Smile that says ‘Aussie Maddie’, 4, is safe at last
Cleo found 18 days after she was snatched from campsite
LICKING an ice lolly in hospital, Cleo Smith waves a big thank you to the police who ended her 18 days of captivity at the hands of a stranger.
Her bright smile was something her distraught parents feared they would never see again after the fouryear-old went missing on a family camping trip, sparking a huge search in Western Australia.
The case drew comparisons with that of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished in Portugal in 2007 but has never been found.
Cleo was taken from a tent where she was sleeping – scooped up as her mother slept inches away – at a campsite nearly 50 miles from her home.
Yet when officers kicked in the door to a house to find the little girl in the early hours of yesterday, they were just two miles from her front door in the town of Carnarvon, 550 miles north of Perth.
Video captured the moment police found Cleo in the house – a seven-minute drive from her family home. ‘We’re going to take you to see your mummy and daddy, OK?’ a detective told her as she was carried on an officer’s shoulder.
A little after 1am, Ellie Smith – Cleo’s
‘Someone here wants to speak to you’
mother – received a phone call. ‘We’ve got someone here that wants to speak to you,’ she was told by police.
Cleo shouted ‘Mummy!’ in a tearful reunion with Miss Smith and partner Jake Gliddon shortly afterwards, giving them big hugs and kisses.
Visiting Cleo in hospital where she was receiving a medical check, Miss Smith let the tears of joy flow. ‘Our family is whole again,’ she said on social media.
The tender moment brought an end to a desperate investigation that began when Miss Smith reported Cleo missing from the Blowholes campsite on October 16, and which had been overshadowed from day one by fears of a tragedy.
The zip on the tent was raised to a height the four-year-old could not have reached so police immediately suspected she had been taken.
Officers have not said how or why they believe Cleo was taken, or how she came to be inside a locked house just a twominute drive from their own headquarters. Investigators have also not disclosed what led them to the house, saying only that a report of a car in the area was crucial.
Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine said cops used battering rams to storm the house. They found Cleo alone in a bedroom. ‘I wanted to be absolutely sure it was her, so I said, “what’s your name?” And she didn’t answer and I said, “what’s your name?”,’ he said.
‘She didn’t answer again, so I asked her a third time and she looked at me and said, “my name is Cleo”. And that was it.’ Cleo’s dad Daniel Staines, who is separated from Miss Smith and lives 600 miles away, said he was ‘overjoyed’ at the news.
Miss Smith said her daughter had seen her missing posters that were plastered around the town. ‘Cleo has seen her photo. She thought it was beautiful,’ she wrote on Facebook.
Her alleged abductor – named locally as 36-year-old Terry Kelly – was last night in hospital after reportedly beating his head against a wall after his arrest. He was known to police, they said, but was not a sex offender.
Neighbours yesterday admitted they had seen the ‘childless loner’ buying nappies and heard crying coming from his home, but did not connect the dots to Cleo.
They said Kelly was an ‘oddball’, who did not mix well with others. One said he ‘never let anyone into his house’, even though they had been neighbours for a long time.