Where is Daniel Morcombe? | 8. Daniel

As the Morcombes finally learn what happened to their son, they’re faced with further questions as the ripples of their journey spread far and wide. Binge all episodes of Where is Daniel Morcombe? ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. Join The Binge’s free newsletter – Patreon.com/TheBinge From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Ally here with cash when you need it. Like when your stylist just did the most. Fresh cut and zero cash. Don't be an idiot. Ally has 75,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide. So you're never without cash. Ally Bank Member FDIC. I haven't seen my son since 2012.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. What do you want from me? I should solve the mystery.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  I know that my son is somewhere alive.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Listen to Where Is Austin Tice from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Listen to all episodes of Where Is Daniel Morcombe ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  Campsite Media.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  On the day, I'd wake up at 5:00 a.m., have my uniform on, never worn it before. It was orange overalls, black boots, gloves and a hat. So the only part of us showing really was our face.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  It's September 4th, 2011, Father's Day. With three children of his own, the first Sunday of every September has always been special for Pat McShane. But this one was different.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  I said to my wife and kids that we'll give our Father's Day to a man who needs it more. And when I get home, we'll have our Father's Day.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  This morning, he's headed off to his first assignment as a state emergency service volunteer, known locally as the Orange Angels.

• 1:57Speaker 04

  As I put my boots on that day, I felt something was going to happen.

• 2:04Speaker 04

  As we drove down, approaching the search site, all the houses had red balloons, red hearts, and red streamers. And there was residents just waving vigorously to us. There's this army of people going in to search for Daniel. And that lifted me.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  It's a long road. It goes for quite a few kilometres. And we go a bit further and houses stop and the bitumen stops. And then left and right is plantation. It started becoming less formed and more of a track. And

• 2:47Speaker 04

  you could have imagined how Daniel felt. Where has this guy taken me? You know, what's happening?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Pat's car continues down the dirt road, flanked by pines. Suddenly, the road spills into a large slab of farmland with macadamia trees. Base camp.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  The actual search site is further away, in the overgrown scrub of an old deserted sand quarry.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  It had been raining. It was a bit misty. There was incredible solids.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Pat joins the line of nearly forty individuals, stretched out across the bush. They're on their knees, heads down, shoulder to shoulder, inching forward slowly.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  I could hear some of the girls are crying. Daniel's spirit was in the air. His spirit was in the birds, in the trees, in the breeze. And as I was searching, just removing the material, going through every morsel, and then placing it behind me, all I could picture was images of Daniel that are being published. That's all I saw. We kept on going, at the rate of about one metre per hour as we were searching.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Then, Pat notices something.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  I unearthed an item. That was round, it was about four centimetres in diameter. It was like the size of a tennis ball, a curvature. And it was brown in colour, it was porous in texture, and it had calcium leaching out the side.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  I called the team leader and she picked it up and she said, "That's a yip."

• 4:50Speaker 04

  And it was human.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  I said, "That's a bone fragment and that's not an entire piece and there's more. And we want you to continue searching."

• 5:05Speaker 04

  So I had five police over my shoulder. And I continued searching and then I found another piece and that was like

• 5:19Speaker 04

  half a cheezle. I dug again and another piece just rolled out in front of me and that was like half a bowtie. And I was shaking.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Basically, we exhumed a human. It was the most known child in Australia. And I had this feeling. I can't describe it. I felt, as I held him, I felt the love that Daniel had for his mother. And it was a love that I could describe as even when he went to school, he missed his mother.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  I'm Matt Angel and from Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Where Is Daniel Warcome?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Episode eight, Daniel.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  It's an uncomfortable request to make, but I knew I had to try. After seven years of knowing Daniel's story, of, at times, obsessing over it, I felt I needed to retrace his steps from December 7, 2003. From that dream home in Palm Woods to the hail-and-ride bus stop beneath the Keel Mountain Road overpass. From the church parking lot to Koochin Creek. From the macadamia farm to the old sand quarry. Initially, Bruce and Denise weren't so sure. But somehow, one Sunday, I found myself in their car. I got out at each stop.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  I think I just wanted to feel close to the person who has had such an impact on so many, myself included. Bruce and Denise stayed in the car once we got to the quarry. And with some directions from Bruce, I walked off, around a locked gate and down a trail. It's actually hard to believe that I'm standing here. You see it a certain way in your head for almost seven years, and then, you know, you see the real place.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I trudged across the landscape to the edge of an embankment and stared into the trees. I was standing where the Morgan family had stood, silently embracing each other nearly 14 years prior. They wore blue forensic overalls, gloves, surgical masks, covered from head to toe so as not to contaminate the search area with their DNA. Because no more than 50 meters from the edge of that embankment, investigators believed they had found Daniel. Within the week, DNA tests confirmed it.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  As I think Bob Atkinson said, "It's a sad answer, but it's an answer."

