Where is Daniel Morcombe? | 5. The Inquest

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Speaker 2 This episode includes graphic testimony relating to child sexual abuse and murder. Please listen with care.

Speaker 2 It's a surreal surreal moment for Detective Grant Linwood. He's standing at Brisbane Airport, waiting to pick up a person of interest in the Daniel Morecombe investigation.

Speaker 2 The man Linwood is there to greet, a sexual predator who called himself Shadow Nunya Hunter.

Speaker 2 He's flying in from Western Australia, one of a handful of people subpoenaed to take the stand in a high-profile coronial inquest.

Speaker 2 And Grant Linwood?

Speaker 2 He'll be by Shadow's side every step of the way.

Speaker 4 I was basically appointed as babysitter. I got him from the airport, sat with him all through it.
And I had to stay with him during the day, get him his lunches, take him up the roof for him to smoke.

Speaker 4 You can't smoke in the courts, but we didn't want him, you know, mingling with anyone. And we had very close tabs on what he was doing.

Speaker 4 And that was a big issue because basically we didn't want him to rape someone while he was in Queensland. So we had to keep a close eye on him.

Speaker 2 Watching Shadow from afar at night,

Speaker 2 that's the easy part.

Speaker 2 It's the one-on-one time that's challenging for Linwood.

Speaker 4 Initially you sort of want to punch him in the head because he's of what he is. He was just revolting, but he's also he's very chatty.
He's bright and eloquent and easy to talk to.

Speaker 2 Through these conversations, something dawns on Linwood.

Speaker 4 It was really eerie. We had a whole bunch of connections.
So he'd grown up in, I think it was Nitterwell Street, Eberton Park, which was about five streets from where I was living at the time.

Speaker 4 He had gone to Marcelin College, which was the same college I went to. His father and mine had both served in the army together, knew each other.

Speaker 4 And so, in a weird way, I was able to have quite a rapport with him.

Speaker 2 It's a rapport that helps Linwood's cause immensely, because his objective for the next two days is to connect with this convicted pedophile, to make him comfortable.

Speaker 4 You're doing a role, it's an act, you know. He's pretending he's buddy-buddy with me.
Let's be honest, he despises us and what we're doing. It's mutual, but we're all having a little dance together.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 it's weird.

Speaker 2 That little dance, Detective Grant Linwood doesn't know it now, but it will forever alter the course of his life.

Speaker 2 I'm Matt Angel,

Speaker 2 and from Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Where is Daniel Morecombe?

Speaker 2 Episode 5:

Speaker 2 The Inquest.

Speaker 5 We need no more proof of how remarkable Bruce and Denise Morecombe are, yet here it is. They still can't hold his funeral, yet they've mobilized an army to protect other people's children.

Speaker 2 By 2008, five years on from Daniel's disappearance, the Daniel Morecombe Foundation had emerged as a nationally recognized force for change.

Speaker 6 Out of despair has come a strong message about child safety.

Speaker 2 One of the organization's annual events was The Walk for Daniel. Participants would retrace the four-kilometer journey that Daniel hadn't been able to make.

Speaker 2 From a spot near the bus stop at Keel Mountain Road to a park near his home in Palmwoods.

Speaker 7 The walk was just one of 200 events involving over a million children.

Speaker 2 But the centerpiece of all the Foundation's activities fell on the last Friday of every October. Day for Daniel.

Speaker 2 It was a day to honor Daniel. A day to wear red to work in school in a powerful gesture of solidarity.
And a day schools dedicated to teaching the foundation's lessons in child safety.

Speaker 6 An estimated quarter of a million people took part in some child safety activity today.

Speaker 8 The Morecoms have sent out around 1,700 DVDs to schools across the nation.

Speaker 2 Running the foundation had just about taken over Bruce and Denise's lives. They sold their Moeem franchise.
This was their work now. They were channeling their their pain, using it to help others.

Speaker 2 It's all they could do.

Speaker 2 Back in 2006, the Morgan's had been informed by Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Schmidt, the senior investigator on Operation Bravo Vista, that leads were drying up, that detectives were being taken off the case.

Speaker 2 Before they knew it, 2007 was gone. Then 2008.

Speaker 2 They understood the reality here, that the chances of discovering what what had happened to Daniel became slimmer with each passing year. But also, they wouldn't give up.

Speaker 2 They couldn't give up.

Speaker 9 Their greatest fear was that there's going to be a cold case, and I was not going to let that happen.

Speaker 2 Bruce was reading up on the inner workings of Australia's legal system when he came across something called a coronial inquest, a formal court hearing designed to gather information about the cause or circumstances surrounding a death, particularly when the cause of that death is unknown or contested.

Speaker 2 Crucially, these inquests are overseen by a state coroner who has the authority to scrutinize evidence in open court.

