THE drug runner found guilty of murdering Huddersfield backpacker Peter Falconio in the Australian Outback will launch an appeal next week against his conviction and sentence.

Bradley Murdoch, 48, is serving a life sentence after a jury in Darwin, Australia, decided he shot 28-year-old Mr Falconio in the head.

The mechanic was also convicted of abducting and assaulting Mr Falconio's girlfriend, Joanne Lees, at gunpoint on a remote stretch of road near Barrow Creek, about 200 miles north of Alice Springs, on July 14, 2001.

Almost exactly a year after a judge ordered him to serve at least 28 years without parole for the murder, Murdoch will attempt to overturn his conviction and sentence.

The appeal is taking place before the Court of Criminal Appeal in the Northern Territory Supreme Court in Darwin.

It will be heard by three judges, led by Acting Chief Justice David Angel, and is listed for four days, starting on Tuesday.

Murdoch is not expected to appear and Mr Falconio's girlfriend Joanne Lees has said she does not plan to attend the appeal.

It is understood Murdoch's lawyers will argue that much of the evidence Miss Lees gave at the trial was unreliable and should have been excluded.

They are also expected to claim the trial judge, Chief Justice Brian Martin, should have told the jury to weigh up whether alleged inconsistencies in Miss Lees' evidence weakened her credibility as a witness.

Miss Lees, a 33-year-old support worker from Almondbury, now living in Brighton, East Sussex, said during last year's trial that she had had nightmares about being jailed and had been more scared of being raped than of dying during the attack.

In October Miss Lees published a book, called No Turning Back, in which she wrote that her boyfriend's murder "forever changed the way I would see the world".

Mr Falconio's mother Joan said Murdoch's actions had torn her family apart and she had wanted to die "many times" after losing her son.

The young couple had set out on a trip of a lifetime that took them to Thailand, Nepal and Cambodia before they reached Australia in January 2001.

They were travelling along the Stuart Highway heading north towards Darwin when Murdoch, of Broome, Western Australia, flagged down their orange camper van.

The mechanic shot Mr Falconio dead before threatening Miss Lees with a gun to her head and painfully tying her up with her hands behind her back, the trial heard.

She managed to escape and hide in the bush for more than five hours on the moonless night before being rescued.

But Mr Falconio, of Hepworth, was never seen again and his body has never been found.

Murdoch, who admitted using amphetamines to stay awake as he transported cannabis long distances across Australia, has always denied he was the killer and no motive for the attack has ever been established.