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett greenlit Brett Peter Cowan's arrest because he believed that Cowan's recorded confession to undercover operatives would be enough to secure a conviction. But the idea that any corroborating evidence might still exist to support that confession? It had been almost eight years. It was a heavily wooded area rife with wild animals. The vegetation was dense. Floods had hammered the terrain.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  We had no real expectation of finding anything. The fact we did was, you know, a small miracle.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  And there were more miracles to come. One of the things Brett Cowan had confessed to the undercover operatives was that after he stripped Daniel's clothes from his body, he tossed them off a nearby bridge into a fast-flowing creek.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  Tied around some mangrove roots in very shallow water in the creek, we found the band of the underpants that Daniel had been wearing. And they found, buried under a couple of inches of silt and sand under the water, the remains of some of the other clothes that he'd been wearing that day. They were still there, right where he said they'd be, eight years later. Now, we had no right to be able to recover those items in those circumstances after all that time. You know, he'd had all the luck for about eight years, and then all of a sudden, we ended up starting to have the luck.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  In all, just 17 bones were found.

• 10:32Speaker 06

  We didn't find much of Daniel. I was told that what was found of Daniel would probably fit in a cigarette box.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  The day after Brett Peter Cowan's arrest, Bruce and Denise faced a swarm of media outside their home. One journalist asked if they planned to continue the Daniel Morecamme Foundation.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  We said, yeah, we've worked too hard for so many years. We're going to continue and have this foundation grow.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Even after the first of Daniel's remains were found, the Morecammes didn't stop.

• 11:10Speaker 06

  We set up the foundation for the search for Daniel, but we also set it up to educate children on child safety.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  For months, they'd been organising a tour of the Queensland coast. Bruce and Denise would visit schools and present the foundation's latest child safety curriculum.

• 11:26Speaker 06

  People were saying, oh, you shouldn't go, you don't need to go and that. We said, no, we're going. What could Bruce and I do? We couldn't sit in a chair at home doing nothing because that's not part of us.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  They had made a commitment and they honoured it for Daniel.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  We had our big trailer and we just drove off and it was about 2,000, 3,000 kilometre trip up there and then another couple of thousand coming home.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  From one town to the next, they were greeted by crowds wearing red and brandishing handmade signs showing their support.

• 12:01Speaker 07

  We love you Morecammes, we won't forget Daniel. Balloons for 2,000 kilometres, it was extraordinary.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  They were astounded by the outpouring of love.

• 12:12Speaker 06

  We'd get to the service station and by petrol, we'd get there at the counter and the person before us had already paid for it. And then we got to Cairns and there was, I'm not kidding you, there would have been 2,000 people waiting for us in the park there.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  But it was a difficult journey for the couple.

• 12:28Speaker 07

  Periodically, the police commissioner would ring Denise or myself and he'd say, look, just letting you know before the media get hold of it, there'd been another find of Daniel's remains, another bone, whatever it may have been. Sometimes we were within 30 minutes of walking into a school. You need to compose yourself. You're going to meet teachers, school principals, mums and dads, and of course, kids that you've never met in your life. So you've got to do your best. But you had to flick that tear away and say, I'm here to make their life better and safer. And that's what we did.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  When they returned from the tour, all Bruce and Denise wanted was to collect their son's remains, to finally separate him from the investigation, to take him home.

• 13:24Speaker 06

  And we asked them, can we please have a funeral for Daniel? Ramay said,

• 13:32Speaker 07

  You will not receive Daniel's remains until all avenues of appeal have been extinguished. And we just felt it was so unjust. It just seemed a play for power that's played by our rules as we go through the court processes.

• 13:48Speaker 06

  Or you won't get Daniel's remains.

