Daniel and His Family at the Big Pineapple in 1993.
Daniel Morcombe's family have been told their lost boy's remains will returned to them by Friday afternoon. In an extraordinary turnaround after 15 months of waiting, the police, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Coroner agreed to release Daniel to the family's funeral director.
Daniel's father Bruce said the family hoped to lay him to rest within the next 10 days. "Eleven am this morning you have no hope to three o’clock it is done deal and certainly within 24 hours from now, most certainly Daniel will be back with us at the funeral parlour,'' he said. Advertisement "It has been an amazing couple of hours seemingly from nowhere, Daniel will be released. "The family is in a bit of a huddle this evening and we are working through potential funeral arrangements and what that will involve – whether it is a public or private funeral and those sorts of things.'' It came after Brett Peter Cowan, the man accused of abducting and murdering the Sunshine Coast schoolboy, consented through his legal counsel to release the remains. The accused man's announcement brought "no joy'' to Daniel's parents who were relieved they were now one step closer to being able to bury their lost boy. Speaking earlier outside the committal hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to bring Mr Cowan to trial for allegedly abducting and murdering the 13-year-old, Mr Morcombe said the family had been without Daniel for 3280 days. It has been 15 months, or as Mr Morcombe put it, "467 days" since Daniel's remains were found on a property on Kings Road on Glass House Mountains. "There has been an amount of correspondence between the state coroner, the DPP, the state police service and Mr Cowan's defence team and that correspondence has been ongoing for quite a number of months and obviously the family's been included in that but largely not respected in having Daniel's remains released in a timely fashion," Mr Morcombe said. "There are a number of players who appeared to have held up Daniel's remains and we are just going through that process. "Obviously it is a recent development, but interestingly it was after the last DNA expert did provide their evidence this morning, so perhaps they have made a decision that they believe they have nothing to gain by doing their own tests.
That was a matter for them, but it’s been 467 days since Daniel's remains were found. “One would suggest that is more than ample time for everybody concerned in this matter to do their own tests and be satisfied with those results and cross check and triple check of required." Mr Morcombe said his family had not been kept in the dark but he felt they had not been listened to. The Morcombes said they did not know which state body held Daniel's remains. "We still have to wait for the DPP, the coroner and the Queensland Police, so I don't know how much longer we have to wait for, but it's not going to be an easy process," Mrs Morcombe said. "I think we are the most patient people you could ever imagine, so we just have to keep waiting and waiting. It's all you can do really." Defence counsel Michael Bosscher said the decision to release the remains, from his client's prospective, could not have come any faster. "I don't think it is possible that we could have done it any quicker," he said outside court. "We did it immediately after I finished cross examining the very last relevant scientific witness, so within half an hour of that concluding and confirming my instructions in the break, that meant we were in a position to do that." Mr Bosscher said his client’s instructions were that he did not see any further benefit in having the remains examined again, after hearing the evidence and cross examination of the scientific witnesses. Mr Cowan faces five charges in relation to the December 7, 2003 disappearance and death of the 13-year-old. Day four of the committal hearing was dominated by the cross examination of identification witnesses, ending on a sombre note. Witness remembers 'feeling sorry' for boy left at the bus stop The final of today's five identification witnesses, Fiona Theuerkauf, told the Brisbane Magistrates Court that she remembered "feeling sorry" for the young boy the bus she was travelling on drove past, on December 7, 2003. Ms Theuerkauf, who would only have been 17 years old when Daniel disappeared from the Nambour-Connection Road where he had attempted to flag down a bus, said she remembered seeing a "little boy" standing under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass from her vantage point in the back seat of the bus. "I was travelling to Maroochydore, we went under the bridge and we saw a little boy standing there and the bus didn't stop," she said. "I kinda felt sorry for him, that we didn't stop. He tried to wave the bus down when we went past. There was a man standing behind him when we went past ... and I could see him when we went past, through the back window." Ms Theuerkauf said the man she saw was leaning against the overpass wall about three and a half or four metres away from the boy. The man had shoulder length dark hair, a goatee and must have been wearing a short shirt because she could see a tattoo on his left upper arm. However under cross examination from defence counsel Tim Meehan, Ms Theuerkauf said she was unable to make a positive identification from a photo board of 12 men she was shown by police, as none of the people shown had the characteristics she had reported and she was forced to rely on her memory of the man's upper face. Earlier in the afternoon, Arthur Whitworth, another identification witness, said he remembered seeing a blue "oldish" car parked near the overpass as he travelled past as a passenger in a four wheel drive. He said "the young fella in the red shirt" caught his eye and noticed the boy was speaking to a man who was leaning against the car, which had an open back passenger door. Both Mr Whitworth and Ms Theuerkauf gave their statements to police within a week of Daniel's disappearance. Daniel sightings up and down the coast The court also heard from witnesses who claimed they had seen Daniel near Townsville, the Gold Coast and Toowong in Brisbane in the days, weeks and months following the 13-year-old's alleged abduction. Those statements, were not given to police until months, and in some cases years, after Daniel's case first made headlines. An elderly woman claims she saw a boy matching Daniel's description at a service station near Townsville in January 2004. In a testimony that went for 30 minutes and had to be constantly stopped for clarification, Denise Lincoln told a story which involved minute detail of clothes and cars and observations of her friends, a service station attendant and noted dates by referring to an NRL grand final the Cowboys lost to the Tigers. Mrs Lincoln said she had stopped at a service station at Yabulu to buy a paper and was walking back to her car when she saw a man "exclusively dressed" standing with a boy. She told the court that while her gaze was taken by the man, whom she believed to be in his 70s and wearing clothes that "would have kept [her] in food for about three months", the child standing next to him tried desperately to catch her attention. She said the boy smiled at her and mouthed 'come on' and gestured to her paper, which had a photo of Daniel on the front page. She said after a few moments of these charades, she looked at the paper and mouthed 'Daniel' to which the child mouthed 'yes'. She told the court she mouthed 'really' and the child, who was dressed in a canary yellow t-shirt, nodded. Mrs Lincoln said she then went to walk past and say 'hello Daniel', when she said the man noticed the interaction between the two and threw the boy into the nearby men's toilets, swearing. The woman then told a convoluted story which involved a low-speed car chase on a road which led back to the highway where she saw the child being held in custody by the well-dressed man and another woman in the car. The woman smiled and laughed during moments of her testimony, including when she told defence counsel Tim Meehan that while she had a mobile phone, she "had no idea how to use it".
