Case 322: William Tyrrell (Part 1)

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Speaker 1 Today's episode involves crimes against children and won't be suitable for all listeners.

Speaker 1 Please note that the names of several individuals have been changed due to court suppression orders preventing them from being identified, while others have been changed to protect their privacy.

Speaker 1 It was 10.50 on the morning of Friday, September 12, 2014 when a call came through to the New South Wales Police Emergency Helpline.

Speaker 1 On the other line was a woman named Angela calling from the small hinterland town of Kendall located on the state's mid-north coast.

Speaker 2 Police Emergency Disaster Moon. Yeah, hi, no Sundays.
I think it's three and a half.

Speaker 2 Um, sorry. What's your address? Bennaroom Drive, Kendall.
Okay. Benner Room Drive in Kendall.
Yes. Alright, I'm just going to bring that up on my map.
I won't be a moment. Thank you.

Speaker 2 How long has he been missing?

Speaker 2 Well, I think, well, we've been looking for him now for about 15 or 20 minutes, but

Speaker 2 I thought it could be five, it could be longer, because just playing around here, we heard him and then we heard nothing.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 So what the nearest Cross Street being Ellendale Crescent, is that right? So what is it? Ellendale Cresent. I don't know.
This is my mum's house. Okay.

Speaker 2 So he's been missing since about 10.30. Yeah, I'd say so.
Okay, can you describe him to me? How tall... Obviously not very tall.

Speaker 2 He'll be about two and a half feet.

Speaker 2 He's wearing a Spider-Man outfit.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 What colour hair is he blocking? He's got dark sandy coloured hair. It's short and he's got really big browny green coloured eyes.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 You get any shoes on? Do you know any other distinguishing features?

Speaker 2 Oh, he's got a freckle on the top of his head when you cut the hair on the left-hand side. Yep.
You'll see a freckle on the top of his head. Okay.

Speaker 1 Alright.

Speaker 2 Do you know where he might have gone?

Speaker 2 We actually live, we've owned properties near a state forest. Okay.
And they're on a huge block. We've walked up and down Bennaroon Drive and we can't find him.
Okay. What's his name? William.

Speaker 2 What's William? Don't

Speaker 2 T Y R R E double L.

Speaker 1 Senior Constable Christopher Rowley was already in the area when he received word of the missing three-year-old Boyan Kendall.

Speaker 1 He arrived at Benaroon Drive at 11.06am,

Speaker 1 by which time William Tyrrell had reportedly been missing for just over half an hour.

Speaker 1 The single-story brick home of William's grandmother, Mary Saunders, sat on a sharp slope high upon a corner block, elevated above a large garage and workshop space.

Speaker 1 Hers was one of the last houses on the Deadand Street, with three sides of the property backing onto dense bushland.

Speaker 1 Framed by lawns and native trees, a veranda wrapped around the length of the house, with a 5-metre-high balcony providing the perfect spot to take in the scenic easterly views.

Speaker 1 Senior Constable Rowley found William Tyrrell's mother, Angela, in a clear state of distress, walking down the middle of the street in tears.

Speaker 1 Her husband Peter was frantically dashing around, calling William's name and checking the surrounding properties.

Speaker 1 The family of four had only arrived in Kendall at around nine the previous evening after driving the roughly four-hour journey from their home in Sydney's northern beaches.

Speaker 1 Angela's father had recently passed away and the purpose of the visit was to help her mother Mary organise her house for sale.

Speaker 1 The substantial three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a 1.2-acre block was simply too big for the elderly woman to look after on her own.

Speaker 1 According to Angela, that morning of Friday, September 12, 2014, the two Tyrrell children had woken up in good spirits.

Speaker 1 William and his four-year-old sister, Lindsay, were excited to be at their grandmother's house, a place they had visited several times before.

Speaker 1 Their father, Peter, had to make a video call for work but the internet reception in Kendall was notoriously lousy so he left the house at around 8.30am to make the call from the nearby town of Lakewood instead.

Speaker 1 While Peter was gone, William and Lindsay rode their bikes around Mary's driveway and explored the yard.

Speaker 1 Afterwards, William played a game with his mother called Mummy Monster, which involved Angela chasing her son around the garden.

Speaker 1 When they were done, they climbed the steep slope back up to the house.

Speaker 1 The grass was covered in loose twigs and leaves, and they kept slipping over.

Speaker 1 One of the slips resulted in Angela injuring her hand, so they went inside to tend to the wound.

Speaker 1 Lindsay had heard them playing Mummy Monster and wanted to join in the game, so they went back outside for a while.

Speaker 1 After the kids grew bored of that, William and Lindsay decided to make some cards to bring to their grandfather's grave when they visited later that day.

Speaker 1 Angela set them up with some art supplies on the back deck that overlooked the rear lawn.

Speaker 1 Shortly after 9.30am, she grabbed her digital camera and snapped some photos of them.

Speaker 1 William was thrilled that he'd been allowed to wear his new favourite outfit, a two-piece blue and red Spider-Man costume that his parents had bought him on a recent family holiday to Bali.

Speaker 1 He put a Spider-Man t-shirt underneath the polyester suit so he could be head to toe in his favorite superhero get-up.

Speaker 1 At 9.37am, Angela stood above William and pointed the lens towards him as he crouched on the deck pretending to be a tiger.

Speaker 1 The little boy looked up at her, his eyes cast to the sky and mouth agape as he let out a loud roar.

Speaker 1 It wasn't long before William lost interest in the craft session and began a new game he called Daddy Tiger.

Speaker 1 This involved him crawling around and launching himself off the deck as he roared and clawed his hands in the air.

Speaker 1 He asked Lindsay to join in, but she was too engrossed in the card-making process.

Speaker 1 William continued the game alone. ducking around the side of the house out of sight for a moment before reappearing with a loud roar.

Speaker 1 Just before 10am, Angela said that she and her mother were sitting and watching the kids over a cup of tea.

Speaker 1 Mary remarked how loud William was being, and Angela explained that's just how he was, always full of energy.

Speaker 1 The two women looked on as William darted around the garden, jumping and roaring enthusiastically.

Speaker 1 He then ran around the northwest corner of the house and out of sight, the sound of his roar still clearly audible.

Speaker 1 After a few minutes, Angela noticed it had gone unusually quiet.

Speaker 1 She got up and walked around the side of the house, but she couldn't see William anywhere.

Speaker 1 Angela called out William's name, saying, Where are you? I can't see you.

Speaker 1 There was no reply.

Speaker 1 She looked for splashes of his red Spider-Man costume against the vibrant green foliage, noting it was suddenly so quiet that even the birds seemed to have stopped chirping.

Speaker 1 Angela told Mary that she couldn't see William anywhere. Thinking he was hiding and playing a trick on them, Mary remarked, oh the little devil.

Speaker 1 But Angela was starting to get worried.

Speaker 1 She went around the eastern side of the house and looked in the ferns that sat underneath the balcony, all the while calling William's name. When he didn't appear, she became frantic.

Speaker 1 Mary's property had no fence or other barrier to prevent William from wandering beyond its boundary.

Speaker 1 Angela ran to the street, checking each side of the yard, but she still couldn't see or hear William.

Speaker 1 She ran into her mother's house with Mary following, checking each room and opening cupboards to see if he was hiding inside.

Speaker 1 Angela tried to remain calm so that William wouldn't panic thinking he was in trouble. Keeping her composure, she called,

Speaker 1 William, you have to come out. You have to talk to me.
No more hiding, William. I can't see you.

Speaker 1 There was no reply.

Speaker 1 While all this was happening, Angela's husband Peter had been at the Lakewood shopping precinct making his work calls from inside his brand new Land Rover Discovery.

Speaker 1 After stopping to grab a newspaper, he headed straight back to Kendall.

Speaker 1 Peter told the police that at around 10.30am as he neared Benaroon Drive, he'd sent Angela a voice-to-text message suggesting it was a good time to send the kids outside.

Speaker 1 William had a deep fascination with cars, trucks and planes, which was an interest Peter encouraged.

Speaker 1 The Tyrrell children always got a thrill out of watching their father arrive home and running out to greet him. It was a moment Peter looked forward to every day.

