Where is Daniel Morcombe? | 2. A Dark Place

It's Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness.

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This episode contains discussions of child's abduction and the emotional impact and trauma that results from a missing child.

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The Keel Mountain Road Overpass runs above a four-lane highway called Nambor Connection Road.

At either end of the overpass are roundabouts with on-ramps to the highway.

Walk on the narrow grass shoulder alongside those on-ramps and you find yourself at the underpass with traffic whizzing by.

It's just a flat dirt area and a great big clay embankment on the back of it.

A bit of an eerie sort of place really.

I don't know why the boys used to catch the bus there but

but all the locals did and we didn't think anything different about it.

That's exactly what Daniel Morecombe was doing on December 7th, 2003.

The next morning, Bruce and Denise Morecom, Daniel's parents, reported him missing at the local police station.

Sergeant Lori Davison asked them some questions, but the Morecoms didn't know much.

Just that Daniel had planned to catch the 135 bus to the Sunshine Plaza shopping center.

He was going to get a haircut and buy Christmas presents for his family.

Why he didn't come home that afternoon was a mystery.

So Sergeant Davison picked up the phone and called the local bus company.

Bruce and Denise couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of that line, but they could hear Davison's side of the conversation.

He said something along the lines of, he saw a boy in a red shirt, did he?

Then, they watched the blood drain from Davison's face.

He's gone from a jovial police officer to realizing, shit, this could be real serious.

Davison hung up and told the parents to return home.

But they could tell there was something the sergeant was keeping from them.

And they were right.

The bus driver had told Davison that the boy beneath the overpass wasn't alone.

Behind him,

leaning against the embankment, was a man.

I'm Matt Angel.

And from Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media,

this is Where is Daniel Morcom?

Episode 2:

A Dark Place.

Julie Elliott was sort of an unlikely police officer.

Many people joined the force in their late teens, early 20s.

Julie was a mom in her 30s.

Her first day on the job was telling.

My first shift after coming out of the academy, and I had some age on me, and I had a couple of kids, and the sergeant said to me, I'm so sorry.

I've got to put you with, mm-hmm.

He hates female police officers and he won't let you drive.

So we put all our accoutrements on and I get introduced to this buff head and he threw me the car keys and I went, oh, it's interesting.

And

he said, now I'm going to tell you before we even leave the driveway, I hate women.

I hate new constables and you're only driving to see how far apart your shirt pops to see how big your tits are.

So I said,

well, you're a fuckwit.

She said that Boothhead asked her out on a date at the end of that shift.

No joke.

At the time of Daniel's disappearance, Julie was in her late 40s.

She was a senior sergeant working in the media unit.

Her job was to gather relevant case information and pass it on to the press.

Up until 2001, it was a job for journalists.

But Commissioner Bob Atkinson thought that a hybrid unit made up of journalists and police officers might be more effective.

If police rang from a scene and got a police officer, they gave us more information because they felt we were one of them.

The cops could then work with the journalists and they'd strategize how best to engage the public.

After a time, that worked really well.

There was a fax machine in their office at police headquarters in Brisbane.

Anytime they heard it power up, it meant something was going down.

I pulled the fax out on December the 8th with that picture that I think all of us have seen of that angelic face.

Everyone knew intuitively that this was very different.

The next day, she was assigned as the family media liaison officer to the Morecoms.

She would coordinate talks between police, the family, and the press.

It was a balancing act.

It required strategy in terms of what info should be given to the public, as well as compassion.

It was an emotionally chaotic time.

I was baffled.

I wasn't trained in that role in any way, shape, or form.

The training I was getting was to put together media releases.

But investigators on Daniel's case needed leads, which meant they needed the public's attention.

And to get that attention, they needed the boy's parents in front of the cameras.

Someone had to be there to make that happen.

I think I was picked because I was a mother of two boys and for some reason the director thought, well, I'd have a connection with the family.

And that was it.

I put in a car and off I went.

