BRETT PETER COWAN
FOR YEARS THE MURDER OF YOUNG DANIEL MORCOMBE WAS ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S MOST BAFFLING CASES – IT TOOK AN INGENIOUS UNDERCOVER STING OPERATION TO BRING DANIEL’S KILLER TO JUSTICE
On 7 December 2003 Daniel Morcombe was just 13 years old, and in another 12 days he was going to share his 14th birthday with his twin brother Bradley. Dark-haired, good-natured Daniel was doing well at school, loved animals and wanted to be a vet – an early teenage boy just starting to find his way in the world.
It was hot in the Australian summer sun when Daniel left his home in Woombye on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast that afternoon to catch a bus to go to the Sunshine Plaza shopping centre, where he planned to have a haircut and buy some family Christmas presents. Woombye, 100 kilometres north of Brisbane, is a very small town with a population of just over 2,000 people. It was a safe route to the mall – just on and off the bus – and was a journey that Daniel had made many times before. But that day was to prove tragically different.
A CONSPIRACY OF CIRCUMSTANCE
Daniel made his way on foot to the bus stop under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass on Nambour Connection Road to catch the 1.35pm bus. But the bus would break down that day around two kilometres from Daniel’s stop and be stranded by the side of the road for some time. Daniel waited patiently at the bus stop for 35 minutes before a replacement bus went past. But it was running late so it didn’t stop as it was only a request stop.
This would prove controversial later as the bus driver – who said that he was just following the bus controller’s orders on the radio – and other witnesses on the bus saw Daniel at the bus stop. One passenger later claimed that she had remonstrated with the driver to go back and pick up the boy, which the driver has denied. Daniel was not the only person at the bus stop when that replacement bus sped by at 2.10pm – a man was seen standing close behind Daniel. The bus driver radioed for the next bus, which was just behind, to pick up Daniel. But when it reached the bus stop at 2.13pm, just three minutes later, nobody was there. Daniel had disappeared.
Daniel’s mother Denise later recalled how on that day, as she was taking Daniel’s clothes off of the washing line at about 4pm, “I knew something was wrong. 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 [Daniel’s father] returned home soon after 5.30pm from the bus stop without him, I knew that I would not see him again.”
It was a mother’s intuition, and it proved to be right. Daniel wouldn’t return home. When he was first reported missing Queensland Police treated Daniel’s case as that of a runaway t
