November 7, 2024 • 61 mins
An inquest reveals what police have - and haven’t - found about William’s disappearance.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm standing in front of the New South Wales Coroner's
Court in Lidcomb in Western Sydney, where in just a
few minutes now the inquest into William's disappearance is about
to start. It's a gray day. You can hear the
traffic roaring past. But for those involved today, all that
movement is going to stop. I can only imagine their
(00:23):
whole world is going to stop, and all that will
matter is what happens in that courtroom inside the building
in front of me. Now, it's four years now since
the last public hearing in this inquest, and in that
time the police focus has shifted completely onto William's foster mother.
They've launched an enormous search, literally dug up tons of
(00:46):
soil from around ben Rooin Drive while William went missing,
and her name's been in the newspapers. She has been
described in court as having had something to do with
William's disappearance.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Today, I'm in the media that we're going to be
doing some operational activity in the Kendle area over the
coming weeks. This activity is in response to evidence we've
obtained in the course of the investigation. It's not speculative
in any way. We're acting on behalf of the coroner.
At any conjunction with coronnial orders, she will be kept up.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
David, and we do today expect to hear what evidence
the police have or haven't got to justify that level
of suspicion. Strangely though, we won't be hearing from the
lead detective David Laidl, or the man who's running the
strikeforce into William's disappearance, because and this is this is
(01:41):
actually extraordinary, the coroner has refused to call him. The
Police Commissioner specifically asked that David Laidlor will be called.
The coroner has refused to do that, but she hasn't
released her reasons why David Laidlaw's decision to target William's
foster mother has been very public. The Police Commissioner, Mick
(02:01):
Fuller said this about the strikeforce.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I brought a new team on board under Detective Chief Inspector.
They've laid Law through probably the state's most experienced homicide investigator,
and he pulled together probably one of the best teams
we've seen and spend an active investigation. And you know,
they had been working through a number of different pieces
of information and they inherited what was a bit of
a mess and have really cleaned up that investigation and
(02:27):
they've got a clear strategy, and.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
The detectives in that strike force have said in court
they believe she knows what happened to William. So the
question that's in my mind right now is I'm about
to walk into this inquest, is how can the police
say all that with that kind of confidence? And yet
today in this hearing we're not going to hear from
(02:52):
the lead detective himself. Are we going to get the
answers that really, after all these years everyone is hoping
to receive. I don't know. The only way we're going
to know is by going inside.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Okay, Daniel, Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So one of the things about courts is you're not
allowed to record inside them. So the only way we
can actually tell anyone what happened in the inquest today
is just like this, we come out and then you
and I have this conversation, Nina, because you weren't in court,
so you don't know what happened. The big thing is
(03:37):
what we haven't got. So there hasn't been a moment
where anyone has said this is the evidence. The police
have got to justify what they've been looking at and
the theory they've been following for the past four or
five years now. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The
senior lawyer working with the coroner said, it's beyond any
(03:59):
argument now that we'll material has not been found, and
it's beyond argument that no forensic evidence has been located
anywhere that provides a clue to his disappearance, So no
forensic evidence. And also it's beyond argument that there is
no eyewitness who's provided an account of how William left
(04:20):
the area where he was last seen, meaning the police
have no direct evidence of what happened to him. Okay,
it means the police can only have a circumstantial case,
which that can still work. You can still prove someone
has done something with a circumstantial case, but it's harder
(04:40):
and to do it you also have to prove that
the other people who might have been involved definitely didn't
do it. And what's been interesting is that the lead
lawyer working with the inquest has cited a couple of
the other moments in the long history of this investigation
where the police have directly accused other people of being
involved in William's disappearance, and the lawyer said that media
(05:05):
reports show the police now believe the foster mothers involved,
and he says it cannot be overstated that the coroner
has to act on the basis of reliable evidence. He said,
guesses are not rational. Suspicions form no rational basis for
making findings of fact. So you're kind of reading between
(05:27):
the lines because the way he talks, this guy, Gerard
Craddock is very loyally. It's kind of scholarly. He kind
of goes around the houses, but listening to what he's saying,
he's saying, there's no evidence and you shouldn't be guessing.
You shouldn't be using your suspicions to make findings, which
(05:48):
is what the inquest now has to do.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
So you reported earlier this morning that David Laidlaw was
not going to be called as a witness. No, did
they give any indication as to why.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
No, nothing, it's been I said that Craddock is kind
of loyally and scholarly. He spent a lot of this
morning talking about all the evidence that has been heard
in the inquest before now years ago and emphasizing who
was where and when and detail timings of that morning,
and how we can be certain of what we know
(06:21):
on the morning when William went missing, So the time
the last photo of William was taken, the time a
text message was sent by William's foster father, at the
time of the triple zero cars, the time of the
first police officer arriving, how different people's Facebook posts can
show that certain things were happening at certain times and
certain people were where they said they were, and talking
(06:43):
about the search that was done that morning. And the
more he went over this, the more I'm starting to think,
why are we going over this? And then I started
to think, because he's building a case about what we
can know and what we know we can't no if
that makes sense. So he talks about the initial search
(07:03):
for William in the first few days, and he says
that was thorough. He's got no question about whether or
not that did its very best to find where William was.
And he talks about the second search in twenty eighteen,
which he says was intense, and then he talks about
this third search he mentioned in twenty twenty one, which
(07:24):
the police launched, and he describes that as another level
of intensity. The police went in with excavators and rakes,
and they stripped out of vegetation, they used divers. And
the conclusion that the lawyer Gerard Craddock says is no
evidence was found that relates to William Tyrrell's disappearance. He
says the court may consider and perhaps conclude. And that's
(07:46):
the loyally talking that William under his own stem cannot
have traveled beyond the area searched. And the point he's
making is therefore someone else must have been involved. One
thing that among all that kind of long and detailed
raking over of the evidence we've heard is he talked
(08:08):
about how the neighbors heard a car that morning. They
heard a car on the gravel at the top end
of Benuin Drive, which is just outside the house where
William was staying. And he says, you can't prove that
there was a car, but there's definitely evidence of a
car being there, and no one knows. No one's been
(08:29):
able to prove who drove that car.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Yeah, Peter and Sharrell crab So I went back and
looked into that. And so they got home about nine
point thirty in the morning that day, and they both
testified in twenty nineteen that they heard a car doing
a U turn in the street. They both thought it
sounded like the postman at the time. Yeah, and Charrell
testified that the car was moving quite fast. But I
did wonder, because there's been a lot of people testifying
(08:53):
about cars. I did wonder the significance of the crabs
in particular. Did he mention why he brought them up.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
He's confident about the cabs evidence because he says one
of the detectives is sitting with Sharrell Krab asking her
about this, when Sharrell Crab says, oh, can you hear
that car driving up the road, and then a few
seconds later the detective hears it. So he says, despite
the fact that Charrell's quite elderly at that point, she's
obviously very capable. She is able to hear a car.
(09:22):
So he's got quite a lot of confidence in that.
