Is this gun linked to the murder of Peter Falconio?

A gun found in a toilet nine years after Peter Falconio was shot dead could be linked to his brutal murder and disappearance.

In August 2010 plumbers Johnny Gronemyer and Matt Olson were pumping out a long-drop dunny at a Taylor Creek roadside rest area, when the suction hose jammed.

The tourist stop is just 28km north of where Bradley Murdoch shot Mr Falconio after he and Joanne Lees were flagged down on the Stuart Highway in 2001.

Gronemyer told NewsCorp he was sucking up the septic and found something stuck on the end of the hose.

“I pulled this rag off and a pistol fell out… It was a six-shooter revolver,” he said.

He said the first thought that occurred to him when the gun was found was Murdoch.

“The gun was covered in s**t. And I didn’t like the idea of leaving a loaded gun it on the back of the truck and taking it back to Tennant Creek. So I put it in my smoko box.”

His boss called police.

He said since that day, he’s heard nothing – until journalists contacted him asking if it was true he’d found a gun near the kill scene.

Five years later, Northern Territory Police confirmed the gun, a Remington New Army Model .44, dated to 1858 and with all six chambers loaded, had been in the forensics lab since the men handed it in to Tennant Creek police.

Acting assistant commissioner for crime and specialist services, Kate Vanderlaan, told NewsCorp news of the find had not been made public at the time as there was no evidence it was related to Murdoch or the murder of Falconio.

She said the gun had a lot of rust spots and was in poor condition due to exposure to water and moisture.

Police have not ruled out that the gun may have belonged to Murdoch, who was serving a 28-year non-parole sentence in Darwin for Falconio’s murder.

They feel the connection is ‘highly-unlikely’, however Vanderlaan felt the proximity to the crime scene was intriguing.

The revolver bears a serial number that was cross-referenced with the Australian Crime Commission database.

It found it had never been registered to an owner in this country.

The gun was a powerful revolver, popular during the American Civil War.

Murdoch had a thing for cowboy-style guns – such as the one that was pointed at Joanne Lees after he killed Falconio.

One issue with the dunny find, was that the toilet wasn’t built until after Murdoch was locked up.

However it’s possible someone stumbled across it in the bush and dropped it down there.

Perhaps someone found it and decided it would be easier to get rid of it, rather than complicating life by turning it over to authorities.

Or, it could be completely unrelated to Murdoch and Falconio.

It’s suspected Murdoch covered Falconio’s head in Lees denim jacket and dumped him, along with the guns he was carrying at the time.

Murdoch owned a long-barrelled .22 revolver, which is thought to be what he shot Falconio point-blank in the back of the head with on July 14, 2001.

Murdoch also owned handguns and bigger weapons, none of which were ever found.

All police ever found was Falconio’s pooling blood, which led them to believe Murdoch used his .22 because the bullet would have stayed in his skull.

Police suspect Murdoch stalked Lees and Falconio as they trekked in their old Kombi. He planned to abduct Lees but needed Falconio out of the way first.

It was shortly after 8pm when Falconio was shot, 12km north of Barrow Creek.

He then turned to Lees, punching her and putting a sack over her head – using his handmade handcuffs and tape to restrain her.

Remarkably Lees managed to escape, gathering the courage to emerge from hiding in scrub to flag down a road train.

Though detailed searches were undertaken for Falconio’s body, finding his corpse proved impossible.

It’s possible Murdoch dug a shallow grave for his victim.

Murdoch was convicted in 2005 of the roadside killing.

Now 57 and 10 years into the sentence, he has never admitted to the murder and rejected offers to move to a Western Australian prison to be closer to his family, in exchange for revealing the location of the Falconio's body.

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