It's Sunday the 7th of December 2003.

13 year old Daniel Morcombe. 7th of December 2003.

13 year old Daniel Morcombe waits at an unofficial bus stop under the Kiel Mountain Road

overpass in the Wumbai District of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

He's on his way to the Sunshine Plaza shopping center

for a haircut and to buy Christmas presents for his family.

The bus he planned to catch breaks down and the

replacement bus fails to stop. The driver radios the depot for another bus to

pick him up but by the time it arrives Daniel is nowhere

to be seen. I'm your host Campbell grab a beer and pull up a deck chair. This is True Crime Island, another true crime podcast. It was a warm sunny day this Sunday afternoon in Wumbai.

Wumbai is a town located on the sunshine coast,

about an hour's drive north of the Brisbane CBD,

with a population of just over 2000, you may have driven past it

while visiting the big pineapple tourist attraction. With three weeks before Christmas, 13 year old Daniel Morcombe decides to go to the Sunshine

Plaza shopping center for a haircut and to buy Christmas presents for his family.

For a 13 year old boy to catch a bus into town, it wasn't considered a risky journey, as

Wombai was a safe community.

Often Daniel would walk down to the bus stop with his twin brother Bradley on their way to the plaza.

This Sunday, Daniel planned to catch the 135 bus to the shopping center alone.

But it broke down around 145 PM about 750 meters short of his stop.

A replacement bus arrived shortly after 2.15 PM,

but as the service was now running late, it was decided the replacement bus would continue as an express service to the Sunshine Plaza,

...