So I think all he's doing is establishing there's no
evidence of what happened to William, but there's a possibility
that this car was involved in whatever did happen. He
hasn't gone any further than that.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
It sounds like he was just making a big focus
on hard facts that he thinks can be proved versus
theories that can't be.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Is that the theme, yes, And he talked about how
the inquest came to an end in twenty twenty and
he said the reason it restarted this week this morning,
he said, is because the police decided to follow up
a theory. And that's the theory we looked at episode
four that the police believe William may have fallen off
the balcony, that his foster mother decided not to seek
(10:06):
help but to dispose of his remains, and she drove
down the road to the corner of Batar Creek Road
and Cobb and Co Road and disposed of his body there.
But what's really strange is the inquest seems to have
gone out of its way not to call any of
the detectives, so no one's been asked to explain why
the police pursued this theory or why they did the
(10:29):
twenty twenty one search, the enormous search a few years ago.
What Craddock the lawyer did say is that the detective
leading that inquiry the one who's not been called to
give evidence, Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw. He says he's
given a number of statements the most recent one is
heavily redacted, meaning he's not going to be called to
(10:50):
give evidence, and his statement has been censored, so we
can't know what he says. Craddock, the lawyer, explained that
saying the simple reason for that is what we wanted
was a straightforward recitation of the investigative steps taken since
twenty twenty, and the statement we've been given deals with
(11:11):
evidence in the form of one person's opinions about what
the evidence shows. So what he's saying is the coroner
asked the lead detective to give us the facts of
what the police have done, and what the lead detective
has given them is opinions about the evidence. He says,
it's fine for the lawyers to make submissions so long
(11:32):
as they take into account all of the evidence, not
of opinions, but a proper fact finding processes. So again,
it's loyally, it's scholarly, it's kind of going around the houses.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
But it is a criticism that a sounds like a
loyally disc.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It is a loyally it's a loyally dis and detective
Chief Inspector laid Law sitting in the inquest listening to
this but not responding saying nothing publicly. We heard one witness,
(12:08):
a hydrologist who was involved in planning the police search,
and you get a sense of the scale of the search.
Vegetation was stripped, then they sent in a cadaver dog.
Then they dug out the soil with rakes or hose
or use an excavator and they drained the creek. Or
divers are sent in to do a hand search, and
they dug out tons of soil and searched each bucket
full by hand. And this is all around that crossroads
(12:31):
that you and me went to where the police are
working on the theory that Williams fostermotherd disposed of his body.
And by establishing the search is so thorough, it underscores
the fact no evidence was found, potentially because there was
no evidence there to find.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
When I saw that John Ollie, the hydrologist, had worked
on the Daniel Markham case in twenty eleven, I thought
that was quite interesting because it's quite a similar sort
of search that he did nine years since Daniel went missing.
And I was reading more about how they did that
search there to excavate five hundred cubic meters of sand
and remove a huge layer of sediment up to a
(13:11):
meter deep to find Daniel's body. And you've got to
think that is a case where they actually knew where
the body was. So I can't imagine how much harder
it will be for the place in this case when
they're kind of just working on a hypothesis and they
don't know really how big the area they have to
look at is.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It was vast. We saw a video of the search
in operation and it is, honestly, it's a lunar landscape.
They've stripped all the vegetation back and then dug the
earth down to five ten fifteen centimeters. Some place has
gone deeper, and then they've just dragged that earth out
and searched through it or sieved through it. But what
we've not heard, because no one's been asked, is why
(13:49):
did the police launch that search? What evidence did they
have to support the theory they were pursuing? And I
guess we don't have to have those answers yet. It's
only day one of the inquest.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Do we have an indication of who else is being
called this week? Are we going to stay on the
twenty twenty one search.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, most of the evidence this week is on the
twenty twenty one search. We're going to hear from some
of the constables who are involved, another expert talking about remains,
how they can be preserved or they can be lost.
And one witness who was a truck driver who was
driving a long Bitar Creek Road. And we know because
it's been in the media, so it's been leaked to
the media that that truck driver saw William's foster mother
(14:33):
at that time. We don't know what he says she
was doing.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
In the foster Mother's walk through describing that drive, she
talks about passing a truck as she drove down to
Patar Creek Road.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
Yeah, he thought I pulled over because he acknowledged me
by saying thanks for pulling over. But I pulled over
because I've just got my head out the window looking
for William.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Do we know if it's that truck driver or is
it We don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
We have to assume it's that truck driver. So at
the moment, we've got no evidence, no explanation of why
police launched this search, and yet it's only day one.
But there is something that struck me right at the end,
and this might give you an indication of how these
things play out not just in court, but in the
(15:17):
media and in the politics of this. Right at the end,
after you know, we've heard all day that the police
have found nothing, this professor John Ollie is on the stand.
He's a hydrologist. The police barrister stands up and says,
after you've finished your work on this, did you consider
that there might be any other explanation for what happened
(15:38):
to William? And he says yes. He wrote to another
scientist who was an expert on invasive species of pigs
or fox to ask him if it was possible one
of those animals had done something to William, And of
course the counsel assystem, the coroner and the coroner shut
that down and they say, look, we've already established basically
(15:59):
when not going to hear that evidence, and that also
you're asking a hydrologist about an ecologist's explanation of what happened.
But by then it's too late. That theory is out there.
And when I left the media room where the journalists
have all been working today, everyone is talking about this
idea that William Tierrell may have been taken by a
(16:20):
fox or a pig. And I bet that the headlines
tomorrow or even later today. The headlines say William Tierrell
could have been taken by a fox and there's no
evidence for that, but the theory is now out there
in the wild. So that's day one. Okay. So I
(17:02):
told you the media would report on the possibility of
wild animals, didn't I?
Speaker 4 (17:07):
He did?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I did, and they did so the Guardian and the
Daily Mail, particularly the Guardian headline is William Tyrell inquest
Police suspect foster mother Berry Toddler after accidental death. And
then the stand first wild dogs may have taken any
remains of the three year old. Now it does say
no bones or clothing belonging to William were located, but
(17:29):
it doesn't mention that the senior lawyer at the inquest
has specifically said it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found,
which I think is a difference in terms of how
strongly he's put there. And then the Daily Mail headline
is expert combed through a rubbish dump in the hunt
for William Tibble's body as detectives reveal shocking theory they
(17:53):
believe solves the mystery. I mean that's strong language, and
the article beneath it it says this expert didn't find
William's remains, but admitted animals could have removed them like
they do with kangaroo carcasses. And again it does say
police did not believe any trace of William was left there.
(18:17):
But that's actually quite different to what the lawyer said,
which is it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found.
So I asked to speak to both of those reporters
and asked to interview them both about why they wrote
it the way they did, just out of interest because
I would have done it differently. And neither of them
took me up on the offer of an interview. But
(18:38):
I did speak to the Daily Mail reporter and we
had actually a really nice players and interesting conversation, and
she was talking about different things. So she's not actually
the one who kind of does the final bulk together
of her article. It gets updated over the day, so
she doesn't have final control of things, particularly like headlines.
She's also said she wasn't convinced that what I thought
(19:01):
was important about the lawyer saying it's beyond argument there's
no forensic evidence. She didn't think that was as important
as I did. As she said in terms of their audience.
This question about could animals have moved William's remains was
more interesting because this idea about wild animals has not
been heard before, so it's new, so it's news. I
(19:23):
said to her, Look, I would have written that article
pretty much the opposite way around, so the top line
is no forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses, and I might not
even have put in the reference to the wild animals.
