HOW EVIL THEY CAUGHT
Police reveal how they nabbed
JASON Daron Mizner was marched from a Thai jail on to an international flight back to Australia and straight into waiting handcuffs when he landed in Brisbane.
Gold Coast detectives have disclosed the delicate international relations they had to tip toe around to make sure one of the worst child sex offenders they had ever encountered would be arrested as he stepped foot back in Australia.
A decade earlier, in 2006, the former Gold Coast yoga teacher was rotting in a Thai jail, accused of attempting to rape a baby after he befriended the child’s mother in northern Thailand.
In the days after his arrest in the South-East Asian country, Gold Coast detectives swooped on his home – a woman had found videos of Mizner raping her two-yearold daughter along with a raft of other depraved material hidden in a bag.
In 2008, Mizner was sentenced to 35 years in a Thaiprison for his crimes against the Thai child.
Gold Coast detectives would have to wait nearly a decade before they could bring the violent, sexual predator to account for his horrific crimes against the Coast child.
Regional Crime Co-ordinator Kerry Johnson said when Mizner left the Thailand jail in 2017, years of work came to fruition when the handcuffs were slapped on the convicted paedophile.
“This investigation inthey volved a foreign country where he was apprehended for a similar offence and imprisoned,” Detective Superintendent Johnson said.
“The moment he went offshore and these offences were detected on the Coast we were building a brief of evidence against him. It had to be rock solid, we don’t want to give these type of people an out because he was caught for the same offence he was doing here, over there.
“Our liaison over there, and this is where our Commonwealth partners came into play, worked with Thai authorities – we had regular information come back to us on the status of Mizner.
ONE OF OUR KEY ROLES AS POLICE IS PROTECTING THE MOST VULNERABLE IN OUR COMMUNITY
DET SUPT JOHNSON
“You have to remember there are language barriers, different court processes and systems of government, so we had to continually monitor him.
“They let us know when he was coming up for release and when those triggers happened, the Thai authorities immediately escorted him to an aircraft and he flew home, where we had officers waiting for him in Brisbane.”
Det Supt Johnson said it was the job of police to protect the community from these types of predators and they made no apology for the work put into arresting them.
“These are opportunistic predators, we don’t want these people on the streets and it is our job to prevent them from getting the opportunity.
“As disturbing as it is, and it is disturbing, I don’t care if you’re a seasoned officer like me or two minutes into the job, it’s disturbing, you can’t get around it, but this is a reason people get into this field, to arrest these predators.
“One of our key roles as police is protecting the most vulnerable in our community.”