It was like, hello.

I'll do the best I can.

Her first task was to organise a press conference at the police station.

That's where she met the Morecams for the first time.

I opened the door and they looked up with such expectation because it was, is this someone coming with some good news?

And they were just frozen.

And it was a room full of grief and terror, really.

I thought she was a little bit scary.

Being a strict police officer, she hadn't met us before and she didn't know what type of people Bruce and I were or our family.

I had the difficult job of saying to them, you have to speak.

You are the ones that need to look into the camera and say to everyone in their lounge rooms that your son is missing.

And I know Bruce said to her, you're not going to get me to cry because I'm like an East Island statue.

And she sort of just looked at him.

Bruce also has these blue eyes.

They were focused.

I didn't see emotion because I don't think he was going to allow himself to be emotional.

He had a job to do and he did it.

And that's Bruce.

Julie sort of said to us, you know, just relax, do what you can and we'll help you through it.

My God, every medio in Queensland were there.

Every camera, every reporter was in that room.

Quite like 50 or more.

It was a lot.

A lot of detectives as well.

The room was chocolate block.

Yeah, it was full and was very daunting and very scary.

Denise just couldn't speak.

She couldn't.

She literally could not do anything but sit there.

I had to corral them into doing something

that was foreign to them while they were in shock.

And

I felt a lot of guilt about that, but I knew that that had to be done the very first time that the horde of media were there because the media loved it.

And that's just being blunt and honest.

Spilling their hearts out in public, it was something the Morecoms were going to have to get used to.

Just four days later, they were back in front of the cameras.

I pushed Bruce aside and said, no, people want to look at mum and hear her voice.

And I'll never forget that day on the side of the road near where Daniel was taken, saying to her, You have to

do something very, very traumatic here.

And those blue eyes that everyone connected with for years after,

you could look into a soul.

It's getting desperate.

We need him back.

We want Daniel back.

I felt so sad for her that I had to push her to that limit.

But my purpose was to get results.

That's what we needed.

Mum and dad flew up from Melbourne and they were staying at our place and Bruce used to go out and get the newspaper every morning.

And I heard them all saying, don't tell Denise, don't show her that newspaper.

I came downstairs and I said, what's going on?

And there was a front page

of me looking

with big eyes looking a bit worried.

I said something like, a pedophile may have taken Daniel.

For people living in Palmwoods back then, the thought of a pedophile snatching a boy from a bus stop in broad daylight seemed impossible.

Sadly, Deputy Inspector Mike Condon, who was leading the investigation, knew better.

Sex offenders were his first line of inquiry, and it it wasn't long before one in particular took center stage.

In April of 1995, Douglas Brian Jackway was driving when he spotted a group of young boys.

He attacked them, threw one of the nine-year-old boys into his car, and raced off.

The child's father joined police in their search.

They found Jackway in a swamp of mangroves.

He was naked and in the act of sexually assaulting the boy.

On November 7th, 2003, after spending just eight and a half years in prison, Jackaway was released.

Two weeks later, he was back in handcuffs.

He had taken his new car, a Holden Commodore, for a bit of a joyride with police in pursuit.

The car was impounded, but he retrieved it on December 5th, just in time to make his December 8th court date on the Sunshine Coast.

So, Douglas Jackaway is a violent, opportunistic pedophile.

He's back on the streets, and he's set to appear in court on the Sunshine Coast less than 24 hours after Daniel vanishes.

But there was another, even more compelling reason Mike Condon had his sight set on Jackaway.

Police had started getting calls from people who had been in the area when Daniel disappeared, and one detail in particular kept popping up.

More than a few people had said that they saw a blue car near the underpass that day, and it had investigators' attention, especially given the color of Douglas Jackaways holding Commodore.

Yeah,

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The Queensland Police Service couldn't keep up with the number of calls jamming the switchboard in the major incident room.

The lines at Crime Stoppers were also inundated.