Speaker 4 A coroner is there to find facts, is to find out what happened in a death, one, because it's important to the victims of the family, and two, because by finding those facts, they might help prevent those deaths in the future.

Speaker 2 This is Peter Johns, a lawyer, and at the time, senior counsel assisting the state coroner.

Speaker 4 It's really one of the few types of court where the judge is also the investigator.

Speaker 2 This blows my mind. When I hear the word coroner, I picture a person in a sterile morgue surrounded by walls of metal freezers.

Speaker 4 I will admit.

Speaker 2 That could just be my naivete, or it could be because in the US, we don't have the same same system.

Speaker 2 In fact, the role of a coroner doesn't just vary from country to country. In the U.S., it varies from state to state, even county to county.

Speaker 2 But the most powerful state coroners in America don't wield the powers of those in Australia. In Queensland at the time, a man named Michael Barnes was entrusted with this great authority.

Speaker 4 He could make orders that anywhere be searched. People could be arrested on his orders, property seized.

Speaker 4 The most significant of all the powers is that the coroner could order people to answer questions, even if it might incriminate them. No other court has that power.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Anyone can be subpoenaed, called to the stand, put under oath, and made to talk.

Speaker 4 If you don't, you can be punished by fines, jail, whatever.

Speaker 2 The U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment denies our institutions this ability.
Here, we can, as we say, plead the fifth. We have the right to not incriminate ourselves.

Speaker 2 All that said, these coronial inquests are not trials. There can be no conviction in the end.
But if the procedure uncovers anything significant, it could absolutely lead to a trial.

Speaker 4 The most a coroner can do is, if he thinks you're guilty of a crime, is send a report to the public prosecutor, who will then pursue it.

Speaker 2 For Bruce and Denise Morecombe, there was one key aspect of an inquest that stood out, that convinced them it was the only way forward.

Speaker 2 Coronial inquests, they are public proceedings.

Speaker 9 What we wanted was the police investigation to be put in the public arena.

Speaker 2 After years of fruitless meetings with investigators, years of living in the dark, the Morecambe saw a way to get the answers they'd been seeking.

Speaker 9 Let's flush it out. What have you guys been doing?

Speaker 2 Once again, they were getting strategic. The challenge was just how rare a coronial inquest was.

Speaker 4 5% of all deaths get to the coroner's office to start with. And of those 5%,

Speaker 4 maybe another

Speaker 4 5% of that 5% actually ever go to an inquest.

Speaker 2 If you have a heart attack or you get in a car accident, if there's nothing questionable about your death, it's not going to result in an inquest.

Speaker 2 But deaths of people in police custody, deaths that are suspicious or violent, high-profile cold cases, that is when Peter and Michael would get involved.

Speaker 2 Peter Johns did a lot of the legwork in these sorts of investigations, but the decision was ultimately up to Michael Barnes.

Speaker 9 What we ended up doing was writing to the coroner and saying, this is who we are. We're Daniel's parents.
We need your help, mate.

Speaker 2 A member of the public writing directly to the state coroner wasn't common practice. Typically, a request went through a chain of command.
But Bruce was long past following any norms or procedures.

Speaker 2 He went straight to the top.

Speaker 9 And about a month after

Speaker 9 he wrote back and organized a meeting.

Speaker 2 Michael Barnes is a kind-looking man with glasses and a neatly cropped beard.

Speaker 2 He's had a distinguished career and is known for his calm authority, his thoroughness, and his compassion in handling some of Queensland's most sensitive and high-profile cases.

Speaker 2 His nickname in the courts supports this. They called him Cold Case Barnes.

Speaker 9 He said, this is in the public interest, this case. The public have a right to know.
So that allowed him to say, yes, we will hold a coronia inquest. And he also said, yes, I believe you can assist.

Speaker 2 It was a big decision, and an unusual one. Not only was Michael Barnes authorizing the inquest, but he saw value in Bruce and Denise's own dogged investigation and relentless pursuit of the truth.

Speaker 2 He believed that they had earned the right to be involved. They wouldn't just be watching from the sidelines.
The Morecoms would be part of the process.

Speaker 2 As soon as the inquest was approved, reality set in for the Morecoms.

Speaker 2 What lay ahead was daunting. An emotionally overwhelming prospect to face in the public eye.
And a legal minefield they were not prepared for.

Speaker 10 I mean, we didn't know all the legal jargon. We didn't know where to sit in the court, what to do, what to say, how to bow, and we didn't know how to do all the questioning.

Speaker 2 They were eager to share the news with the Foundation's board, their trusted advisors on everything to do with Daniel.

Speaker 10 And Peter Boyce said, well, who's going to represent you? And Bruce said, we're doing it ourselves. And Peter said, no, you're not.
He said, they'll annihilate you.

Speaker 10 He said, I'm going to do it for you.

Speaker 2 Peter Boyce had been the Foundation's solicitor since the early days, when meetings were held around the Markham's kitchen table. He was to become their secret weapon.

