20 years on: The ‘red herring’ that let Daniel Morcombe’s murderer slip through police officer’s fingers, plus the glaring error that meant he was free to kill in the first place

‘Ten years ago you made a choice to rip our family apart.’

These were the words Bruce Morcombe, the grieving father of Daniel Morcombe, who was kidnapped from a Sunshine Coast bus stop by pedophile Brett Peter Cowan in 2003, spoke to his killer in court.

‘Your decision to pull over and abduct Daniel for your own evil pleasure ultimately caused a level of personal pain to each of us that has made it hard to go on,’ he continued in his victim impact statement, given at the 2014 sentencing.

‘Over the years, we made a face for the media with determined self-control on the outside. On many occasions, particularly in the first few months, I was physically ill each morning at the unbearable images of what may have happened to my son Daniel.’

‘But you picked on the wrong family,’ he continued.

‘Our collective determination to find Daniel and expose a child killer was always going to win.’

A mission bigger than the hurt

That determination to make meaning out of horrific tragedy has defined the past two decades for the Morcombe family, whose tireless advocacy through the Morcombe Foundation has been honoured in a new documentary marking 20 years since its establishment.

Don’t Waste It: The Daniel Morcombe Story is told primarily through the eyes of Bradley Morcombe, Daniel’s twin brother, who talks of his ‘best mate’ who loved horses and riding motorbikes with him.

Daniel (pictured) was abducted from a Sunshine Coast bus stop on his way to the shops

Bradley Morcombe recalled the day his brother, Daniel, was abducted and murdered in 2003 (pictured left to right, Daniel, Bradley and eldest brother Dean)

‘We wanted to put a statement piece out about the dynamics of the Morcombe family, who Daniel was, who his brothers are, and what’s happened to us today,’ Bruce Morcombe tells Daily Mail Australia. 

‘So we created this short documentary. Of course it has sad undertones, as we appreciate that’s the nature of that beast, but in spite of the subject matter it’s not an overly heavy piece to watch, because there are many uplifting moments where the community have stood tall and we got the answers at the end of the day.’

The title for the documentary came about, explains Bruce, through a heartfelt conversation with an adult survivor of sexual abuse, in which he explained their family’s philosophy about making meaning from senseless horror.

‘Don’t Waste It’ is actually a shorter version of “don’t waste your pain”,’ he explains.

‘It’s a reminder that your story is highly important. It’s important that you tell your story, receive the help that you need, and you will be believed and you will be cared for, but most importantly, you will show others that that person didn’t win. You’re the survivor, and you’re going to carry on the rest of your life being the best person you possibly can. So don’t waste it.’

The Daniel Morcombe story

When it comes to pain, the Morcombes have suffered more than their fair share.

Described by his mum Denise as a gentle boy who loved animals and wanted to be a vet, 13-year-old Daniel had been headed out to buy Christmas presents for his family on December 7, 2003 when he was last seen wearing a red shirt at a local bus stop around 2pm.

Even though Daniel was not due to return to the bus stop until 5:30pm, Denise realised something was wrong more than an hour before he failed to show.

‘At 4:00pm Sunday, December 7, 2003, while getting Daniel’s clothes off the line, I knew something was wrong,’ she told the Brisbane Supreme Court in her victim impact statement.

Denise and Bruce Morcombe (pictured) have revealed how their six-year-old grandson was recently targeted by a paedophile online in a horror incident that re-opened old wounds

‘Daniel wasn’t due to return to the bus stop until 5:30pm but for some unknown reason I was anxious. Hence, I went to see if he was there at 4:30pm. I don’t know what it was, but I knew that when Bruce returned home soon after 5:30pm from the bus stop without him, I knew that I would not see him again.’

Sadly, Denise’s mother’s intuition was correct. In spite of a large-scale investigation being launched, Daniel’s remains – and the answers to what happened to the Morcombe’s beautiful boy – would not be found for another eight years, after an extensive police sting operation revealed the monster responsible.

In 2011, Cowan led police to a remote patch of bushland north of Brisbane, confessing to the crime with six heartless words: ‘I chucked the body over there.’

Daniel’s remains were located shortly afterwards, with a coronial inquest finding Cowan lured Daniel to his vehicle on the pretext that he would drive him to the shopping centre and instead, drove Daniel to an isolated property near Beerwah where he sexually assaulted and killed him, and then disposed of his body.

