Quest for a lost son

The parents of a missing boy want an inquest into the 2003 case.

THE first months of any murder or abduction investigation are the time when police are most likely to get a result, which is why the best and brightest investigators are normally working round the clock and focusing solely on the case.

But in Queensland things ran differently when it came to one of the most baffling child abduction cases of the decade: the disappearance of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe from a roadside near Nambour in the state's southeast in 2003.

Two senior investigators at the centre of the case were abruptly shifted to other duties early in the investigation, after they were found to be having an affair, the Queensland Police Service confirms.

The removal of the officers is one of a number of issues that may come under scrutiny, alongside a vast file of evidence, if Queensland Coroner Michael Barnes holds an inquest into Daniel's case later thisyear.

The teenager went missing while waiting at a bus stop to travel to the beach suburb of Maroochydore to buy Christmas presents for his family on December 7.

A suspicious man and a blue car were seen in the area at the time of the incident, sparking fears he had been abducted.

A huge police investigation dubbed Operation Vista was mounted, but no trace was found of the suspected abductor or of Daniel's body.

Late last year, Daniel's parents, Denise and Bruce Morcombe, wrote to Barnes asking for an inquest. Police are believed to be close to completing a file for the coroner's office.

Bruce Morcombe says he and Denise were told that two officers were removed from the case in the key period in 2004.

"It fractured the work team and the confidence Denise and I had with them," he says.

"They told us and we just accepted that view and we let the investigation continue, and now six years later we are still not any closer."

The Australian understands that the two officers involved told the Morcombes they had been shifted off the case.

Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson says the operation did not stall because of their transfer.

"There had been no disruption to the momentum of the operation," Atkinson says.

"The Morcombe investigation has also maintained a core group of investigators who have a continuity of knowledge in relation to the operation."

The Queensland Police Service says the two officers did not face disciplinary action because workplace relationships do not constitute misconduct. "To be removed from an investigation of this nature would in itself be a significant sanction for a police officer," a QPS spokeswoman says.

Efforts by The Australian to contact the two officers have been unsuccessful.

Atkinson says it was not necessary to inform the coroner about the decision to shift the detectives, and that officers are often rotated during an investigation so that case can benefit from being looked at by fresh eyes.

Bruce Morcombe says he is unsure exactly what the coroner might investigate but hopes that he can provide a fresh insight.

He is hoping the coroner will examine several persons of interest who have been questioned about Daniel's disappearance.

One is Douglas Brian Jackway, who is serving a jail sentence for a sex assault on a nine-year-old girl on the Sunshine Coast.

A month before Daniel's disappearance, Jackway had been released from jail after serving nearly eight years for sexually assaulting a boy he attacked on a roadside near Gladstone on Queensland's central coast in 1995. In late November 2003, Jackway was residing at Goodna, a suburb in Brisbane's outer west, and driving regularly to the Sunshine Coast, an area he knows well from his childhood there.

About two weeks before Daniel's disappearance, he was arrested near Noosa after leading police on a lengthy car chase through the region.

His distinctive old-model blue Holden Commodore was then impounded at a Sunshine Coast car yard, but on December 5 -- two days before Daniel's disappearance -- Jackway returned and drove off in the vehicle.

Goodna locals, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, say that police searched Jackway's vehicles parked at the Goodna property.

They say Jackway is known for his volatile nature, but they don't recall noticing him doing anything suspicious around children.

They say Jackway became well known in the district after he cameunder suspicion for breaking into vehicles.

A group of local youths, known for their no-nonsense attitude, decided to set an ambush.

"One guy was hiding in the bushes with a bow and arrow and the other guy had a samurai sword," says one local.

"Late at night they saw him [Jackway] come across the road and try the door handles on thecar.

"They jumped out and chased him halfway around the suburb. He didn't come again after that."

Police found no evidence linking the vehicles to Daniel, and Jackway has vigorously denied having any knowledge of his whereabouts.

Investigators have spent significant time tracking Jackway's movements around December 7. They have also interviewed a youth who lived near Goodna and had been associating with Jackway in the weeks leading up to Daniel's disappearance.

Another line of inquiry involving Jackway concerns a letter he received in jail. The anonymous writer blames him for ruining the writer's life by involving him in a terrible incident.

Former associates of Jackway have been interviewed by police, who took fingerprints and other material in a bid to locate the author of the letter.

Bruce Morcombe says police have confirmed to him that the letter exists, but have provided no further information.

When asked about the letter last week, a police officer said such matters are considered operational and there would be no comment.

A second person of interest whom the coroner may seek to examine is a prisoner who claims to have knowledge of where Daniel's body is buried, and how the boy had been drugged and tied up in the back seat of a car before being dumped in a 44-gallon drum off a local wharf.

The prisoner, who cannot be named because he is involved in a court case, agreed to meet Bruce Morcombe to pass on this information.

Morcombe was smuggled into police headquarters on the floor of a police car for the meeting.

"I was just trying to be calm because I saw it as an opportunity to extract information which was primarily what he knew about Daniel's abduction," Morcombe says. "He [said] he did see Daniel alive after the 7th of December and that he was heavily drugged in the back seat of somebody's vehicle, and I was trying to say what was your purpose of the trip.

"I don't place an enormous amount of importance in it.

"I think he is a liar and he stalled the investigation and that's probably a tactic to frustrate the police. He doesn't care about family or upsetting the family or anything."

Morcombe says he later showed up at an unrelated court hearing for the prisoner.

"We exchanged glares. I have always told police the day you catch and charge somebody then I will be the most dangerous person in the courtroom.

"They [can] have all the protective measures they like. I expect somebody to be slammed for that and we will wait and see," he says.

The Morcombes have established a hotline for tips about the case and a foundation that educates children on personal safety and assists victims of crime, particularly children. They have received hundreds of phone calls offering information that has then been passed on to police.

At one point they received information from an associate of the prisoner and personally investigated the information by travelling to a remote Sunshine Coast beach and digging up a suspicious mound. The information was found to be false and it is understood the the prisoner's claims have not checked out.

Another tip related to Daniel's body being rolled up in a carpet and dumped in a local quarry.

Morcombe is anxiously monitoring news about a quarry near Riverview -- a suburb near Ipswich, west of Brisbane -- which is being drained in relation to another missing person.

The police file that is likely to be handed to the coroner is voluminous. Over the years since Vista has been running, police have received thousands of tip-offs and tried everything from hypnosis to hi-tech science to get leads.

Locals in the Woombye area who made mobile telephone calls from the area at the time Daniel went missing were interviewed after their phone records were investigated.

Motorists travelling on the Nambour Connection road at the time also provided statements, with one Nambour local reporting a blue car being driven erratically at high speed along the road travelling east around the time of the disappearance.

Another saw a man leaning against a blue car opposite the bus stop before Daniel went missing. Police have released a series of sketches of the man but are yet to identify him.

Other information involves local mothers who had been picking their children up from the Woombye Primary School and noted a skinny, small-statured man described as "ratty faced" who had been seen in a blue car near the school on several occasions.

Some of the mothers tell The Australian they feel they are open to criticism for not going to the police about the incident until after the Morcombe case broke, but say police had earlier "thrown the book" at another family whose children had made up a local abduction attempt in the same area before Daniel's disappearance.

At least one of the women was hypnotised by police in a bid to extract further details about the "ratty faced" man.

For the Morcombes, the decision to ask for an inquest has been a difficult but necessary step.

"We don't want the case to be put in a back room somewhere where it becomes a cold case," Morcombe says.

"We know it's going to be anything but nice."