Speaker 3 Full bore through the front door, if I have to.

Speaker 2 Ruthless. Committed to the cause.
Peter Boyce had total respect for the judicial system.

Speaker 3 I've always thought our legal system, the courts, they've been fairly fantastic, really.

Speaker 2 But his views on the police service weren't always so generous.

Speaker 3 It's such a big juggernaut.

Speaker 3 What really annoys me about a a lot of this is how they can make things sound favorable when in fact if you look at it closely you think that's just rubbish.

Speaker 3 You start to pull it apart and they get the shits with you for doing that.

Speaker 2 He's right. They do.
Cops don't like to be questioned in public and a coronial inquest puts an investigation under both a microscope and a spotlight. Which is another reason why they exist.

Speaker 2 To dissect the investigation, assess how the system has performed and determine what improvements can be made no one likes being told you did something wrong at a top level that affects careers and and so then there becomes pushback but there was also a deeper more understandable reason for law enforcement's resistance to this particular process a legal one and it did have serious implications

Speaker 4 you're constantly weighing up the

Speaker 4 desire to find out what happened, but it does risk messing up a criminal prosecution of that person.

Speaker 2 That's because evidence from an inquest can't be used in a criminal trial.

Speaker 4 If you sort of overstep the mark or a person is forced to give evidence to get to the facts, and then they make an admission, yes, it's not admissible.

Speaker 2 And any perceived unfairness in the process, it could later be weaponized by the defense.

Speaker 4 And they could still ultimately argue because they've had to give this evidence. It's been publicized, perhaps.
You're never going to find a jury who will give them a fair trial. So there is a risk.

Speaker 2 Bruce and Denise Morcombe felt the risk was worth it. And Peter Johns agreed.

Speaker 4 You've basically reached a point where you say, look, there's not going to be a criminal prosecution here. Almost certainly not going to be one.
So we might as well take that risk.

Speaker 4 Let's throw ourselves into this. If it ends up we don't take it further, that'll suck.
But, you know, maybe we can push things along.

Speaker 2 It was clear from the very beginning that the investigating team didn't agree with this.

Speaker 4 My understanding was in the early days that they said, no, look, we're not ready. It's not ready for an inquest yet.
The investigation is still going.

Speaker 4 You shouldn't hold an inquest until we're completely done.

Speaker 2 For over 18 months, Detective Inspector Mike Condon and his team told the Morecoms that the coroner couldn't receive a brief while the investigation was still active.

Speaker 2 I looked at the 2003 Coroner's Act, and from what I can tell, That isn't actually true.

Speaker 2 There can be concurrent investigations so long as no one has been charged in the case or is awaiting criminal prosecution. In Daniel's case, no one had been charged.

Speaker 2 Not to mention, the Morcoms had been told things were sputtering out. If that was true, wouldn't detectives want to close the investigation and hand it off?

Speaker 2 Didn't they want what was best for the case? A case that, for all intents and purposes, was going cold?

Speaker 4 The use of the term cold case was incredibly controversial. That's what really annoyed the police, the Morcoms calling it a cold case.

Speaker 2 But here's the thing. The Morcoms weren't just making this up.
They remembered their 2006 meeting with Detective Paul Schmidt, the way he spoke with defeat.

Speaker 2 That meeting was the catalyst that led Bruce and Denise to this point. And it wasn't long before they learned it had all been put in writing.

Speaker 2 The police commissioner Bob Atkinson had always assured them that the QPS would never give up on Daniel's case.

Speaker 2 But Paul Schmidt had written a letter to Mike Condon, an official suggestion that Daniel's case be referred to the Homicide Investigation Unit as a cold case.

Speaker 2 So that extremely loaded term, it had been used. The Morecoms weren't just throwing it around.

Speaker 3 I have no suspicions that they were just going to cold case it, but we were trying to say, well, that's your mindset. No, no, we're always going to investigate it.
And you think what bullshit that is.

Speaker 3 You tell us you've done all these things. We just want to make sure that we check.

Speaker 2 Once the state coroner made the official request for a report, police had no choice. They had to prepare one for the coroner's office.
It took them well over a year to do it.

Speaker 2 The Morcom's patience was wearing thin. Bruce went so far as to suggest that maybe the delay was due to some screw-up being discovered.
Perhaps police were trying to clean up their mess.

Speaker 2 Tensions were clearly mounting.

Speaker 3 It's all fair in love and war, but really, they're not paid to be judges. They're paid to do a job, and that is to present the the evidence.

Speaker 3 Not to say, well, that's my view, and that's close the shop. That's what they did.

Speaker 2 Give an opinion on who that came from?

Speaker 3 Well, Condon was the person in charge. So

Speaker 3 doesn't the buck stop with the chief?