• 13:52Speaker 07

  It seemed almost a ransom.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  They waited 15 months.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  I know we're in Brisbane and we had a newspaper article that was being written and it was going to be printed on the Friday morning. It was going to be the front page news talking about how the police, the DPP, and the coroner wouldn't release Daniel's remains. The coroner phoned Bruce up about 4, 5 o'clock on that Thursday afternoon and said Daniel's remains are going to be released.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Maybe the impending front page news story in no way influenced the sudden release of Daniel's remains after those 15 long months. Or maybe it did. But only one thing mattered to the Morecans.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  And we were able to start working on Daniel's funeral that evening. And we had it a week later.

• 14:43Speaker 07

  We went to the funeral parlor. Probably one of the most difficult times in your life. A private room. Within that room was a small white coffin with a gold cross and gold handles. A beautiful coffin, really. The undertaker there said, would you like me to open the coffin so you can reflect? We declined. I didn't want to see Daniel as he is. I wanted to see and remember Daniel as he was. So I didn't want to look at his remains, those few bones that were in there. So we left the coffin closed and Denise and I walked out,

• 15:27Speaker 07

  knowing tomorrow's the day.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Daniel Morcombe was laid to rest on December 7th, 2012. It was the nine-year anniversary of his death.

• 15:39Speaker 08

  Sunshine Coast parents Bruce and Denise Morcombe have waited nine long years to bring their son home. And today, they will finally give him the farewell he deserves.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  You tell me about the funeral?

• 15:50Speaker 06

  No.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I would do.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  No.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  My heart broke. I watched those soulful blue eyes, filled with a pain that can't be put into words. And then...

• 16:11Speaker 06

  Well, it was at St Catherine's of Siena. And one of the girls from the foundation had organised, to sort of send, not the invite, but sort of let people know that the funeral would be on. You know, that people wanted to have a specific seating and parts of the church.

• 16:29Speaker 07

  There were thousands of people there.

• 16:33Speaker 07

  Quite a few people that you knew. From school.

• 16:39Speaker 07

  Teachers.

• 16:41Speaker 09

  They're asking everyone to wear red, which is the colour that he was wearing the day he disappeared.

• 16:46Speaker 07

  We did allow TV cameras into the church. It was our way of thanking the public, because they wanted to be there as well. So while there were perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 people at the church, inside the church or some outside, it was live broadcast around Australia.

• 17:04Speaker 09

  It really has touched the hearts and affected everyone, not just here in Queensland, but right throughout the country.

• 17:10Speaker 06

  On Daniel's coffin, we put a beautiful photo that Daniel had in a crystal photo frame. And it also had a couple of Christmas presents that we'd had in the cupboard that Daniel hadn't opened. So we put those on top of his coffin as well.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  You do your best, you shed a tear, you say goodbye, you walk outside.

• 17:33Speaker 07

  And the motorcade slowly takes off. Denise's mum's in tears, Denise's in tears. Not great.

• 17:42Speaker 07

  And, um,

• 17:45Speaker 07

  we head off to the cemetery, where it was a quiet profit service. And that's it.

• 17:58Speaker 06

  Once we'd had Daniel's funeral and he was in the cemetery and we were able to go and say hello to him, it got a lot easier. Dean and Brad, we noticed they seemed to have been quite different. They were more relaxed, just in a better, happier place. I think, knowing that Daniel was now laid to rest.

• 18:20Speaker 07

  To a mum and a dad, it's the toughest day of your life saying goodbye to your kids. But the next day, very uplifting. You know, that chapter's finished.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Bruce and Denise had done it. Finally, they had brought their boy home. On March 13, 2014, Brett Peter Cowan was found guilty of the murder of Daniel Morcombe. The next day, he received his sentence.

• 19:08Speaker 10

  It took more than 10 years to convict Brett Peter Cowan. It took less than an hour to lock him away for life.

• 19:15Speaker 11

  The judge told Cowan he was beyond rehabilitation and should never be released.

• 19:20Speaker 10

  They face a lifetime of grief, but for now, the Morcombe family can take comfort. Justice for their son and brother has been won.

• 19:28Speaker 07

  It would have been so easy to stand up, as human nature would say, "That's what you're going to do. You're going to say, 'I hope you rot in hell, you animal,' whatever. You're going to give him a spray." But what the family did, we turned our back to Cowan and we gave each other a hug. A few of us were in tears. But that moment, we were not going to give Cowan any satisfaction and disgrace ourselves in court. You want to give that person a piece of your mind, but we didn't say anything. We just turned our back and...

