Further revelations about the attack and trial are expected to flow from numerous books and film projects she is said to have agreed to work on.After yesterday’s verdict, Judge Martin told jurors: “For what it’s worth, can I say in respect of your verdict that I entirely agree. But during the trial, Ms Lees and the Falconio family gave every impression of solidarity as they left court together.In a cold and unemotional television interview with Martin Bashir, for which she was paid £50,000, she complained that police had not believed her account. Although the Darwin jury did not hear of Murdoch’s police record, Mr Algie claimed that his client had been “set up”.Yesterday’s verdict has provided vindication for Ms Lees, 32, from Brighton, East Sussex, who has contended with media speculation – and who was condemned by one senior Australian policeman as “offensive” – about her role in the murder. As the only witness to the attack, it was revealed during the trial that she cheated on her boyfriend by having an affair with a man who was working in a Sydney bookshop. In both cases he was alleged to have used black cable ties and tape to restrain his victims in order to cover them with a hood or blindfold them.Detectives in the rape case found a hoard of weapons concealed inside his van including a rifle, crossbow, cattle prod and chains and shackles similar to those used to bind the wrists of Ms Lees. During the rape trial, he vehemently resisted analysis of his DNA – tests that eventually linked him to Mr Falconio’s murder and showed that he was 100 million times more likely to be the killer than anyone else.But Grant Algie, who defended Murdoch on both occasions, alleged that the first trial was influencing the second.

She was eventually rescued when she ran out in front of a lorry, which almost knocked her down. The trucker had to cut her hands free with a bolt cutter before driving her to the nearby Barrow Creek Hotel truck stop to raise the alarm. Police searched the area the next morning and found the couple’s Volkswagen Kombi van parked in the scrub. They also found a patch of blood on the highway covered in soil, which was later identified as Mr Falconio’s.A breakthrough in the prosecution came when Australian detectives investigating the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl arrested Murdoch, whose criminal profile had already made him a suspect in the Falconio case.During the rape trial a picture emerged of the defendant, from Broome, Western Australia, as a man with a violent past who transported cannabis across Australia on a commercial scale and was convinced he was being framed for the Falconio murder.In November 2003 Murdoch was cleared of rape, false imprisonment and assault, but evidence heard in court linked him to the Falconio case. She then managed to escape and hide in the bush “like a rabbit” for more than five hours on the moonlit night as Murdoch searched for her with his dog and a torch, sometimes coming within a few feet of her before giving up.She heard their camper van being driven away and then the other vehicle being driven off. The defence attempted to pick holes in her account and her personality, pointing to another relationship she had behind Mr Falconio’s back, her unlikely escape from the attacker through the back of Murdoch’s 4×4 and, above all, the absence of a body, despite a hunt by Aboriginal trackers.Murdoch flagged down the couple as they were travelling in their orange camper van, duping them into believing that he had spotted a fault with their vehicle. He shot Mr Falconio, then 28, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, dead at close range once outside the vehicle.

As she fought for her life, Ms Lees pleaded: “Have you shot my boyfriend? Where is my boyfriend? Where is Pete?” Murdoch put a gun to her head and said: “Shut up and you won’t get shot.” He tied her hands behind her back and put her in the back of his vehicle, but with her attacker’s attention diverted for a moment, Ms Lees climbed out – a difficult manoeuvre that she was forced to simulate in court to convince the jury – and ran away into the bush. The only sentence is imprisonment for life” he said.In a nine-week trial the court in Darwin has heard in minute detail the events of the evening of 14 July 2001 on Stuart Highway, a remote, dusty stretch of road about 200 miles north of Alice Springs.Ms Lees told the court how their backpacking trip came to a violent end at the hands of a man portrayed by the prosecution as a notorious sociopath, drug trafficker and gun enthusiast once tried for rape. The trial, in a purpose-built courtroom, saw hundreds of journalists descend on Darwin in the largest case since the 1982 trial of Lindy Chamberlain, who alleged that her baby was snatched by a dingo.Inside the Northern Territory Supreme Court, Ms Lees sat shaking in the public gallery and cried on the shoulder of Mr Falconio’s brother Paul as the verdict was read out. Murdoch sat impassively as he heard his fate from the judge, Brian Martin. “Bradley John Murdoch, you have been found guilty of wilful murder. Speaking after Bradley Murdoch, a long-distance truck driver and drug runner, was given a life sentence for the murder of Mr Falconio four years ago, Ms Lees said she was “obviously delighted” with the verdict, but said Murdoch should reveal “what he had done with Pete”.
Murdoch, 47, was also convicted yesterday of abducting and assaulting Ms Lees, but the trial ended with mystery continuing to surround the motive for the attack, as well as the whereabouts of the body. What they do know is the price they receive for their cotton harvests, essential for basic necessities such as medicines and school fees, is dropping fast..

Joanne Lees, the girlfriend of the murdered backpacker Peter Falconio, has urged his killer to reveal where he hid the body. The farmers working in the cotton fields of Burkina Faso, often in remote locations, have little knowledge of the intricacies of world markets. Seydou, dressed in a ripped T-shirt that hangs off his shoulders, looks blank when questioned about the effects of United States subsidies on his only source of income, cotton farming. At least nine people were injured in scuffles outside a convention centre in Hong Kong, where the World Trade Organisation held a jamboree opening ceremony yesterday ahead of five days of talks.