‘I KNOW WHO TOOK WILLIAM TYRRELL’
Withh a new attempt to solve this heartbreaking mystery, police believe they know who abducted William
Asenior investigator linked to the case into the disappearance and presumed death of three-year-old William Tyrrell has told colleagues he knows who is responsible for snatching the boy in September 2014.
“I’m certain I know who it is,” the investigator, who can’t be named for legal reasons, told workmates. “Now we need to prove it.”
In the lead-up to the start of a coronial inquest, William’s still grieving family said they had “renewed hope” for answers for their boy, who disappeared dressed in his Spider-man suit. On the official “Where’s William Tyrrell?
Bring Him Home” Facebook page, the family said they trusted the inquiry into their son’s abduction will “enable Strike Force Rosann to test the information and evidence they’ve painstakingly gathered to help further their investigation to find out what has happened to our precious little boy”.
HEARTACHE AT INQUEST
In opening statements at the inquest in Sydney last week, counsel assisting the coroner said the findings were likely to be that William’s vanishing “was the direct result of human intervention”.
“I expect it’s likely he was taken,” Gerard Craddock SC said in his opening address. “That conclusion is chilling because it means a person snatched a three-year-old from the safety of a quiet village backyard. That person, with whatever his or her proclivities and interests, remains in our community.”
Sitting in the front row of the court, William’s biological father wept as the boy’s foster mother cried on the stand, explaining her horrible realisation their boy was gone.
Sobbing, she recalled how, in the time it took her to make a cup of tea, William, who had been playing hideand-seek with his older sister, had vanished from the gumtree-filled yard of her
mother’s house in Kendall on the NSW mid-north coast.
The 49-year-old, who cannot be named, said one minute he was “roaring like a tiger… And then, nothing.” She thought, “That’s really weird. It’s just too quiet. I get up, and I walk around, and I go, ‘William, where are you? You need to talk to me. I can’t see you.’ But he’s just gone.”
She told the inquiry she thought she heard a terrifying quick and high-pitched scream before everything went silent and “the birds stopped singing”. “I have to call the police. My immediate thought was someone has taken him and he’s gone.”
THE FRANTIC SEARCH
Multiple neighbours told the inquest they saw William's foster father frantically searching and screaming the child’s name. “I’m sure if William had been around, he would have come to himhim,” Sharelle Crabb said. Another neighbour, Lydene Heslop, said she searched into the early evening. “BY then I knew he wasn’t around,” she said of the search that continues to this day and carries a $1 million reward for information leading to an arrest.
Two days after his disappearance, while police and volunteers continued to scour bushland, drains, creeks and the local cemetery ffor any sign of William, his foster mother recalled seeing two suspiciously parked cars.
She remembered the cars were gone when she started searching for William, revealing she saw another car with a “big man” with “weathered skin” behind the wheel, who gave her a “challenging look” as he drove up and down past her mother’s Benaroon Drive home.
The devastated foster mother said she’d “beaten myself up” for years for not taking down the number plates.
Kendall resident Anne-maree Sharpley told the coroner she knocked on the door of neighbour Paul Savage, who is legally represented at the inquiry, and told him a little boy was missing. He joined the search for William.
And the court heard that three days before William disappeared, local repairman Bill Spedding, who was earlier named by police as a person of interest in the case and is also legally represented at the hearing, had come to the foster grandmother’s home to fix a broken washing machine.
William’s foster mother told the court she had made a follow-up call to Bill Spedding on the morning of the disappearance but it went through to voicemail.
Outside court, William’s shaken biological grandmother said listening to the evidence was “very difficultdifficult” and it made her feel like “throwing up”.
‘She heard a terrifying quick and high-pitched scream…’