• 20:03Speaker 02

  That was done. Cowan's legal team contested the ruling on appeal twice. And twice, they failed. Today, nearly 22 years after taking Daniel's life, Brett Peter Cowan is serving his life sentence at the Woolston Correctional Centre, a high-security prison in Brisbane. He's unlikely to ever see the light of day. And yet, somehow, this isn't where the story ends. The mystery of what happened to Daniel had been solved. But the coronial inquest into Daniel's disappearance and murder always had another aim: to assess the investigation. In December of 2016,

• 20:46Speaker 02

  the proceedings resumed with a new coroner by the name of Terry Ryan. The question at the heart of the matter? Had police missed an opportunity to catch Brett Peter Cowan sooner? These final two days of the inquiry laid bare just how much politics inside the investigation and beyond it had shaped the case from the very start. You might recall Task Force Argos detectives Dennis Martin and Ken King. The two men had been the first to interview Cowan just two weeks after Daniel had vanished. They had retraced Cowan's alleged movements and identified a 45-minute gap in his alibi. They had prepared a report, and Ken King had briefed the Major Incident Room

• 21:30Speaker 02

  on December 22, 2003. Both Ken King and Dennis Martin were called to give evidence at the inquest in 2016. While on the stand, Dennis Martin recalled the conversation that took place in the immediate aftermath of King's MIR brief.

• 21:47Speaker 12

  I had the infamous conversation with the lead detective in the hallway. He was going past, and I said, "Look, Cowan's your man. I think you should focus on him." And the exact words were, or similar to that, was, "Just fuck off. What would you know?" And so that was the end of that conversation.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  What was his name?

• 22:04Speaker 12

  Condon.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Condon, as in Mike Condon, the detective inspector at the time and the man in charge of the case from beginning to end. Mike Condon was a decorated officer and respected by many. But my conversations with people suggested a reputation that was more complicated. Some said he was a competent and dedicated investigator. Others said he was difficult, prickly, and even a dictator. But it was never these descriptions of Condon that struck me most. It was the change I witnessed in some people when he was brought up. The energy of the interview would just shift, as if they suddenly remembered they were

• 22:51Speaker 02

  being recorded. That wasn't so much the case with Dennis Martin, though. He had no problem sharing his feelings about Condon on the record.

• 23:00Speaker 12

  He was just a fellow that had a very bad disposition on life. I don't know whether he liked life or hated life, but he's just one of those sort of people, just an asshole on life. You know, that's the way it was and that's the way he is.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  When Condon took the stand during this final part of the inquest, he denied the conversation with Martin ever happened. And the coroner concluded there was insufficient evidence to find that it took place. Regardless, some people I spoke with still side with Martin on this one. One detective said, "If you asked 100 people who knew Mike Condon if they thought he said that to Martin that day, 100 people would tell you he did." And Ken King certainly believed his partner.

• 23:45Speaker 13

  I trust Dennis, anyway, partly because he'd just not have a reason to lie because he's not worried about, like, he doesn't have some agenda. It's just not in his style to even bother.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  We reached out to Mike Condon several times, but he declined to be interviewed for this podcast. He said that he doesn't make comment on operational matters in retirement. But to understand Condon's alleged reaction is to understand where many were at this early point in the investigation. Douglas Jackaway was a prime suspect. He had a criminal history as dark as Cowan's, a familiarity with the area, opportunity, and a shifting alibi. Plus, he'd been driving a blue car, one that perfectly matched the blue car so many eyewitnesses had seen near the underpass. The problem? Hindsight. We now know that Douglas Jackway had nothing to do with the crime.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  It was Brett Peter Cowan, an argument that Dennis Martin and Ken King made in King's brief to the MIR, that Cowan was an equally compelling suspect who demanded attention. King and Martin also claimed that their report on Cowan was nothing short of extensive.

• 25:05Speaker 13

  All of the information in the two job logs plus attachments.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Photos of Cowan, his car, and the car's tyre treads, printouts of his criminal history, and the recordings from their interactions with him. But something curious happened in 2011. Following Brett Peter Cowan's arrest, in preparation for court proceedings, an investigator followed up with Ken King about those early interactions.

• 25:32Speaker 13

  And I said, "Well, the reports are a good starting point." And he said, "What report?"

• 25:38Speaker 12

  They said that there was no report, the order had gone missing.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  It wasn't the only thing that would end up going missing. The recordings disappeared too, as did Ken King's notebook. Ken had left the Queensland Police Service in 2008. As was standard protocol, he checked in any notebooks he had used on investigations over the years. Police keep these things stored should they ever be needed for future matters. One of those notebooks that Ken turned over contained his notes from his days on Operation Bravo Vista. In 2013, he was called to give evidence at Cowan's pre-trial.