So many ‘what-ifs’

When police finally arrested Brett Peter Cowan for Daniel’s murder, it was the result of a months-long police ruse in which undercover officers had played the roles of gang members recruiting Cowan. 

His confession came about because, by gaining his trust for months as the result of a ‘chance’ meeting on a plane, one officer in particular had managed to convince the pedophile that he would be protected from prosecution as long as he showed senior gang members where he’d buried Daniel’s body.

The investigation, inspiring the 2022 Netflix film The Stranger starring Joel Edgerton as a lead detective, was one of the largest sting operations conducted in Australian policing history. It is rightly lauded as an impressive example of police work, but the case has not been without its critics.

In 2014, when Cowan was eventually sentenced for Daniel’s murder, the first police officer to interview him in connection to the case told ABC’s 7:30 program that he and [senior constable] Dennis Martyn had been ‘jumping up and down at the time,’ when they’d first questioned him just two weeks after Daniel went missing.

‘I thought he was a red-hot suspect,’ former Queensland Police constable Kenneth King said at the time.

Daniel’s killer Brett Peter Cowan is serving a life sentence for the 13-year-old’s murder

King said reports of a blue car seen in the area at the time of Daniel’s abduction may have been a red herring that allowed Cowan to initially slip through investigators’ fingers, because he drove a white four wheel drive.

‘There seemed to be an almost blinkered approach as far as locating the blue vehicle to the exclusion of other information,’ he said.

This week, another detective involved in the case has spoken out about a previous crime for which he had arrested Cowan, telling ex-homicide detective Gary Jubelin’s I Catch Killers podcast that Cowan received a harsher sentence for the 1993 rape of a child in the Northern Territory, Daniel might still be alive.

Retired homicide detective Daren Edwards, who was involved both in the 1993 case and then, coincidentally, in Cowan’s 2011 arrest for Daniel’s murder, reflected on the fact that Cowan got off too lightly for his horrific attack on the six-year-old boy in Darwin.

Cowan served four years for the crime, but police at the time had been pushing for him to be charged with attempted murder, due to the severity of the child’s injuries.

‘And you know, a lot of the guys said that things might have been different if he had been serving eight or nine years for attempted murder in Darwin,’ he told the podcast.

‘[Daniel’s murder] might not have happened. It’s a stretch of the bow, I know, but a lot of police still have that attitude, and maybe the Morcombes do too.’

Thursday marks 20 years since Daniel Morcombe, 13, vanished without a trace after leaving his Sunshine Coast home to buy his family Christmas presents 

Cowan the victim of frequent prison attacks

55-year-old Cowan is serving a life sentence in Brisbane’s Wolston Correctional Centre, where since his incarceration for the crime in 2014 he has been the victim of several attacks at the hands of other inmates.

In 2023 he was attacked at the same time as former Gold Coast childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith, who is serving a life sentence for over 300 offences against 69 girls.

Griffith was treated for facial burns after having hot water thrown in his face, while the same attacker allegedly then assaulted Cowan, punching him in the head.

In 2022 Cowan sustained burns to his legs, chest and head after having boiling water thrown over him, and in 2018 he was injured after being stabbed in the head and neck with an ‘improvised implement’ by a fellow inmate.

The incredible resilience of the Morcombe family

But while Cowan’s crimes clearly have not been forgotten inside prison, in the outside world, Daniel’s family prefer not to focus on him at all, looking instead to the legacy of their boy, and the work they have dedicated their lives to in his honour.

‘The documentary is really a thank you,’ says Bruce.

‘In essence, it was to mark a milestone, which is 20 years since the Daniel Morcombe Foundation was started. We lost Daniel some 21 and a half years ago, but we like to focus on some of the good things that come about because of Daniel’s legacy, and that is educating kids on how to keep safe. We established the foundation all those years ago to thank the community, which in the first 18 months or so had supported us so much.’

‘We had no expectation that 20 years later we’d be in the space we’re in now,’ he continues, ‘but that’s a good thing, and we’ve learned over the years to say thank you. It’s a small thing, but it means so much. We wanted to show people that even though yesterday was a bad day, you’ve got to put one foot in front of the other and say, How can I improve the place I’m in today?’

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