Mr. Big

On December 7, 2003, 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe waited under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass at Woombye, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, for a bus to take him Christmas shopping. The bus had broken down, and the replacement drove past without stopping. When the next bus came about ten minutes later, Daniel was gone.

Brett Peter Cowan, who had prior convictions for sexually assaulting young boys, was questioned within two weeks, but the lead was set aside, and he later admitted being on Kiel Mountain Road that afternoon. In April 2011, as a coronial inquest was underway, detectives began a covert Mr. Big operation. Undercover officers posing as a criminal gang slowly won his trust. In August 2011 he told the gang’s supposed boss that he had abducted and killed Daniel and left his body in bushland. He was arrested on August 13, and searchers soon recovered Daniel’s remains near the Glass House Mountains.

On March 13, 2014, a jury found him guilty of murder, indecent treatment of a child and interfering with a corpse, and the next day he was sentenced to life with a 20-year non-parole period. The Queensland Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in May 2015, and the High Court refused him special leave to appeal in March 2016. Queensland’s public child sex offender register, called Daniel’s Law, went live on December 31, 2025.