The monster who snatched and murdered an 11-year-old boy from a quiet seaside street 25 years ago has never been traced - but a new movie about Daniel Morcombe's killer has revived chilling questions about the case.

Gerard Ross, 11, vanished in broad daylight as he walked to a shop just 800m away from his family's holiday home in Rockingham, south of Perth, on October 14, 1997.

His body was discovered 15 days later, dumped in a pine plantation 20km away. Police have never revealed details of how he died, and his family was prevented from seeing his body. 

The case is almost identical to the tragic murder of Daniel Morcombe on the other side of the country in Queensland six years later, who was also abducted in broad daylight.

Daniel, 13, was grabbed by Brett Cowan at a makeshift bus stop near The Big Pineapple on the Sunshine Coast in December 2003 and never seen again.

Some of his bones and clothes were finally found eight years later in remote bush on Glasshouse Mountain 35km away after an elaborate police investigation.

Joel Edgerton's new movie The Stranger has revealed how detectives mounted an incredible sting operation to lure Cowan into admitting his guilt and leading them to Daniel's remains.

Many of the details of the two murders have haunting similarities. 

Both boys were aged similarly with Gerard, 11, and Daniel, 13.

They both bore a striking resemblance with bright eyes, round faces and dark hair.

Both were snatched off the street in broad daylight.

Witnesses in both cases said they saw two men struggling with a child beside a car at the time Gerard and Daniel were abducted.

The bodies and remains of the boys were found in remote pine plantations 20-35km away from where they were snatched.

Both boys were missing one key item when their remains were found. 

Gerard's prized New York Yankees baseball cap has never been found.

Daniel's treasured pocket fob watch also remains missing, sparking fears they were kept as trophies by their killer.

Neither boy's body was buried and just dumped on top of the ground.  

But it has also revived Cowan's links to the Gerard Ross case, with question marks still remaining over his possible involvement amid conflicting reports of his alibi for that murder.

Cowan grew up in Bunbury, Western Australia, just 150km south of Rockingham, and already had a history of attacking and raping young boys before Gerard vanished.

He had previously dragged a seven year old boy into a Brisbane toilet block in 1987 and raped him, but only served one year of a two year jail sentence in 1989.

Cowan struck again in 1993 when he raped a six year old boy in an abandoned Darwin car yard, injuring him so badly Northern Territory Police thought the child had been hit by a car.

He was subsequently jailed for seven years in 1994 for the savage attack but only served a fraction of the sentence and his whereabouts in 1997 remain unclear.

Cowan only served three and a half years of his seven year sentence for the attack in Darwin, meaning he could have been walking the streets as a free man when Gerard was snatched and murdered.

Additionally, one of the few forensic clues police were able to recover from Gerard's body were mystery dog hairs. 

Cowan owned a dog - and later adopted its name when he changed his name to Shaddo N-unyah Hunter in a bid to evade police.

When Cowan later became a suspect for Gerard's murder, he was reported to have told police he served four and half years of the seven-year sentence for raping the six year old in the NT, and was still in jail at the time of the murder.

But during Daniel's murder trial, it was heard that Cowan had relocated to the Sunshine Coast when he was released from jail in 1997, but was then arrested and jailed for breaking and entering.

Even Daniel's parents were stunned by the similarities between the murder of their son and the murder of Gerard.

'There are a number of remarkable similarities, striking and haunting,' Daniel's father Bruce admitted.

'Similar ages, young boys going about an everyday activity, heading to the shops, suddenly they vanished, appearing to be no witnesses to the incident.

'And as time would progress, both their bodies were retrieved.

'The finding of Daniel's remains were in fact in pine plantation and the eerie dirt track that led them there is very, very similar to some of the photos that we've seen of where Gerard's final resting place was.'

After Cowan's conviction, the Morcombes led a call for a coronial inquest into Gerard's death in a bid to uncover new evidence which could prove vital.

'We had a coronial inquest, and I would suggest it was the catalyst for solving Daniel's case so I feel very frustrated in wanting to help the Ross family,' Bruce said.

'I want to help Gerard because Gerard is unfortunately deceased - and sadly the Australian public have forgotten this poor boy.'

WA authorities have refused all calls for an inquest.

Police set up an elaborate sting operation to catch Daniel Morcombe's killer, as dramatised in Joel Edgerton's movie about the investigation, The Stranger.

Detectives had pinpointed Brett Cowan as their chief suspect but had been unable to tie him to the crime, until Queensland Police launched a 'Mr Big' op in conjunction with Western Australia Police.

The technique was developed in Canada as a long-term con, recruiting the suspect into a fake criminal gang until they had his complete confidence before soliciting a complete and damning confession.

As Cowan flew home to Perth in 2011 after appearing at the inquest into Daniel Morcombe's death, a bloke sat next to him on the plane and started chatting.

Unknown to him, he was a detective posing as a low-level criminal, luring him in with the offer of easy money and easy work for some shady mates of his.

