What happened on that lonely desert road in the middle of the Australian outback on 14 July 2001?
How did two young British travellers find themselves caught up in a terrifying attack on the Stuart Highway north of Alice Springs? What sort of people were they? And why did the young woman who survived such a frightening experience, which attracted the sympathy and understanding of all those who read about her ordeal, behave so oddly in the weeks, months and years that followed? What was the motive for the killing? Was it a random crime that nobody could explain? Why were there inconsistencies in the young woman's story? Had the police contaminated the evidence? Could drugs have been involved? Why had they been specifically targeted? These are some of the questions posed by the author of the book published in 2005. While some of these questions were eventually answered, some remained a mystery.
Until today, Peter Falconio has not been found or more precisely, his body, that is if the accounts of the events were true. However, a man from Adelaide, Bradley John Murdoch was accused and convicted of Falconio's murder in 2005 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of twenty-eight years. Could a man possibly be convicted of murder without a body? Apparently so, but quite unheard of. Was he set up? Was he innocent? Or was he wrongly imprisoned?
What about Peter? Was it even possible he was still alive today - eleven years on - judging from the rumours going around? After all, he had only been presumed dead.
For years, veteran English journalist Roger Maynard travelled throughout Australia and the United Kingdom uncovering evidence about this extraordinary case and addressing the key questions. He pieced together evidence, statements and the courtroom cross-examinations of the key players and witnesses in an effort to establish a factual account of what was to have been the dream journey of a lifetime for a young couple but which turned into a terrifying nightmare. This is perhaps one of the most eerie of unsolved murder cases in this day and age. Expertly written and meticulously researched, I would recommend Where's Peter? (2005) to all who are interested in real-life unsolved crimes based on facts and reality.
Latest news on the Peter Falconio case from Yahoo!7 News on 29 January 2014:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/lifestyle/article/-/21152315/falconio-breakthrough/
About the author: Roger Maynard has worked as a journalist for more than forty years in Britain and Australia. After nearly twenty years with the BBC, in 1987 he moved to Sydney, where he worked as Australian correspondent for a number of British media outlets, including the London Daily Express and Independent Television News. Since 1993 he has been Sydney correspondent for the London Times and CNBC, the global business and finance television channel. His previous books include Milat (1996), based on the serial killer who murdered seven young travellers in New South Wales during the 1990s. He is married with three children and two grandchildren and lives on Sydney's Northern Beaches.
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