Inquest into Daniel Morcombe’s murder resumes

UPDATE: Claims an assistant commissioner told a fellow officer to “f*** off” for suggesting Brett Peter Cowan was to blame for Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance have been blasted as “outrageous” and perjury.

A FORMER police officer’s claim that Assistant Commissioner Mike Condon told him to “f*** off” for suggesting Brett Peter Cowan was to blame for Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance have been slammed by the top cop.

“That was an outrageous statement,” Mr Condon told the inquest.

He accused Dennis Martyn of committing perjury with the claim.

Earlier, Mr Condon said he would “never” have approved the arrest of Brett Peter Cowan prior to 2011.

Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner Mike Condon. Pic: Peter Wallis

Taking the stand, the top cop was questioned about when he first became aware of Cowan in the early phase of the investigation into the disappearance of Daniel Morcombe.

“There was a list generated from a number of databases to work up as many known paedophiles within the Sunshine Coast area as we could,” he said.

“From there we could try and generate information that could give us a direction.”

“It was certainly around 21-22 December, 2003, that inquiries were generated.”

He said while former police officers Kenneth King and Dennis Martyn’s investigation on Cowan was “very interesting at that stage,” he said there was no direct evidence implicating him in “any offence”.

He said his job was to apply the “finite resources” to the path he thought was best.

“My view is we had some 84 witnesses talking about a blue car during the critical time, all good-meaning people, talking about one or two persons with Daniel ...” he said.

“It would be foolish not to apply as much resources as we could to that line of inquiry, taking into account all we had with Cowan at the time, and for a lot of people, was a gut feeling — which was interesting but not evidence.”

Daniel Morcombe was 13 when he went missing from a Sunshine Coast bus stop.

“He denied seeing Daniel ...[and then] his previous history from the NT — once again, interesting but not admissible.”

“We didn’t have much evidence to ... to commit resources away from other areas ...”

“We made a decision in good faith, to apply whatever resources to the path we believed would get the best result.”

He told the inquest he would “never” have approved Cowan’s arrest prior to 2011.

In 2003, Condon held the rank of detective inspector in charge of the state homicide squad.

Assistant Commissioner Condon said he first laid eyes on Cowan in September 2006.

He agreed Cowan resembled the comfit, adding “as do thousands of others, unfortunately”.

He said he made “no apologies” for the decisions he made, which were done “in good faith”.

He said 84 witnesses sent him down the path of the blue car.

“It occupied a lot of the investigators time?” Mr Boyce put to him.

“We’ve got to protect the investigation two years down the track when the Supreme Court has to assess the admissibility of the evidence,” Assistant Commissioner Condon said.

The court has heard that Cowan was given “advance notice” in December 2003 that his car was about to be forensically examined.

“You wouldn’t normally do that?” Mr Boyce asked Assistant Commissioner Condon.

“You’re not in the habit of warning people?”

Assistant Commissioner Condon replied it was a “fine balance” with trying to get the cooperation of persons of interest, without having a search warrant.

“It’s not uncommon, I’ve done it myself,” he said.

“Could they (persons of interest) clean the car? Possibly.”

“F*** off, you wouldn’t know anything”

That was the response the then-head of the Homicide Squad, Mike Condon, allegedly gave the then-Detective Senior Constable Dennis Martyn after he told him he believed they’d find Brett Peter Cowan was “their man” in the Daniel Morcombe case.

“What did you say to that?” Peter Boyce, acting for the Morcombes, asked.

“What could you say to that?” Martyn replied.

Former police officer Mr Martyn has told the inquest how he and another officer compiled a report in the early investigation making it known that “more focus” should be put on Brett Peter Cowan.

Mr Martyn said the report, sent to the Major Incident Room, recommended a course of action, including seizing Cowan’s computer and “doing all the mandatory” checks for a person who is considered a “good suspect”.

He told the inquest Cowan, a known paedophile, was near “probable” and “should have been investigated”.

He also said he was concerned about the delay between taking DNA and forensic evidence, to when it was analysed.

Lawyer Peter Boyce, representing the Morcombes, asked Martyn when he knew Cowan was their man.

“He was a highly probable person of interest after my first conversation,” he said.

Mike Condon, now an Assistant Commissioner, is expected to give evidence as part of the proceedings.