• 26:15Speaker 13

  So I asked for my notebook in case I needed to refresh my memory during the pre-trial hearing, and I was told it was missing.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Apparently, it had been misplaced after being signed out by someone on an unrelated matter.

• 26:29Speaker 13

  I made it really clear to a few people that I wouldn't be stopping whatever ruckus I needed to cause until my notebook was found.

• 26:39Speaker 13

  And my notebook was produced at the pre-trial hearing it was found.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Ken made clear that, given the notebook was found, the court proceedings were in no way impacted. Still, he doesn't understand why it ever went missing in the first place. Then, at the 2016 inquest, King and Martin learned that their original report had been found as well.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  But what officers presented was not the extensive report that the detectives swear they turned over to their superiors.

• 27:11Speaker 12

  The report they produced in the court was a redacted report from some of the facts from that report.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  It was just over two pages, and notably absent, the attachments, including the printouts of Cowan's criminal history, which Ken King insists were included. He recognized some aspects of the text as their own, but he was adamant that those pages were nothing more than a summary of the comprehensive report that they had submitted. After discussing all of this with Ken, I put a question to him. Knowing what you know today, the report goes missing, the recordings go missing, your notebook, for a period of time, goes missing. Do you believe this was by coincidence?

• 27:57Speaker 13

  No.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  The inquiry found no evidence to suggest a more extensive report beyond that of the three-page document ever existed. But a few years ago, Dennis Martin was doing a cleanup of his old computer files. He came across a hard drive he didn't recognize with a USB stick attached.

• 28:22Speaker 12

  I was transferring everything on my computer because it's about 30 years old. I opened up the

• 28:29Speaker 12

  big hard drive and in the bottom was a USB stick. And I said, please, I don't know, what's on here? Put on there. I come up with a few things and I come up with the operation for Daniel Morcombe. And he was the original report, had not been changed or touched since 2003.

• 28:46Speaker 12

  So that was the original report, which was quite lengthy and had everything that Ken and I had always said it had on it.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  The police always maintained that Brett Cowan was a primary suspect throughout the case. But police actions, or lack of actions here, might speak louder than words. When detectives seized Cowan's vehicle in the days following King and Martin's brief, materials were collected for testing. But that material wasn't submitted to forensics for five months, where it remained untested for four more years. Dennis Martin recalls submitting suggestions to seize Cowan's computers and phone records, but that wouldn't be done for 18 months. Cowan's wife at the time, she wasn't officially interviewed by investigators for 18 months.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  He was never one of the four suspects displayed on the major incident rooms photo board. Here's what I think. I think that all of this points to something major being missed by the police. There's one more story worth mentioning here, a story that has bothered me since the moment I heard it. In the lead up to Brett Peter Cowan's confession, Detective Grant Limwood and one of the covert's controllers were chatting in Perth.

• 30:02Speaker 14

  We joked, "Oh, we'll never have to buy a beer again if we can pull this off and come back." And the reality was quite different, which surprised me. I got the distinct impression that, as weird as it sounds, not everyone's happy sometimes when something like this happens.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  The question I keep asking myself is, were the police so determined to tie the blue car to Douglas Jackaway and charge him with Daniel's murder that they refused to listen to some of their own detectives regarding Brett Peter Cowan? And as it became clear that Cowan might be guilty, were attempts made to cover malfeasance? Did they care so much about being right that they disregarded doing what was right? The inquest itself did not conclude that investigators had acted inappropriately or made improper decisions. Some questions were referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission, but the CCC too found no evidence of misconduct.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  But the inquest did agree that, yes, more could have been done to focus on Brad Peter Cowan early on. Detective Linwood feels the same.

• 31:12Speaker 14

  If you want to write something off properly, as we say, to really run it out, there's a way to do it. And there was a few steps that had been missed. But, and I do know the same people that had to investigate him were probably doing 10 other POIs, so I won't be critical of that. But in an ideal world, there's a few things that should have been done.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  But the coroner also said that he didn't believe it was necessary or helpful to retroactively evaluate every element of the QPS investigation. He concluded that even if Cowan had been pressed harder, it was speculative to suggest that the investigation would have drawn to its conclusion any sooner. Linwood also agrees with this finding.

