THE nightmares are always the same. Arms outstretched, the little girl reaches up to her, crying for help.
A former girlfriend of Brett Peter Cowan has told how she fears for the fate of a little girl left alone in his care in the weeks leading up to his attack on a boy at a Darwin caravan park.
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Tracey Haneveld was 18 when she met Cowan. It was 1991 and the man who would eventually be convicted of child abduction and murder was fresh out of prison. In his early 20s, he’d been in jail for breaking into houses – or so he told her. It was a lie. He’d taken a seven-year-old boy from day care and abused him in a toilet block, earning himself a 14-month jail stretch.
They met at a party and started dating, eventually moving in together.
“I remember going to his parents’ place on Christmas Day,” she said.
“We were standing there in the kitchen and his mum was chopping up the ham. I specifically remember him (Cowan) grabbing a piece of ham and his brother slapped his hand away. There was a big argument and the boys went out and had a bit of a scuffle.”
They were living together when he started going missing at night. He’d leave at 4pm and be gone until dawn.
Friends found Tracey in tears. Cowan controlled the money. She had no way to buy food. They eventually came clean: Cowan was down the road with another woman, they said. Tracey was there in minutes. She stormed inside to the sound of a screaming baby. It was the first time she’d see the girl who would haunt her dreams for years.
Her name was Crystal and her mother had been seeing Cowan. Tracey shouted and screamed and slapped Cowan across the face.
They broke up for a while but he charmed her back – even after telling her he’d been meeting men for sex at Maroochydore’s Chambers Island.
“After finding him with another woman in Maroochydore, I just lost my self-esteem,” Tracey said. “I was stupid, young and naive and he won me over. I’m not that stupid now. Brett Cowan taught me a lot but he didn’t teach me much.”
In 1993 Cowan moved to a Darwin caravan park. Tracey met him there soon after but discovered he’d been cheating again. He’d driven to Darwin with Crystal and her mum.
“I haven’t told you everything,” he said. She’d been sitting with him in the caravan’s annex for an hour when a baby started crying. It was the first she knew that Crystal was staying with him while Crystal’s mother was away working.
“She was under the age of two. She had only just started standing and walking,” Tracey said. “She was in his care. He was looking after her by himself.”
Cowan went back to jail a few weeks later. A six-year-old boy at the caravan park had been taken into bushland and sexually abused. His injuries were horrific.
“I’m going to find this rock spider a---hole,” Cowan had said – but days later he was charged with attacking the boy.
“It was him all along – he just didn’t want to be caught,” Tracey said.
She finally learnt her boyfriend was a monster. She went to see him after his arrest and told him she thought he was innocent. She didn’t. She wanted his PIN, to “clean him out” because he owed her money.
She went to his first court hearing but found it too much. “I went outside and threw up,” she said.
Then, in 2003, she saw Daniel Morcombe on TV. Something about him reminded her of the boy from Darwin. And she and Cowan used to hitchhike from the spot he vanished from. She phoned police. Wrote them letters.
“I had a gut feeling Brett, if he was out of prison, may have something to do with it,” she wrote.
Then the nightmares started. Who was Crystal and where was she now? In her dreams the little girl would call out to her for help. “I just need to know she is OK,” Tracey said.
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