End of a Highway to Hell

There aren't too many reasons to stop as you race along the Stuart Highway through the sunbaked, unchanging scrub of Australia's center: a meal at a roadhouse; a photo of a weathered cairn, perhaps. Or car trouble - flat tire, overheated engine - the reason every driver curses, and the one which, on the speed-limit-free stretch between Alice Springs and Darwin, will now forever be linked with the terrible tale of British tourists Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees.

When mechanic Bradley John Murdoch was last week found guilty of killing Falconio on the night of July 14,...