Speaker 2 Through all of this, Bruce and Denise tried to keep their focus on the good. There was a flicker of hope.
The inquest was happening, and its aims were clear.

Speaker 2 One, find out if Daniel was dead. Two, if so, determine when, where, and how he died.
And 3.

Speaker 2 Assess the adequacy of the police's initial response to Daniel's disappearance, as well as the ongoing investigation.

Speaker 3 Let's go and see what's been going on. Because they've been told, we're sentenced.
Well, we've done everything.

Speaker 2 Whether or not that was actually true, the Morecambe's would know soon enough.

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Speaker 2 The comprehensive police report on Daniel's case, the one mandated by the inquest, finally arrived at the coroner's office in April of 2010. Peter Johns couldn't believe the scope of it.

Speaker 4 The file was literally 30-plus large boxes of material that took up a quarter of my office. And that's a tiny fraction of the investigation.

Speaker 4 It was very clear to being told to us that it was the largest ever investigation in Queensland history.

Speaker 2 A 71-page cover report summarized the 10,000-page police brief.

Speaker 2 That brief covered over a thousand interviews, 17,840 job logs, statements from 84 eyewitnesses, and profiles on 33 persons of interest who might be called to give evidence.

Speaker 2 Peter Johns had to know all of it inside and out. He would be the one questioning those persons of interest, their associates, detectives, and eyewitnesses.

Speaker 4 The job of counsel assisting is to essentially be fair and impartial and to make sure all of the evidence comes out.

Speaker 2 As he worked his way through the materials, one detail in particular grabbed him. A detail that might sound familiar.
The blue car.

Speaker 2 It had been nearly seven years since Daniel vanished, and the presumed irrelevance of this one particular piece of evidence hadn't faded. Peter became obsessed.

Speaker 4 For about a year there I had a wall full of number plates, fantasizing I suppose that there was some somehow I'd cracked the code of one of those number plates showing up in some other piece of evidence, constantly looking for that breakthrough that the police may not have seen for some reason.

Speaker 2 But his persistence with that car didn't take away from his primary task. to work out which of the 33 persons of interest from that police brief deserved greater scrutiny.

Speaker 2 He went through every single case file.

Speaker 4 Because of how long it had gone, how public it was, where absolutely every last rabbit hole had been gone down.

Speaker 4 We were getting to the level of, what do you call them, tarot card readers and people that claimed they could, you know, see the future, which obviously you would just ignore normally.

Speaker 4 But it was such a significant case that I think the police were like, well, God, if we ignore this and something comes of it, we'll never live it down.

Speaker 2 It was exhausting work. And Peter Jones wasn't the only one going through it all with a fine-tooth comb.

Speaker 2 State Coroner Michael Barnes' decision to let the Morecombs be involved meant that they too received the police report in its entirety.

Speaker 9 I think the coroner saw some merit in comparing his notes and his senior counsel's notes with my notes. And if something marries up, well,

Speaker 9 that's more so of interest. Oh, the police resisted.
They requested that we did not receive it, but the coroner made a call that we get it.

Speaker 10 They'll courier to our place in Palmwoods.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it wasn't just in one drop.

Speaker 10 File after file after file.

Speaker 2 They're not exaggerating. I visited the Foundation's offices, and I got to see the report.
They'd kept it. Every bit of it.
Stored in dozens of thick binders, each filled to the brim.

Speaker 2 occupying multiple four-shelf cabinets in Bruce and Denise's office.

Speaker 2 The moment they started receiving these files, Bruce, Denise and Peter Boyce dug in. They dedicated every waking moment to reviewing those materials and preparing for the court proceedings.

Speaker 3 We'd meet and I would say to them, well, give me what notes you want to make about witness A and witness B and witness C.

Speaker 10 I don't know where Peter found the time to do all this. He had six children of his own, his own wife, his own business.

Speaker 3 Get up at half past three, four o'clock in the morning and start reading it and then I'd have my day's work. And I remember we went to Fraser Island as a family and I took the brief with me.

Speaker 3 I'd dictate in our bedroom for our wife probably didn't get much sleep but did that for a week or 10 days that we were up there and got all my notes together.

Speaker 9 Well at times you'd wake up in the middle of the night and I remember writing

Speaker 9 74 pages of information that I thought

Speaker 9 just raised my eyebrow thinking, oh, that's funny. Hmm.

Speaker 3 Wow. It was just compelling.

Speaker 9 I felt the answer is here. I just got to flag it.

Speaker 3 There's not one word they wouldn't have read. They were unbelievable in their focus on what areas that we wanted to cover with each witness.

Speaker 3 I don't think I've ever been able to work with anyone better who was not qualified as a lawyer. We were on the same page about the whole thing and

Speaker 3 how it might play out or it might not.

Speaker 2 Together, they began to see holes.

Speaker 9 You could see deficiencies and gaps and you think, why wasn't that run out? We didn't know. Like these, there were so many answers.