The young blue-eyed boy had ignited something in the community.

Things like this just didn't happen here.

And everyone wanted to help.

For me, it all started many years ago.

I was involved in a rescue that I did of a child in a stormwater drain up in Palmwoods.

This is Tim Ryan.

He's telling me a story he's not sure he's ever recalled out loud before.

It was one of those days that was cyclonic and we're driving along the railway line as such and this woman's jumped out in front of me screaming and waving her arms.

A boy had been playing in the flooded street when he was sucked into a storm water drain.

And I seen the drain lid pop.

It didn't just pop, it blew into the air and manhole covers like that can weigh hundreds of pounds.

Tim had a background in engineering.

He knew that water pressure like that could only come from a severe blockage.

That meant the child was stuck down there.

He dove in, but the surging water forced him back.

The second time, he felt a body, but he couldn't get a grip.

I've got the locals to hang on to my legs, and I just couldn't do anything.

The water pressure was just too much.

Eventually, the pressure dropped, and they pulled the child free.

I worked on him for half an hour because none of the rescue authorities could get to us.

I'm sorry, the child died in my arms.

Tim received an award for his bravery on that day.

As the governor pinned it to his chest, he looked Tim in the eye.

Tim, he said, go out and do things in the community and bring people like you to me.

I went, wow.

So that was the start of my life as such.

Daniel disappeared a couple of years after that.

I was going to work and I drove out of Palmwoods.

turned right to go onto the highway and I looked to the left and there was police cars everywhere.

Everywhere.

I remember it very clearly driving off to work that morning going, holy smoke, this isn't good.

Tim didn't know Daniel, but his son did.

They rode motorbikes together.

It all felt way too close to home.

Didn't know what a pedophile was.

And I'm serious, in 2003, they didn't exist in our minds.

They were just ordinary working people getting on with it.

It was national news and it was my little town, Palmwoods.

Yeah, that hurt too.

This was a tight-knit community and the people showed up in force.

They were searching far and wide and I remember all the SES, the state emergency services, the volunteers that were walking through the scrub and get covered in ticks and bloody worried about snakes and everything else.

And it was very hot.

These people in overalls and big boots and out there looking for Daniel and it wasn't a couple, it was hundreds.

One of the last people to see Daniel on his walk to the bus stop was a man named Peter Harth.

The locals knew him as Petrol Pete.

He owned a gas station by the overpass.

I said, mate, anyone that comes into this building, anything that they want, drinks, sandwiches, whatever, I'm paying for it.

Just do a tab.

I'll pay for it all.

So the word quickly got out to all the free drinks down there.

The snacks were appreciated, but Tim was just getting started.

I rang a company called Coats Hire and I said, I need a favour.

And he said, what do you want?

And I said, your big electronic signboards.

They call them the VMS board, variable message signboard.

I want them on all over Australia with Wes Daniel.

He said, big ass, Tim.

I said, I want it, mate.

And you got kids?

And he said, yeah.

I said, well, let's do it.

So all of a sudden, every roadwork sign everywhere all over Australia had Wes Daniel.

Tim was going to keep doing everything he could.

The Morecamps had inspired him.

They were my superstars in them days, just

for them to stand up and do what they were doing.

And they were struggling.

They were really struggling.

They weren't just struggling.

They were crumbling.

The family's pain was unbearable.

Each day just rolled into the next day, into the next day.

There was never

any good news.

One day I would be fine and Bruce would be having a bad day and then the next day Dean might be having a bad day and Bradley would say, come on, we'll be okay.

Dean dropped out of school.

He spent most of his time working or hanging out with his friends.

It was different for Daniel's twin Bradley.

He didn't want to do anything without his brother.

Bruce and Denise did their best to make things feel normal for him, but how could it possibly be normal?

We were just paranoid.

We didn't want him to leave the house.

We just couldn't let him out of our sight.

If Bradley did go out, Denise had to write down where he was going and what he was wearing.

