENERGY
HE’D BEEN WATCHING THE STORY of Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees unfold from afar, but now it was the turn of the Northern Territory’s police straight shooter, Assistant Commissioner John Daulby, to ride into town and take charge. Daulby, fifty-one, had been over in New Zealand for three weeks in July 2001, visiting his two daughters who were living with their mother across the Tasman. On his arrival back to Darwin, he was called into the office of the Commissioner. Brian Bates had been growing increasingly worried at what was happening down in Alice Springs. When he’d appeared at a press conference, and was asked about a man being questioned in NSW over Peter’s disappearance, he’d been baldly accused by a journalist of lying when he replied that the police were 99.9 per cent sure he wasn’t the one they were hunting. Bates shakes his head in disbelief. ‘That was the sort of hysteria we found ourselves in the middle of. Joanne had got the media offside, and they were attacking everyone. I’d pick up my phone and there’d be a voice on the other end saying, “This is the BBC and you are live to air, Commissioner”. Day after day in my diary, I had written down: Briefing re missing tourist. It was madness.’ Bates asked Daulby to go straight to Alice Springs and take charge. ‘He’s a very down-to-earth officer, and very, very close to the community,’ says Bates. ‘He was the ideal man for the task.’
Daulby’s arrival brought a draught of fresh energy to the investigation. He examined the progress so far and
took immediate action: he announced the discovery of a mystery man’s DNA on Joanne’s T-shirt. The revelation on August 2, three-and-a-half weeks after the attack, instantly took the heat off Joanne. At last, here was tangible evidence that there may have been someone else at the scene, besides the two backpackers. Daulby still refused to say whether it was blood, saliva or sweat, but he was firm about its existence. ‘We have found a DNA profile of a male person on the clothing of Joanne Lees,’ he said. ‘All that can be said in relation to this is that it could be the offender, and I can’t speculate any more on that.’ Privately, he felt the fact of the existence of DNA should have been released much earlier. ‘Withholding it created real problems,’ he says. ‘Putting it out gave Joanne’s story credibility.’
Daulby also released a new computer image of the man’s face, this time showing him with his hair cut, without a cap and shaved of his moustache. It was a wise move. Fourteen years before, another man, twenty-six-year-old German migrant and former security guard Josef Schwab, killed a father and son who’d been camping in the bush. He’d used a semi-automatic rifle to shoot them both at close range in the back, the father once and his son twice. Their bodies were stripped naked before being buried. Police across the Northern Territory and WA released an identikit of the killer and set up a massive network of roadblocks to catch him. Unbeknownst to them, however, he’d shaved his droopy moustache into a thin line, and cropped his long hair short. Six days later, he murdered an engaged couple and their friend, shooting all three in the back. Schwab was eventually shot dead in a bloody gunfight.
Daulby warned that the man may also have altered the appearance of his vehicle, and disclosed that the gun he’d threatened Joanne with had been a revolver. A criminal profile was prepared, and the DNA was sent around to all the crime data banks in the Territory, NSW, Queensland and Victoria. When that failed, it was circulated further, to international databases in New Zealand, Britain, the US and other countries with similar programs. Daulby also threw his weight firmly behind Joanne. ‘I have no doubt she is telling the truth,’ he said. ‘I’ve had no doubt from the very beginning.’
JOHN DAULBY WAS A COPPER’S copper, through and through. Tall, broad-shouldered and imposing, with a square jaw, neat grey moustache, an easy lope and a painfully firm handshake, he had the bearing of an army sergeant major, but softened with a quiet voice and a thoughtful manner. From country SA, he’d joined the local police as a cadet in 1967, took a break to work as an apprentice fitter, then signed up with the Northern Territory police in January 1975, just a month after Cyclone Tracy swept through the city of Darwin. Since that second start, he’d never looked back. He was in his fifth year as Assistant Commissioner, but still couldn’t cross the road without picking up a stray tree branch that had fallen on the ground, or wishing knots of locals a brisk G’day.
When he took charge of the Barrow Creek investigation, he went back through all the files and came to the conclusion that there was too much territorialism between officers. ‘Detectives weren’t talking to the people running the search, and vice versa,’ he says. As well, he perceived Joanne’s unwillingness to speak to the press had created a welter of other difficulties. He wished he’d been there at the very beginning. ‘If I’d have been there, I would have strongly urged her to talk. It would have stopped all the nonsense early on.’
In addition, he recognised that some of his police colleagues were turning armchair critics and promoting negativity towards Joanne. ‘There were two very strong elements from the start: those who believed Joanne and those who didn’t,’ he says. ‘The first were quite vocal, and dissected everything she said. But Joanne wasn’t treated badly. She was the only credible witness we had, but there were just gaps in what she was saying. I think we had a duty to examine very closely those things, yet the disbelieving element were pushing a stronger stance against Joanne. So we decided to undertake a formal investigation, going through things with her again. She was upset by that, and eventually became exasperated, but it had to be done.’