Asked outside court how they felt hearing evidence from two former police officers who said they knew it was Cowan from the beginning, Bruce Morcombe said it was “unnerving”.

He said the inquest showed it was “really relevant ... in establishing that a review process of the investigative procedures is important”.

“It’s not about Denise and I, and what we think of the investigative process,” Mr Morcombe said.

“We know a guilty man is behind bars and Daniel is deceased.”

“What this process is clearing the path; making it easier for the next unfortunate family that will follow in our footsteps.”

Bruce and Denise Morcombe arriving for the inquest into Daniel's death today. Pic: Mark Calleja

Not enough to search Cowan’s property, officer says

A POLICE officer has told the inquest into Daniel Morcombe’s murder that he believed there would have been “insufficient grounds” to obtain a warrant to search Brett Peter Cowan’s property in the early days.

Detective Sergeant David Wilkinson, who was officer-in-charge of the Major Incident Room, said he thought a Magistrate would have “looked at me oddly” had he tried.

“We were looking in the second week following [Daniel’s disappearance],” he said.

“We had no crime scene ... we were looking at a number of investigative theories.”

“[There weren’t] sufficient grounds for a search warrant at that time”.

He said Cowan appeared to have a “loose alibi”.

Former detective Wilkinson said he had requested information from Queensland Police Service before appearing at the inquest but was not provided with all the records.

He said without it, he was “only giving myself half a chance to answer the questions adequately”.

“I need to be fully armed with information,” he said.

“Happy to be here, happy to help out but if I need to answer questions then I need information.”

Mr Wilkinson was asked whether one of the documents he was provided with appeared to be the long-missing report on Brett Cowan written by former officers King and Martyn.

Mr Wilkinson said he couldn’t be sure what the undated, unsigned document was but the inquest was told it had the title “Suspect Operation Vista — Cowan, Brett Peter”.

Mr Wilkinson denied ignoring Cowan as a suspect early on.

“We weren’t waiting around,” he said.

He said following Martyn and King’s initial inquiries, more detectives were tasked to seize and examine Cowan’s car.

“Certainly whoever actioned that ... They certainly weren’t thinking to themselves well, this guy’s not worth looking at. Quite the contrary.”

Report on Cowan, notebook missing

FORMER police officer Kenneth King has told the inquest into Daniel Morcombe’s murder that he was surprised when he heard a report and notebook had gone missing.

After taking the stand, Mr King said he and Mr Martyn prepared a written report about Cowan, labelling him a “strong suspect” and took it to the detectives in the Major Incident Room.

It included copies of Cowan’s criminal history and other information they’d gathered.

The two officers had even driven the route Cowan claimed to have taken on the day Daniel disappeared — right past the bus stop where the teen was last seen.

“He was a sex offender with a history ... consistent with being the type of person who may abduct a child from the roadside,” Mr King said.

“He put himself in the vicinity ... He had a white vehicle and it was possible that there were two witnesses that reported seeing a white vehicle on the opposite side of the bus stop.

“He had recently shaved off a goatee beard. He resembled a comfit that had been produced. And there was that 45-minute gap in his timeline.”

But Mr King said he found out years later the report had gone missing.

“I was quite surprised when I learned the report had gone missing many years later,” he said.

“I had no idea.

“I had thought it was odd given the normal investigative practice of coming back to officers ... I thought it was a little bit odd that no one had come back to me to check details.”

He said years later, when asked to make a statement, he asked for the report and the officer taking the statement “wasn’t aware the report existed”.

Mr King said police could have carried out surveillance on Cowan, conducted through forensic examinations of any property associated with him and a covert strategy — which would prove successful many years later — could have been done much earlier.

Under questioning from the Morcombes’ lawyer, Peter Boyce, Mr King said he and Mr Martyn went to see Cowan on December 21 — two weeks after Daniel disappeared — and again the following day.

“I got the impression from him ... he seemed like someone who was a little bit too cooperative,” he said.

Mr Boyce asked: “He was the only person who had admitted going past the scene and back past the scene again?”

Mr King replied: “Yes ... the inquiries that I was aware of, he was the standout person.”

Mr King said he had a high quality digital camera and, without anyone seeing, crawled under the car to photograph the tyre tread on Cowan’s vehicle.