He and Daniel weren't identical twins, but police wanted to be safe.

If someone someone mistook Bradley for Daniel, they would be able to quickly rule it out.

He just wanted a bit more freedom.

He sort of lost his freedom when Daniel went as well.

Bruce would be busy out in the garden, mowing the lawn, doing all his chores.

I used to yell at him, you know, what if we hadn't moved from Melbourne, if we hadn't bought the Jim's mowing franchise, if we hadn't moved to the Sunshine Coast, if we'd stayed at the previous house, if we hadn't gone to the Christmas party, if we'd made the boys come with us.

I mean, who knows?

It wasn't that easy being with friends because they didn't know how I felt.

It was too difficult to see what their children were doing.

You go and have a morning tea with a couple of girlfriends and they'd be saying, oh, you know, Satan's my son's got a cold.

And I'd be thinking, really, my son's probably fucking dead in the bush somewhere.

I didn't know where he was.

There was one person Denise felt comfortable with.

Julie started coming to our house pretty much daily and you just start chatting and you'd have a cup of tea or a coffee with her and just over the months and months we sort of came really close friends.

We were thrown into this world

with

no warning.

It was traumatic.

It was an upheaval.

It was tragic.

We butted heads, we've cried together, we've laughed.

It all took its toll on Julie.

She was never home for her sons.

Her engagement fell apart.

She so badly wanted to take away the Morecambe's pain, but that wasn't possible.

So she and Denise did what they could to cope.

We took to drinking like we'd invented it.

We were

gold star drinkers.

Coping mechanisms just to

let all the emotion down at times.

Denise has spoken publicly about this in the past, but she didn't want to talk about it when I asked.

I wasn't as good an influence on her as I could have been.

Bruce was never, ever a part of that.

And Bruce is great fun, but that brain is ticking in the background going, got an idea.

Bruce's brain was always ticking, but there was also a quiet anger in him.

And he had his own coping mechanisms.

There were a couple of occasions I painted messages on a large piece of sheet metal.

Swing you, bastard, justice will be done.

And I drew a noose.

That was just for myself.

Do you remember the first time you heard the name Douglas Jackway?

I do.

It was at Maridgidor Police Headquarters.

There was a short list that a couple of senior police were discussing.

I can recall his name was within earshot of our listing.

and

it just registered who's that fella.

His car had broken down down at the caravan park, not far from where Daniel was at the underpass, and he had a blue car.

That was Douglas Shackley, yes.

The Woombai Gardens Caravan Park is just up the way from the Keel Mountain Road overpass.

Back in 2003, they had powered and unpowered sites for rent.

Motel rooms, too.

It was one of the first places investigators door-knocked in the early hours of Operation Bravo Vista.

A number of local sex offenders were living there.

It was a hotspot for criminal activity.

Tim Ryan had heard the rumors.

That Douglas Jackway, you know, he was up here and he was at that motel and that they were cooking up whatever they do with drugs and he was known to be there and that was only a couple hundred meters down the road on the other side of the road.

The way Mike Condon saw it, there were no coincidences.

He was hoping for an open and shut case with Jackway.

Unfortunately, detectives kept hitting roadblocks.

They just couldn't find enough concrete evidence to charge him.

So in April of 2004, they expanded their search.

Focus remained on their most significant clue.

It was the blue car.

Basically, that's what we had.

80 to 90 witnesses phoned in to say there was a blue car there.

There were two people there, there were four people there, the boots open, the doors are open.

Oh, actually, the car was on the other side of the road.

No, the car was that side of the bridge.

No, it was over that side of the bridge.

So many inconsistencies.

But what was consistent was the bloody blue car.

Every blue car that we saw, we're thinking, oh my god, that could be it.

Shopping centre on the road, parked in someone's driveway.

We would write down those number plates and the type of car and we would contact people in the MRI room dozens of times, dozens and dozens of times.