And also, you know, the coroner challenged it when it
was mentioned in court and said, look, you're not the
right person to even give this as evidence because you're
(19:44):
an expert in hydrology, to which the response was that
that's because I've spent a lot of time criticizing the
police theory and that the podcast we're making right now
is all about criticizing the police, which is fair that
there has. It's been a fair bit of criticism of
the police in this podcast. But today in court the
(20:07):
police barristers back on his feet, so the lawyer representing
the police asking questions again about the effects of wild
animals on human remains. So it is something the police
are interested in.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It's interesting, isn't it. It just shows you how the
media shapes the story absolutely and we're relying on the media.
You know, there's no cameras in court, there's no recording,
there's no transcript the public have access to. We're relying
on the media to give us those reports.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yes, so it's the media who allow the Oh. I know,
this isn't rocket science. Everyone knows this. But it's the
media who shaped the how the public understand the story.
So right across the country, this is how people understand
not just what happened, but who these people are. And
you suddenly realize just how powerful it's shifting emphasis can be,
(20:56):
and how potentially damaging a shift of emphasis can be.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
I did catch a new story this morning that kind
of highlights that the court opened today with the coroner
telling people off for abusing the foster mother outside the
court yesterday.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's a really good point because it's the first thing
we hear is that there was a woman outside the
court yesterday as people were coming out. As William's foster
mother walks out, this woman outside the court starts yelling
abuse at her style. Oh, but also starts yelling her
(21:45):
name in public, which is obviously protected by these non
publication orders which haven't been put in place to protect
William's foster mother. They've been put in place to protect
other children who are associated with or have some connection
to her, so she started using her name. She abuses her.
The TV cameras are rolling because they're all there to
(22:07):
get that footage of William's foster mother leaving court. But
then the coroner says this morning, how she's disappointed and
this must not occur. But it struck me this is
one of the problems with courts is they haven't kept
up with the technology. You've got all this technology in
now with social media where people are spreading facts and
lies as well outside of the court, including all this
(22:31):
stuff that people think or suspect or speculating about the
people involved in this case. It's all getting spread, but
it's trickling into the real world. It's having real world
effects on the real people involved. But what we did
see today was ours more evidence about the search. You
know the search. It was big, it was thorough, and
(22:53):
there's no evidence has been found to support the police theories.
But the problem is that a lack of evidence doesn't
prove that William's body wasn't there, which is where these
wild animals come in. If the wild animals could have
taken William's body, then it might still be that the
police theory is possible that this kind of hypothetical situation
(23:13):
where William falls off the balcony, his foster mother discovers him,
doesn't call for help, and decides to dispose of his body,
is still possible because possibly a wild animal took his corpse,
and that's why there's no forensic evidence despite years and
years of searching. The coroner did talk about that evidence
today and she said that the actual expert who gave
(23:34):
that evidence, she looked at the way he'd conducted his
experiments and said that his report could not help the
inquest because there were problems with the experiments. The police
had asked him to assume William's body was placed in
one particular place, and she says, you know, I pause
to say, there's actually no evidence that anyone was seen
placing a body here or anywhere else. And anyway, she said,
(23:56):
the place, which I think is that crossroads, had changed
over the time. So his reports and his suggestion that
a wild animal was involved was actually flawed. So she
decided not to include his report in evidence and was
not going to call him as a witness. But now
that whole idea has got out.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Was that area searched previously in previous search.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, well that's one of the things that did come
out today was we heard evidence from some of the
dog handlers and at least one of them, they put
their maps up on the screen in the court of
where they were searching. He couldn't see one that clearly,
but the other quite clearly showed that they did go
down to that particular crossroads the day after William went
missing and obviously didn't hear anything and obviously didn't find anything.
(24:41):
Although one of the things that's really frustrated me with
this inquest is we're hearing a lot of detail from
these different people. So a guy who mapped the searches,
two different dog handlers, other people, and we know a
lot about them, but nobody is asking them what did
you find? No one in court has actually asked anyone
what was found in that search. All we know is
(25:01):
from what one of the lawyers has said, which is
that no forensic evidence was found. But it's not that
hasn't really been emphasized.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah, because I know that, I mean a time of
the twenty twenty one search, there was so much media there,
and there was lots of moments where they were holding
up bits of material very dramatically and bagging.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Oh it was breaking news. It was breaking news. Yeah,
we've found a bit of red cloth, or we found
a thread.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
But none of that. They haven't said what that was.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I haven't mentioned it at all. Inside the court. There's
still quite a lot of secrecy. There's a lot of
non publication orders. There were a lot of suppression orders
we're dealing with. Just before coming here, we've had to
(25:49):
email the court to say this thing you were talking
about this afternoon, we think it's covered by a suppression order,
but you've been talking about it. So is it suppressed?
Isn't it suppressed? Can we talk about it? That's how
difficult it is to cover this inquest at times, because
so much of it is under wraps. That said, I
(26:12):
think we can talk about it. Do you want to
hear about it?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Okay, now, okay, this was interesting. This was the last
witness today. A police analyst comes in and starts talking
about the number of what the police called persons of
interest and long in the short of it is there's
a lot of them, a lot of potential persons of interest.
I can't tell you how many, because that's where I
think this suppression order kicks in. So there's bits I
(26:36):
can't tell you, but what I think we can say,
and if I'm wrong, then we'll obviously not publish. This
part of the podcast is that by the August of
this year, there's still a lot of those persons of interest,
and the persons of interest we heard in the court
are people who might be suspects in this investigation, except
(26:56):
in August of this year, the lead detective, David Laidlaw,
asks this analyst to change the name from persons of
interest to persons named to police, and she said it
was changed to persons named because they were named on
investigations reports, but they weren't actually investigated, and that struck
(27:18):
me as being interesting.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
That is interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
And then we started to hear in the cross examination
of her that the detectives on the strike force told
the analyst to take some of those names off her list.
And again I can't tell you how many because of
this court order, but she believes that was because those
people had been eliminated by the inquiry, but she doesn't
(27:41):
know why or on what grounds they eliminated, and then
apparently they worked out some of the names had doubled up,
so they took more names off the list, and there
was some uncertainty about those numbers, but it still left
a lot of names. So then she was saying, she
went through and she starts looking at these names and
cross referencing them against things like RMS data, so driver's
(28:03):
license records, and under cross examination they basically established that
you can't eliminate someone who doesn't have a driver's license
because they could still be driving a car just illegally.
But those names had been eliminated on that basis, So
more of the names were taken off the list, so
the list keeps getting smaller.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Sorry that sorry, you're saying as of August, yes, there
were moving people based on whether they had.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
A license or yeah, RMS data yeah, and whether or
not they'd passed one of three point to point cameras
on the Pacific Highway, despite the fact that the analyst
was saying, whether there were are the roads in and
out of Kendall. So she's asked by one of the barristers,
what I'm suggesting to you is that the examination of
the RMS records couldn't exclude anyone from being a person
(28:53):
of interest? Would you agree? And she says, I agree
with that. And yet it was used to take people
off this list, and the list got smaller. And we
don't know how small that list got. It started off
with lots of people, and we don't know how small
it got, except the police Commissioner Mick Fuller back in
(29:15):
I think twenty twenty one, suggested that list got very small. Indeed,
how many suspects have you narrowed the investigation down to?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You know? My understanding is from the investigators is that
there is certainly one person in particular that we are
looking closely at.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Do we know if any previously publicly identified persons of
interest were removed in this process?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
We don't, And I think even if we did know that,
I couldn't tell you because of this suppression order. I think.