Speaker 2 This may well have been one of the largest ever police investigations in Australian history. But as Peter Boyce now saw it, volume doesn't necessarily equate to quality.

Speaker 3 They turn up at the inquest as the largest investigation ever in Queensland. It probably was.
But was it the best investigation? Probably not.

Speaker 2 The inquest began on October 11th, 2010. It was held at the Maruchador Magistrates Court, just a stone's throw away from the Sunshine Plaza Daniel was headed to on that fateful day.

Speaker 10 I remember walking up through Maroochador where we parked at the Big Top Shopping Centre with this trolley load of archived boxes. Dean and Bradley were with us as well.

Speaker 10 As we walked up to the courthouse, there was just media everywhere.

Speaker 9 There was almost a line where they had to be, I don't know, 30 feet from the front door.

Speaker 10 People with cameras everywhere just waiting for us to talk.

Speaker 3 I don't think I was nervous but I was probably saying to myself I wonder where this is going to end. Hopefully something really good comes out of it but let's go and find out as much as we can.

Speaker 2 It was a modest courtroom, basically just a meeting room. A few rows of chairs were laid out theatre style at the back.

Speaker 2 Up front, a table set up with microphones.

Speaker 10 When the coroner came in, everybody had to stand up, bow to the coroner, sit down.

Speaker 10 Peter Boyce and Bruce were sitting on one of the benches together, and there was a police prosecutor, and Peter Johns was in the middle.

Speaker 2 This small courtroom would become their world for the next three weeks.

Speaker 2 Witnesses appeared one by one, each questioned by the two Peters, Peter Johns representing the coroner and Peter Boyce for the Morecoms.

Speaker 10 I think Bruce was the first witness to be called up.

Speaker 2 It made sense. The story began with Bruce and Denise noticing their son had gone missing.

Speaker 2 I was

Speaker 9 extremely nervous.

Speaker 9 This is not an environment I'm used to, but Peter Boyce had sort of said just answer questions. If you're not sure of an answer, just say I don't recall and do your best.

Speaker 2 It was simple as that. Bruce walked everyone through those first terrifying hours, explaining how they'd realized Daniel was missing, the search, the first conversations with police.

Speaker 9 He was trying to establish, is he a runaway? Did he have drug habits? Did he have issues with gambling or debts or meeting someone online? Somewhat obvious questions.

Speaker 2 Peter Boyce's line of questioning here had a very specific purpose.

Speaker 2 To illustrate that police hadn't done enough in those early hours, given what Bruce and Denise were telling them about Daniel's character.

Speaker 3 And you can understand the coppers. coppers, they probably get a lot of people in like that, and they do turn up.
But you've got to work out who's the subject before you.

Speaker 2 Bruce arrived at the point in the story where Officer Laurie Davison issued a be on the lookout for alert, and an astonishing revelation surfaced.

Speaker 9 There was no evidence to suggest that it had been done.

Speaker 10 We found out that that didn't happen.

Speaker 2 Peter Boyce was fuming.

Speaker 3 That mind-boggles about their lack of action.

Speaker 2 It was a troubling start, and it set Peter Boyce on a course.

Speaker 2 He drilled into the initial police response.

Speaker 3 So we're uphill and downdale and all that stuff. And some of it was done well, some of it was really poor or not done at all.

Speaker 2 Here's another example. On the afternoon of Sunday, December 7th, 2003, less than two hours after Daniel was last seen, the Sunbus offices received a phone call.

Speaker 2 Sunbus was the name of the Queensland bus operator. It was their 1.35 p.m.
bus that Daniel was waiting for beneath the Keel Mountain Road overpass.

Speaker 2 The incoming call that day came from a distressed woman. She wanted to know if a boy had been reported missing after not being picked up from a stop.

Speaker 2 Investigators had just assumed it was Denise who made that call.

Speaker 10 But we didn't know Daniel was missing until later. I didn't get home for 4 o'clock.

Speaker 9 It was a phone call from an outside source that nobody knew.

Speaker 2 But police never checked the phone records.

Speaker 9 It was an astounding moment of failure, I think. Why didn't you look at the pieces of paper?

Speaker 2 Could that phone call have led the police to Daniel in those crucial first hours? Maybe. Maybe not.
But for Bruce and Denise, the oversight was devastating.

Speaker 2 The frustration that they'd long held in check was beginning to boil over, and it began to spill into the public spotlight.

Speaker 12 The inquest into Daniel Morecombe's disappearance has raised doubts over the initial police investigation. The inquest took a sudden turn when Bruce Morcomb testified he was unhappy with police.

Speaker 13 When he reported his son missing, Bruce Morcombe testified police had sometimes been dismissive and were initially slow to respond.

Speaker 2 In the days that followed, the police continued to face uncomfortable questions. The inquest was beginning to cast the investigation in a whole new light.

