William Tyrrell case: former detective defends previous investigation into boy’s disappearance
Gary Jubelin, the retired homicide detective who once led the William Tyrrell case, has defended his previous investigation as the renewed search for the child’s remains continues.
The former detective was responding to criticisms from the state’s current police commissioner, Mick Fuller, that the new investigation team had “inherited what was a bit of a mess”.
Jubelin investigated the case from five months after the then-three-yearold disappeared in September 2014 until he was removed from the case.
He took issue with Fuller’s comments, saying he provided monthly progress reports to his superior officers detailing everything – “what suspects I was targeting, what the future directions were”.
Jubelin said he had formed a friendship with William’s foster parents and believed the foster mother to be “a very decent human being”.
However, he said he “went hard” when investigating the couple.
“I basically ambushed the (foster) parents and then I interrogated the (foster) parents,” he told Sydney radio 2GB on Thursday.
Jubelin eliminated them as suspects after a covert operation that included placing a listening device in their car.
“At the time I was taken off the investigation … I was certainly of the belief that they were not involved,” he said.
He said he had investigated all theories, including that William had died in an accident, but he said any theory had to be backed up with facts.
The investigation is now understood to be considering whether William might have died after falling from the balcony of the foster grandmother’s house.
His comments came as dozens of police from various units resumed the search effort at two sites in Kendall on the New South Wales mid north coast. They included the former home of William’s late foster grandmother, where he was last seen, and a patch of nearby bushland about a kilometre away.
Earth moving machines and a large electric sifter is being used to help forensics experts going through dirt by hand as they look for evidence.
At one point, a forensic expert carried a snake on his shovel away from the bush search site, while searchers at the house used ground penetrating radar and 3D cameras to look for anomalies in soil beneath concrete on the garage floor.
The concrete was understood to have been laid after William disappeared. On Thursday afternoon, a police media spokesman on site at the dig told Guardian Australia the radar tests indicated “nothing that would indicate any abnormalities of interest to the investigation”.
Search teams worked through sunny and dusty conditions but by the afternoon, a cool change swept through with rain predicted. Police vowed to continue searching until the rain becomes “torrential”.
Rural Fire Service members also continued clearing trees in the area of bushland on Batar Creek Road.
On Wednesday, the search team discovered threads of red fabric that fuelled speculation they could be similar to the Spider-Man costume that William was last seen wearing. There is so far no confirmed link between the thread and the costume, however the sample was sent overnight to a police lab in Sydney for further testing.
The patch of land where the fabric was found was covered with protective tarpaulin overnight, and officers, together with specialist soil and grave analysts – including a professor who helped find the remains of missing Queensland boy Daniel Morcombe – resumed sifting through earth in the specific spot.
Police had earmarked two further patches of nearby bushland but had yet to begin searching.
NSW Police revealed on Wednesday they had seized a car that belonged to the foster grandmother, who has since died.
The grey Mazda was taken from a home in Gymea in Sydney’s south under a coronial order last week and is undergoing extensive forensic examination.
The findings of a coronial inquest into William’s disappearance, which concluded last year, are yet to be handed down.
A $1m reward for information on the case still stands.