Speaker 1 But as he pulled up to his mother-in-law's house, it wasn't his children who came out to greet him, it was his wife. Angela looked panic-stricken.

Speaker 1 She gestured urgently for Peter to roll down his window.

Speaker 1 Have you got William? she asked.

Speaker 1 Peter frowned, confused. Of course not, he said.
Why would you think that?

Speaker 1 Frantically, Angela replied, Because he's missing.

Speaker 1 Peter didn't ask for any more information. He leapt out of his car and took off running, shouting out William's name.

Speaker 1 Neighbours heard the commotion going on outside and came out to see what was going on.

Speaker 1 I am looking for a little boy in a Spider-Man suit, Angela told them. Have you seen him? His name is William.

Speaker 1 The neighbours searched their yards, checked their swimming pools and any other places that might be of interest to a young boy, such as cubby houses and play equipment.

Speaker 1 When police senior constable Christopher Rowley arrived at Bennaroon Drive, he conducted a thorough search of Mary's house. He was soon joined by additional officers who arrived at the scene.

Speaker 1 They checked cupboards and under furniture, going so far as to remove cushions from the couch and pitchers from the walls.

Speaker 1 Benaroon Drive is a secluded, quiet street that backs onto scrubland. It consists of 21 houses, each of which is situated on a large block and set back from the road.

Speaker 1 At the end of the know-through road is a rugged dirt track surrounded by dense bush that eventually leads to the Kendall Cemetery.

Speaker 1 There is no foot traffic and no reason to be in the area unless you live there or are visiting one of the residents.

Speaker 1 Angela told the police she had only seen one unfamiliar car in the area and that had been earlier on when the two Tyrrell children had been riding their bikes outside.

Speaker 1 It was a dark green or grey grey sedan that had briefly pulled into a neighbour's driveway before immediately reversing out and driving away.

Speaker 1 A couple who lived nearby heard the car too, but just assumed it was the local postal worker.

Speaker 1 It therefore seemed highly unlikely to the police that William had been abducted, especially given the very short amount of time between when his mother last heard him and when he went missing.

Speaker 1 They thought the most likely explanation was that he had wandered off and gotten lost in the bush.

Speaker 1 The rugged area was thick with weeds, reedy grass and spiky lantana bushes.

Speaker 1 There were also numerous waterways, cliffs, abandoned mineshafts and wild animals, creating plenty of hazards to explain why the young boy hadn't yet been found.

Speaker 1 But Peter and Angela were dubious.

Speaker 1 Although William was adventurous and had a mischievous side, they said he was also clingy and reserved.

Speaker 1 While he might hide and jump out for fun, he was the kind of kid who wouldn't try to cross the street by himself, and it would be very out of character for him to just wander off on his own.

Speaker 1 They said he had a clear understanding of boundaries and would deem rocky slopes and rugged terrain too dangerous to scale alone.

Speaker 1 They also said he would never blindly go off with a stranger. He didn't warm to people immediately, but rather sat back and assessed them first.

Speaker 1 A Benaroon Drive resident created a Facebook post online calling for volunteers to assist in the search.

Speaker 1 Within minutes, locals of all ages and demographics swarmed to the area, traversing through the surrounding scrub and driving the neighboring streets shouting William's name.

Speaker 1 A three-year-old girl sat in her pram calling out,

Speaker 1 You're not in trouble, William. You can come out now.

Speaker 1 The operation was overseen by experienced land search and rescue coordinators.

Speaker 1 Line searches were conducted in the surrounding bushland while horses and motorbikes traversed the dense scrub and police helicopters searched overhead.

Speaker 1 Mary's house was thoroughly checked multiple times, as were other houses along Benaroon Drive.

Speaker 1 Different personnel were brought in to search the homes in case a fresh set of eyes noticed something that others had missed. Sheds, roof spaces, wall cavities and cupboards were meticulously checked.

Speaker 1 Sniffer dogs also battled the rugged terrain but were unable to detect any scent of William Tyrrell beyond Mary's garden.

Speaker 1 The primary concern for the search party was that the young boy might be injured or unconscious, preventing him from coming forward to rescue us.

Speaker 1 There was also a serious fear he had drowned, prompting police divers and the Rural Fire Service to search and drain numerous dams, storm drains and water tanks in the area.

Speaker 1 The day was mild at 18 degrees Celsius, but as nightfall approached, dark clouds gathered and the temperature dropped significantly.

Speaker 1 With no sign of William, concerns mounted that, if he was still alive, he might succumb to the elements overnight.

Speaker 1 Untreated dehydration or hypothermia posed serious risks.

Speaker 1 William also suffered from asthma, which worsened in the cold conditions and could be triggered by stress or by the powdery pollen released by the surrounding lantana bushes.

Speaker 1 The search continued overnight with police calling for volunteers to register at the Kendall showgrounds at 7 the following morning.

Speaker 1 Rain was expected and volunteers were asked to wear high visibility clothing suitable for wet weather and to bring plenty of water.

Speaker 1 The search was expanded beyond the scrub near Benaroon Drive and into the nearby Kendall and Middlebrothers state forests. No stone was left unturned, yet there was still no sign of William.

Speaker 1 By Sunday, September 14, the two-day search for William remained fruitless.

Speaker 1 However, Angela told the police that she might have seen something significant on Benaroon Drive the day her son vanished after all.

Speaker 1 She said she'd completely forgotten about it at first, but the memory had come back to her while driving to pick up a relative from the airport.

Speaker 1 According to Angela, on the morning William went missing, she had looked out the window at around 6.40 and noticed two cars parked strangely on the street.

Speaker 1 They stuck out to her because both of their driver's side windows had been left open, which was something you wouldn't see in the city.

Speaker 1 Both of the cars were dirty older models with tinted windows windows and no hubcaps.

Speaker 1 One was a gunmetal grey sedan, possibly a Falcon or a Commodore, and the other an off-white station wagon with a boxy back end, possibly a Camry.

Speaker 1 They were parked close to one another on the road between two properties, which Angela noted as odd given that any visitors to the area typically parked in the driveway of whichever home they were visiting.

Speaker 1 Angela hadn't mentioned mentioned any of these cars to her mother or husband.

Speaker 1 When she'd called emergency services to report William's disappearance, the operator had asked if she'd seen any suspicious vehicles in the area, and Angela had firmly answered no.

Speaker 1 No other residents of Benaroon Drive recalled seeing the parked cars either, but it was a helpful bit of information for the police.

Speaker 1 While William's disappearance continued to make the news, Peter and Angela stayed away from the spotlight and didn't make any public appearances.

Speaker 1 As the days passed with no sign of the three-year-old, public conjecture started to grow about why the parents weren't talking.

Speaker 1 The speculation only escalated when a family friend made a national appeal for information on Peter and Angela's behalf.

Speaker 1 If they were genuinely concerned about William, the public wondered why they weren't doing everything in their power to keep their son's disappearance in the media.

Speaker 1 Some speculated that their lack of exposure meant they had something to hide.

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Speaker 1 Peter and Angela had always wanted children. Unable to have any of their own, they decided to help those in need.

Speaker 1 In 2011, the married couple applied to become foster parents.

Speaker 1 They were put on the books of what was then called the Department of Family and Community Services, or FACS, after successfully completing the mandatory foster carer training classes and two short-term assignments.

Speaker 1 As a successful couple from Sydney's affluent North Shore, Peter and Angela made made attractive candidates when Lindsay Tyrrell was placed into the foster care system.

Speaker 1 In 2012, Lindsay was sent to live with Peter and Angela, followed shortly after by her eight-month-old brother, William.

Speaker 1 According to those who knew Peter and Angela, the two were doting foster parents to the Tyrrell children. They gave them everything a kid could possibly want.

Speaker 1 A playroom full of toys, regular trips to playgrounds and and parks, family holidays, birthday parties, and most importantly, a stable and comfortable home life.

Speaker 1 Peter and William had a particularly strong bond, with Angela describing the two as absolutely adoring each other.

