Eight years later, Brett Peter Cowan (born 18 September 1969),[3] a former Sunshine Coast resident, was charged with Morcombe's murder.

Morcombe was abducted from an unofficial bus stop under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass in the Woombye district of the Sunshine Coast approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of the Big Pineapple on Sunday, 7 December 2003.

[10] This publicity prompted civil liberties groups to call for laws banning media outlets from naming people linked to criminal cases.

Earlier in the month, a full-size clay model of the man believed to be involved in Morcombe's abduction was placed at the spot where he disappeared.

[13] On 13 August 2011, after an extensive Mr. Big police operation, police took Brett Peter Cowan into custody and charged him with Morcombe's murder, child stealing, deprivation of liberty, indecent treatment of a child under 16, interfering with a corpse, and other offences after having led undercover detectives to Morcombe's remains.

In 2006, Cowan had been interviewed over the Morcombe case and had admitted to police that he travelled along Kiel Mountain Road on his way to purchase marijuana from a drug dealer on the day of the disappearance.

[14][15] Cowan confessed to having seen and approached Morcombe to offer him a lift to the shopping centre,[16][17] having parked his car in a nearby car-park of the church he attended.

[7] By the end of the investigation, seventeen bones had been found, including a rib, hip, leg, arm, and vertebrae.

His legal team argued "... that the confession elicited through an undercover sting by police was inadmissible as evidence at trial".

The foundation is committed to educating children about personal safety, and to raising awareness throughout Australia of the dangers of predatory criminals.

These efforts are supported by the Australian media, especially on each anniversary of Morcombe's disappearance when a "Day for Daniel" is held to promote awareness of the vulnerability of children.

[29] In 2015, Bruce Morcombe spoke to the family of another missing child, William Tyrrell, and warned them that psychics would descend on them with "bizarre and offbeat ... distracting information".

He called it distressing and said that although they received hundreds of leads telling them that there was a "shed or a water tank", none were of any help, but still couldn't be ignored in case they included a "disguised confession".

[30] Morcombe's murder was the focus of the Crime Investigation Australia season 1 episode "Tears for Daniel"[31] aired in 2005.