But the one thing we have heard more than anything else,
and we've heard it more than once at this inquest,
is that however many people or person is left on
this list of potential persons of interest or people named
(30:01):
to police. The one thing we've heard is that the
police have no forensic and no eyewitness evidence to say
that that person did anything to do with William.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
So that's where we are at the end of day two. Okay,
(30:34):
day three, and I can now tell you the thing
that I didn't think I could tell you last night.
So I got an email at about twenty to ten
last night from the Coroner's Court saying that the information
on the persons of interest list we were talking about
yesterday is not suppressed after all. And what this does
is it shows you the challenges of the secrecy surround
(30:56):
in this case. Because I was going off a suppression
order put in place in twenty nineteen by the coroner
on quote information from the persons of interest list, and
given we spent in court a good chunk of yesterday
talking about information from the persons of interest list, I
thought that might be covered by that suppression order, but
(31:17):
it's not. Either way, I can now tell you what
I thought I couldn't tell you, which is that in
August of this year, there were one thousand, seven hundred
and nine people on the police persons of interest list
for the investigation into William Till's disappearance. One thy seven
hundred and nine. Those are people that the police had
(31:41):
a reason to potentially suspect or want to investigate. But
that's before the cops changed the name of that list
from persons of interest to persons named to police and
then started cutting that list. So we heard in the
inquest that the detectives told the police analyst to take
three one hundred and forty five people off the list
(32:02):
earlier this year. She didn't know why, and we won't
know why because the detectives have not been called to
answer questions at the inquest.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It's completely maddening. I think at this point I would
pay money to just have any lead investigator on this
case from any point just stand up and outline how
they have investigated the case, how they've ruled people in,
how they've ruled people out.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And the other thing the police are not going to
explain is why they launched the investigation they're currently doing
into William's foster mother. So we don't know why they
decided to do that. Yeah, the other thing we don't
know because the court is closed and I'm currently speaking
to you because the court being closed means we've been
(32:48):
shut out of the room. Well, actually I can't tell
you why that's happened, because there's a non publication order
on the existence of the thing the court is now
hearing evidence about. So all I can say is we're
not in there. We're not able to know what it is.
And I can't tell you what it is that we're
not able to know about. And at this point there
(33:11):
was quite a bit of laughter in the media room
among the journalists. But I can tell you what the
big news from today was.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Yes, is it the truck driver.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
It is the truck driver.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Everyone's excited about the truck driver. What did he or
is she say?
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Okay? So the truck driver is a he okay. The
truck driver drove down Bitar Creek Road at around the
time William's foster mother has said she came out of
Benirun Drive which turns onto Bitar Creek Road and drove
down there looking for William. And the police have been
quite clear, in fact said in court on oath that
(33:50):
they believe she disposed of William's body on that road.
So we've been expecting big things from the truck driver.
I went back and I looked at some of the articles,
or actually you found them for me, and then I
read them. November twenty twenty one, The Daily Mail says
a New South Wales police source said officers believe an
(34:11):
object may have been thrown from the vehicle. That's Williams
foster mum's car as it was driven along Bitar Creek Road.
So there's this suggestion which is left hanging, that something
is thrown out of her car and that that's what
the police are looking for and talking to the journos.
The police were briefing journos at the time that this
(34:34):
was seen by another driver on that road. And then
November twenty twenty one, the Daily Telegraph talks about an
elderly man who told investigators he saw something dumped from
a vehicle on the morning when William went missing, and
the reporter says they showed this man a photo of
the car William's foster mother was driving and the man said,
(34:55):
I'm pretty sure that's the car I saw. Now, interest,
we've not heard anything about that man.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Well, yeah, because I think the public assumed that the
person who saw somebody throwing something from the car was
the truck driver.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yes, and I did, and all the other journalists did.
So we were expecting this truck driver to be the
key witness because we know Williams foster mum says when
she was driving down that road, she saw a truck
driver coming the other way. And we know because it's
been in the papers that police are saying a witness
saw something being thrown from the car she's driving. So
(35:33):
maybe we've put two and two together and come up
with five, but we're all expecting the witness, the truck driver,
to say he saw William's foster mother throw something and
he was there at the time, because when it gives
evidence in court today, he says he was driving along
that road at about just after ten past ten on
(35:53):
that morning and was driving back around ten to eleven,
and that just before William's foster mother caused the police.
So just after she's driven down the road, on her
evidence says she's looking for William, and on the police
or their version of events, said she's disposing of William's body.
(36:15):
Now here's what that truck driver said. He saw he
saw two cars coming the other way, a black BMW
or maybe burgundy and a gray duel cab ute and
he didn't think either of those were coming out of
benuuin drive. And neither of those are the car that
William's foster mother drove and the driver didn't see anyone else.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Sorry, this isn't the truck driver that the foster mother
saw while driving.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, actee, that's a good point. It is a truck
driver who was driving down that road at that time.
She does say she saw a truck driver.
Speaker 5 (36:59):
She did. He thought I pulled over because he acknowledged
me by saying thanks for pulling over.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
But I pulled over because.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I've just got my head out the window looking for William.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
He in his evidence, doesn't describe the car that she
was in, and also doesn't describe seeing her or anyone
else throwing anything out of a car or disposing of
William's body at the crossroads where police have suggested she did.
(37:27):
So that's it.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Okay, So we've got a truck driver who saw some cars,
not that car.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
We've got a truck driver who was definitely there because
the CCTV and his evidence and the evidence i'm assuming
of the person he was picking his load up from,
So he was there. The significance is what he's not said.
He's not said that he saw anything a bit like
the police search of that area, which went on for
(37:56):
four weeks, found nothing, and we know they have no
eyewitness evidence of William being taken, and we know no
one saw William's body being disposed of anywhere, and we
now know that this witness drove along that road and
didn't see anything either. This truck driver said in his
(38:17):
evidence at the inquest today that he actually called crime
stoppers shortly after William went missing to tell them where
he was and what he'd seen. And he also called
the radio station two GB and spoke to Ray Hadley.
This is what he said at the time, Peter Good,
I good.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
How are you ready?
Speaker 6 (38:35):
Well Pete, thank you mate. I just don't going to
hear this kid being either abjactor or disappeared. I wasn't
condewn that time of the morning. I actually stayed overnight
in Clive Barker the coffee or Bobby called Air BP. Yes,
I had the big A machine up out of Kendal,
Silverdale on Friday and by the time I got up
and got down to Chew area would have been about
(38:58):
nine o'clock. So I was in the area for nine
o'clock onward. And as I came off the Streic Highway
and I had to go over the top of the
highway into Q and as I came into the queue
shopping here, there was a black Camray sitting on the
left han side, now that it was a no parking area.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
The truck driver also said he saw the car acting suspiciously.
There was a black Camray driven by a blond woman,
But while he said it was acting suspiciously, he didn't
really seem to have a lot of grounds for that suspicion.