Speaker 1 As the children settled into their new home life, Peter and Angela transitioned from short-term carers to long-term carers, making them the legal guardians of the two Tyrrell siblings until they turned 18.

Speaker 1 The reality was, when it came to Williams' disappearance, his status as a foster child made it difficult for Peter and Angela to front the media.

Speaker 1 For starters, they weren't legally allowed to identify themselves as his carers.

Speaker 1 Police needed permission from the relevant government departments before they were allowed to divulge any details regarding Williams' family situation.

Speaker 1 Secondly, they wanted to protect Lindsay Tyrrell's identity. If news got out that William was a foster child, it outed Lindsay too.

Speaker 1 Based on advice from facts, Peter and Angela made the decision to remain anonymous.

Speaker 1 This would also protect the reputation of the department who had assigned the children to their care.

Speaker 1 The true identities of William's foster parents, foster grandmother and sister sister were banned from publication under court suppression orders.

Speaker 1 Any journalist or reporter who broke this rule was warned that they could face potential prosecution.

Speaker 1 Peter, Angela and Mary are pseudonyms Casefile has created for Clarity, while Lindsay is the pseudonym created for her by the courts.

Speaker 1 The decision to withhold Peter and Angela's identities from the public ultimately muddied public opinion.

Speaker 1 With no face of parental grief and desperation for the Australian public to cling on to, the case sparked suspicion against the parents instead of compassion.

Speaker 1 But Peter and Angela weren't the only ones feeling the weight of this decision.

Speaker 1 Williams' biological mother, 26-year-old Amy Tyrrell, not her real name, was heavily pregnant with her fourth child when the police knocked on her door in Western Sydney on the evening of Friday, September 12, 2014.

Speaker 1 Officers entered the house and were shocked to find a young boy matching William's description playing in the backyard. One of the officers looked at Amy and said accusingly, What have you done?

Speaker 1 But the boy wasn't William. It was his 18-month-old brother.

Speaker 1 Amy and her partner, Tyler Martin, not his real name, who was William's biological father, were confused by the police presence.

Speaker 1 They knew they were on the authorities' radar for a string of domestic violence, assault and drug-related offences, and Amy's initial thought was that there might have been a warrant out for her arrest.

Speaker 1 When she was told that William went missing that morning, She was in disbelief.

Speaker 1 Amy had never wanted to put William and Lindsay into foster care and she'd been taking steps to get them back.

Speaker 1 She wondered how her son could be missing when he'd been put into the care of guardians who were supposed to keep him safe.

Speaker 1 At first, Tyler thought it was a joke, but as the police began searching their house, the reality of the situation started to sink in.

Speaker 1 The police asked Amy and Tyler about their movements that day.

Speaker 1 Tyler said he'd woken up before sunrise to go to the local McDonald's restaurant to grab breakfast and use the establishment's free Wi-Fi.

Speaker 1 He was scheduled to work that day, but he sent his boss a text to let him know he couldn't make it due to a shoulder injury.

Speaker 1 When Tyler got home, Amy took their 18-month-old son out shopping for the soon-to-be-born baby.

Speaker 1 She said the two caught the train to the suburb of Blacktown, visiting various shops and making several purchases along the way before returning home at around 4pm.

Speaker 1 The police were dubious. After all, if Amy or Tyler had anything to do with the Williams' disappearance, it wouldn't be the first time.

Speaker 1 Amy Tyrrell and Tyler Martin were both raised in low socio-economic conditions and each struggled with their own set of personal issues and run-ins with the law.

Speaker 1 In 2008, they were introduced by one of Amy's brothers and they later began dating.

Speaker 1 It wasn't long before Amy became pregnant with Lindsay.

Speaker 1 But the young couple struggled. They had limited support and finances, and the demands of parenthood took a toll on their already volatile relationship.

Speaker 1 One night, after the couple had a fight, Amy began drinking heavily. She was pushing Lindsay in a pram on the street when police spotted her and thought she was acting erratically.

Speaker 1 Concerned for the baby's safety, they approached Amy and one of the officers tried to take Lindsay away.

Speaker 1 Amy subsequently punched the officer in the face.

Speaker 1 The incident was reported to Fax and Lindsay was handed over to the state and eventually put into Peter and Angela's care.

Speaker 1 By the time Amy gave birth to William, he was already on the department's radar for potential foster care.

Speaker 1 FAX believed that Amy and Tyler's toxic and often violent relationship created an unsafe home environment for children.

Speaker 1 The department therefore ruled that Amy wouldn't be able to keep William if she continued living with Tyler.

Speaker 1 The couple stayed together but told the authorities their relationship had had ended.

Speaker 1 Eventually, they were caught out and the New South Wales Family Court ordered that William be handed over to Fax.

Speaker 1 Determined to keep William, Amy and Tyler took him and went on the run.

Speaker 1 A police task force was assembled and several weeks later the family was found hiding out in a small flat in Sydney's upper north shore.

Speaker 1 William was taken from his biological parents and reunited with Lindsay in the custody of Peter and Angela.

Speaker 1 As per standard procedure, Amy and Tyler were forbidden from having any contact with the foster carers, and they were only granted the occasional supervised visits with William and Lindsay.

Speaker 1 Each of these visits was overseen by a social worker.

Speaker 1 At first, the visits were weekly, then monthly, and then eventually by the time William went missing, for one hour every two months.

Speaker 1 Amy and Tyler reluctantly adhered to these rules with every intention of regaining custody of their children.

Speaker 1 They undertook anger management courses, counselling and joined parenting groups, unaware that the foster parents were already thinking about formal adoption.

Speaker 1 As soon as the police looking into William Tyrrell's disappearance became aware of his family situation, the possibility was raised that Amy and Tyler could have taken him.

Speaker 1 Yet, the pair were adamant that they had nothing to do with it. They both insisted they wouldn't do anything that could hinder their chances of legally regaining custody of their kids.

Speaker 1 They also knew how close William and Lindsay were and wouldn't dare take one without the other.

Speaker 1 Police checked CCTV footage, bank statements and receipts, all of which backed up the couple's claims that they were nowhere near Kendall on the day William went missing.

Speaker 1 The futile search for William Tyrrell continued for five days until police concluded that if he had simply gotten lost in the bush, it was no longer possible that he could still be alive.

Speaker 1 Instead, Strike Force Roseanne was created as investigators began to operate under the assumption that the three-year-old had been abducted and possibly killed.

Speaker 1 The fact that Williams' disappearance had been treated as a missing person case from the get-go instead of a major crime presented some problems for the investigation.

Speaker 1 For starters, Mary Saunders' house on Benaroon Drive had never been considered a crime scene and therefore it wasn't cordoned off or properly secured.

Speaker 1 With hundreds of volunteers, visitors and official personnel having already trampled through the yard and its surrounds, any forensic evidence such as footprints, tire tracks or DNA were long gone or contaminated.

Speaker 1 Cars had also been free to come and go from the area without being checked.

Speaker 1 In addition, the police had searched some of the 21 houses on the street, but not all of them, with some of the residents having been relied upon to conduct conduct their own searches.

Speaker 1 If William had been taken, each of these factors meant that vital evidence or a person of interest could have been overlooked. Police had no way of knowing what they might have missed.

Speaker 1 In Australia, it is extremely rare for a child to be abducted by a stranger. The person responsible is typically a relative or someone close to the family.

Speaker 1 Therefore, Peter and Angela were obvious suspects.

Speaker 1 Accepting this uncomfortable fact, the couple willingly handed over their phones, vehicles and computers for forensic analysis, eager to be ruled out.

Speaker 1 Police looked into Peter's claims that he'd been in the next town over at the time William disappeared. Phone records and CCTV footage confirmed that he'd been in Lakewood at the time in question.

Speaker 1 Peter had made a conference call that lasted for 39 minutes before making another call and then ducking into a grocery store to buy a newspaper.

Speaker 1 Police considered the possibility that William could have died by accident and his foster family had disposed of his body and then faked his disappearance out of sheer panic.

Speaker 1 But they found absolutely no evidence to support such a theory, and by all accounts, Peter and Angela's desperation to find William seemed completely genuine.