If he was put into a car, a blue car, he could be anywhere in Australia.

So when you've got nothing else, okay, we've got to work with this, but gee, it was vague.

It was, which meant they were searching for a needle in a haystack.

Julie organized a press tour for the Morecams.

It would keep them in front of the cameras, and they would pose questions to get people thinking.

Did anyone know someone with a blue car?

Who recently sold a blue car?

Who had a blue car and maybe recently changed their physical appearance?

It was a Hail Mary,

but it was something.

We'd eat of a night, we'd drink of a night, Denise and I'd get pissed of a night and we'd cry and wail and

we got nowhere with it because

we just didn't.

It was worth a try

because of the number of people that said there was a blue car involved.

But there's one night that stands out for Julie.

She and Denise were drinking in her hotel room.

We were sitting on the end of the bed and just talking and then she said, I think my danny's dead.

And I said,

I think he is too.

And we just hugged and cried.

A lot of it was grog, emotion, but it was truth talking as well.

At that time, I think I was the only person she could have said it to.

Yeah, that happened, yeah.

Do you and Bruce ever say it out loud to each other?

No, I don't believe so.

We both knew, but you didn't say it.

When you've been together so long, you don't have to actually say words sometimes.

To the outside world, Bruce and Denise were defying the odds.

They were united in the face of a tragedy.

But Julie could see the cracks.

The Morecoms were pulling away from each other.

Denise was isolating more.

And Bruce may not have said it out loud, but he was worried about her.

No one likes watching someone else in pain, and

to see Denise struggle with some of those moments.

Christmas Day, Mother's Day, birthdays, like you can't avoid them.

Someone had contacted police to assist us, but particularly to assist Denise.

And that particular person was a hypnotherapist and he just identified in clear English that Denise and myself were very different people recovering at different speeds, were in different places.

And I'm quite confident my recollection would be correct in him saying,

your marriage is heading in a dark place here.

Your relationship,

it's going to go like so many other relationships when a significant event happens in your life, it just explodes.

You could perhaps see the walls collapsing around you, but...

I'd sort of made a promise to myself and a promise to the family that whoever has taken Daniel for whatever reason and whatever's happened,

that's a crime and I'm going to hate you for it and you're going to pay for it as well.

But the ripple effect, it's not going to happen.

This family will maintain its strength.

So even though there are some moments where you think, well, we're cooked here,

I would not let the person that had taken our son destroy our family.

Bruce meant it.

But some of the greatest challenges were yet to come.

And in May of 2004, six months after the worst day of his life, he found himself coming face to face with one of those challenges.

Detective Paul Schmidt, the senior investigator on Operation Bravo Vista, contacted the Morecoms with a question.

He wanted to know if they knew anyone by the name of Bill Dooley.

Dooley was another convicted child sex offender, one who had come forward to say that he had information on Daniel Morecombe.

But there was only one person he was willing to share it with.

Daniel's father.

And Bruce said, I'll meet with him.

I thought Denise had faint in the office.

Officers came by the Morecoms the next morning to pick them up.

Denise rode with Julie, Bruce with the detectives.

There were four police officers, two in the front.

one either side of males in the middle at the back.

They arrived at police headquarters and pulled into the underground car park.

An officer logged the registration and the number of occupants in each vehicle.

The police either side of me, they put the hand at the back of my neck and gently but forcibly pushed my head down so I sort of my head was in my knees.

And I can remember them saying to the security person, there's only four in the car.

Effectively, I was smuggled into police headquarters.

They took Bruce to an area outside the interrogation room and prepped him.

And they said, within that room, you're more or less in a glass booth.

Opposite that glass booth is another glass booth.

So their mirror image, one facing the other.

They explained that there was no door handle on the inside and only one way to get out.

He would have to say, okay,

I'm going to leave now.

Once they heard that cue, they would open the door.

I walked in and quickly observed a thin man was sitting with his back to me on a small bench.

