| Bruce Morcombe | |
| Birth Date: | [1] |
| Birth Place: | Adelaide, South Australia, Australia |
| Occupation: | child safety advocate |
| Known For: | co-founding the Daniel Morcombe Foundation |
| Spouse: | Denise Morcombe (m. 1983) |
| Children: | 3 (including Daniel Morcombe) |
| Awards: | Sunshine Coast Region Citizen of the Year (2018) Queensland Great (2020) |
Bruce David Morcombe (born 1959) is an Australian child safety advocate.
Morcombe is arguably best known as the co-founder of the Daniel Morcombe Foundation, a non-profit organisation which he established with his wife Denise Morcombe in 2005 following the abduction and murder of their 13-year-old son Daniel Morcombe in December 2003.[2] [3]
During his childhood, Morcombe's parents owned a Brisbane fruit shop in the inner west suburb of Rosalie.[4]
At the age of eight, Morcombe and his older brother Perry discovered a body of a murdered woman in the grounds of Milton State School on 12 November 1967 after following a blood trail they had found outside the parents fruit shop.[4] [5]
In 1970 Morcombe's family relocated to Melbourne, and in 1977 he commenced working for the Board of Works.[1]
Morcombe met Melbourne-born bank worker Denise Beavis on 15 February 1980 in Lorne, Victoria.[1] The pair were married on 3 September 1983.[1] Their first son was born on 4 October 1987. They then had twin boys who were born eight weeks premature on 19 December 1989, including Daniel.[1] After accepting a redundancy package from the Board of Works in February 1992, the Morcombe's purchased a Jim's Mowing franchise in Boronia.[1] [6]
The couple later accepted an opportunity to swap the Boronia franchise with a regional franchiser territory based in and around Sunshine Coast in Queensland.[1] Initially living at Mountain Creek where their children attending nearby Mountain Creek State School, the family eventually settled at Palmwoods.[1]
See main article: Murder of Daniel Morcombe. Morcombe's son Daniel was abducted from a bus stop on the Sunshine Coast on 7 December 2003.[7] The circumstances surrounding his disappearance triggered a widespread search and lengthy police investigation, with Morcombe and his wife frequently appearing in the media appealing to the public for information.[8] Following the arrest of Brett Peter Cowan on 13 August 2011, some of Daniel Morcombe's remains were found at a search site at the Glasshouse Mountains on 21 August 2011.[7] His funeral was held on 7 December 2012 at Siena Catholic College.[9]
Cowan's trial commenced on 10 February 2014, where he entered a plea of not guilty and refused to give evidence.[10] Cowan was found guilty on 13 March 2014 and sentenced to life imprisonment.[11] [12] Cowan appealed against his sentence but it was dismissed by the Queenslandd Court of Appeal on 21 May 2015.[13] The High Court of Australia dismissed a subsequent appeal on 11 March 2016.[14]
With his wife Denise, Morcombe established the Daniel Morcombe Foundation in May 2005 to educate children about how to stay safe in both a physical environment as well as online.[2] [3] This has included launching educational resources such as Foundation Red and holding events such as the Walk for Daniel which was inaugurated on the Sunshine Coast in 2005 and the Day for Daniel, a national awareness and fundraising day held on the last Friday of each October when all Australians are asked to wear red, to reflect the red shirt Daniel Morcombe was wearing when he went missing.[2] [3]
Morcombe has openly advocated for a publicly accessible sex offender registry to allow members of the public to know which suburbs convicted sex offenders are living. The proposal garnered the support of the Federal Government, but met with reluctance among state governments which caused frustration for Morcombe.[15] In 2019, he described the proposal as comparable to crocodile signage found in Far North Queensland, stating: "One similarity I use when we were coming up north is every creek crossing you see there are signs, in multiple languages, warning not to swim here, you’ll be eaten by a croc. We don’t go out shooting crocs or punching them, but we’ve got an awareness program that says ‘look out, these guys live in the area'. Isn’t that the same as a public sex offenders website? We are alerting the public to look out for these people. Predators need to be aware that we’re watching."[16]
Morcombe has occasionally commented on other high-profile missing persons cases involving children. He revealed in 2009 that he and his wife had been in contact with the family of missing British girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared from Portugal in 2007.[17]
In 2015, he criticised the decision to stop the parents of William Tyrrell from speaking to the media to appeal for information relating to Tyrell's disappearance.[18]
Morcombe formally appealed to the Western Australian state coroner in 2016 for an inquest to be held into the unsolved 1997 murder of 11-year-old Gerard Ross.[19] Morcombe said his interest in the Ross murder came about when he learned that a person of interest who was investigated as part of his son's murder was also questioned in relation to Gerard Ross' murder.[19]
In December 2021, Morcombe called on Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to instigate an independent review of forensic evidence from the investigation of the murder of Shandee Blackburn.[20]
In 2021, Morcombe appeared on the "Families of Missing Persons" edition of You Can't Ask That on ABC TV which first aired on 26 May 2021.[21]
Morcombe was angered by the release of The Stranger in 2022, a film directed by Thomas M. Wright and starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, which is based on the undercover police investigation which led to the arrest of Brett Peter Cowan.[22] Describing the film as a "terrible tale that glorifies a horrific incident", Morcombe asked people not to see the movie and instead donate the money they would have used to buy a movie ticket to donate to the Daniel Morcombe Foundation.[22]
In late 2011, Morcombe and his wife Denise were jointly named as Queensland Australians of the Year, and as a result were nominated to become 2012 Australians of the Year, but lost to Geoffrey Rush.[23] [24]
Morcombe was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of his service to the community relating to safety awareness programs for children.[25]
Morcombe and his wife Denise were both named as the Sunshine Coast's Citizens of the Year at the local Australia Day awards in 2018.[26]
In 2020, he was named as a Queensland Great.[27]