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Netflix movie The Stranger revives chilling questions about another missing child case

Home> Film & TV

Updated 10:25 29 Jan 2023 GMTPublished 10:13 29 Jan 2023 GMT

Netflix movie The Stranger revives chilling questions about another missing child case

The Stranger shows how police underwent a sting operation to catch Daniel Morcombe's killer

Anish Vij

Anish Vij

Netflix movie The Stranger has raised chilling questions about another missing child case.

In 2003, a boy named Daniel Morcombe, 13, was abducted and murdered by monster Brett Cowan and Joel Edgerton's new movie follows the police investigation that eventually brought the killer down.

However, the film has revived eerie similarities with a 1997 unsolved case where Gerard Ross, 11, vanished in broad daylight.

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Check out the frightening teaser for The Stranger below:

The 11-year-old boy was snatched in broad daylight in Rockingham, south of Perth on October 14, 1997, just 800m away from his family home.

Gerard's body was found 15 days after he was reported missing and we still don't know who the killer is.

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Daniel Morcombe.
Family handout

Now if we look at the case of Daniel - which has been documented in The Stranger - he was taken by Brett Cowan in December 2003 at a bus stop near The Big Pineapple on the Sunshine Coast.

Eight years later his bones and clothes were found in a remote bush on Glasshouse Mountain.

Gerard Ross.
WA Police

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Cowan had a history of snatching and torturing young boys and previously served a one year prison sentence in 1989 for raping a seven year old boy.

In 1993, he raped a seven-year-old in a an abandoned Darwin car yard and was jailed for seven years in 1994, only serving three and a half years.

When he became a suspect for the Daniel Morcombe case, we found out that the killer relocated to the Sunshine Coast in 1997.

Brett Cowan pictured on the right.
Queensland Police

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Daniel's father Bruce said: "There are a number of remarkable similarities, striking and haunting.

"Similar ages, young boys going about an everyday activity, heading to the shops, suddenly they vanished, appearing to be no witnesses to the incident.

"And as time would progress, both their bodies were retrieved.

"The finding of Daniel's remains were in fact in pine plantation and the eerie dirt track that led them there is very, very similar to some of the photos that we've seen of where Gerard's final resting place was."

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The father says he wants to help the Ross family but is 'frustrated' that the public have 'forgotten about this poor boy'.

"We had a coronial inquest, and I would suggest it was the catalyst for solving Daniel's case so I feel very frustrated in wanting to help the Ross family," Bruce added.

Netflix

After an elaborate sting operation, undercover police were able to recruit Cowan into a fake criminal gang where he seemingly made his confessions on tape.

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"No, yeah, I did it. It is my deepest, darkest secret … I’m not proud of it," he said.

The Stranger is a 'fictionalised account' of what happened and all names were changed, producers said.

Featured Image Credit: Netflix/WA Police

Topics: Netflix, Crime

Anish Vij
Anish Vij

Anish has an MA in Multimedia Journalism and is passionate about delivering sarcastic/mildly amusing content. After studying business at undergrad, Anish realised that he’d much prefer getting paid to rant about a topic, rather than to find a solution to it. Apart from that, he loves the ‘Four F’s’, as he calls it - family, friends, football and food. Email: [email protected]

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@Anish_Vij

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