The key witness in one of Australia's most gripping murder trials was tied up in court yesterday and asked to demonstrate how she escaped from the man accused of killing her British boyfriend in 2001.
Joanne Lees' arms were bound behind her back with a man's necktie so she could show the Northern Territory Supreme Court how she managed to slip them to the front of her body as she fled her attacker on a desert highway.
Sitting on the floor of the witness box, Lees took just a few seconds to carry out the demonstration requested by judge Brian Martin.
Bradley John Murdoch, the 47-year-old outback drifter charged with assaulting and abducting Lees after murdering her boyfriend Peter Falconio, watched impassively.
Lees, 32, told the court she was covered in cuts and bruises after the attack, which she said had occurred after a man flagged over the campervan she and Falconio were travelling in along the Stuart Highway.
She has identified Murdoch as the man who asked Falconio to come to the rear of the vehicle before allegedly shooting him dead. He then tied up Lees at gunpoint and forced her into the back of his pickup van.
Lees managed to roll out of the vehicle and run into nearby scrub, where she hid in the dark for five hours as her attacker searched for her.
In her fourth and final day of testimony, Lees denied a suggestion from defense lawyer Grant Algie that she may have encountered Murdoch at a fast food restaurant in Alice Springs in the days before her ordeal.
"I don't recall anyone coming close to me, or even speaking to me," she said.
Falconio's body has never been found, despite the largest manhunt in Australia's history.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not