Bradley Murdoch is a gun-obsessed thug whose repeated answer to claims by police that he was responsible for violence, sex offences and murder was that he had been framed.
Today the self-confessed drug runner was convicted of murdering Peter Falconio in the Australian outback in July 2001 and of attempting to abduct the British backpacker's girlfriend Joanne Lees.
Two years ago, Murdoch stood trial for the rape of a 12-year-old girl, whom prosecutors claimed he had abducted with her mother "for insurance" while in a drug-fuelled psychological state as police investigating the Falconio murder closed in.
The 47-year-old was cleared of rape and false imprisonment but the case had similarities to Mr Falconio's murder on the Stuart highway after Murdoch flagged down the British couple's camper van.
At the trial in 2003, the court heard Murdoch had told a 33-year-old woman and daughter, who thought they were his friends, that he was "on the run" because the police had framed him.
The prosecution claimed Murdoch, from the north-west resort town of Broome, had subjected the pair to a 25-hour ordeal at Swan Reach, in Riverland, South Australia.
The South Australia district court heard in October 2003 that during the alleged incident in August 2002, Murdoch denied killing Mr Falconio, but admitted having one of his T-shirts.
The rape trial heard he used black cable ties around the wrists of the mother and her daughter. Two years later, the jury trying Murdoch for murder heard he had put black cable ties around the wrists of Ms Lees.
And while Ms Lees's attacker covered her head with a sack during the attack and tried to tape her mouth shut, the girl said she was blindfolded while her mouth was taped.
The jury in the rape trial also heard Murdoch spoke about Mr Falconio during the alleged attack itself. The prosecution said Murdoch was paranoid that he would be linked to Mr Falconio's disappearance and murder.
The court heard the girl's mother asked why he had raped her daughter and he laughed in response.
Officers who arrested Murdoch discovered a hoard of weapons inside his van, including a high-powered .308 rifle with telescopic sight, Russian-made night vision goggles, almost 800 rounds of ammunition, a knife, a crossbow with 13 bolts, an electric cattle prod, chains and shackles similar to those used to bind the wrists of Ms Lees.
They also discovered two long-handled shovels, a jockey whip and five pairs of disposable gloves.
In a hidden compartment in a spare fuel tank in the rear of the vehicle, officers found an empty box for a 9mm semi-automatic Glock pistol and a fully-loaded .38 Beretta semi-automatic pistol was found in a holster within a backpack between the van's front seats.
The court heard he vehemently resisted attempts to have his DNA analysed - tests which eventually linked him to Mr Falconio's murder and showed that he was 150,000 million billion times more likely to be the killer than anyone else.
He was immediately arrested over the Falconio killing after the jury returned majority verdicts of not guilty on two charges of rape, two charges of false imprisonment, two counts of indecent assault and one of common assault in South Australia.
Murdoch's defence barrister in both cases, Grant Algie, said outside court during the trial in 2003 that his defence for both the alleged rape and the Falconio murder "has always been that he was set up".
He admitted during the murder trial that he transported large amounts of cannabis across Australia on a commercial scale, often carrying a gun with him in a compartment within the driver's door of his vehicle for protection.
Described in court as meticulous, fastidious and obsessive, it was Murdoch's business to avoid the police and he regularly changed his appearance, shaving off his beard and moustache, as he went about his drugs business.
His former schoolmates described him as a thug and a bully as a teenager and reports in the Australian media claimed he had once been a young member of a Klu Klux Klan group.
He served 21 months in prison after being convicted in 1995 for firing shots from a rifle at a group of Aborigines at a football game.
At that court case, psychologist Ross Smith reported that Murdoch was "in such a state that nothing was going to tone him back" and that he had an "impulsive and irrational way".
Although he grew up in a stable family background, he endured some trauma and dysfunction during his childhood, the psychologist said. He often felt distanced and isolated from his parents Colin, who died in April this year, and Nance, who were relatively old when he was born, the report said.
Murdoch became involved in inter-racial tensions when he was growing up in the small country hamlet of Northampton, near Geraldton in Western Australia. He claimed he was badly beaten up by Aborigines on several occasions when he was six years old, because of his father's decision to help police tackle problems in the community, the report said.
His family moved to Perth when he was 13 but he left school two years later, married in 1980 at the age of 21, and had a son in 1986. But the marriage later broke down and he has little contact since with either his ex-wife or his son.