• 31:50Speaker 14

  I don't know if it ever would have been solved. In a weird way, it's the passage of time and it's that sequence of events that led to him perhaps being comfortable enough to one day admit it. I don't know, it's just one of those very interesting, convoluted stories that perhaps had to happen the way it did. Does that make sense?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  It does to me. I try my best to believe that things happen for a reason. In this case, everything led to the Mr. Big Sting. And if it hadn't been for that high-stakes operation, Cowan may have never confessed to the covert operatives or led investigators to Daniel's remains. Daniel may never have been found. Still, one of the primary purposes of an inquest is to bring change. It's why Ken King was willing to sit down with me. He harbors no illusion that he is the victim in this story. But if his speaking out can help improve the system even a little bit?

• 32:46Speaker 13

  Because this is kind of the point we're making, is how much better can we do things? So that next time an offender like this is investigated, you know, we've somehow, you know, incrementally advanced our society to improve things a bit.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  As a result of Daniel's coronial inquest, the Queensland Police Service now requires a mandatory independent review at the 12-month mark of any homicide or suspicious, high-risk, missing persons case.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  For better or worse, this investigation had a massive impact on the lives of those involved. Julie Elliott, the police liaison who grew close with the family as they faced their darkest days. For years, she struggled with the effects the case had on her emotionally. Ken King and Dennis Martin ended up leaving the police force. And Grant Linwood saw his days in the homicide division come to an end. And the covert operatives, without whom none of this would have been possible? I tried to reach them through various avenues, but they declined any requests for interviews. Grant Linwood still speaks to some of them, though, and he has seen firsthand the toll it's taken.

• 34:03Speaker 14

  They're all absolutely destroyed by it. They're quite sensitive about it and don't, you know, they'll talk openly to me about it, but only in hushed whispers somewhere quiet. They're very, yeah, you can see it's had an effect on them. I couldn't do it. I think they're brilliant.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Every single detective I spoke with went out of their way to make one thing perfectly clear. In the end, all that matters is that the case was solved, that Brett Cowan is off the street, and that the Morecoms got the answers they deserved.

• 34:35Speaker 14

  There's no one hero to any part of it, but many, many people played a critical role in the very strange sequence of events that led to this ending. Were it not for the extraordinary amount of work that so many police did fruitlessly chasing every useless red herring across the state to get rid of that, it wouldn't have been where it was. So that should be recognized. A lot of it went nowhere, but they, geez, they were trying. Were it not for then, you know, the assistance of, you know, the coronial process, Peter Boyce, wonderful staff at the coroner's office, all of that getting involved, the Western Australia Police, the bits we did, the covert operatives, you know, it all led to one huge sequence that, you know, and so it always needs to be recognized, the part everyone

• 35:20Speaker 14

  played.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Which brings us back to Bruce and Denise. They are, after all, the beating heart of this story. The two people who faced the worst pain, who fought harder than anyone, who refused to give up, who never stopped pushing for answers regardless of the challenges they faced. Perhaps if they hadn't gone through this...

• 35:47Speaker 02

  They wouldn't be doing what they're doing today.

• 35:56Speaker 15

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• 36:27Speaker 16

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• 36:54Speaker 02

  I'm walking through downtown Brisbane with Lee Parker.

• 37:00Speaker 16

  G'day.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  It's March 15th, 2025, and I'm on my way to City Hall for the 20th Dance for Daniel. That other guy, Lee Parker, that's my best friend. He was Daniel's age and living on the Sunshine Coast when the abduction occurred. I wouldn't be telling this story if it weren't for Lee. He told me about Daniel, and then he introduced me to Bruce and Denise. We went and bought our red ties. The entire exterior of the building is lit red for the dance. It's pretty incredible. And there are just hundreds of people in formal attire zigzagging through lines in front to be let in. This is incredible.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  As we were checking in, I took a quick look at the guest list. I see Julie's here. Pat McShane. How are you? I heard my name. We just saw your name. Oh, okay. We were like, oh my god, that's Pat. We're at table 58. 58, okay. Thank you, Pat. Peter Boyce, Ross Barnett, Tim Ryan, everyone was here. All right, now we're walking into the main, the main event. Denise Morcombe told me to look up at the ceiling. Oh, wow. There's a giant projection on it. It's all red lights, and it has the logo, the Daniel Morcombe Foundation, established 2005, t-shirt, and a special banner, 20 years of keeping kids safe.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  And then Denise, Bruce, and Dean walked onto the stage, dressed to the nines. They carried themselves like the celebrities I'd always been told they were.