He said the car was in q which is a
town a short drive from where William went missing, and
then he later saw it in Kendall, which is the
(39:34):
town just near where William went missing.
Speaker 6 (39:38):
I sort of went around this person and I started
heading into Kendall about interesting miss letter. That particular car
came into Kendell and parked up because I was almost
like a car park is a nursery there or something.
When you come over the bridge and then you go
over the railway line and there's a few little shops there,
and I was parked up on the left hand side
in the opening there where other cars were sort of
(39:59):
parked for a ninely degree, and.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
It kind of got in his way. It was parked
where he'd wanted to park, and that added up in
his mind to being suspicious.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
It was puck along Simon, but there was nothing room
for them to get out. So that particular car came
and parked, and there was a lady, a well built lady,
black shorts, blacktop, blonde walked into that shop. Now, I
was still there for a while, but then I had
to move on and I came back out a kendall
(40:28):
around eleven thirty twelve o'clock right, So this.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Play, but the key thing was that black can we
with That blonde driver wasn't seen near benuuin drive, which
is where William disappeared.
Speaker 6 (40:44):
Okay, Pleeter, just stay there, stay there down hanging up
at a noisy line. We'll get your details on past them.
Two the investigators were poor filing.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
What's odd is why are we hearing from this truck
driver now. He said in his evidence today that he
called crime Stoppers in the days after William went missing,
and when he was interviewed on two GB Ray Hadley
said he was going to pass his details to the police,
and we know from his evidence today that he did
give a statement to police before twenty twenty one, when
(41:16):
he gave another statement to the current strike Force who
are investigating William's foster mother, So why are we only
hearing from him today, particularly when it doesn't seem that
he saw anything that really proves anything at all. The
(41:47):
foster mother has lived for four years under public suspicion,
ever since that front page story in a newspaper where
police said they had a new suspect and are now
confident they will solve the missay of William's disappearance.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Yeah, and something that comes up every time people talk about,
you know, whether the foster mother is suspicious or not,
people bring up the objects thrown from the car.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah, but there's no actual evidence that we've heard at
the inquest that there was any object thrown at the car,
and the only truck driver they've been able to find
didn't see anything. So for those four years when the
police have been working on this theory, prosecuting it in public,
(42:33):
in court and through the media, and also by trying
to send a brief of evidence to the Director of
Public Prosecutions, that's four years when we seem to know
now that they actually haven't got any direct evidence. And honestly,
there were people here at the court today who are
in tears about this. The whole inquest is talking around
(42:55):
the police investigation and looking at the facts of what
they found, but not talking about the investigation itself. And
the problem with this is police have no evidence, isn't
going to make the front pages, whereas police suspect William's
foster mother made pretty much every front page. There are
(43:18):
journalists here who are not finding stories today for that reason.
There's some that have already gone home, but there's others
who are angry. I've just spoken to one who's He
turned around to me and said, you know, for years now,
we have dutifully reported what the police told us in
good faith and started talking about the damage done to
(43:40):
the people involved. And I think that's fair, and I
think we have to look at ourselves for reporting these things.
But also we're not the ones who've been saying this
in the first instance. And it goes back to that
thing that if we now have four years on no evidence,
then what evidence might have been found if the police
(44:00):
were looking elsewhere. So day four and the last day
(44:22):
of the inquest, at least for now, I'll be honest,
it's been a painful week. So sitting in the courtroom,
I'm only really on the edge of the hurting but
even so, I feel like every night I go to
sleep and I wake up without getting any rest. How
(44:43):
are you doing?
Speaker 4 (44:45):
It's been frustrating to watch it from the outside. I
kind of maagine how frustrating it's been sitting in there.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Look not frustrating to be there because we've learned so
much in the past week. Honestly, today he was probably
the most grueling of the days to witness. So today
we watched a video recording of an interview, no not
even an interview, of the examination of William's foster mother
(45:14):
before the New South Wales Crime Commission. So she was
examined for two days and it's the first time anyone
publicly has seen her questioned. She's now the woman at
the center of the police investigation, and she's been questioned
before by police more than once, and she's done a
very few interviews, either released by the police or with
(45:35):
the media. But this is the first time she's been
sent in public under sustained examination by law enforcement. And
they played it with both William's biological parents and his
foster parents sitting in the room watching.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
This was in front of the Crime Commission. Yeah, can
you tell me what that is? Was You've had to
explain it to me before, and I'm sure a lot
of the members of the public don't really know what
that is.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
The Crime Commission is fascinating. It is a body specifically
set up to fight organized crime, and it doesn't often
or ever maybe get involved in this kind of case.
It's there for gangsters, drug gangs, and it has incredible powers. Firstly,
it's a secret body, so no one watches its examinations.
(46:22):
If you're called to give evidence to the Crime Commission,
you're not allowed to tell people that you've been there.
When you walk into that room to give evidence. You
have no right to silence. You are not allowed to
not answer the questions. Your answers can't be used in
criminal proceedings, but they can be past to the police
for their investigations. And lying to the Crime Commission is
(46:45):
punishable with a prison sentence. So it goes way beyond
the powers of any normal court or any normal police investigation.
And we saw Williams fostermother sitting there on her own
in the dock, facing this exactation, and she was told
that the police had reviewed the investigation into William's disappearance,
(47:07):
that that involved them going right back to the very
beginning and looking again at every person and possibility to
try to find out what had happened to William. And
we heard that that was what delayed the inquest. So
there's been this four year delay in the inquest and
in her examination at the Crime Commission, they said that's
what the inquest is waiting on. And she looked very
(47:30):
lonely in that. You could call it the witness box,
you could call it the doc She looked very lonely,
and she was told the police have reached a point
of excluding a number of other people and possibilities and
there is a focus on you. I can't imagine what
it would be like to sit in that box on
(47:51):
your own, unable to tell anyone that you were even
in there, and face that kind of examination.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Yeah, it must be such a surreal feeling as well,
because most people, like I said, they wouldn't have heard
of the Crime Commission, So suddenly you're sort of just
brought into this weird, shadowy place.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the stuff of dystopian fiction. The
Crime Commission, probably there's a law against me saying that
we'll find out. Okay, So if there isn't an episode six.
That's because there is a law against saying that.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
So it was a four hour video you guys have played, right.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, we watched excerpts of her evidence. So she was
questioned over two days and we watched chunks of that
and in keeping with the rest of this week, at
the inquest, there was nothing in that examination that was
evidence against her, nothing that you could say, well, because
of that, we can say she did anything to William.
(48:52):
There were uncertainties, you know, she was asked about when
she made tea and when she took it out of
the house where William was reported missing. She was asked
exactly when she made the tea, how long was she
playing with the kids, and William's foster mother was saying,
she can't remember. There's timings and she can't remember other details,
other timings, you know, and her answers she was saying,
(49:15):
I don't know. I can't say definitively, I just don't know.
