Murder in the Outback, Channel 4 tonight and next 3 nights

[Chicchicchicchiclana]

Anyone else watching?

I was quite gripped by the first part. I sort of remember the case although I was very caught up in the world of having a new baby when it happened back in 2001 and probably wasn't fully engaged with the news.

I do remember reading several fairly long news articles about the case over the years and know that Joanne Lees has always been regarded with suspicion in some quarters.

The thing I'm taking from tonight's episode is - how are they going to explain away the suspect/accused Brad Murdoch's DNA being present on her t-shirt?

Also, the defence lawyer. I don't know about him.

She was 12000 miles from home, no family or friends supporting her.
Hostile police interviews with no legal representation, no "friend" sitting in with her, although she is not a suspect, just a witness.
No credible motive given at any time.
She failed to dance to the Medias tune so they turned on her as a pack.
2 failed prosecutors now investigating her in a ghastly 4 part TV extravaganza with predetermined theories.
If he's a leading Australian criminal barrister, God help the Australian judicial system.
The whole thing is one long, lazy voyeuristic farce, and Channel 4 should be ashamed of themselves.
.

It does smack of Amanda Knox. The way the police didn't like how she acted and tried to trip her up. Thank God for the dna on her tshirt or she might have been in trouble.

Her description of the guy was pretty spot on for the cctv footage of the guy in the petrol station that night at the right time, truck matched as well. So she didn't make that up. Whether that bloke was Murdoch or not I don't know.

The media were awful. I remember while she stayed in Australia afterwards she went back to work in the bookshop in Sydney and the paparazzi stalked her at work and used to take photos of her stacking the shelves. And photos of her talking to men - God forbid!

I'm reserving judgement on whether C4 should be ashamed of themselves until I've seen the whole series. It could turn out to be a great expose of the shoddy way she was treated at the time (again, the police interviews!! ) the whingeing media (wtf) and the dubious intentions of the lawyer and sidekick in their examination of the case.

It's very odd she was emailing Nick Reilly 2 days after the event happened, to try to arrange to meet him in Berlin.
And there were no footprints in the desert apart from hers and no dog prints either.
I think she appears very suspect from this.
But his brother must believe her if he's with her now.

I guess she’d checked out of the relationship with Peter but that doesn’t mean she killed him or set up his murder.

I think people just behave strangely in times of traumatic events but if she had got close to someone else and felt alone/traumatised etc then she would reach out to someone. No matter how it looks. She was clearly close to this Nick guy.

I too noticed how she kind of clung in to the brother after the press conference and was reaching for his hand. I wasn’t surprised to learn they were together.

So much was made about how she didn’t cry but she just looked like she was trying to hold it together most of the time and she did appear to break down a few times.

I do find it quite odd - not that she didn't do "media interviews" but that she didn't do one of those official press conference style police appeals - in view of the fact that her boyfriend was a missing person at that moment. I find it strange she didn't do that but she DID do the weird reconstruction video a few days later. Not saying she did anything or was definitely responsible or anything, but I wonder why she immediately refused to do anything like the press conference. The media hadn't even covered the story yet, so they weren't "hostile" at that time.

I'm not that familiar with all the details of the case, was obviously vaguely aware of it at the time but I can't recall all the controversy etc.

The programme does seem a bit stretched out tbh. Four episodes?

I have mixed feelings about this so far. I do remember at the time that Joanne Lees was not acting in the sort of way that people who have been through something like this, act. But that doesn't mean to say she is guilty of anything, except being wary

Amanda Knox a different kettle of fish. I hate the way she has cashed in on all of this since the awful events that happened. She just won't let it drop, even going on some publicity stunt in Italy last year. I feel so sorry for the Kercher family, their beautiful daughter gone but Knox never stops talking about it. She took part in a Netflix documentary making £3.5M alone from that, let alone all the other stuff.

Maybe it hit home too much for me, I had a DD who looks very much like Meredith and she was on an Erasmus scheme just after.

Joanne Lees' silence on all of what happened is refreshing.

Sorry, don't mean to derail the thread!

The tight tshirt thing really pissed me off. I looked like that in the 2000s too, because that's what tshirts looked like then. I didn't own a baggy one.

I have big boobs and I can't remove them, they're permanently stuck there. Perhaps the press feel she shouldn't have been in possession of breasts, or that nice ladies have a certain body shape?

They also spent far too long in episode two recapping episode one. I hate how programme makers do this. I actually thought I'd recorded the same programme twice.

She did do police official appeal type press conferences didn’t she? She was sat in one in the documentary last night. The press were pissed off because she vetted the post appeal questions prior to the event and selected which ones she would answer.