Speaker 1 Lindsay had also been present when William went missing and she hadn't said anything to the police to raise suspicion on her foster parents.

Speaker 1 When questioned about what William had been doing before he went missing, Lindsay told police that he was running out to see Daddy's car.

Speaker 1 Police also considered the possibility that William's biological parents could have organized to have someone snatch William on their behalf.

Speaker 1 The problem with this theory was that Amy and Tyler didn't even know William and Lindsay's foster carers' names or their address.

Speaker 1 Furthermore, no one had told Amy and Tyler that the trip to Kendall was going ahead.

Speaker 1 While the foster care agency had approved the trip, the biological parents weren't made aware of it.

Speaker 1 The trip to Kendall had also gone ahead a day earlier than was originally planned.

Speaker 1 Peter and Angela told the police they had been scheduled to drive up on Friday night, but Peter had finished work early on Thursday, so they'd decided to get a head start on the bumper-to-bumper traffic that typically jammed the Pacific Highway on Fridays.

Speaker 1 They had picked William and Lindsey up from daycare early on Thursday afternoon and headed straight to Kendall from there, stopping only to have dinner at McDonald's and to change the kids into their pajamas.

Speaker 1 The unplanned nature of the trip ruled out the possibility that it was a targeted attack. As far as Peter and Angela were aware, no one had followed them on their drive from Sydney to Kendall either.

Speaker 1 Police checked CCTV footage of their journey and the stops they'd made along the way. but found nothing to indicate the family was being trailed.

Speaker 1 The footage from their stopover at McDonald's showed William joyfully riding into the restaurant on Peter's shoulders, the very image of a happy family.

Speaker 1 Both William's foster parents and his biological parents were ruled out as suspects.

Speaker 1 Regardless, the possibility that William could have been snatched in an opportunistic attack was difficult for investigators to comprehend.

Speaker 1 Benaroon Drive was a safe place where none of the other residents had ever encountered anything untoward and children played on the street without fear.

Speaker 1 The isolated location of Mary Saunders' house at the end of the street, coupled with the lack of street traffic in the area, meant that a kidnapper would have had to coincidentally walk or drive past in the mere minutes that William jumped around the side of the house unsupervised.

Speaker 1 Had such a rare moment occurred, it would have taken an incredibly brazen offender to snatch a child in broad daylight with his family just meters away on a quiet street where any of the neighbours could have easily noticed an outsider.

Speaker 1 Several residents were home at the time and all of them said they hadn't noticed anyone or anything out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1 None of them had been expecting any visitors on the morning that William went missing either.

Speaker 1 Still, police couldn't discount the possibility that someone could have dropped by without warning, seen William, and made the split-second decision to take him.

Speaker 1 It was also possible that William had heard a car coming and ran onto the street thinking it was his father arriving home before being snatched.

Speaker 1 However unlikely, investigators also theorised that someone could have heard the children playing earlier that morning and had lay in wait ready to strike if an opportunity arose.

Speaker 1 If so, they would have had to move incredibly fast.

Speaker 1 The fact that William was wearing the distinct Spider-Man outfit would have made it easy for someone to initiate a conversation with him, as it was an immediate talking point that would have appealed to William.

Speaker 1 A perpetrator could have used that to lure the young boy away voluntarily, or simply grabbed him and forced his silence.

Speaker 1 According to Angela, when she first realised William went missing, she was struck by how silent everything had gone.

Speaker 1 Then, she thought she heard a short, high-pitched scream coming from the bushland, the type of scream a child would make if they'd hurt themselves.

Speaker 1 Angela said she had ventured into the reeds towards the direction of the sound, but couldn't see any splashes of red from William's Spider-Man suit.

Speaker 1 She had brushed it off as her imagination, thinking it must have been a bird.

Speaker 1 Kendall was home to a species of bird known as a cat bird, which makes a sound very similar to that of a crying child.

Speaker 1 At the end of Benaroon Drive, a dirt firetrack leads into the dense scrub.

Speaker 1 If the perpetrator had been on foot, this could have provided an escape route for them to grab William and run off undetected.

Speaker 1 But the terrain in the surrounding bush was rough and running off with the three-year-old boy would have been no easy feat.

Speaker 1 If this was indeed a random opportunistic attack, everyone agreed it would be one of the rarest and most unfortunate cases of William Tyrrell being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Speaker 1 When asked if anyone unusual lived in the area, Mary Saunders pinpointed one person, a former taxi driver aged in his 50s who mostly kept to himself.

Speaker 1 While there wasn't anything overtly suspicious about him, he lived alone in a small house surrounded by bushland where he kept odd hours, typically sleeping during the day and hanging around his house at night.

Speaker 1 In the days following William Tyrell's disappearance, some neighbours noticed that the taxi driver had uncharacteristically left his house.

Speaker 1 When he returned home a couple of days later, he was carrying a backpack and walked around his property as though checking each of his windows before going inside.

Speaker 1 An officer went to visit the former taxi driver and noticed something odd.

Speaker 1 A box had been installed over one of his windows, making it impossible to see inside.

Speaker 1 When questioned about his whereabouts on the day of William's disappearance, the taxi driver claimed he'd been sleeping at home alone, an alibi that couldn't be verified.

Speaker 1 The officer noted that the man had a small red mark on his wrist. A cursory search of the property revealed a stepladder in the laundry that led up to a manhole.

Speaker 1 The officer climbed to the ladder, wondering if the manhole could be used as a hiding place.

Speaker 1 But it was obvious the manhole hadn't been accessed in some time.

Speaker 1 When the police returned to visit the taxi driver again, his television had been paused on a news channel providing updates about William's disappearance.

Speaker 1 Although this indicated he was keeping an eye on the story, police found nothing to suggest he was involved in the crime in any way.

Speaker 1 The taxi driver soon sold his house and moved out of Kendall, saying there was too much activity in the area.

Speaker 1 By day 14 of the hunt for William, line searchers had painstakingly covered an area of 18 square kilometers.

Speaker 1 Various items were found, including an abandoned children's cubby house, number plates from a stolen vehicle, animal bones, a shovel, a spear gun, and other miscellaneous items.

Speaker 1 But all of them were ruled out of having anything to do with William's disappearance. And still, there was no sign of him.

Speaker 1 Investigators had no choice but to scale the search back.

Speaker 1 Instead, they turned their focus to known sex offenders in the area.

Speaker 1 This was no easy task. Within the 30-kilometre radius of Benaroon Drive alone, 18 known sex offenders lived among the rural properties.

Speaker 1 Just further beyond that lived another 60.

Speaker 1 Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubilin, Jubilin, who would later come to front Strikeforce Roseanne, remarked,

Speaker 1 It's as if they've settled on this quiet, overlooked backwater like mosquitoes.

Speaker 1 Detective Jubilin told reporters that police intended to track the movements of everyone who was within a one-kilometre radius of Benaroon Drive on the day William went missing.

Speaker 1 If anyone who had been in the area failed to come forward and identify themselves, Jubilin warned it would give the the police grave concerns and be an immediate cause for suspicion.

Speaker 1 CCTV footage was collected from 12 businesses around Kendall.

Speaker 1 Police were particularly interested in the footage captured by the Kendall Tennis Club between 5 and 11 on the morning of Friday, September 12, 2014.

Speaker 1 This camera faced one of the main roads leading in and out of the village, and there was a chance it had captured the abductor's car.

Speaker 1 However, the footage was grainy and only captured the sides of the vehicles, not their number plates, making it difficult to identify the cars that came and went.

Speaker 1 However, there were numerous roads leading to Benaroon Drive and it was possible the kidnapper hadn't been captured on any cameras at all.

Speaker 1 Although William Tyrrell's disappearance had made national headlines, investigative resources were limited and questioning witnesses and persons of interest was a time-consuming task.

Speaker 1 Police were also inundated with reported sightings of William coming from all over the country.

Speaker 1 It didn't help that Spider-Man costumes were incredibly popular amongst young boys.

Speaker 1 Every potential lead, sighting and piece of information was diligently recorded. but the hard part for police was figuring out which to prioritize.

Speaker 1 They worked tirelessly for several months, checking 169 CCTV cameras from outside Kendall, as well as analysing data from traffic cameras and mobile phone towers.

