HE twice went to jail for snatch and rape attacks on young boys, lost count of how many other children he’d abused and carried out violent and depraved sexual fantasies on the women he dated.

This was the side of predator Brett Peter Cowan the jury deciding his fate could not be told.

The Courier-Mail can now reveal Cowan’s sadistic past, including that he began abusing children from the age of nine and once told police he’d been sexually active since the age of eight.

BRETT COWAN GUILTY OF MURDERING DANIEL MORCOMBE

The 44-year-old former tow truck driver and father-of-three was today convicted of Australia’s highest profile child abduction case when a jury found him guilty of murdering Sunshine Coast teenager Daniel Morcombe.

News_Image_File: Brett Peter Cowan abducted and killed Daniel Morcombe. He had a history of deviant behaviour and had been jailed twice for abusing children

The 13-year-old vanished while waiting for a bus under the Kiel Mountain Rd overpass near Woombye on December 7, 2003.

Cowan was arrested eight years later following a sophisticated undercover sting that ended with him leading them to Daniel’s remains.

It can now be revealed that Cowan:

TOOK a seven-year-old boy from a playgroup and molested him in a toilet block, putting his hands around the boy’s throat when the distraught child threatened to tell his mother;

LEFT a second child, aged six, with horrific and life-threatening injuries after raping him in Darwin;

ADMITTED to abusing up to 30 children while a child himself by luring them into the change rooms of a local swimming pool;

SEXUALLY assaulted children in the lead-up to Daniel’s disappearance in a series of incidents not reported to police;

FORCED a girlfriend into a bizarre and violent kidnap and rape role play years after killing Daniel; and

SUBJECTED partners to violent sex acts, including repeatedly choking one into unconsciousness.

Cowan was once the target of a revenge attack by the brothers of a 14-year-old girl he was accused of raping.

justice for my boy finally — Denise Morcombe (@DeniseMorcombe) March 13, 2014

The brothers tried to ambush the pedophile in Clayfield in 2008 by calling for a tow truck but the wrong driver showed up.

The driver was beaten with a wrench until the men realised they had the wrong person. They told the young driver they had planned to kill Cowan.

Police made contact with Cowan just two weeks after Daniel’s abduction because of his criminal history.

At the time he admitted to driving past the Kiel Mountain Rd overpass when Daniel would have been waiting for a bus.

CHECK FRIDAY’S PRINT EDITION OF THE COURIER MAIL FOR A 16-PAGE SPECIAL ON THE DANIEL MORCOMBE CASE

News_Image_File: Daniel Morcombe.

He denied seeing the boy and forensic examinations conducted on his still-filthy car found nothing.

Police were also contacted by numerous people who said sketches and computer generated images of a suspect seen standing behind Daniel at the bus stop looked just like Cowan.

Cowan, the second youngest of four brothers, had a relatively privileged upbringing.

The son of an army major, he grew up on Brisbane’s northside, attending school until year 10.

He started smoking marijuana in primary school before experimenting with harder drugs, including LSD and speed. As a teenager he became involved in petty crimes like stealing, break and enters and car thefts.

Cowan told police and his mother he was never abused himself and offered no explanation for his offending.

In 1987, aged 18, he had been ordered to undertake community service at a park in Stafford when he snatched a young boy from a playgroup and took him into a toilet block.

He subjected the boy to a series of horrific sex acts before walking off to watch television.

He was sentenced to two years jail for the crime, serving just 14 months.

News_Image_File: How the NT News reported on Cowan's guilty verdict in 1994

In 1993, while living in a caravan park on the outskirts of Darwin, Cowan took a six-year-old boy who was walking through the park looking for his sister.

He took the boy to a collection of burnt out car wrecks in bushland adjacent the park, where the boy was raped, suffocated and left for dead.

The boy stumbled into a petrol station some time later, naked, filthy, covered in blood and barely able to breathe.

The boy had blood blisters on his face, broken blood vessels in his eyes, a punctured lung, severe lacerations and injuries consistent with violent sexual abuse.

His injuries were so severe police expected him to die.

Despite having been to jail for raping another child, Cowan was given a seven-year jail term.

He was released after four years.

“I felt he was a remarkably simple person to identify and this was a simple puzzle to solve,’’ Bruce Morcombe said.

News_Rich_Media: LANGUAGE WARNING: See the interview in which police allege Cowan confessed to the murder of Daniel Morcombe.