Daniel Morcombe, a 13-year-old from Australia, had plans to go on a solo trip for a haircut and to buy Christmas gifts for his family on December 7, 2003.
According to a report from the Coroners Court of Queensland obtained by PEOPLE, the teenager lived less than a mile from the bus stop and had visited the Sunshine Plaza shopping center in Queensland ‘more than a dozen times before’.
Concern deepened for Morcombe’s parents, Bruce and Denise, when their son did not return from his trip on the Sunshine Coast.
After an initial search, he was reported as a missing person.
Authorities commenced an official investigation into his disappearance.
The investigation identified 33 individuals of interest, including 29-year-old Brett Peter Cowan.
Cowan appeared on video footage taken near the place where the child disappeared while waiting for his bus at around 2 pm, according to officials.
However, he was initially cleared due to insufficient evidence to identify him as a suspect at that time, as reported by PEOPLE.
Seven years after Morcombe vanished, his parents requested an inquest into his disappearance.
This inquest proceeded despite earlier unsuccessful attempts to trace his whereabouts.
During the inquest, officers questioned Cowan about his criminal past involving sexual offenses against minors.
The report noted that Cowan had claimed neither of the previous crimes involved violence.
A year after reopening the inquest, the Queensland Police Service carried out a successful undercover operation which led Cowan to confess to abducting and assaulting Morcombe.
Cowan revealed to an undercover officer that he had offered the boy a ride to the shopping center, according to the report.
He reportedly parked at the Christian Outreach Center and approached Morcombe to speak with him.
Subsequently, Cowan took the child to an abandoned house, enticing him with a glass of water, as detailed in the report.
Authorities stated that Morcombe was killed within an hour of his abduction and that Cowan, described as an ‘opportunistic offender,’ sexually assaulted and strangled him when he tried to escape.
It was revealed that after committing the murder, Cowan disposed of Morcombe’s remains at ‘an old sand mining site’ before discarding his clothes and shoes.
He returned to the site a week later to ‘dispose of the remaining evidence,’ according to the report.
Following Cowan’s arrest in August 2011, he was charged with murder, indecent treatment, and interfering with a corpse, as mentioned in the filing.
“You knew if he ran away, you’d be caught. So you killed him. You killed him because you didn’t want to get caught,” stated Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Roslyn Atkinson during Cowan’s sentencing in March 2014, as reported by ABC.
“Everything you did to that boy is horrific and disgraceful. I’ve seen no evidence in the months you’ve been in this court that you ever felt any remorse for what you did,” added Atkinson.
Cowan was convicted and imprisoned in March 2014, with the Australian Broadcasting Company reporting that he would serve a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years without parole.
After Morcombe’s funeral in 2012, his parents established the Daniel Morcombe Foundation. The foundation aims to provide ‘personal child safety education to children and young people to prevent abuse and promote lifelong health and well-being’.
If you have been affected by any of the issues discussed in this article and would like to speak confidentially with someone, contact The Survivor’s Trust for free at 08088 010 818, or visit their website at thesurvivorstrust.org