Speaker 1 But things moved slowly, and as the year drew to an end, they didn't seem to be any closer to finding William.

Speaker 1 Then, A call came in from someone who wanted to report a member of the community as a potential person of interest. interest.

Speaker 1 Four days before William Tyrrell went missing, his grandmother Mary called a local white goods repair company called Speddo's Repairs after her washing machine stopped working.

Speaker 1 The business owner, 63-year-old Bill Spedding, came to the house to provide a quote, only to discover that he needed to order a new part.

Speaker 1 He told Mary he would come back to conduct the repairs whenever part came in.

Speaker 1 On Friday, September 12, just 90 minutes before William vanished, Angela had called Bill Spedding on her mother's behalf to follow up on the replacement part, as the washing machine still wasn't working.

Speaker 1 The call had gone straight to voicemail, so she left a message asking Spedding to call her back.

Speaker 1 Mary said that he would likely show up at any time without prior notice. That's just how things were done in Kendall.

Speaker 1 Given that Bill Spedding was one of the few visitors to Beneroon Drive in the days leading up to Williams' disappearance, police had already taken him in for questioning in the early stages of the investigation.

Speaker 1 Spedding had confirmed details about the initial repair call-out, but he denied having received a follow-up phone call from Angela on September 12.

Speaker 1 Police confiscated Spedding's phone and found no record of Angela's voicemail.

Speaker 1 This was immediately suspicious.

Speaker 1 Police already had Angela's phone data confirming she had made the call to Bill Spedding, leaving officers to wonder if he had deleted it.

Speaker 1 If he had nothing to do with Williams' disappearance, they wondered why he would do such a thing.

Speaker 1 But Bill Spedding steadfastly denied having ever received the message at all.

Speaker 1 He also claimed to have an alibi for the day of Williams' disappearance.

Speaker 1 According to Spedding, he and his wife Margaret had coffee at a local cafe leaving around 9.45am to attend a school assembly where their grandson had received an award.

Speaker 1 Afterwards, Spedding said he went back to his office and worked a normal day before picking his grandchildren up from school.

Speaker 1 While Spedding said his wife was the only one who could verify his alibi, police weren't overly concerned until the tip-off came through from a member of the public to report that Bill Spedding had been accused of sexually assaulting two young girls in the past.

Speaker 1 It was alleged that in 1987, Spedding had sexually assaulted a three- and five-year-old during an overnight stay in a caravan park.

Speaker 1 Another tipster also came forward to report having seen Spedding access some storage sheds he owned six hours inland from Kendall on the day after William disappeared.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, Bill Spedding was looking much more interesting to the police.

Speaker 1 They obtained bank statements from the cafe Spedding claimed to have dined at on the morning William Tyrrell went missing. and confirmed that he and Margaret had indeed been there at 9.42.

Speaker 1 However, the cafe was only an 18-minute car trip from Benaroon Drive.

Speaker 1 If Spedding was lying about attending his grandson's school assembly, police theorised that he could have driven to Mary's house to work on her washing machine when he'd come across William and made the split-second decision to snatch him.

Speaker 1 They questioned school faculty members and some other parents who attended the assembly on the day in question, but given the passing of time, no one could specifically recall seeing Bill Spedding there.

Speaker 1 Although they said that the assemblies occurred frequently and each one tended to blur into the other.

Speaker 1 One woman had taken photos of the event on September 12, but she had since dropped her phone in the toilet and lost its contents.

Speaker 1 Strikeforce investigators were conflicted about how to act.

Speaker 1 If they decided to pursue a raid on Spedding's home and business, the news would surely leak. If Spedding found out he was a suspect, this would give him a chance to destroy any potential evidence.

Speaker 1 But if they got it right, they just might find William Tyrrell.

Speaker 1 CaseFile will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors.

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Speaker 1 On Tuesday, January 20, 2015, just over four months after William Tyrrell disappeared, detectives from Strike Force Roseanne descended on Bill Spedding's home in Bonney Hills, a small town 20 kilometers northeast of Kendall.

Speaker 1 He lived there with his wife and three grandchildren for whom they were the current legal guardians.

Speaker 1 It was a dramatic scene with an excavator, cadaver dog and forensic experts on standby.

Speaker 1 The search team scoured each room of the house and the dark, dank recesses of the basement before turning their attention to the yard and a woodpile outside.

Speaker 1 A plumber was even brought in to drain the property's septic tank.

Speaker 1 Eleven kilometers from Kendall in the coastal town of Lauritan, a search was also conducted at Spedding's office.

Speaker 1 As feared, news of the raids had leaked and throngs of media gathered outside both properties ready to capture any breaks in the story.

Speaker 1 Police seized phones, computers and a mattress, but found no sign of William.

Speaker 1 There was one item of particular interest found in his van though, a Spider-Man toy.

Speaker 1 Bill Spedding was taken into custody and subject to six hours of grueling interrogation.

Speaker 1 Investigators put it to him that on Friday, September 12, 2014, he showed up at Benaroon Drive to fix Mary Saunders' washing machine.

Speaker 1 but saw William playing outside and made the snap decision to abduct him.

Speaker 1 They suggested that Spedding had taken the three-year-old in his work van and quickly fled the scene.

Speaker 1 Spedding strongly rejected these allegations. He stuck by his alibi and denied having deleted a voicemail from Angela on the day William went missing.

Speaker 1 As for the Spider-Man toy found in his van, he claimed it belonged to one of his grandchildren.

Speaker 1 His wife supported this, saying one of the kids had given it to Spedding to keep him company while while he worked.

Speaker 1 But detectives weren't convinced. They thought there was something off about Spedding and that he had a sly way of answering questions.

Speaker 1 Regardless, with nothing eventuating from the raids, he was free to go.

Speaker 1 By this point, Bill Spedding's potential involvement in William's disappearance was a hot topic around town.

Speaker 1 A month before the raids, he had shared a Facebook post from another user that contained a picture of William Tyrrell and read,

Speaker 1 Today, somebody is keeping a secret. They got up this morning, had breakfast, realised that they need to pick up some more milk, made some calls, all the while maintaining a poker face.

Speaker 1 Some viewed this as Spedding's way of taunting the police. as though to say, catch me if you can.

Speaker 1 A week after the raids on Bill Spedding's properties, the investigation was officially handed over to Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubilin after the case's initial lead detective retired.

Speaker 1 Detective Jubilin was a veteran of the New South Wales Police Force.

Speaker 1 Known for his tenacity and resoluteness, Jubilin applied disciplined thinking and creative policing to help solve some of the country's most high-profile murder cases.

Speaker 1 He also worked on the Bowerville murders, as covered in episode 186 of Case File, and on the Matt Leveson case, covered in the Case File Presents series, Maddie.

Speaker 1 Although he had a hard edge, Jubilin was admired by victims' families for his genuinely kind and compassionate nature.

Speaker 1 He was the kind of detective who took each case personally, giving the investigation his all and refusing to accept mediocrity.

Speaker 1 He promised William's foster family he would do everything he could to find William.

Speaker 1 By the time William had been missing for six months, police interviewed an elderly Kendall resident after hearing he had some information that could be useful to the investigation.

Speaker 1 Ronald Chapman lived on Laurel Street, about half a kilometre from Benaroon Drive.

Speaker 1 At around 10.45 on the morning that William went missing, Ronald claimed that he had stepped outside to check the mail.

Speaker 1 A fawn-coloured four-wheel drive sped past, rounding the corner so fast that loose gravel flew onto Ronald's lawn.

Speaker 1 In the back seat, Ronald saw a young boy matching William Tyrrell's description standing up without a seatbelt on.

Speaker 1 He had a bewildered look on his face and was wearing a blue and red outfit with black patterns on it, resembling a Spider-Man costume.

Speaker 1 The car was being driven by a woman who Ronald described as a plump blonde in her 30s.

Speaker 1 A blue sedan with a male driver sped behind in close proximity, as though the two vehicles were traveling together.

Speaker 1 Ronald said he swore at the woman under his breath for driving so fast with an unrestrained child on board.