Speaker 2 What had previously seemed comprehensive was now starting to look like it was filled with holes. And the Queensland Police Service was feeling the pressure.

Speaker 9 The police legal representative in the first few days didn't have a lot to say. Then that person was removed as there appeared to be a little bit of heat and perhaps anger within the room.

Speaker 9 Then there would be two more senior counsel

Speaker 9 and then some time in the future beyond that, they were removed and Queen's Counsel would sit in the chair.

Speaker 9 So there was an upgrading several times of the legal skill and ability that were all representative of Queensland police.

Speaker 2 In week three, focus shifted to the persons of interest.

Speaker 2 Peter Johns presented a list of POIs that he felt should be subpoenaed to give evidence. Following that suggestion, Peter Boyce rose.

Speaker 2 He too had a list of POIs the Morecamps wanted to put on the stand. They were especially keen to hear from POI 5, Douglas Jackway.

Speaker 2 Following Boyce, the solicitor for the police got to his feet. And his plan for the POIs was,

Speaker 2 well, I'll let Bruce tell it.

Speaker 9 The police representative, he stood up and said to the coroner, we don't wish to call any witnesses, Your Honor.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 9 This was the perfect opportunity for the investigative task force to actually put some bastards in the chair and say, what do you know?

Speaker 3 Where were you?

Speaker 9 Your alibi doesn't stack up. What were you wearing that day? Who were your friends? Like, serious questions.

Speaker 10 Dean Brad and I were furious. We would have just looked at each other and going,

Speaker 10 what the hell?

Speaker 3 We were gobsmacked that they didn't want us to cross-examine any of them.

Speaker 2 The solicitor went on to question how putting these persons of interest on the stand could possibly help.

Speaker 2 He said that Jackway had been thoroughly looked into by cops and that some of the others had also already given evidence.

Speaker 9 So, when you have all the tools at your disposal, and the coroner's there with fresh eyes, lots of talent, lots of skill, and the police decline to call any witnesses, just didn't make rhyme or reason.

Speaker 3 You know, stand-up says it's the biggest investigation in Queensland. This could interfere with the investigation.
I think,

Speaker 3 what bloody bullshit that is. You've had seven years to do this.
What more do you want?

Speaker 9 I remember mumbling under my breath, you must be very proud.

Speaker 9 Which was me saying, you're a prick, mate, because that's really what I wanted to say to him.

Speaker 2 State Coroner Michael Barnes disagreed with the police position, and he overruled them.

Speaker 14 As many as 10 people identified as being of interest may be brought before the coroner's court over the disappearance and suspected murder of Sunshine Coast teenager Daniel Morcombe in December 2003.

Speaker 2 By this point, two additional persons of of interest had been added to the original 33 outlined in the police brief. It was time to apply the legal blowtorch to the suspects.

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Speaker 2 The inquest was adjourned for six weeks before resuming on December 13th, 2010. at a new courthouse in Brisbane.

Speaker 2 The move to the state capitol's courthouse was to provide greater security and accommodate what officials anticipated would be heightened interest in the next phase of the proceedings.

Speaker 2 Across the nation, the inquest had become front-page news. Australians were poised for a breakthrough in the case.
And the prospect of further police missteps had the media clamouring.

Speaker 3 I remember ringing Bruce because he was interviewed by the ABC.

Speaker 3 He was really complimentary on the police and saying there's some things that obviously might have been missed and the inquest is about us checking and making sure and one of the things he said was even though we're challenging a lot of that you've got to remember we're on the same side here

Speaker 3 when I heard that I rang him I said mate don't know how you could do that because there's no way I could

Speaker 3 he said

Speaker 3 but we are on the same side

Speaker 3 and I've never forgotten that statement for him.

Speaker 2 Six POIs were set to take the stand. They included a suspected murderer, rapists, pedophiles.

Speaker 2 Bill Dooley was first up.

Speaker 2 He was led into the courtroom by police. He wore a suit and reading glasses.
This was the man who'd sat with Bruce in that interrogation room in 2004 and claimed to know what had happened to Daniel.

Speaker 2 The man who, in 2006, was incriminated by a girlfriend, claiming to have witnessed his involvement in the brutal sexual assault, murder, and burial of Daniel.

Speaker 2 Daniel Morcombe's case aside, Dooley was forever in trouble with the cops. He'd been charged with the murder of his 73-year-old roommate.
That conviction was later overturned.

Speaker 2 Yet, here was Bill Dooley, still in police custody, serving time for another batch of unrelated crimes. Dooley admitted to the court that he had lied to police about Daniel's case over the years.

Speaker 2 When When asked why, he said he didn't know. He just did.

Speaker 4 It made no sense, but it was designed to benefit himself and try and get him off these other charges.

Speaker 4 And then when it became clear to him how serious what he was doing, he immediately retracted it all and said, geez, sorry, I'm lying. But of course, you know, you can't just take that at face value.