Later, he made a phone call to police in Northern Territory to make further inquiries into Cowan’s criminal history there, which involved the abduction and horrific sexual assault of a young boy.

He said he was unable to get hold of the investigating officer but was able to get detailed information on the crime.

Mr Boyce asked Mr King why he and Mr Martyn took the extra step of writing a report on Cowan to give to detectives.

“Because we wanted to highlight him as a suspect,” Mr King said.

“Time needed to be of the essence.

“We took the criminal history information and we stapled that to the extra report so they were there as an annex.

“So the MIR (Major Incident Room) would have that information at their fingertips. We had the photographs that we had taken (and) there was also the audio recording that we took.”

Mr King said he could not understand why such emphasis had been put on witness sightings of a blue car when two witnesses had also seen a white vehicle.

“I couldn’t understand ... why the blue vehicle was of any more importance than a white vehicle,” he said.

He said investigating the blue car sightings was “absolutely understandably an important aspect of the inquiry” — but the white car sightings should have been given equal attention.

“The thing that struck me about the blue vehicle ... it didn’t seem to be a partial rego that they’d married to some other piece of information ... that overwhelmingly connected it to the crime scene.

“I’m not in any way criticising the effort to follow-up the blue vehicle.

“From our inquiries, the significance of (the white car sightings) was that Cowan would have potentially pulled up on that side of the road.”

Mr King criticised the early investigation, saying that if the investigation into Cowan had been left with Taskforce Argos detectives — a renowned unit that targets child sex offenders — no stone would have been left unturned.

“My concern with this is that it could have been done a lot better and part of that was a time factor on how quickly things were done,” he said.

“Why was it that my report went missing?

“Why did my notebook go missing for a period of time?

“Why did, when such a large amount of resources (were available) ... why weren’t more resources directed at (convicted killer Brett) Cowan?

“Inadequate resources were directed to Cowan in the early stages.

“I would have put a surveillance team on him immediately ... the moment they could possibly be on him.

“I would have flown to the absolute limits of the law.

“It’s not a difficult thing to get a search warrant.

“I don’t accept that, given the large number of experienced detectives in the MIR, that a first rate plan, well-resourced, couldn’t have been executed very quickly to do more with Cowan,” Mr King said.

“I think that is ridiculous.”

Top cop asked to leave inquest

AN Assistant Commissioner from Queensland Police Service has been asked to leave the inquest into Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance and murder so witnesses could give evidence without any “fear of intimidation”.

Coroner Terry Ryan ruled Assistant Commissioner Mike Condon should leave the room while two former police officers give evidence after one said he would be unable to on “medical grounds” should the senior officer remain.

The inquest into the disappearance and murder of Queensland schoolboy Daniel has resumed — six years after it began.

Prison image of Brett Peter Cowan.

Daniel Morcombe.

Coroner Ryan agreed to resume the hearing for a further two days so witnesses, including serving and retired members of the Queensland Police Service, can be questioned.

Police charged serial paedophile Brett Peter Cowan in 2011, eight years after Daniel disappeared from a bus stop, following a lengthy and complex covert operation.

Cowan gave evidence at the inquest in early 2011 but the hearing was suspended as the covert operation began.

Cowan would eventually confess to covert operatives and detailed how he’d lured the teenager from the bus stop into his car.

He drew a map and took police to the place where he said he’d left 13-year-old Daniel’s body — a Sunshine Coast macadamia farm.

Police relied on scientific experts and State Emergency Services volunteers to dig and sift through an area of swamp and bushland until Daniel’s remains were found.

Cowan was later convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence.

Counsel assisting Peter Johns said the inquest would hear from four witnesses today, beginning with former police officer Kenneth King.

The inquest has heard that both Mr King and another former officer, Dennis Martyn, have asked that Assistant Commissioner Mike Condon leave the court while they give evidence.

Mr Johns said he had no objection to Mr Condon remaining in the room but added Mr Martyn had advised he would be unable to give evidence on “medical grounds” should the senior officer stay.

Solicitor Peter Boyce, for the Morcombe family, said the two former police officers should be able to give evidence “freely and without any fear of intimidation”.

Coroner Terry Ryan asked Mr Condon to leave the room while the two officers take the stand.