Speaker 1 Police weren't sure what to make of this information. Ronald was adamant that the incident had happened, but it begged the question of why he hadn't reported it sooner.

Speaker 1 Ronald claimed that when he heard about Williams' disappearance, he did tell some acquaintances about what he'd seen.

Speaker 1 He assumed they would pass the information on to a local officer they were friendly with. and expected police to come and question him about it.

Speaker 1 When they didn't, he just assumed they had more significant leads worth following.

Speaker 1 Ronald was known to be an honest man with an eye for detail, but some relatives who were staying with him at the time of this supposed incident said he'd never mentioned it.

Speaker 1 When pressed by detectives, Ronald admitted he could have dreamt the whole thing, but when shown a photo of William, he was certain it was the same boy that he'd seen.

Speaker 1 For William's foster parents, the decision to return to Sydney after William's disappearance had not been easy.

Speaker 1 But they felt there was little they could do to help in Kendall, and they needed life to return to as normal as possible for Lindsay.

Speaker 1 While the case continued making national headlines, things were tainted by the mysterious nature surrounding William's family status.

Speaker 1 The public still hadn't been made aware that William was a foster child, and suspicion continued to be cast upon his parents.

Speaker 1 The fact that they weren't talking led many to believe the family had something to hide.

Speaker 1 With their enigmatic status hindering public sympathy, the Strikeforce bargained with the Department of Family and Community Services to let them release an interview with Angela and Peter online.

Speaker 1 While it still couldn't be revealed that William was a foster child, the aim of the video was to let people know he was dearly loved and sorely missed, and to give the foster parents the chance to plead for his return.

Speaker 1 The 21-minute video interview went ahead in April 2015, over six months after William vanished.

Speaker 1 While Peter and Angela's faces were blanked out, They could be heard crying as they talked about their love for the cheeky and vibrant little boy, describing their ordeal as a living nightmare.

Speaker 1 I just can't believe it's happened, Angela said. We just don't have our boy.
We just... we have no idea where he is.
We don't know who's got him. We don't know what's happening to him.

Speaker 1 We know nothing about it. We just want it to be over.

Speaker 1 The couple said they continued to hold hopes that William would be found alive.

Speaker 1 Angela pleaded, If somebody has him and if he is alive, I want him to be safe. I want him to be feeling loved and I want someone to be looking after him.

Speaker 1 Because to imagine something else is going on, we can't live a life like that.

Speaker 1 We need to know where he is. His sister can't grow up never knowing what happened to her brother.
Just to give him back.

Speaker 1 Take him to a church, take him to a police station, take him to a school.

Speaker 1 Give him back.

Speaker 1 Give him back.

Speaker 1 The video provoked mixed responses. While some people felt deeply for the grieving family, others questioned why their identities continued to be withheld.

Speaker 1 Online sleuths wondered whether the parents were involved in the crime, were in witness protection, or were part of something dangerous like a criminal gang.

Speaker 1 The police did their best to dispel these suspicions, but the questions loomed over public opinion like a dark cloud.

Speaker 1 Peter and Angela began working with a not-for-profit public relations firm as a means to communicate with the public without having to reveal their faces.

Speaker 1 Together, they created a campaign titled Where's William? which included the launch of a website, billboards, and social media.

Speaker 1 The aim of the campaign was to provide the community with more information about William's disappearance while hopefully generating information that could assist with the investigation and ultimately bring the little boy home.

Speaker 1 They created missing person posters that the public and businesses could share, with coasters placed in pubs in the hopes someone might become loose-lipped after one too many drinks.

Speaker 1 To coincide with the launch, Peter and Angela released a statement that read in part,

Speaker 1 This has torn away the fabric and foundation of our life as we know it. There is a huge gap of space, emptiness in our lives that we feel without William being here with us.

Speaker 1 We have been entirely shattered, emotionally exhausted, physically and mentally beaten.

Speaker 1 This is a pure living nightmare.

Speaker 1 William's sister continues to ask where her brother is and when he'll be home.

Speaker 1 We've tried so hard to keep life as normal as possible for her, reminding her how loved and safe she is, even though William is not here.

Speaker 1 They were like two peas in a pod.

Speaker 1 For those who have families and children of their own, this is so unbelievably confronting.

Speaker 1 If it could happen to us, it could happen to them.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, the implications against White Goods repairman Bill Spedding kept coming.

Speaker 1 One of his neighbours, a man named Dean Pollard, came forward to claim that on Saturday, September 13, 2014, the day after William Tyrrell went missing, he saw Spedding's work van driving down a dirt track.

Speaker 1 It was near an area of dense forest colloquially known as Ghost Road.

Speaker 1 Dean claimed that when Spedding saw him, he ducked down to avoid being spotted. Dean told police, It was definitely Bill's van.
I would know it anywhere.

Speaker 1 With this new information coming to light, a major search was organised of the bushland surrounding the area in question.

Speaker 1 If William's body had been left out in the elements, police were aware that there would be nothing left at this point but his small skeletal remains, which would be easy to miss.

Speaker 1 However, if he was buried with his clothes on, the polyester Spider-Man suit would take hundreds of years to disintegrate, and the rubber soles of his shoes would take decades.

Speaker 1 Dozens of uniformed police officers searched with the help of cadaver dogs, but found nothing relevant to the William Tyrrell investigation.

Speaker 1 Yet, something of interest did come out of it.

Speaker 1 While the search was underway, camera crews were on standby, ready to capture any discoveries.

Speaker 1 As the cameras rolled, they captured Bill Spedding's van as it drove right past the search site, with Spedding looking out the window.

Speaker 1 When questioned, Spedding denied having been anywhere near Ghost Road on September 13.

Speaker 1 He claimed he had been celebrating the end of the football season at the local footy club, approximately 20 kilometers away.

Speaker 1 Although police still had no evidence against Spedding in relation to William Tyrrell, suspicion against him was growing.

Speaker 1 The allegations that he'd sexually assaulted two young girls in the past were enough to warrant an arrest.

Speaker 1 If police brought Spedding in for that crime, their hopes were that with enough pressure, he might cave and admit to being involved with William's disappearance.

Speaker 1 On Wednesday, April 22, 2015, almost seven and a half months after William went missing, a team of detectives arrived at Bill Spedding's house in Bonney Hills.

Speaker 1 They placed him under arrest for the historic sexual assault crimes he'd been accused of.

Speaker 1 He was charged with five counts of sexual intercourse with a child under 10, as well as two counts of common assault.

Speaker 1 Spedding vehemently denied the allegations.

Speaker 1 He claimed the crimes were fabricated by his ex-wife during a time when the two were going through a bitter divorce and custody battle.

Speaker 1 At the time, his ex-wife had been advised not to pursue the charges due to lack of evidence and a judge had thrown the entire case out.

Speaker 1 This time, Spedding was held in jail pending the outcome of a trial.

Speaker 1 Bill Spedding's cellmate was a sex offender in his late 50s named Tony Jones who was serving a three-year sentence.

Speaker 1 Although Jones had amassed a long criminal rap sheet that included charges for assault, breaking and entering and various drug offences, his latest charge was one of the more vile.

Speaker 1 Jones had joined a local community group called Grandparents as Parents Again, which supported older people who had been given custody of their grandchildren for various reasons.

Speaker 1 Jones used his position to take advantage of a young intellectually disabled girl by overdosing her with autism medication and sexually assaulting her while she was semi-conscious.

Speaker 1 He was subsequently convicted of aggravated child sexual assault.

Speaker 1 The fact that Tony Jones and Bill Spedding were cellmates was no accident.

Speaker 1 Jones, who lived 23 kilometers from Kendall in the town of Warhope, had also been established as a person of interest in William Tyrrell's disappearance.

Speaker 1 On the day William went missing, the unemployed former truck driver left home early, telling his partner Debbie he was going out into the bush with their son to collect scrap metal.

Speaker 1 But Debbie soon found their son at home with no knowledge of this supposed outing.

Speaker 1 Enraged, she waited at home to confront Jones about the lie.

Speaker 1 When Jones returned home at around 2pm on September 12, Debbie claimed he was so intoxicated he could barely speak.