Ugh I hate that too, Morris. Every programme seems to do that now, after every break it repeats what happened in the first part, so annoying.

Thanks for the tip off, I'll take my time to tune in tonight!

Yes Jacob, but I thought that was quite a while later? Not immediately after when there was feasibly a chance Peter was alive/injured/somewhere in the area?

Men are never violent. Men never kill other men. Men never attack women.

Women lie.

She wore a teeshirt from Next with 'Cheeky Monkey' written on it.That is much stronger evidence than any DNA.

Of course, she is guilty.

Meaningless post hannah.

I think DH and I are giving up with this after the second episode. As a lawyer I find the 'evidence' ridiculous. None of this behavioural analysis stuff is credible at all. The DNA is much more compelling. Seems to me that this defence lawyer wants his 5 minutes of fame.

Also, having been through a traumatic event myself (albeit nothing like this), there are bits of what happened that I remember vividly and other bits that are a total blur. I'm stunned that these police officers don't have some insight into how memory is affected after trauma.

Oh and the poor media not getting an interview and dictating how she should look and act is despicable. If it was me, I wouldn't want to speak to the tabloids either, they're scum. I find the whole crux of the programme so far despicable.

Yes it seems to me that the media were out to get her from the off? All starting with people expecting her to give media interviews which is odd to me

You should watch all episodes because they talk about the red car at the scene which I don't think the jury were told about . Also there is a man who believes ( strongly ) he saw him at his petrol station after his supposed. I don't think Brad is guilty either . There just isn't enough evidence !

I watched episode 1 last night and I’m currently watching episode 2. Haven’t read the thread yet.

Thoughts so far- Ex defence lawyer/cokehead gives me the heebie jeebies. Serious creep/bully boy flags being raised by him.

Vince Miller- was he drunk/high when he gave that video to creep defence lawyer where he mentioned the red car? And why had he never mentioned that to the police?

I too have serious misgivings about the programme and gave up after episode 1.

The ex lawyer and "author" are clearly not credible and seem to be after fame and money (which Channel 4 is gladly offering them). Both are hardly objective commentators. Hell, the ex lawyers wife pretty much admitted he wanted another shot at the big time.

If you analyse anything to the nth degree there will be inconsistencies. If someone asked me what time I had for dinner last night, I wouldn't be exactly sure. Doesn't mean I didn't have dinner. This is why scientific evidence is so important. But in this case the DNA evidence seemed to be totally dismissed (in the first episode at least).

Also the misogyny running through these types of true crime documentaries is disturbing. Innocent men manipulated by lying women or gruesome female deaths pored over to save some innocent man (who of course did not do it). It's troubling to say the least.

It's a bit like the McCann's to me anyway.

I have mixed feelings about this so far. I do remember at the time that Joanne Lees was not acting in the sort of way that people who have been through something like this, act. But that doesn't mean to say she is guilty of anything, except being wary

Certainly not.

There's a fairly objectionable mindset amongst some people whereby they claim that there is a "right" way to react to the sort of event, invariably what they claim they would have done -, with all the luxury of a comfy seat in front of a computer and zero direct experience. We see it time and again, most notably in relation to Christopher Jeffries who was tried, convicted and condemned in the court of public opinion essentially because he was a bit of a loner and an oddball.

The truth is that there is no right" way to react to an experience as awful as this, and no-one can claim to know how they would react in Joanne Lees' situation. Condemning her for acting differently from some idiotic preconception of how victims should behave is incredibly crass, yet that is in effect what the makers of this programme are doing time and again.

You should watch all episodes because they talk about the red car at the scene which I don't think the jury were told about

Because the supposed witness didn't mention it at the time, though he doesn't explain why not. Frankly it sounded to me like either fantasy or deliberate fiction on his part.

This all seems to me to have very unfortunate parallels with the Lindy Chamberlain case. I'm very aware of the need not to over-generalise, but there seems to be a bit of a pattern of condemning young women in Australia for the crime of not being submissive little housewives and daring to speak up for themselves. What seems to condemn them most in some eyes is their dreadful conduct in failing to conform to a highly misogynistic stereotype of how it is thought they ought to behave in unbelievably stressful and traumatic circumstances which are wholly beyond the experience of those who condemn them.

I’m so glad others have said about the misogyny, I came here to ask if I was being mad getting angry about this. There’s such a trend of women being blamed who don’t fit the submissive stereotype. Also I thought Australia was massively misogynistic when I went there, and started watching this programme expecting them to cover all the women that get raped and killed and dumped in the bush there. But no, a mans gone missing so obviously a woman did it 🙄. Not saying all women are angels or that none have killed but it just seems so skewed.