The tasks escalated from delivering dodgy crayfish to a restaurant to debt collecting from a brothel to blackmail to a warehouse heist and gun running to trafficking illegal blood diamonds across the country.

The series of 20 carefully script-written scenarios were all fake but had taken in Cowan completely who now trusted his 'gangsters' with his life.

The final scene saw them tell Cowan their corrupt police contact had told him he was about to be subpoeaned for the murder of Daniel Morcombe - but they could make it all go away for him.

He just had to tell them what exactly had happened and lead them to the body so they could dispose of it permanently - or else be kicked out of their gang.

Cowan told the undercover cops he had spotted Daniel at the bus stop and thought he was a 'f***ing cute little thing' before grabbing him.

He described taking him to an abandoned demountable where he 'had his man fun' with the boy before killing him and smashing his skull with a shovel.

In video tape of the confession in the staged set-up, Cowan admits: 'No, yeah, I did it. It is my deepest, darkest secret … I’m not proud of it.'

He then led the police 'gangsters' to the location where he'd dumped Daniel naked body at a remote spot at Glasshouse Mountain in the Sunshine Coast.

The body had been unburied and probably ripped apart by wild dogs. Forensic experts found traces of Daniel's clothes and 17 of his bones at the site.

The controversial confession - which was questioned in court for entrapping and enticing Cowan who claimed he'd been lying - was key to his conviction.

Nine years after he thought he'd got away with murder, Cowan was finally arrested, charged and jailed for life in 2014, with a minimum of 20 years before being eligible for parole.

But sentencing Judge Roslyn Atkinson warned: 'I don't think you should be released in 20 years time.'

Although The Stranger was based on the Daniel Morcombe investigation, all names have been changed, including Daniel's, and the murder itself is never shown. 

'The Stranger is a fictionalised account of the undercover police operation that resulted in a successful murder prosecution,' the film producers insisted.

'It tells the story of the unknown police professionals who committed years of their lives and their mental and physical health to resolve this case and others like it.'

Despite the striking similarities, six years after Cowan confessed to killing Daniel Morcombe, he was publicly eliminated from the Gerard Ross inquiry.

In 2017, WA Police confirmed he was not 'a person of interest in this matter'.  

'We have been able to ascertain from Queensland authorities that Brett Cowan was in custody at the time,' Acting Detective Inspector Jon Munday said.

WA Police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia Cowan was still not a person of interest - but did not reveal exact details of where he was or what sentence he was serving at the time.

Queensland Police also refused to provide further details on Cowan's whereabouts on the day Gerard was snatched. 

'Unfortunately we are unable to assist with your enquiry,' they told Daily Mail Australia. 

'We can't search people by name and confirm their location or whether or not they have been charged with a crime or were being investigated for a crime.'

Gerard Ross, 11, set off on foot with his older brother Malcolm, 13, on rollerblades to go to a nearby comic shop when he was snatched off the street.

His brother had skated on ahead on the short 800m journey to the shop - but when he turned around, Gerard had gone and was never seen alive again.

The family had been staying at a holiday home in the south Perth seaside suburb of Rockingham on a break from their home in the mining town of Newman in WA's Pilbara Desert.

Father Stewart Ross and his six-months pregnant wife Cyrese were reuniting with Cyrese's mother and sister who had just flown in from Scotland.

But their world was turned upside down when Malcolm came back to say Gerard was missing.

The publicity-shy family were thrust in the spotlight as the two week search for Gerard ensued before his body was tragically found on the 15th day by a horse rider on a lonely forest trail 20km away. 

They took Gerard's remains back to Newman but Stewart later lost his mining job and, unable to find another, the family of six - after the birth of twin sisters following Gerard's death - returned to Scotland.

Gerard's body remains alone in a grave in the red dirt of Newman, 14,000km away from his family, with police no closer to finding his killer after 25 years.

Rewards in the murder hunt have repeatedly been increased from $100,000 to $250,000 and now $1million without anyone bringing the vital piece of information needed.

Detectives even offered an amnesty to any accomplice in a bid to lure out  the killer but with no success.

Aside from Cowan, persons of interest have included a possible suspect in Newman who was also in Rockingham at the same time as the Ross family.

Another suspect was identified in Rockingham who was a model aircraft fanatic but who died in 2012 without ever being charged.

In 2019, Mr and Ms Ross spoke at length for the first time about their decades-long wait for justice.

'Sometimes, the hardest thing for me is that we're getting on with life without him,' admitted heartbroken mother, Cyrese. 

'When he was first killed, you have the very strong physical memories of how his hands were, his hair, his skin. I could actually just visualise that clearly. 

'But as time has gone on, that's you're not you don't even have that feeling. And it's like we distance ourselves from him  - and I don't want that.

'It does change you, losing a child. You will just always have that piece missing.'

They still live in hope of finding who killed Gerard even 25 years later.

'They should suffer - not like us, because they won't,' added Ms Ross. 'But they shouldn't be free on the streets to live a normal life.

'They've taken so much form Gerard and us, the only way we can move forward completely is if we can get justice for him.'