DANIEL MORCOMBE INQUEST OFFERS UP A FEW LESSONS WHICH POLICE MUST LEARN FROM

In any homicide or suspected homicide investigation, everything in the way of tipoffs, someone's intuition and perception, even a well founded hunch, must not be disgarded and fobbed off by anyone, including the Police Commissioner.

Nothing which is brought to the attention of police, or thought to be a possibility by an individual police officer, can afford to be swept under the carpet as though it's a red herring or in plain English - a load of make believe rubbish.


No one in the general public is ever going to know exactly what present day Assistant Commissioner Mike Condon said to detectives Kenneth King and Dennis Martyn in 2003 about their intuitive belief that Brett Peter Cowan was the killer of Daniel Morcombe. But it doesn't matter now.


What matters now is that police, and that includes Condon, have to learn a lesson or two from some very identifiable flaws and oversights in the early days of the Daniel Morcombe investigation immediately following his disappearance.

Clearly Cowan should have been apprehended and charged at least 10 years earlier than he was. In some instances, intuition is like a bridge between suspicion and attaining the evidence needed to prosecute someone for a crime. Some police have it, some obviously don't.

The fact that detective King's and Martyn's intuition was passed off as bollocks gave Cowan 10 years of freedom he should have never had, and subjected the family of Daniel Morcombe to 10 years of torment which was in hindsight oh so avoidable.