For nine years Brett Peter Cowan thought he’d gotten away with the abduction and murder of Sunshine Coast teen Daniel Morcombe on Sunday, December 7, 2003.

This dramatic footage captures the moment Queensland Police arrested Cowan on August 13, 2011, in a bush clearing on a macadamia farm on Kings Road in the Glass House Mountains, near Beerwah.

The footage, which has never been shown outside a courtroom, shows detectives emerge from hiding to formally caution Cowan before telling him he’s under arrest for one of most high-profile cases in Australian history.

Cowan, chillingly casual and disinterested tells the person he’s chatting with on his mobile, ‘yep cool, I’m under arrest for Daniel’s murder, Daniel Morcombe’s murder.’

Chevron Right Icon 'Yep, cool, I'm under arrest for Daniel's murder, Daniel Morcombe's murder'

His casual reaction married up with a police profile described him as a type of criminal able to return to a normal life after committing an offence. An opportunistic offender who acted quickly to commit a crime but would go unnoticed.

In the lead-up to the arrest, Cowan calmly told the police undercover agents he’d led to the site ‘And that’s where it happened.” He followed with a graphic account of how he murdered 13-year-old Daniel.

Seven News applied to Queensland Police for the footage three years ago and it was released today to the network after the State Coroner delivered his findings into Daniel’s disappearance and the police investigation.

The release of the footage to Seven News was with the approval of Daniel’s parents, Bruce and Denise Morcombe.

Chevron Right Icon 'It is haunting, it is difficult to watch but there it was, a trap that got him'

Mr. Morcombe described the moment their son’s killer arrest as“haunting”. “It is haunting, it is difficult to watch but there it was, a trap that got him,’’ he told Seven News. Cowan’s arrest followed a sting operation that snared a child sex predator - who was twice jailed for attacking boys before he abducted and murdered Daniel. A predator who admitted to sexually offending from the time he was nine-years-old and molesting around 30 children.

The operation began on 1 April 2011 when an undercover officer posing as a member of an organised crime gang sat down next to Cowan on a flight to Perth. Cowan was penniless, lonely and police knew he liked to please and loved to boast. He was one of ten persons of interest who had just appeared at the coronial inquest into Daniel’s disappearance. What happened next would unravel a mystery that devastated one family and altered the freedom of a generation of Australian children.

Watch the full video above.

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