He may have been thin, but from the photos I've seen, he looks a little bit like the penguin from the Batman comics.

He has a round face, oily black hair, thick eyebrows, and a rounded nose with long, thin nostrils.

He was pretty shell-shocked that there I was

saying, g'day,

what do you know?

Bruce started with small talk.

He asked Dooley about his family, what his favorite sports teams were.

He was trying to build Dooley's confidence, earn his trust.

Then he asked again, what do you know?

He had identified to me that he had sat in the back seat of a vehicle with Daniel in the back seat who was unconscious, possibly with drugs.

Dooley went on.

He said there were two men with Daniel, presumably the two men responsible for abducting him.

When Bruce asked for details, who the two men were, who owned the car, what color it was, which seat Daniel was in, he got nothing from Dooley.

He just kept saying,

not sure.

Finally, Bruce asked Dooley if his son was dead.

Dooley replied,

Yeah,

he's dead.

Difficult to comprehend and still maintain your composure and carry on a conversation with someone that says that.

He must have wanted to reach across and smash him in the face.

Bruce had had enough.

He said the exit phrase, and the officers opened the door.

One or two of them said, Do you think he did it?

And I said, No.

He couldn't really explain why he felt this way.

He just had a gut feeling that Dooley was lying.

Denise was downstairs with me in the media unit.

We were waiting and waiting.

And so another day of devastation for them, of the build-up, the time, and then to go home and go,

what world have we come into since December 7th, 2003?

Bill Dooley may not have been helpful in this moment, but his involvement in this case was far from over.

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I didn't have children when I first heard Daniel's story, when I first met Bruce and Denise Morcom.

But I do today.

Two little ones.

They absolutely...

own my heart.

Stories like this one make me wonder, what would I do?

If my son was missing and day after day I had no new information, no idea what was being done within the investigation, but knowing that whatever was being done would never be enough, that's where Bruce was.

He was tired of the quiet, of the not knowing.

He had to get involved.

I needed...

to feel as though I could contribute to the investigation.

I wasn't the ideas person like that.

If Bruce Bruce came up with an idea,

I would go along with it.

Being an older house and having a huge barn, there were old items that had been replaced in the house.

Old doors.

And I proceeded over time

to use those doors as a sounding board to extract information.

Sometimes they were just to create a fake media conference.

He'd only been facing the media for a few months and already Bruce had figured out how to play the game.

We needed to create some atmosphere, something for them to get their hooks into and get a story.

The doors were a strategy, a way to keep Daniel front and center in people's minds, a way to keep pressure on investigators.

The very first one, I painted it white and there was a key hole with a key that was in the lock.

He took a thick black permanent marker and wrote a message in large letters across the door.

Bruce just said, I've got this idea and I'm going down the underpass with the door and that's what I'm doing.

I dare say we had some contacts within media, just phoned them or emailed them and said I'll see you at the underpass tomorrow at 10 and I remember going down there with a couple of star pickets, metal spikes, belting those into the ground, cable tying the door to it and having the key on a piece of string just sort of swinging in the breeze.

The door was carefully positioned at the underpass.

Bruce and Denise waited for the journalists to arrive.

The cameras rolled.

They did their piece.

And then they revealed the message that had been scrawled across the freshly painted wood.

Where is Daniel?

Who took him?

Help find the key to unlock this horror of a crime.

The media loved it.

The police?

Not so much.

Well, as police, we're going, holy crap, Bruce.

I didn't care.

It wasn't reckless.

It was a desperate act act to reinvigorate the investigative process and to get some more information and to remind police officers, if you don't find the answers, I'm gonna.

Six months have passed since Daniel was taken, but Denise refuses to let go of what little hope remains.

His bedroom is untouched.

His pajamas are still folded.

I'd go in there all the time.

to sit on his bed or smell his pillow or look at his clothes.

But everything was left exactly the same for a long, long time.

The police encourage her to change the sheets on Daniel's bed to try and get back to normal life.