The first exercise was hypnotherapy. Joanne was nervous about reliving her trauma, but agreed to take part. A psychologist from Sydney put the young woman in a trance on August 3 and 4, then asked her more questions. Police hoped she might come up with more details. Some took it as a test for Joanne’s truthfulness about the incident. Three days later, on August 7, another interview was organised for Joanne, this time to sort out any lingering doubts over certain aspects of her description of the ambush. Senior Sergeant Jeanette Kerr was chosen to conduct the interview which lasted nearly three hours, and ranged over the whole spectrum of Joanne’s evidence. The concerns were many and varied: none of the mechanics interviewed had ever seen a vehicle like the one she described; no-one knew of a four-wheel-drive ute with an opening between the front and the back; no gun that matched her description could either be found on the firearms records or was within the experience of ballistics experts; a doctor had said he’d expected her injuries to be worse than they were; and could Joanne really have heard a conversation going on at the back of the Kombi over the noise of its engine?
There were other doubts too: the electrical tape found was too short to go around her ankles; Aboriginal trackers said she wasn’t in that single position under the mulga for anything like five hours; she hadn’t suffered any sign of the frostbite that some said should have been expected on someone who’d been out so long at night; the police had found only her footprints; there was no forensic evidence to suggest that a body had been dragged anywhere; and the odometer on the Kombi read that it had travelled 6.5 kilometres further than police had measured the distance from Ti Tree. In addition, another detective mentioned that the scrolling she described on the gun was similar to a pattern on the door of the orange Kombi. In the same way, there were also worries about the dog and the canvas bag she’d had shoved over her head. Was it really just coincidence that the dog looked to be the same breed as the one at Barrow Creek, and what of the suggestion that the bag was similar to a mail bag that was in the roadhouse?
The exercise, says Kerr, was ‘to clarify apparent inconsistencies in Ms Lees’ account. It was conducted at that time based on the information and evidence that the Northern Territory police had at that point in time, and the information available to me.’
Lastly, police had arranged for Joanne’s statement to be analysed by linguistic content experts, both in the Northern Territory and interstate, to assess whether it contained all the relevant information. All were of a view, Kerr was shocked to discover, that vital information was missing. They believed she was telling the truth about the attack, but they also thought she was hiding something. Kerr racked her brains for what Joanne might be concealing from the investigation team and instructed everyone involved to keep a closer eye on the young woman.
THE STRAIN MEANWHILE WAS TAKING its toll on the Falconio family. Peter’s mother Joan appeared on TV from her Huddersfield home to make an impassioned plea for people to come forward. ‘It’s the only thing we can do,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t been found and people are saying all sorts of things but he still hasn’t been found. He might be alive. That’s what we’ve got to cling on to. We’ve just been going through hell every single day. Today it’s no better than it was the first day.’ When she was asked about Peter’s girlfriend, she didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ve known Joanne for six years,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t lie. She loved Peter.’ She corrected herself quickly. ‘She still loves him. She wants him to be found.’
Luciano went home a few days later. He said he was worried about his wife’s health.
THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUED APACE. Wanted posters with the details of the $250,000 reward went up at all the truck stops, shopping centres, and throughout every police station across Australia. Commander Max Pope was still doing some 200 press interviews a week. The British police had sent over some snaps from two holidaying women who’d played pool with someone fitting the man’s description in a bar off a different stretch of the
Stuart Highway. Checks were being made of car body builders to see if anyone knew of utes being re-configured to allow access from the cab to the back. Detectives flew to Sydney to talk to people who knew Peter and Joanne, to double-check they hadn’t made any enemies in Australia who’d perhaps stalked them all the way to the north before swooping.
There had been 2500 calls to Crime Stoppers, but still no definite leads. The sheer volume of information was proving both a blessing, and a curse. ‘It was overwhelming,’ says Superintendent Kate Vanderlaan. ‘Trying to sift through it all was a huge task. But it was so frustrating because after a while I sort of felt you were dealing with so much information, but nothing concrete, and you wonder: when is it all going to end? I always felt it would eventually come to an obvious conclusion — but there wasn’t even an obvious conclusion!
‘We tried a lot of different approaches and lateral thinking and experimentation. We had a lot of brain-storming sessions. The investigation had so many different angles. We were looking at different types of cars around Australia, who deals with modifying cars, manufacturers of cable ties, which shops sold them, who owns pistols and which gun dealers or clubs might be able to help, where to place the media appeals, whether to put them in four-wheel-drive magazines … It was always difficult even finding a point at which to start.’
JOANNE WAS HAVING DIFFICULTIES of her own too. The press was still stalking her around town, and she was just as determined not to speak. On a number of occasions, she was caught holding hands with Paul Falconio as they strolled around town together, and rumours soon started circulating that she was now having an affair with Peter’s brother. Others remarked that maybe she did have a motive for doing away with her boyfriend.