• 38:39Speaker 06

  Ladies, gentlemen, on behalf of the management committee, I welcome everyone to our 20th day for Daniel. Tonight promises to be a very special night.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  The event was mind-blowing. Never in a million years could I have imagined how massive the Daniel Morcombe Foundation really is. Its scope and the impact it has had on an entire country was on full display that night. The foundation has made astonishing accomplishments in the last 20 years. Since its inception around the Morcombe's kitchen table, it has grown into Australia's leading voice for child safety. Something like 90 people joined Bruce and Denise on the first walk for Daniel. Last year, the 20th Day for Daniel began with that walk. An estimated 2 million people wore red and took part across the nation.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  The curriculum they've developed has been adopted nationally. Free counselling and assistance is provided for young victims of crime. The list goes on and on. Because Bruce and Denise Morcombe have dedicated their lives to this cause, to making sure that whatever happened to their little boy never happens to any other child.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  John Rouse was also at the dance for Daniel that night. He's the one who, at the turn of the century, was brought in to launch the internet division at Task Force Argos, the division which played a pivotal role in the earliest days of Daniel's case. Back then, John was adamant that the general public needed to be made more aware of the dangers of the internet. So he started organising public presentations, which led to a chance encounter.

• 40:22Speaker 17

  I was in a hotel somewhere in the city. I can't remember what the nature of the actual event was, but I was speaking probably for about an hour on Argos and what we do and all of that kind of thing. I remember saying that, you know, the reason we do what we do and we're pushing so hard is to never let what happened to the Morcombe family happen again to another family. And that was kind of how I concluded. And I was packing up my laptop and most people had gone. And then one of the organisers came up to me and said, oh, this lady wants to talk to you. And I was like, okay, yeah, sure. And I didn't recognise her, but she was visibly shaken, distressed. But she didn't say anything.

• 41:04Speaker 17

  And I, you know, can I help you? Nice to meet you. And she just, she took my hand and shook it and then she left. Look, you trigger people sometimes when you talk about this, you know, it happens. But I didn't realise that it was Denise Morcombe that I'd just spoken to. And I'll never forget that.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Daniel's case and Bruce and Denise's perseverance over the years shaped the course of John Rouse's career.

• 41:32Speaker 17

  I saw the trauma that they were going through and I just went, I'm going to do everything I can to never let another family go through this. So like at the, at the dance the other night, they got us to record messages. And the message for me to them was very simply that, you know, your legacy is the foundation. You know, you can't measure how many children who heard your message that then were safeguarded because they acted on it. We'll never know. But I did say that one of the legacies too, actually, is also like the beating heart of Task Force Argos, because your legacy was what drove that team to just do everything it could.

• 42:14Speaker 17

  You know, we went from a very small team of three doing the, dealing with internet crimes against children to a team of nearly 40. And by the time we finished, we were leading global operations involving pretty much the biggest agencies in the world.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Europol, Interpol, FBI, HSI, RCMP, the network of intelligence and law enforcement agencies that have come together to share information and resources in the global fight to protect children. It's enormous.

• 42:43Speaker 17

  A pretty amazing achievement for a small, relatively small team that are focused on the jurisdiction of the state of Queensland, to be on a daily basis identifying child victims globally and sending leads globally.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  From the moment I first heard their story, it was clear to me that Bruce and Denise's work had impacted a nation. But my time with John Rouse made me realize something. This average couple, who met on a beach in 1980, who had three boys and settled down in a small town, who worked together on weekdays and planted fruit trees with their children on weekends, who lost a son in the worst way imaginable, and then led the charge to find answers. Their actions inspired a man in his pursuit to save children around the world. A pursuit that, over the last two decades, has succeeded in ways nobody can

• 43:42Speaker 02

  quantify. Which means that Daniel's story, and Bruce and Denise's work, hasn't just changed Australia, it's changed the world.

• 43:53Speaker 17

  It's the ripple effect, you know, the way people touch you, and then you carry that forward with other people. That's a big fucking ripple. Yeah. Oh, it is, yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  But for all the good that has come, the epicenter of this tragic story still haunts me. Bruce and Denise Morecamme lost their son. And that pain, the pain of losing a child, as a father myself, it's hard to even think about. But I've seen the effects of that loss in people like Bruce and Denise. And it never leaves you.

