20 years later: the ‘Red Haring’ so that the murderer of Daniel MORCOMBE could slip through the fingers of the police officer, plus the striking mistake that meant he was in the first place to kill

“Ten years ago you made the choice to tear our family apart.”

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

“Your decision to stop Daniel and kidnap them for your own malignant pleasure, ultimately caused a level of personal pain for all of us that it made it difficult to continue,” he continued in his victim impact statement given in the conviction of 2014.

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

“But you chose the wrong family,” he went on.

“Our collective determination to find Daniel and to expose a child murderer would always win.”

A mission that is bigger than the pain

That determination to give meaning from horrible tragedy has defined over the past two decades for the MORCOMBE family, whose tireless advocacy has been honored via the MORCOMBE Foundation in a new documentary that has been marked 20 years since the founding.

Don’t waste it: the story of Daniel MORCOMBE is especially told by the eyes of Bradley MORCOMBE, Daniel’s twin brother, who talks about his ‘best partner’ who loved horses and riding with him.

“We wanted to set out a statement piece about the dynamics of the MORCOMBE family, who was Daniel, who are his brothers and what happened to us today,” Bruce Morcombe tells Daily Mail Australia.

‘So we made this short documentary. Of course, the sad undertone, as we appreciate that that is the nature of that beast, but despite the subject it is not an overly heavy piece to look at, because there are many uplifting moments in which the community has been standing for a long time and we received the answers at the end of the day. ‘

The title for the documentary came about, explains Bruce, through a sincere conversation with an adult survivor of sexual abuse, in which he explained the philosophy of their families about giving meaning of meaningless horror.

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

‘It is a memory that your story is very important. It is important that you tell your story, get the help you need, and you will be believed and what you will be cared for, but the most important thing is that you will show others that that person has not won. You are the survivor, and you will continue with the rest of your life as the best person you can. So don’t waste it. ‘

The story of Daniel MORCOMBE

When it comes to pain, the MORCOMBES have suffered more than their honest share.

Described by his mother Denise as a soft boy who loved animals and wanted to become a vet, the 13-year-old Daniel had set off to buy Christmas presents for his family on December 7, 2003 when he was last seen a red shirt at a local bus stop around 2 p.m.

Although Daniel would not return to the bus stop until 5:30 pm, Denise realized that there was something wrong more than an hour before he could not be shown.

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

‘Daniel would not return to the bus stop until 5:30 pm, but for an unknown reason I was anxious. That’s why I went to see if he was there at 4.30 p.m. I don’t know what it was, but I knew that when Bruce returned home without him shortly after 5:30 pm without him, I knew I wouldn’t see him anymore. ‘

Unfortunately, the intuition of Denise’s mother was correct. Despite a large -scale investigation that is being started, the remains of Daniel – and the answers to what happened to the beautiful boy of MORCOMBE – could not be found for eight years, after an extensive police surgery revealed the responsible monster.

In 2011, Cowan led the police to a remote piece Bushland north of Brisbane, who confess the crime with six heartless words: “I threw the body there.”

The remains of Daniel were shortly thereafter, with a coronial investigation that Cowan Daniel lured to his vehicle on the pretext that he would take him to the shopping center and instead Daniel drove to an isolated real estate near Beerwah, where he had sexually abused and killed and then removed his body.

So many ‘what-Is’

When the police finally Brett Peter Cowan arrested for the murder of DanielIt was the result of a month-long police list in which undercover officers had played the role of gang members who recruit Cowan.

His confession came about because, by getting his confidence for months as a result of a ‘casual’ meeting in an airplane, one officer had succeeded in convincing the pedophile that he would be protected against persecution as long as he showed senior gang members where he had buried Daniel’s body.

The research, which inspired the Netflix film from 2022 the stranger with Joel Edgerton as the main detective, was one of the greatest sting activities that were carried out in the Australian police history. It is rightly praised as an impressive example of police work, but the case is not without its critics.

In 2014, when Cowan was eventually convicted of the murder of Daniel, the first police officer who interviewed him in connection with the case told the ABCs 7:30 program that he and [senior constable] Dennis Martyn was ‘jumped up and down’ at that time, when they had only questioned him for the first time after Daniel was missing.

“I thought he was a red -hot suspect,” said former police officer of Queensland Kenneth King at the time.

King said that reports about a blue car in the area at the time of the kidnapping of Daniel may have been a red herring so that Cowan could initially slide through the fingers of the researchers, because he was driving a white four -wheel drive.

“There seemed to be an almost cut approach to finding the blue vehicle with exclusion of other information,” he said.

This week another detective who was involved in the case has spoken about an earlier crime for which he had arrested Cowan, and ex-homicide detective Gary Jubelin’s I Catch Killers Podcast that Cowan was given a strict punishment for the rape of 1993 in the northern territory, Daniel could still be able to live.

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

Cowan served four years before the crime, but at the time the police had insisted that he was accused of attempted murder because of the seriousness of the child’s injuries.

“And you know, many guys said it might have been different if he had served eight or nine years for attempted murder in Darwin,” he told the podcast.

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

Cowan the victim of frequent prison attacks

The 55-year-old Cowan is a life sentence in the Wolston Correctional Center in Brisbane, where he has been the victim of various attacks by other prisoners since his imprisonment in 2014.

In 2023 he was Attached at the same time as former Gold Coast childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith, who is a lifelong prison sentence for more than 300 violations against 69 girls.

Griffith was treated for face gymnasts after he had thrown hot water in his face, while the same attacker reportedly attacked Cowan and hit him in the head.

In 2022, Cowan walked burns on his legs, chest and head after he had thrown boiling water over him, and in 2018 he was injured after he was stabbed in the head and neck with an ‘improvised implement’ by a co -prisoner.

The incredible resilience of the MORCOMBE family

But although Cowan’s crimes are clearly not forgotten in prison, in the outside world, Daniel’s family prefer not to focus on him at all, instead looking at the inheritance of their boy, and the work they have devoted their lives to him.

“The documentary is really a thank you,” says Bruce.

‘It was essentially to mark a milestone, which was 20 years ago that the Daniel MORCOMBE Foundation was started. We lost Daniel about 21 and a half years ago, but we are happy to concentrate on some of the good things that come about because of the inheritance of Daniel, and who inform children about how they can stay safe. We founded the foundation all those years ago to thank the community, which had supported us in the first 18 months. ‘

“We had no expectation that 20 years later we would be in space in which we are now,” he continues, “but that is a good thing, and we have learned over the years to thank you. It is something small, but it means so much. We wanted to show people that, although yesterday was a bad day, you have to place one foot for the other and say: how can I improve the place where I am today? ‘