Northern Territory Police have released body-worn camera footage of their final interview with Bradley John Murdoch, recorded less than a month before his death from throat cancer in July 2025. The footage surfaced on Saturday, July 11, 2026, days ahead of the 25th anniversary of Peter Falconio's killing on the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek The Guardian.

In the recording, Murdoch denies any knowledge of where Falconio's body was hidden, repeating words he had used for over two decades: "I know nothing. I've said this for 22 years. I know nothing." When officers pressed him, he turned combative, telling them: "now you're here at the last minute because I'm fucking dying" The Guardian. NT Police records confirm Murdoch died at 10:56pm on 15 July 2025 in the palliative care unit at Alice Springs Hospital, with metastatic adenocarcinoma listed as the cause of death NT Attorney-General's Department.

The interview marked the last chance investigators had to extract information from the only person believed to know where Falconio's remains were located AAP. Alongside the footage, NT Police released photographs of Joanne Lees showing blood spatter — images withheld from public view for 25 years — as part of a fresh appeal ahead of the anniversary NT News.

Falconio, a 28-year-old British backpacker, was shot and killed in July 2001 while travelling the Stuart Highway with his girlfriend, Joanne Lees. Murdoch flagged them down and forced Lees into the back of his vehicle after allegedly shooting Falconio. She managed to escape and hid in the surrounding bushland for roughly five hours while Murdoch searched for her with his dog, before flagging down a passing truck driver The Guardian. The case, and the outback isolation at its centre, partly inspired the horror film Wolf Creek.

Murdoch was not arrested until November 2003. The forensic breakthrough came indirectly: his DNA profile had already been collected after a South Australian jury acquitted him of raping and falsely imprisoning a 12-year-old girl. That sample was later matched to DNA recovered from the makeshift handcuffs used to restrain Lees and from her T-shirt. This evidence underpinned his conviction and life sentence for murder, along with charges related to the assault and attempted kidnapping of Lees The Guardian.

For most of the two decades after his conviction, Murdoch maintained his innocence and refused to say where Falconio's body was, leaving the case formally unresolved. NT Police continue to offer a $500,000 reward for information leading to the location of the remains, a sum that has been the primary investigative tool since Murdoch's refusal to cooperate became clear. In a statement accompanying the release, police described the 25-year mark as a significant milestone and said they remain committed to pursuing every avenue toward resolving the investigation The Guardian.

The timing of the release is deliberate, though not unusual for investigations approaching a milestone anniversary. Publicising raw, emotionally charged material tends to jog memories among people who may have overheard something, seen something, or been told something in the years since — particularly individuals who may have felt no obligation to come forward while Murdoch was alive.

What the footage does not do is resolve the central question that has haunted this case. Murdoch's death closes off the most direct source of information about Falconio's remains. Publishing the interview and the Lees photographs functions less as new evidence than as an attempt to convert a quarter-century of dormant memory into the tip that reward money alone has not produced. Whether this approach works depends entirely on whether anyone beyond Murdoch himself was ever told where he left the body.