Speaker 2 Detectives were constantly hearing stories about Dooley's involvement in Daniel's abduction and murder, and they were constantly following up on those leads.

Speaker 2 But with each passing year, it became clearer, Dooley was a master in the art of deception.

Speaker 2 And when Dooley's associates, Alexander Meyer and Elise Smythe, took the stand, they further confirmed this theory.

Speaker 2 A quick refresher on these two. Elise Smythe was the woman who claimed to have been in the car when Dooley and Alexander Meyer had abducted Daniel.

Speaker 2 She told the horrific story of Daniel being held in a dungeon beneath Meyer's house, then given the name Birthday Cake. She had drawn the map, which she claimed led to Daniel's remains.

Speaker 2 But Smythe's testimony at the inquest made clear to the court what police had suspected for years. She was a drug addict, and her recollections were very much affected by that abuse.
And Meyer?

Speaker 2 Well, he admitted to knowing Dooley. He admitted to the dead-bolted dungeon beneath his house.
He even admitted to helping Dooley dump a man's body once.

Speaker 2 But he vehemently denied having anything whatsoever to do with Daniel Morcombe's abduction and murder.

Speaker 2 The testimony from the fourth POI seared itself into the psyches of everyone present.

Speaker 2 Kingston Quick, a convicted child rapist, was a young teen when he was molested by an older man who would go on to become his lover.

Speaker 2 Like Dooley, Quick was in prison for another crime at the time of the inquest, and he had to be escorted in by police.

Speaker 3 He was repulsive in the sense he had long fingernails, dirty long toenails, and was obviously in there for terrible crimes.

Speaker 2 Quick sat in the witness box and then

Speaker 2 confessed.

Speaker 4 A person who had spent two years giving the police the most detailed account of how he

Speaker 4 and his lover had abducted Daniel and hidden his body at Greenbank in the southern suburbs of Brisbane.

Speaker 3 Daniel got chopped up and put in a bin and taken out of a boat or on a boat and trying to see.

Speaker 4 And he'd taken police out to show them where it had happened.

Speaker 2 The courtroom was sickened by the detailed, gruesome testimony.

Speaker 4 Disgustingly and tragically, the Morcombs had to sit there in court and listen to this insanely detailed account.

Speaker 3 That was an awful day.

Speaker 2 But the more investigators dug into his story, the more obvious it became. Quick was also full of shit.

Speaker 4 The police eventually formed the view that this person was just lying, that this was just fantasy.

Speaker 4 He'd ended up in jail because the partner had told police about something he'd done, and this was just a revenge thing. He was willing to go down himself to incriminate the partner who had...

Speaker 4 put him in jail.

Speaker 2 Every word of it was a lie.

Speaker 4 It's the only time ever that I've had someone claim they did something that, you know, we didn't think they had.

Speaker 4 It's insane that someone was confessing to a murder, but that was this insanity that we were dealing with.

Speaker 2 With four POIs having taken the stand, the court adjourned.

Speaker 2 The holidays came and went.

Speaker 2 Then January,

Speaker 2 February.

Speaker 2 Not until March 28th, 2011, did the inquest resume.

Speaker 2 And just two persons of interest remained.

Speaker 9 They'd gone through the first one, two, three, four, and then Jackway was the fifth one up.

Speaker 2 Douglas Jackway,

Speaker 2 the convicted pedophile who had been, from the beginning, the prime suspect in the case.

Speaker 3 Douglas Jackway.

Speaker 3 He was a shocker.

Speaker 2 Peter Boyce had always said he would have marched in the streets in support of the idea that once a prisoner had done their time, they should get out. But Jackway changed all of that.

Speaker 3 He's the one that probably convinced me, as a lawyer, that some people don't ever deserve to be out.

Speaker 3 There are some people who just should never see the light of day once they get convicted because they aren't worthy of the privilege of living in society.

Speaker 2 For years, Jackway had haunted investigators and the Morecoms. And now, here he was.

Speaker 4 Jackway was an incredibly serious criminal that had a proven history of abducting young boys and raping them. So Jackway was right to be the focus of police investigation.

Speaker 2 He had also asked associates to lie about his whereabouts on the day of Daniel's abduction. Associates who, over the years, would change their stories time and time again.

Speaker 2 He knew the area, having grown up not far from there, and he was scheduled to be back in that area for court the next day.

Speaker 2 And then there was the most damning piece of evidence: his car.

Speaker 2 Douglas Jackaway drove a blue holding Commodore, a car perfectly matching the description of the one seen broken down near the underpass by more than 80 eyewitnesses.

Speaker 3 What's the chances of him being in town? On the same road, at the same or similar times that Daniel goes missing. Of all persons of interest, he was striking.

Speaker 2 There was just one problem.