She was saying she wasn't thinking clearly at the time,
and she'd raise her hands to either side of her
head and to kind of give that sense of just
so much going through her mind at the time. You know,
she was talking about panic and hope, and all I
could think was I don't know where he is. And
(49:37):
she was close to tears at times. And yeah, there
are inconsistencies in what she said. You know, she has
been questioned a couple of days after William was reported missing,
interrogated again by police in twenty sixteen. This is the
third time she's had a kind of a major police interview,
and they challenged her. They said, nine other witnesses say
(49:58):
that you told them you were inside making the tea
when William went missing. But she was now saying she
might have been outside drinking the tea when she noticed
William went missing. And she accepted, you know, possibly she
did say that, and possibly she was inside when William disappeared.
But I'll be honest, that was the level of the inconsistency.
(50:20):
So there they are there. But also think back to
what you were doing. This would have been eight years ago.
She was questioned. Particularly a moment of stress, a moment
of fear, a moment of whatever happened, of high emotion.
It would your recall be exactly right?
Speaker 4 (50:41):
No, And there's been plenty of research on the way
that trauma affects your memory and your brain as well,
so that has to be taken into consideration.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, but they kept they kept looking for these inconsistencies,
and that's fine, that's their job.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
They asked her about that drive when she said she
was looking for William down Benner and Drive and out
to Bitar Creep, the drive that you and I did,
down to that crossroads where the police have said they
believe she disposed of William's body. And they asked, you know,
when did you make that drive? Where did you stop?
Where did you turn around the car? Why was there
(51:12):
twenty minutes between that drive and you calling triple zero?
And she says, I don't know. She doesn't claim to
be able to answer. She says, look, I think I
was so focused on I don't know what I was thinking.
All I was thinking was I've got to find him.
I can't give you an answer for that. I don't know.
(51:33):
And look to me, she seemed honest. She seemed fallible.
You know, she didn't have an explanation for everything. She
didn't have a reason for anything. And over the two
days you could see her getting exhausted by those constant questions.
What did she know? When? What did she think?
Speaker 5 (51:52):
When?
Speaker 1 (51:52):
How did she know that? When did she know that?
And her voice got faint and at times she was
fighting back tears.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Just on the timing of the triple zero call gered.
Craddick made a point at the first part of the
inquest that the average time it takes for a parent
called triple zero is two hours.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
I didn't know that, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
So he made a point at the first inquest of saying,
she actually called triple zero faster than average?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Is that right? That's interesting? But you know, again, the
Crime Commission is doing its job's prizing for those weaknesses
in her evidence, and it's trying to kind of get
in and exploit them and see what if it can
widen those cracks. And the examination eventually got aggressive, genuinely aggressive.
(52:43):
So Williams foster mother is being examined by this barrister,
Sophie Callan, who is very good. I've seen her in court,
and she starts asking her, you know, do you accept
that when you took that drive to the riding school
you could have dumped William's body there. And at that
point Williams foster mother does break down in tears and
there's a very emotional reaction. You think I did that? No,
(53:06):
absolutely not. And the barrister hammers it did you do that?
Did you take his body to the riding school? And
responses no, no, And there are tears in the video,
and there are tears here in the courtroom as well,
because William's foster mother is physically in the courtroom watching
herself answer these questions, and she's crying and her husband
(53:27):
has got his arm around her, but the questions continue.
Did you find his body under the ferns and the
verandah that day? Again? No, she's absolutely insistent. Did you
find his body, realize he died and there was no
point calling emergency services?
Speaker 3 (53:43):
No?
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Did you decide to take charge of that situation that
was beyond remedy and hide his body?
Speaker 5 (53:48):
No?
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Did you decide to take charge of the situation and
hide his body rather than let your mother feel a
sense of responsibility.
Speaker 5 (53:56):
No?
Speaker 1 (53:57):
And then the barrister, Sophie Callon, spells out the police theory.
I want to suggest to you that what happened that
day was William went around the verandah and toppled over
and it was nobody's fault but an accident. No, And
I'm finding him and William's mother interrupts, but I didn't
find him. The barrister says, I want to suggest you
(54:17):
put his body in the car and that's why you
took the drive that day, and the foster mother just responds, no,
I didn't. So she's insistent. She looked drawn and she
looked white.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
By the end of it, was your sense that her
answers were truthful.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. And look, I've seen
a lot of people give evidence in court and sometimes
you can tell they're lying, and sometimes, well, I guess
you never know what you don't know. But in this case,
there's nothing to make you think she wasn't telling the
truth or she wasn't saying something that was wrong, arguably
(54:59):
unlike the bit we heard next. So the next thing
we heard was this tape of two of the detectives
who went to the foster mother's house to serve the
summons on her, which is the bit of paper saying
you have to go to the crime commission. And one
of them was this detective, Sergeant Andrew Lonegan, who told
her we're not saying you hurt him, so we're not
(55:19):
saying you hurt William. And the other detective a detective
Sergeant Scott Jamerson, who told her, we're saying we know
how it happened, and we know why it happened, and
we know where he is. Now today at the end
of this week's hearings, we know they didn't know that.
They didn't know how it happened, or why it happened,
(55:41):
or where he is, because we heard today that at
that time when they're saying those things, the huge forensic
search of Benneruin Drive had not been done. Neither had
the forensic search of the car that hadn't been undertaken,
and the forensic search of that crossroads where they're suggesting
she left William's body that had not been done, so
they couldn't have had any evidence from those and we
(56:04):
now know those searches didn't produce any forensic evidence. And
this goes back to what you said about how surreal
the crime Commission is. Is Williams foster mother had a
phone call with one of her friends which was covertly recorded,
and they played that in court today and she said
at one point, I feel like I'm living in somebody
else's body. I feel like I'm living in a dream.
(56:27):
Because she now knows the police are targeting her, and
that friend says, do you feel like they're any closer?
And Williams foster mother says no, And that's what makes
me angry. She says, you know, you've got zero, You've
wasted millions and millions of dollars and you've got nothing.
And that devastates me, she says. And she imagines this
(56:49):
time in the future where you know, years from now,
maybe William's body will be found and people will say, oh,
that was the little boy that went missing. What was
his name again? And she says that hurts me, that
he'll be forgotten. And in this phone call with her friend,
she says, I won't let people forget him. And of
(57:10):
course she doesn't know that anyone's listening to that phone
call at the time. So that was the end of
the evidence today, except right at the end, the police
barrister stood up and said, we are going to come back.
There'll be another week of hearings in December. He said
he wants to call that expert on feral animals that
(57:31):
we heard about way back at the beginning of the week.
Speaker 4 (57:33):
We're still on the animals.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
We're still on the animals, and the theoretical possibility that
William's body could have been removed by an animal and
that might explain why there's no actual evidence at the scene.
And the coroner says she's already refused to call that
expert and has said that she's looked at the way
his experiments were done and she doesn't think they're credible.
But the police said they're going to press it. They
(57:55):
really want to call that witness to arguably say that.
And the police also said they want to call William's
foster mother to face questions in person. The coroner said
she's already ruled that that's not going to happen, but
the police barrister said he's going to ask again. So
(58:17):
I don't know if it will happen, but we are
coming back in December, and that was it. That was
the end of the week.
Speaker 4 (58:25):
So back in November twenty twenty one, when they announced
the search, Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett he addressed the media, YEP,
and he did a press conference where he announced that
they were about to do this search. And I'm just
reading off so this is a story from The Australian.