Speaker 1 This wasn't out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1 Jones was an alcoholic, often scrounging up scrap metal that he could trade for beer money.

Speaker 1 He allegedly told Debbie he'd been out drinking with his mate, Paul Bickford.

Speaker 1 Bickford was the former president of Grandparents as Parents Again, who had once been named Senior Volunteer of the Year.

Speaker 1 But, far from heroic, Bickford removed himself from the group after he was accused of sexually assaulting an intellectually disabled 11-year-old girl while on a drive to buy her lollies.

Speaker 1 The separate sex offences committed by Tony Jones and Paul Bickford ultimately came to light during the investigation into William Tyrrell's disappearance, and both men faced charges for their crimes.

Speaker 1 Police explored the possibility that the two men could have been part of a pedophile ring, but given they were both more solitary predators, this was deemed unlikely.

Speaker 1 However, there was something about Tony Jones that the police couldn't ignore.

Speaker 1 His partner Debbie drove a white station wagon similar to the one William's foster mother claimed to have spotted on Bennaroon Drive on the morning of Williams' disappearance.

Speaker 1 Additionally, his habit of collecting scrap metal meant he had intimate knowledge of the bushland around Kendall and surrounds.

Speaker 1 Jones, who no longer had a driver's license, told police he didn't have access to the white station wagon.

Speaker 1 This was disputed by several witnesses who said he often took it without Debbie's knowledge.

Speaker 1 Jones Jones also gave various alibis for the morning of Friday, September 12, 2014.

Speaker 1 First, he claimed he was out in Bago State Forest collecting scrap metal on his own. Then he changed his mind and said he was out chopping wood.

Speaker 1 Later, he changed his story entirely and said he was off-sourcing a hot water heater from a neighbor.

Speaker 1 He denied ever being with Paul Bickford, despite telling his partner that the two had been drinking together.

Speaker 1 At around lunchtime on the day William went missing, a man was walking his dog around the bush tracks near Queen's Lake in Lauriton.

Speaker 1 He looked over and noticed a tanned man with a mustache sitting in a parked car with fogged up windows. Something about the way the man was acting seemed suspicious.

Speaker 1 The dog walker waved at the man, who quickly wound up his window in response. When the dogwalker returned from his stroll, the car and the man were gone.

Speaker 1 He didn't think much of it until he saw Tony Jones in the newspaper eight months later and immediately recognised him as the occupant of the vehicle.

Speaker 1 What's more, the car in question was an old white Toyota Camry station wagon.

Speaker 1 Jones denied being near Queenslake that day.

Speaker 1 He said it couldn't have been him as he had emphysema and couldn't sit in a car with the windows rolled up.

Speaker 1 Debbie's white station wagon was towed and taken in for forensic testing, but nothing of interest to the William Tyrrell investigation was found.

Speaker 1 However, it wasn't the only vehicle that could be linked to Jones.

Speaker 1 Police later received a tip-off from someone who had come across a silver car abandoned in the Kendall

Speaker 1 They recognised it as the same makeup model as a vehicle belonging to Jones.

Speaker 1 The informant led police to the area, but when they got to the location, they found that the car had been overturned and set on fire.

Speaker 1 Jones's companion Paul Bickford also denied any involvement in Williams' disappearance.

Speaker 1 He claimed he wasn't with Tony Jones on September 12 at all, but 41 kilometers away in Port Macquarie having lunch with friends. Although, he couldn't recall which friends or where they ate.

Speaker 1 In a bizarre coincidence, Bill Spedding and Tony Jones had once lived across the street from one another.

Speaker 1 Police hoped that by pairing them in a cell together, one of them might be compelled to say something incriminating to the other about William Tyrrell.

Speaker 1 But the plan didn't work, and three months after Bill Spedding's arrest for the unrelated child sex crimes, he was granted conditional bail and allowed to return home pending trial.

Speaker 1 News of his arrest had made national headlines, with the inference that he was the prime suspect in Williams' abduction.

Speaker 1 This had a hugely detrimental impact on Spedding's family and business, and he took it upon himself to try to change the public's perception.

Speaker 1 Within days of his release from jail, a video appeared online.

Speaker 1 Reading from a pre-prepared script, Spedding offered his condolences to Williams' family and stated that he had no involvement whatsoever in the young boy's disappearance.

Speaker 1 But the damage to his reputation was already done, with many thinking the bizarre video did nothing but further solidify his guilt.

Speaker 1 In September 2015, as the one-year anniversary of William's disappearance approached, police released the details about the two cars Angela had seen on Benaroon Drive on the morning William went missing for the first time.

Speaker 1 Many questioned why they had waited so long to do this, as vital witness accounts could be forgotten due to the time lapsed.

Speaker 1 The recording of Angela's call to emergency services was also released in the hopes it might elicit an emotional response and prompt a new witness to come forward.

Speaker 1 To mark the anniversary and support the ongoing search, thousands of people participated in community walks held across the country.

Speaker 1 Organisers of the Walk for William events hoped the show of support would encourage somebody to come forward with information, with one walk held as far away as Canada.

Speaker 1 Detective Inspector Gary Jubilin had been working tirelessly on the case and the anniversary was a rude awakening.

Speaker 1 By this point, the strike force had been presented with every possible theory from the credible to the ludicrous.

Speaker 1 With thousands of lines of inquiry still to be followed, there weren't enough hands on deck or hours in the day and the work continued to pile up.

Speaker 1 Detective Jubilin remarked to the press,

Speaker 1 The anniversary is a milestone that no one in the community or family wanted to reach, 12 months without finding out what happened to William.

Speaker 1 From a police point of view, that plays very heavily on us. We feel like we've let them down.

Speaker 1 By December that year, the strike force was no closer to finding answers. William's foster parents released a Christmas poem to keep the case in the public consciousness.
It read in part,

Speaker 1 Christmas is a time for happiness. It's a time when families come together and hold each other tight.
But not our family and not this Christmas night.

Speaker 1 While our beautiful little boy William is still missing, absent from our sight.

Speaker 1 We love you, our darling boy. You are never far from our thoughts.
We remember everything about you.

Speaker 1 Your amazing laugh, your kindness and the love you share with your sister, your complete adoration of your daddy, your funny faces for mummy, your kisses, your hugs and your tears.

Speaker 1 We remember your first words, your first steps, your first fears.

Speaker 1 We miss everything about you, our beautiful little boy.

Speaker 1 Although Peter and Angela had been cleared from the investigation in its very early stages, some among the strike force thought it was worth looking into them again to be 100%

Speaker 1 sure.

Speaker 1 Some questions had arisen about a possible inconsistency in Angela's story.

Speaker 1 In police interviews, she had claimed that William was wearing shoes at the time he went missing. However, in the photos she'd taken of William at 9.37am,

Speaker 1 just minutes before he disappeared, he'd been barefoot.

Speaker 1 His shoes, a pair of sandals with Velcro straps, sat near the back door.

Speaker 1 Members of the public had also responded negatively to the recording of her call to police. Many thought she sounded much too calm for a mother whose child had just gone missing.

Speaker 1 The couple were summoned to the police station under the guise of it being a routine appointment.

Speaker 1 Once they arrived, they were separated and interrogated at length about the day of William's disappearance.

Speaker 1 Detective Jubilin, quote, went hard on them.

Speaker 1 Asked about the shoes, Angela said William had been barefoot when she took the photos, but she had told him to put shoes on, which he was capable of doing on his own.

Speaker 1 because there were prickly weeds and dog feces in the grass.

Speaker 1 Unbeknownst to the couple, while all this was going going down, covert listening devices were placed in their car.

Speaker 1 If Peter and Angela had anything to hide, police hoped that they might divulge something important as they discussed what they'd just experienced on their drive home.

Speaker 1 But both of their stories remained unchanged and nothing of interest was captured in the covert recordings.

Speaker 1 Detective Jubilin was confident that there was absolutely no evidence that raised any suspicion in regards to their involvement, and again, they were eliminated from the investigation.

Speaker 1 By September 2016, the search for William Tyrrell had become one of the largest ever in Australian history.

