The real killer of a university graduate murdered in the outback could still be at large ten years after his death.

Backpacker Peter Falconio, who lived in Hove with his girlfriend Joanne Lees, was ambushed and murdered on an Australian desert highway ten years ago today.

Miss Lees, now 37, had a gun pointed at her head and was beaten and bound by the attacker. University of Brighton g raduate Mr Falconio’s body was never found.

Drifter Bradley Murdoch, 53, was convicted of the murder in 2005 but continues to protest his innocence.

An Australian truck driver has now said he believes he met the real killer after Mr Falconio’s disappearance.

Phil Cook, 62, said he met a trucker, who had been questioned by the police, near the scene of the crime in Barrow Creek, north of Alice Springs.

The trucker was eliminated as a suspect as he did not have a dog which the killer did.

However, Mr Cook told The Sun newspaper: “I told the trucker he was lucky not to have a dog like the Falconio killer and he said, ‘You just shoot the dog’.

“He was a real weirdo. I definitely thought this man could be the killer and I still have my doubts to this day.

“He was a dead ringer for two of the police photo-fits they put out from Joanne’s descriptions.

It was him to a tee.

“He also looked identical to the man caught on CCTV at the Shell truck stop in Alice Springs on the night of the shooting. I never thought that man was Brad Murdoch, who was much taller.

“But I would swear it was the man I met in the Barrow Creek Hotel and who I caught up with several times on the road north to Darwin later that day.”

Mr Cook said the trucker had the same style moustache, was a similar height and had similar features and clothes as Miss Lees description.

He also drove a four-wheeldrive Toyota Land Cruiser but in a police line up Miss Lees said he was not the gunman because he didn’t have a dog.