The Australian says that he was pribed about new information
the force reportedly received in September of twenty twenty one,
(58:46):
which pointed to a previous suspect being questioned again, and
he replied, this is in relation to information we have received,
no doubt about that. There is an investigative review that
has been undertaken as an ongoing process, but there is
also new evidence. I will not go into specifics. Have
you heard anything this week that suggests new evidence?
Speaker 1 (59:07):
No? No, In fact the opposite, which is what leads
you to question, what was the purpose of this week?
If we've spent four entire days in court to show
that the police have no evidence, it makes you wonder if,
in fact that was the purpose of this hearing, And
what's missing is then why did the police pursue this?
(59:27):
How did they make the decision to launch this investigation
of William's foster mother. All we've heard is the fact
that they've not found anything. And I guess that's okay
if you trust the police and you trust that they
always make good decisions. But in this case, they haven't
always made good decisions, or we wouldn't be here. Ten
(59:49):
years on from when William went missing with no evidence
and two families who are hurting, and we don't know
what they would have found if the police had spent
the past four years looking at and one else. So
for the inquest to just gather the facts of what's
been found and not been found and not ask how
that happened, what the police are thinking, I think that's important,
(01:00:14):
and that job asking if the police did the right
thing that's been left to others, which is where we
come in. You know, what did the police do right
and wrong? Right from the beginning, and that is what
we're going to do in the next episode. This is
(01:00:35):
Witness William Tyrrell. A lot of different people have been
involved in making this series. Among them, the executive producer
is Nina Young. The sound design was by Tiffany Dimack.
(01:00:56):
The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicholas Adams, Jazz, phoebe
Zakowski Wallace and Tabby Wilson. Research by Adan Patrick, original
music by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is Stephen Coombs. The
editor at news dot com dot Au is Kerry Warren.
Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
I'm Dan Box
I'm standing in front of the New South Wales Coroner's
Court in Lidcomb in Western Sydney, where in just a
few minutes now the inquest into William's disappearance is about
to start. It's a gray day. You can hear the
traffic roaring past. But for those involved today, all that
movement is going to stop. I can only imagine their
(00:23):
whole world is going to stop, and all that will
matter is what happens in that courtroom inside the building
in front of me. Now, it's four years now since
the last public hearing in this inquest, and in that
time the police focus has shifted completely onto William's foster mother.
They've launched an enormous search, literally dug up tons of
(00:46):
soil from around ben Rooin Drive while William went missing,
and her name's been in the newspapers. She has been
described in court as having had something to do with
William's disappearance.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Today, I'm in the media that we're going to be
doing some operational activity in the Kendle area over the
coming weeks. This activity is in response to evidence we've
obtained in the course of the investigation. It's not speculative
in any way. We're acting on behalf of the coroner.
At any conjunction with coronnial orders, she will be kept up.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
David, and we do today expect to hear what evidence
the police have or haven't got to justify that level
of suspicion. Strangely though, we won't be hearing from the
lead detective David Laidl, or the man who's running the
strikeforce into William's disappearance, because and this is this is
(01:41):
actually extraordinary, the coroner has refused to call him. The
Police Commissioner specifically asked that David Laidlor will be called.
The coroner has refused to do that, but she hasn't
released her reasons why David Laidlaw's decision to target William's
foster mother has been very public. The Police Commissioner, Mick
(02:01):
Fuller said this about the strikeforce.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I brought a new team on board under Detective Chief Inspector.
They've laid Law through probably the state's most experienced homicide investigator,
and he pulled together probably one of the best teams
we've seen and spend an active investigation. And you know,
they had been working through a number of different pieces
of information and they inherited what was a bit of
a mess and have really cleaned up that investigation and
(02:27):
they've got a clear strategy, and.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
The detectives in that strike force have said in court
they believe she knows what happened to William. So the
question that's in my mind right now is I'm about
to walk into this inquest, is how can the police
say all that with that kind of confidence? And yet
today in this hearing we're not going to hear from
(02:52):
the lead detective himself. Are we going to get the
answers that really, after all these years everyone is hoping
to receive. I don't know. The only way we're going
to know is by going inside.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Okay, Daniel, Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So one of the things about courts is you're not
allowed to record inside them. So the only way we
can actually tell anyone what happened in the inquest today
is just like this, we come out and then you
and I have this conversation, Nina, because you weren't in court,
so you don't know what happened. The big thing is
(03:37):
what we haven't got. So there hasn't been a moment
where anyone has said this is the evidence. The police
have got to justify what they've been looking at and
the theory they've been following for the past four or
five years now. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The
senior lawyer working with the coroner said, it's beyond any
(03:59):
argument now that we'll material has not been found, and
it's beyond argument that no forensic evidence has been located
anywhere that provides a clue to his disappearance, So no
forensic evidence. And also it's beyond argument that there is
no eyewitness who's provided an account of how William left
(04:20):
the area where he was last seen, meaning the police
have no direct evidence of what happened to him. Okay,
it means the police can only have a circumstantial case,
which that can still work. You can still prove someone
has done something with a circumstantial case, but it's harder
(04:40):
and to do it you also have to prove that
the other people who might have been involved definitely didn't
do it. And what's been interesting is that the lead
lawyer working with the inquest has cited a couple of
the other moments in the long history of this investigation
where the police have directly accused other people of being
involved in William's disappearance, and the lawyer said that media
(05:05):
reports show the police now believe the foster mothers involved,
and he says it cannot be overstated that the coroner
has to act on the basis of reliable evidence. He said,
guesses are not rational. Suspicions form no rational basis for
making findings of fact. So you're kind of reading between
(05:27):
the lines because the way he talks, this guy, Gerard
Craddock is very loyally. It's kind of scholarly. He kind
of goes around the houses, but listening to what he's saying,
he's saying, there's no evidence and you shouldn't be guessing.
You shouldn't be using your suspicions to make findings, which
(05:48):
is what the inquest now has to do.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
So you reported earlier this morning that David Laidlaw was
not going to be called as a witness. No, did
they give any indication as to why.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
No, nothing, it's been I said that Craddock is kind
of loyally and scholarly. He spent a lot of this
morning talking about all the evidence that has been heard
in the inquest before now years ago and emphasizing who
was where and when and detail timings of that morning,
and how we can be certain of what we know
(06:21):
on the morning when William went missing, So the time
the last photo of William was taken, the time a
text message was sent by William's foster father, at the
time of the triple zero cars, the time of the
first police officer arriving, how different people's Facebook posts can
show that certain things were happening at certain times and
certain people were where they said they were, and talking
(06:43):
about the search that was done that morning. And the
more he went over this, the more I'm starting to think,
why are we going over this? And then I started
to think, because he's building a case about what we
can know and what we know we can't no if
that makes sense. So he talks about the initial search
(07:03):
for William in the first few days, and he says
that was thorough. He's got no question about whether or
not that did its very best to find where William was.