And I said, I don't want to.

In the bathroom, you've got your towel rails.

Daniel's towel rail was that one, and no one was allowed to put their towel on that particular towel rail.

That boy, the boy in the red shirt, by this point, his face is on 2 million pizza boxes, 25,000 milk cartons, 60,000 bumper stickers, all across Australia.

Police have recorded 5,500 leads.

Over 2,000 job logs have been filed.

20 additional officers have been assigned to the case.

But still,

nothing.

No answers.

No arrests.

No Daniel.

The months roll by.

Daniel belonged to one family, but is missed by an entire state.

It's almost one year.

Tonight, we have one aim, finding Daniel.

It's November 2004, and the statewide news program, Seven News, airs a one-hour special titled, Finding Daniel.

Welcome to police headquarters in Brisbane.

Tonight will allow you to see inside their investigation into Daniel Morcombe's abduction and reveal new leads as the hunt for Queensland's most wanted man continues.

Bruce and Denise are there putting their pain on display for people all over Queensland.

Someone told me once that the pain never goes away, you just learn to live with it.

So that's basically what it is.

That pain's here

day and night.

I mean quite often I wake up crying.

So you just

close your eyes and hope you can go back to sleep.

Host Kay McGrath McGrath asks viewers across the country to turn on their porch lights, all at once, in support of the Morecambe family.

Five, four,

three,

two,

one.

Queensland, show your support.

Bruce and Denise look out from the makeshift TV studio, out onto a sea of homes.

One after another, all across the city, porch lights illuminate.

We've got a good show there.

The whole town is lit up.

And we've certainly got an enthusiastic crowd in the front.

That's great, isn't it?

That's great.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

How does it feel to make you know that there are indeed people out there who care greatly?

Oh, it's overwhelming.

And I think it's

very important in our case, but it's sending a very powerful message to

people that want to go down an ugly path

and make children suffer.

it's not the right way, and

the community won't stomach it.

So, you know, it is a powerful message.

The second half of the program focused on the investigation, and detectives had something up their sleeve.

Now, it's time for you to help in another way, and you don't even have to leave home.

Three facial composites of the man seen behind Daniel, created from dozens of eyewitness accounts, were displayed on screen.

A male person in his 30s, 175 centimeters tall, tall, lean built and

what they describe as a tanned and weathered complexion.

Dark brown hair, slightly wavy and a small goatee type beard.

Then the phone lines opened.

It's now up to you, the public, to identify this man.

Hundreds of calls poured into headquarters.

Our comms room broke down.

There were so many calls come through.

The system couldn't handle the number of calls that came through.

So it generated again an emotional and community response.

So many calls.

Blessing and a curse.

Yep.

Definitely.

But amidst the noise, one call stood out.

The voice on the other end of the line was adamant.

They knew the man in the sketches.

A convicted child sex offender who lived in the area.

Not Bill Dooley.

Not Brian Jackway.

This was an entirely new suspect.

A man named Brett Peter Cowan.

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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 Dimack.

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 Krigbaum and Doug Slawin.

And our operations team, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dinkle.

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

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.

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?

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

And if you'd like to make a donation to the Daniel Morecombe Foundation, please visit danielmorecum.com.au.

A boy goes missing from a bus stop in Queensland, Australia.

His disappearance made national headlines and launched the largest search for a missing child in Australia's history.

There were over 700 persons of interest.

It was absolutely enormous.

Now, for the first time, his parents share with a global audience their journey to uncover what happened to their son.

We'd said right from the start, who's ever responsible had picked on the wrong family.

So we just made it our life's work.

We're going to hunt you down.

And if not for the parents, the case might still be unsolved.

But in the end, the pressure led cops to take shocking risks and go to extraordinary lengths to catch this perpetrator.

The master deceiver was deceived and manipulated himself.

We did to him what he did to Daniel.

From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Where is Daniel Morecombe?

Available now on the binge.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.