Speaker 1 A second arm of the strike force was established purely to work through the 1,000-plus names that police had identified as potential persons of interest.

Speaker 1 Detectives were required to travel all over the country to locate each individual and cross them off the list.

Speaker 1 But despite the epic scale of work being put in, the investigation continued with no significant breakthroughs.

Speaker 1 Strikeforce detectives wanted to offer a reward for information, but they knew what would need to be a sizable amount of money if it was going to encourage anyone to speak.

Speaker 1 As Detective Jubilin explained, it would need to be enough money to make a wife turn against her husband or for one pedophile to betray another.

Speaker 1 With support from the New South Wales Police Commissioner and the State Premier, they got their wish.

Speaker 1 On the second anniversary of William Tyrrell's disappearance, a $1 million reward was announced.

Speaker 1 At the time, it was the largest reward ever offered in New South Wales, and the announcement was broadcast heavily on television and shared across social media.

Speaker 1 When nobody tried to claim it, investigators drew two conclusions.

Speaker 1 Either William's abductor had acted alone and not told a soul, or if more than one person had been involved, none of the offenders were prepared to rat the others out.

Speaker 1 The strike force continued questioning known sex offenders and pedophiles.

Speaker 1 Some officers were given the grim task of viewing child exploitation material in case William could be identified in footage or photographs.

Speaker 1 It was a brutal job that took a severe emotional toll, but members of the strikeforce persevered with one ultimate goal.

Speaker 1 To bring William Tyrrell home.

Speaker 1 In mid-2016, the Department of Housing received an application that made them stop in their tracks.

Speaker 1 A woman named Kim Loki had applied for a home in Sydney, citing William Tyrrell's biological grandmother, Tracy Martin, not her real name, as her intended roommate.

Speaker 1 The two women had worked together in the past and had recently rekindled their friendship. with Kim posting photos of herself and a Tracy together online to acknowledge their bond.

Speaker 1 But there was something that rang alarm bells for the Department of Housing.

Speaker 1 Kim had applied for a three-bedroom house, even though she stated that she and Tracy would be the only occupants.

Speaker 1 When William had been a baby and his biological parents had hidden him from the authorities, Tracy Martin had apparently helped them.

Speaker 1 This led the department to question whether that third bedroom was intended for William. Perhaps Kim had been helping hide him all along.

Speaker 1 The department notified the police who placed Kim under covert surveillance. What they discovered was shocking.

Speaker 1 Kim drove a grey Holden Commodore sedan similar in colour and shape to one of the vehicles Angela claimed to have spotted on Benaroom Drive on the day of William's disappearance.

Speaker 1 Kim was also a former customer of Bill Spedding, having hired him to fix her washing machine several years prior.

Speaker 1 But perhaps most alarming, one of Kim's flatmates had a notable brother-in-law, person of interest in the William Tyrrell case, convicted sex offender Tony Jones.

Speaker 1 She was also friends with the Joneses' now ex-partner, Debbie.

Speaker 1 When questioned about her whereabouts on Friday, September 12, 2014, Kim Loki claimed she was at home in Sydney, some 360 kilometres from Kendall, but she had nothing to verify her alibi.

Speaker 1 Her explanation for wanting a third bedroom was that she needed a studio for her art.

Speaker 1 Kim appeared on Channel 9's Accurrent Affair program to deny having anything to do with Williams' disappearance.

Speaker 1 She rejected allegations that it was her car seen on Benaroon Drive, stating,

Speaker 1 I wouldn't be game to do stuff like that, kidnapping a little kid.

Speaker 1 The heat was placed on William's biological grandmother, Tracy Martin, until another twist emerged. Tracy wasn't close friends with Kim Loki at all.

Speaker 1 The two women were nothing more than former work colleagues.

Speaker 1 Kim had used photos of them taken at a work function years prior as testimony to their friendship and had simply wanted to ingratiate herself into the William Tyrrell investigation.

Speaker 1 She tried to sue a current affair for money they promised her for the interview, but the case was thrown out of court.

Speaker 1 The fact that William was a foster child had been publicly discussed online by those invested in the case, but by mid-2017, this fact still hadn't been officially clarified.

Speaker 1 It continued to muddy public perception, with sympathy for the anonymous family slowly dissipating in the eyes of those who viewed them as detached.

Speaker 1 A woman who wasn't connected to either of the families in any way took it upon herself to fight to make this detail public.

Speaker 1 Having been sexually assaulted in a foster home during her own adolescence, the woman became an advocate for other foster children and believed the public had a right to know the truth about William's family's situation.

Speaker 1 The case went to court where lawyers for the Department of Family and Community Services argued that there was a stigma attached to being a foster child.

Speaker 1 If William was ever found alive, this stigma would follow him for life.

Speaker 1 Likewise, his sister Lindsay would suffer from the same stigma. William's foster parents agreed that they wanted to keep this information secret along with their identities.

Speaker 1 Up until this point, Williams' biological parents Amy Tyrrell and Tyler Martin had mostly been kept on the sidelines of the investigation.

Speaker 1 They didn't receive the same regular updates as his foster parents, weren't acknowledged in the media, and had been excluded from the National Public Relations campaign aimed at bringing awareness to the case.

Speaker 1 However, they had always wanted it to be publicly known that William was in foster care at the time he went missing.

Speaker 1 The judge agreed that the public had been misled to believe that Peter and Angela were William Tyrell's biological parents.

Speaker 1 In a landmark decision, he lifted the restrictions that prevented this fact from being reported. ruling that William being in foster care was a legitimate matter of public interest.

Speaker 1 For the first time since William went missing, the names of his biological parents were allowed to be shared, while the names of his foster parents and sister continued to be suppressed by a court order.

Speaker 1 Afterwards, Amy Tyrrell appeared on national television for the first time.

Speaker 1 In a heartfelt interview with the television presenter Melissa Doyle for Channel 7's Sunday Night Program, she admitted to having made poor choices in the past, but said she was trying to be the best mum she could be.

Speaker 1 No longer in a relationship with Tyler Martin, Amy said William and Lindsay shouldn't have been taken away from her in the first place.

Speaker 1 She believed the whole situation could have been improved if there had just been better support for mothers who were experiencing domestic violence.

Speaker 1 Amy cried as she fondly recounted memories of William as a baby.

Speaker 1 She spoke of how difficult the experience of losing him twice had been and how much it hurt her to know that William and Lindsay were no longer together.

Speaker 1 Sobbing, she begged whoever had her son to bring him home unharmed, saying whoever was responsible, quote, needs a bullet.

Speaker 1 Whatever had happened to William, Amy believed that his foster parents should feel guilty.

Speaker 1 I don't want to blame the carers, she said, but they were responsible for looking after William, and they failed.

Speaker 1 As police continued to make their way through the long list of persons of interest, when speaking with Kendall locals, one name in particular kept coming up.

Speaker 1 The individual lived a reclusive lifestyle in an overgrown property near Benaroon Drive, and some people thought he was worth looking into.

Speaker 1 Police arrived at the man's house and what they found was disturbing.

Speaker 1 Outside, animal carcasses hung from pieces of string. Inside was even creepier.

Speaker 1 At the end of the man's bed, a shrine of sorts had been made to William Tyrrell.

Speaker 1 It featured photos of William along with quotes about the investigation that had been cut from the newspaper as well as handwritten poetry about the case.

Speaker 1 Due to the man's unconventional lifestyle, police nicknamed him Gorillas in the Mist after the book and film of the same name about an American scientist who moved to the remote forests of Rwanda to study primates.

Speaker 1 Police questioned Gorillas in the Mist extensively but found nothing to suggest he was involved in Williams' abduction.

Speaker 1 If anything, they thought he seemed lonely and appreciated the police company.

Speaker 1 However, there were certain things about his behavior that they deemed concerning.

Speaker 1 Not wanting to take any chances, the police decided to put gorillas in the mist under surveillance by installing hidden cameras in the bush surrounding his property.

Speaker 1 Before long, one of the cameras went missing.

Speaker 1 Police had no idea what had happened to it until six weeks later, when it suddenly reappeared under strange circumstances

Speaker 1 to be continued.

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