• 44:31Speaker 06

  Everyone's life changes.

• 44:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was a fork in the road moment. Like, we have many of those. Everyone does in their life. But a life-changing event like losing a son, particularly in a criminal act and in the public arena over years and years, is a significant fork in the road.

• 44:51Speaker 06

  You sort of wonder what would have happened if Daniel was still around. He might be a vet, he might have his own business, might be married with kids, you know, just different things like that.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  They think about that last part a lot.

• 45:03Speaker 07

  Not only do you lose that child, but you lose that child who would have been a parent and you don't.

• 45:08Speaker 06

  Might be their children, their more grandchildren.

• 45:10Speaker 07

  You lose the grandchildren from Daniel. So, you know, that's often not spoken about and thought about. He was very caring, very trusting, and he would have been an enormous parent in his own right, but all gone.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  But the loss of Daniel hasn't taken away from their relationships with their other two sons or their children. There was one last stop I had to make before I headed home to LA.

• 45:42Speaker 18

  G'day.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Hey. How are you? Oh, my God, this place is magical. Frogs hopping everywhere.

• 45:48Speaker 18

  There's wallabies everywhere.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  What are wallabies?

• 45:50Speaker 18

  Ah, like little kangaroos. They're everywhere here.

• 45:54Speaker 14

  So you've got wallas next door. Pretty cool.

• 45:57Speaker 18

  My name's Dean Morcombe. I'm Daniel's older brother. I'm 37. I have my own business. I'm married and I have two beautiful young girls.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Dean runs his own successful tree-cutting business, following in his father's footsteps. He dedicates time to the foundation. But it's clear to me that what matters most to Dean is family.

• 46:21Speaker 18

  Most weekends, we kind of like to go take the girls down to Malulaba, down to the beach. There's a path, we get the juices for the girls, I'll get a coffee and that's kind of what the girls like doing. So it's a pretty nice part of the world down there.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  He told me his wife loves riding horses, that his oldest loves drawing and that his youngest, well, she loves eating.

• 46:43Speaker 18

  She just eats constantly and they're just, they're just growing up so fast. And before you know it, they're thirty years old with a husband and kids. And time's just, time's just gone. So I guess you've just got to appreciate the moments and enjoy the time, really. They definitely loved their nana and pa and we try to go see them nearly every weekend, make an effort to do the family thing as much as it kind of can.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Tell me about your mom and dad.

• 47:13Speaker 18

  Everyone will probably know them as Daniel's mum and dad. But my parents just seem like regular people. You don't really know anything, anything different. We had a good, good childhood growing up. I had motorbikes, my brothers had ponies, we had everything you could kind of want. Looking back, we had had a great childhood, really. And then the December seven happened and I guess everyone's life changed. But to me, they're still just my parents. And now they're the grandparents to my kids and they'll do anything that they can to help them out as well. Kind of gives you a reason and a purpose to kind of, to keep going, to enjoy the next kind of moment.

• 47:58Speaker 18

  Whether you're taking them to swimming lessons or just doing some drawing or a puzzle or just the simple moments is probably what it's kind of all about, really.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  If you'd like to make a donation to the Daniel Morecamme Foundation, please visit danielmorecamme.com.au.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Where is Daniel Morcombe is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media. It was hosted, reported, and co-written by me, Matt Angel. Joe Barrett is the managing producer and co-writer. Grace Valerie Lynette is the associate producer. Additional production support from Tiffany Dimmock. The series was sound designed, composed, and mixed by Garrett Tiedemann. Our studio engineer is Trino Madriz. Fact-checked by Tracy Lofgren-Lee. A special thanks to Ashley Ann Kriegbaum and Doug Slaywin. And our operations team: Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dinkle. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriades, and Matt

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Cher. Sony's executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. For PaceCutter Productions, the executive producer is Jessica Rhodes. Alison Momasi and Brian Daly are the associate producers. For Mad Jimmy Productions, the executive producers are me, Matt Angel, and Suzanne Coote. Consulting producers are Dan Angel, Lee Parker, and Andrew Fairbank. If you enjoyed Where is Daniel Morcombe, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:44Speaker 19

  Welcome to The Haunted Library. Join me, Colin Morgan, as I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A story of science and ambition, loneliness and longing, and what it truly means to be human.

• 51:03Speaker 19

  Listen to The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts, or find us on YouTube.