Speaker 2 For years, investigators believed that Jackaway and his blue car were seen on the afternoon of December 7th, the afternoon of Daniel's abduction, one day before Jackaway was meant to be in the area for a court hearing.

Speaker 2 That is what some eyewitnesses had reported. And given how often his alibi shifted, it wasn't out of the question to think that maybe he came up to the the Sunshine Coast a day early.

Speaker 2 But as time passed, it became impossible to ignore that most of these sightings of Jackaway had actually been on December 8th, one day after the abduction.

Speaker 4 They were just never able to prove that he was near the scene on the day. And it wasn't helped by the fact that, like, he was up there the following day, right?

Speaker 4 Do you think, geez, what are the odds of that?

Speaker 2 Maybe the timelines didn't match. Still, to police, it had always seemed very suspicious.
And there was something else that they had to take into account.

Speaker 4 There's these criminologists who'll say that, you know, people often return to the scene of a crime the following day.

Speaker 2 Maybe Jackway had that compulsion. Maybe he did commit the abduction on the 7th and then returned to the scene on the 8th.
Maybe that is why the eyewitness accounts varied.

Speaker 2 So Mike Condon, now the Assistant Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service, couldn't rule Jackway out. He remained steadfast in his belief that Jackaway was their guy.

Speaker 2 That's why in 2008, Condon had launched Operation Golf Avalon, a full-scale 18-month review of the case against Jackaway.

Speaker 2 It's why in 2009, a review of that review was carried out. But they still found nothing solid.
It was all just circumstantial.

Speaker 3 Every time you looked at the evidence in a critical sense, you thought, you know,

Speaker 3 we're a foot of it being 100%.

Speaker 3 So the rope never got entwined because there was still a gap. And whichever way he went around it, you still thought, oh, it's not enough to get him.

Speaker 2 Peter Johns took his turn to question Jackaway at the inquest. But his measured, restrained approach caught Bruce and Denise off guard.

Speaker 3 I can recall him being questioned.

Speaker 9 I remember talking today

Speaker 9 as we were leaving court and I said, geez, I went soft on him because I thought he was a little lame and a little timid. And I didn't say that.
It was in my mind.

Speaker 9 You know, I just buttoned me lip and let it roll through.

Speaker 4 I get the feeling that Bruce and Denise, I think, were quite disappointed after my examination of Jackway, and that I was very matter of fact.

Speaker 4 Just because I think the evidence had been so tested by that stage in relation to Jackway

Speaker 4 as to his movements, and there just seemed no way of ever putting him on the scene.

Speaker 2 And with that, Douglas Jackway was excused.

Speaker 2 One POI remained.

Speaker 2 Listed in his case file as POI 7,

Speaker 2 Shadow Nunya Hunter flew in for the inquest from Western Australia. A young detective by the name of Grant Linwood had picked him up and brought him to the inquest.
Shadow was tall, wiry.

Speaker 2 He wore a confident but sinister look on his angular face. And that name?

Speaker 2 Shadow? Shadow?

Speaker 2 Well, investigators knew him by another name.

Speaker 2 Brett Peter Cowan.

Speaker 2 Remember him?

Speaker 4 And then when he came to the door, I just felt it, you know what I mean? You could feel the slime fall off him.

Speaker 3 I had this disgust, I guess, and this concern that he was someone that could do some horrible things.

Speaker 4 I said, did you see a little boy under the overpass? standing where the bus would pick him up. No, I never saw anybody.

Speaker 2 He is someone with this kind of of history who admits that he was in the vicinity where Daniel went missing from at about the time when Daniel went missing.

Speaker 4 And he was going to get a mulcher from a bloke on Keel Road overpass.

Speaker 3 We have what we thought was a red-hot suspect.

Speaker 2 Brett Peter Cowan swaggered into the courtroom through the civilian entrance.

Speaker 10 As the door opened, it felt like a gush of wind came through. My whole body just went, My goodness.

Speaker 10 And Cowan walked to the left of us and sat only two or three feet away from us. And before Cowan would sit down, I said to Bruce, My God, that's him.

Speaker 10 Just knew it.

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Speaker 2 If you'd like to make a donation to the Daniel Morecambe Foundation, please visit danielmorecum.com.au.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Grace Valerie Lynette is the associate producer. Additional production support from Tiffany Dimack.

Speaker 2 The series was sound designed, composed, and mixed by Garrett Tiedemann. Our studio engineer is Trino Madriz.

Speaker 2 Fact-checked by Tracy Lofgren-Lee. A special thanks to Ashley Ann Krigbaum and Doug Slawin, and our operations team, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dinkle.

Speaker 2 Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriadis, and Matt Scher.

Speaker 2 Sony's executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. For Pace Hetter Productions, the executive producer is Jessica Rhodes.
Allison Momassey and Brian Daly are the associate producers.

Speaker 2 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 Morecombe?

Speaker 2 Please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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