Brett Peter Cowan is a father-of-three. At one stage he was married, and there was a period in his life when he turned to God.
But from the time he was in primary school, he was also a sexual predator who grew into a man who raped young boys.
Now his perverted life story also carries the tag of murderer, after a jury found he abducted and killed 13-year-old Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe just over a decade ago.
The verdict means Australians can now know about his life as a sex offender, which began when Cowan was still a child.
At the 2011 inquest into Daniel's disappearance, Cowan - who until now could only be identified as P7 - said he was still in primary school when he started sexually abusing young children at a community swimming pool.
He went on to commit horrific sexual attacks on two young boys.
In 1987, while completing ordered community service at a supervised playground in Brisbane, the then 18-year-old Cowan lured a seven-year-old boy into the toilets and molested him.
A few years later, when he was 24 and living at a Darwin caravan park, Cowan was approached by a six-year-old boy who was asking for help to find his sister.
Instead of helping the boy, Cowan led the child into bushland and brutally sexually assaulted him on the rusted wreck of a car.
The assault left the child in intensive care with terrible injuries including a collapsed and punctured lung, blackened eyes, large cuts caused by the rusty wreck, and injuries to his neck that suggested "an asphyxial element".
Cowan spent time in jail for his crimes in Queensland and the Northern Territory and while he was there he completed sexual offending courses that were meant to rehabilitate him. They didn't.
During Cowan's murder trial, jurors heard his chilling confession, explaining how he'd abducted Daniel from the side of a busy road and taken him to a remote bushland site so he could indulge his sexual perversions with the boy.
But he claimed he didn't get the chance to molest Daniel, and described how he broke the boy's neck as he tried to stop him from getting away.
"When he ... struggled ... I thought he was going to run and rah rah rah and yeah and grabbed him back in the house and choked him out," Cowan said in a confession secretly recorded by undercover police.
"I probably would have been caught in the end if I'd ... let him go."
Throughout the trial, Cowan's defence team insisted the confession was false and he only made it to impress a fictitious criminal gang, which was actually a band of undercover police.
At the 2011 inquest, Cowan also denied any involvement in Daniel's demise but he was frank about his predatory past and drug use - even admitting he'd given some of his testimony while he was high on marijuana.
The inquest heard about his two convictions for the sex attacks in Brisbane and Darwin, and Cowan also said he'd been accused of a string of unproven sexual assaults on children.
In denying he'd murdered Daniel, Cowan told the inquest: "I wasn't interested in teenage boys. I was interested in six, seven and eight-year-old boys".
But counsel assisting the coroner, Peter Johns, said Cowan had killed Daniel because he knew from his past crimes how dangerous it was to let his victims live.
"You've managed to do it twice (before) - abduct or certainly coerce a boy to somewhere else and rape the boy," Mr Johns told Cowan.
"You found out it was very annoying to have a victim survive and come and identify you."
One of the victims Mr Johns was referring to was the six-year-old Darwin boy, who was found wandering naked, bloodied, and distressed after Cowan abused him.
After the sex attack, Cowan had dumped the child inside the rusted car, leaving the boy injured, terrified and alone in the bush.
Cowan then calmly returned to the caravan park to shower and change.
Documents from Cowan's sentencing hearing in Darwin paint a picture of a dysfunctional young man who had some understanding that his sexual attraction to children was "a problem".
In sentencing Cowan to seven years jail, Northern Territory Supreme Court Justice Dean Mildren said a psychologist found Cowan had a "a generalised erotic interest in children".
Cowan was also deemed to be a pathological liar who'd led a "parasitic existence", relying on social security and his parents when he quit his irregular jobs out of boredom.
Justice Mildren said Cowan had been a regular marijuana user since primary school and later began using acid and speed.
Despite a strict upbringing by a father who was in the army, Cowan became a small-time dealer, who sold drugs to support his own habit.
His criminal record at the time of the Darwin attack included the Brisbane sex attack, along with dishonesty offences including stealing, false pretences, and break and enter crimes.
Justice Mildren ultimately supported a request by Cowan himself to serve his sentence in Queensland, where he would have access to a sexual offenders' treatment program.
He noted Cowan had told police after his arrest that he "needed help" and pointed to Cowan's guilty plea as evidence there was a "fair to good" chance of his rehabilitation.
But the Morcombe case is proof Cowan's urges to molest children continued after his release from jail, and despite his treatment.
His recorded confession, played at his murder trial, has him detailing his plans to sexually abuse Daniel and explaining how that plan was thwarted when the boy resisted and he killed him.
At the 2011 inquest, Cowan told how he got married after his release from jail, and started going to church.
But his marriage crumbled after he was later accused of molesting his 15-month-old niece, something he denied.
He said he ultimately cut ties with the church because he believed the pastor had "mispreached about unforgivable sins".
After the inquest, Cowan changed his name to Shaddo N-unyah Hunter in a bid to put the past behind him.
He later told undercover police Shaddo was the name of his dog, Hunter was a name he heard on TV and liked and N-unyah stood for "nunyah (sic) business".
But by then he was the subject of a sophisticated police sting that swung into action when Cowan boarded a plane back home to Perth after giving evidence at the Brisbane inquest.
The four-month covert operation, which convinced Cowan he was part of a high-level criminal gang, ultimately resulted in the confession that was a critical part of the prosecution case.
This week's verdict has finally given Bruce and Denise Morcombe what they always promised for their son: justice.
And it's given them the best version of the truth they will get: that a complete stranger chanced upon their beautiful boy as he waited for a bus that didn't stop, chose Daniel as his next victim, and killed him to save his own skin.
