Lees identifies Australian in Falconio murder trial

DARWIN, Australia - Joanne Lees told an Australian court on Tuesday that a truck driver on trial for her boyfriend's murder flagged them down on an outback highway in 2001, put a gun to her head and tied her up.

Lees identified Australian Bradley Murdoch on the second day of his trial in the city of Darwin.

Murdoch has been charged with murdering Peter Falconio, whose body has never been found, and with abducting and assaulting Lees on the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The prosecutor asked Lees whether the man who flagged the tourists down and abducted her was in court.

Lees looked across at Murdoch sitting in the dock and replied: "Yes, I am looking at him".

Lees also recounted how the couple were ambushed north of the small settlement of Barrow Creek, after being flagged down by a motorist who claimed sparks were coming from their van.

She said Falconio went to the back of the van with the motorist while she revved the engine. "I kept revving the engine and stopping and then I heard a bang. At first it just sounded like a car backfiring," she said.

Falconio has not been seen since.

Lees said the motorist then appeared at her window and put a silver revolver to her head. He then tied her hands behind her back and pushed her out of the van, landing on the gravel.

"I remember tasting blood in my mouth," she recalled.

Lees said she began fighting the man, trying to escape.

"I was lifting my hands up, trying to hit him in the crotch. He punched me in my right temple. It stunned me. I was screaming for Peter to come and help me," she said.

Asked by Judge Brian Martin to describe her emotions during the attack, Lees said: "I felt alone. I thought I was going to die."

Lees said the man pulled a sack over her head and pushed her into his small white utility truck, where she managed to move to the truck's back tray, which was covered with canvas.

As she lay in the truck, Lees cried out to the man, asking him whether he wanted money or whether he planned to rape her.

"He came back and told me to shut up or he would shoot me," Lees said. "I wondered what he had done to Pete."

She said when she asked the man whether he had killed Falconio, the man replied no.

As the man busied himself with something on the side of the road, Lees slipped out of the truck and ran into the bushes.

"I knew there was no way I could run far or out run the man. It was pitch black. I didn't speak. I was trying not to breathe," she said.

Hiding under a bush Lees desperately gnawed at the cable ties around her wrists. "I tried to bite them off with my teeth," she said, adding when that failed she used a pencil lip balm in her pocket to grease her hands but could not slide the ties off.

Eventually the motorist drove off, leaving Lees cowering under the bush for hours until she flagged down a passing truck.

The trial, which has attracted international attention with some 70 foreign and local media covering the hearing, is expected to last six to eight weeks.

- REUTERS