She said after "drying her tears" she continued on to a friend's house, who was "wild" she was late for their catch up, and went home to bed without calling the police to report her experience. She eventually gave her statement to police in 2006, after walking into a police station with a newspaper article which identified a potential suspect in Daniel's disappearance and asking to see a photo of what the man looked like when he was released from jail. While attempting to clarify the clothes the man she saw with the child was wearing, Mr Meehan asked if the man looked like a "drug baron". Chief magistrate Brendan Butler interrupted to say it might help if Mr Meehan explained what a drug baron looked like. "They have a lot of bling," Mrs Lincoln answered with a smile. The court room, including Mr Cowan laughed. The Morcombes did not. Despite the sometimes complicated nature of Mrs Lincoln's evidence, the woman said she was convinced the boy she saw was Daniel. "He told me he was," she said. A second woman claimed she saw the 13-year-old on the Gold Coast the day after he was reported missing. Daniel had left his family's Palmwoods home to go Christmas shopping on December 7, 2003; he never returned home.
After Queensland's biggest police investigation, 42-year-old Mr Cowan was arrested and charged with Daniel's abduction and murder in August last year. Soon after police found Daniel's remains in a property on Kings Road at Glass House Mountains. Tracey Carpentar said she saw a boy she believes matched Daniel's description in Southport on the Gold Coast, close to 200 kilometres from where Daniel went missing, on December 8, 2003. She said she saw a man and a woman, whom she believed to both be on drugs, sitting in grass, with a subdued boy standing about a metre behind them. She said the child had his head down and was looking at the ground and did not interact with the couple who sat silently. She described the man as having a beard and looking scruffy, while the woman, who had long dark hair and bad teeth, rolled cigarettes and passed them to him. "Something just didn't feel right," she said about the scenario. "[The child] was clean, his head was down, ... he didn't fit in, ... I don't know what it was." Ms Carpentar did not give her statement to police about what she saw until May 7 2004. More members of the public have entered the Brisbane courtroom as the committal has progressed. "I just wanted to see what the accused looked like," one said after the lunch break. "This...it's not how I imagined it to be. It's not like it is on TV, like on Law and Order, is it?" Forensic science in the spotlight Mr Cowan's defence counsel used the fourth morning of his committal hearing to once again question a DNA expert over the possibility of contamination. The evidence has centred on the removal of bones and clothing from a search site on Kings Road at Glass House Mountains 15 months ago. The 17 "skeletal elements" uncovered were eventually determined to be Daniel's after a painstaking DNA identification process hampered by the condition of the bones and the time they lay out in the open. The morning of the fourth day was no different.
Dr Jeremy Austin, an expert in ancient DNA from the University of Adelaide, told the court he compared DNA from a humerus bone provided to him and matched it to DNA samples provided from Daniel's two brothers and parents. Dr Austin said he used tests that matched the maternal line, known as mitochondrial DNA testing, as well as a test which focused on the Y chromosome, or paternal line. But as he has for all the DNA experts so far, Mr Bosscher questioned the sensitivity of the testing methods and then possibility of contamination. On top of the full protective suit, face mask and two layers of gloves used by testers, Dr Austin said the surface of the bones were subjected to 15 minutes each side in a high intensity UV light box, which was used to remove any contaminants. Dr Austin admitted the procedure was not 100 per cent fool proof but said in his 12 or 13 years examining DNA in this method, he had not detected any signs of cross examination. He said if contamination had occurred in this instance, he would have expected to find two mitochondrial DNA profiles. But he only found the one, which he matched to Daniel's mum Denise. Dr Austin said he had matched the remains to Daniel, however in his report he could only say he could not exclude the bones were Daniel's. When asked how many people shared the same DNA profile as Daniel, Dr Austin said there were only four that he knew of - Daniel's parents and siblings. While he agreed with Mr Bosscher that there was no exclusive Australian mitochondrial DNA database which would give an indication of how many people shared those DNA sequences, Dr Austin said European and other international databases provided a guide, given the relative youth of the Australian population.
"What we do know is the modern Australian population had to have come from countries overseas," he said. "We know Australia is a multi-cultural population so the modern Australian population has to have come from the four major continents." Mr Butler, who is overseeing the committal hearing, agreed, adding his four grandparents had come from Europe and therefore he would expect to share similar DNA profiles with Europeans. Dr Austin said while he could not definitively say the remains he tested were Daniel's, that was his opinion. "We can be confident we can exclude a large section of the Australian population as sharing that DNA type," he said. The committal hearing will continue tomorrow.
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