And he talks about the second search in twenty eighteen,
which he says was intense, and then he talks about
this third search he mentioned in twenty twenty one, which
(07:24):
the police launched, and he describes that as another level
of intensity. The police went in with excavators and rakes,
and they stripped out of vegetation, they used divers. And
the conclusion that the lawyer Gerard Craddock says is no
evidence was found that relates to William Tyrrell's disappearance. He
says the court may consider and perhaps conclude. And that's
(07:46):
the loyally talking that William under his own stem cannot
have traveled beyond the area searched. And the point he's
making is therefore someone else must have been involved. One
thing that among all that kind of long and detailed
raking over of the evidence we've heard is he talked
(08:08):
about how the neighbors heard a car that morning. They
heard a car on the gravel at the top end
of Benuin Drive, which is just outside the house where
William was staying. And he says, you can't prove that
there was a car, but there's definitely evidence of a
car being there, and no one knows. No one's been
(08:29):
able to prove who drove that car.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Yeah, Peter and Sharrell crab So I went back and
looked into that. And so they got home about nine
point thirty in the morning that day, and they both
testified in twenty nineteen that they heard a car doing
a U turn in the street. They both thought it
sounded like the postman at the time. Yeah, and Charrell
testified that the car was moving quite fast. But I
did wonder, because there's been a lot of people testifying
(08:53):
about cars. I did wonder the significance of the crabs
in particular. Did he mention why he brought them up.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
He's confident about the cabs evidence because he says one
of the detectives is sitting with Sharrell Krab asking her
about this, when Sharrell Crab says, oh, can you hear
that car driving up the road, and then a few
seconds later the detective hears it. So he says, despite
the fact that Charrell's quite elderly at that point, she's
obviously very capable. She is able to hear a car.
(09:22):
So he's got quite a lot of confidence in that.
So I think all he's doing is establishing there's no
evidence of what happened to William, but there's a possibility
that this car was involved in whatever did happen. He
hasn't gone any further than that.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
It sounds like he was just making a big focus
on hard facts that he thinks can be proved versus
theories that can't be.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Is that the theme, yes, And he talked about how
the inquest came to an end in twenty twenty and
he said the reason it restarted this week this morning,
he said, is because the police decided to follow up
a theory. And that's the theory we looked at episode
four that the police believe William may have fallen off
the balcony, that his foster mother decided not to seek
(10:06):
help but to dispose of his remains, and she drove
down the road to the corner of Batar Creek Road
and Cobb and Co Road and disposed of his body there.
But what's really strange is the inquest seems to have
gone out of its way not to call any of
the detectives, so no one's been asked to explain why
the police pursued this theory or why they did the
(10:29):
twenty twenty one search, the enormous search a few years ago.
What Craddock the lawyer did say is that the detective
leading that inquiry the one who's not been called to
give evidence, Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw. He says he's
given a number of statements the most recent one is
heavily redacted, meaning he's not going to be called to
(10:50):
give evidence, and his statement has been censored, so we
can't know what he says. Craddock, the lawyer, explained that
saying the simple reason for that is what we wanted
was a straightforward recitation of the investigative steps taken since
twenty twenty, and the statement we've been given deals with
(11:11):
evidence in the form of one person's opinions about what
the evidence shows. So what he's saying is the coroner
asked the lead detective to give us the facts of
what the police have done, and what the lead detective
has given them is opinions about the evidence. He says,
it's fine for the lawyers to make submissions so long
(11:32):
as they take into account all of the evidence, not
of opinions, but a proper fact finding processes. So again,
it's loyally, it's scholarly, it's kind of going around the houses.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
But it is a criticism that a sounds like a
loyally disc.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It is a loyally it's a loyally dis and detective
Chief Inspector laid Law sitting in the inquest listening to
this but not responding saying nothing publicly. We heard one witness,
(12:08):
a hydrologist who was involved in planning the police search,
and you get a sense of the scale of the search.
Vegetation was stripped, then they sent in a cadaver dog.
Then they dug out the soil with rakes or hose
or use an excavator and they drained the creek. Or
divers are sent in to do a hand search, and
they dug out tons of soil and searched each bucket
full by hand. And this is all around that crossroads
(12:31):
that you and me went to where the police are
working on the theory that Williams fostermotherd disposed of his body.
And by establishing the search is so thorough, it underscores
the fact no evidence was found, potentially because there was
no evidence there to find.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
When I saw that John Ollie, the hydrologist, had worked
on the Daniel Markham case in twenty eleven, I thought
that was quite interesting because it's quite a similar sort
of search that he did nine years since Daniel went missing.
And I was reading more about how they did that
search there to excavate five hundred cubic meters of sand
and remove a huge layer of sediment up to a
(13:11):
meter deep to find Daniel's body. And you've got to
think that is a case where they actually knew where
the body was. So I can't imagine how much harder
it will be for the place in this case when
they're kind of just working on a hypothesis and they
don't know really how big the area they have to
look at is.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It was vast. We saw a video of the search
in operation and it is, honestly, it's a lunar landscape.
They've stripped all the vegetation back and then dug the
earth down to five ten fifteen centimeters. Some place has
gone deeper, and then they've just dragged that earth out
and searched through it or sieved through it. But what
we've not heard, because no one's been asked, is why
(13:49):
did the police launch that search? What evidence did they
have to support the theory they were pursuing? And I
guess we don't have to have those answers yet. It's
only day one of the inquest.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Do we have an indication of who else is being
called this week? Are we going to stay on the
twenty twenty one search.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, most of the evidence this week is on the
twenty twenty one search. We're going to hear from some
of the constables who are involved, another expert talking about remains,
how they can be preserved or they can be lost.
And one witness who was a truck driver who was
driving a long Bitar Creek Road. And we know because
it's been in the media, so it's been leaked to
the media that that truck driver saw William's foster mother
(14:33):
at that time. We don't know what he says she
was doing.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
In the foster Mother's walk through describing that drive, she
talks about passing a truck as she drove down to
Patar Creek Road.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
Yeah, he thought I pulled over because he acknowledged me
by saying thanks for pulling over. But I pulled over
because I've just got my head out the window looking
for William.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Do we know if it's that truck driver or is
it We don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
We have to assume it's that truck driver. So at
the moment, we've got no evidence, no explanation of why
police launched this search, and yet it's only day one.
But there is something that struck me right at the end,
and this might give you an indication of how these
things play out not just in court, but in the
(15:17):
media and in the politics of this. Right at the end,
after you know, we've heard all day that the police
have found nothing, this professor John Ollie is on the stand.
He's a hydrologist. The police barrister stands up and says,
after you've finished your work on this, did you consider
that there might be any other explanation for what happened
(15:38):
to William? And he says yes. He wrote to another
scientist who was an expert on invasive species of pigs
or fox to ask him if it was possible one
of those animals had done something to William, And of
course the counsel assystem, the coroner and the coroner shut
that down and they say, look, we've already established basically
(15:59):
when not going to hear that evidence, and that also
you're asking a hydrologist about an ecologist's explanation of what happened.
But by then it's too late. That theory is out there.
And when I left the media room where the journalists
have all been working today, everyone is talking about this
idea that William Tierrell may have been taken by a
(16:20):
fox or a pig. And I bet that the headlines
tomorrow or even later today. The headlines say William Tierrell
could have been taken by a fox and there's no
evidence for that, but the theory is now out there
in the wild. So that's day one. Okay. So I
(17:02):
told you the media would report on the possibility of
wild animals, didn't I?
Speaker 4 (17:07):
He did?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I did, and they did so the Guardian and the
Daily Mail, particularly the Guardian headline is William Tyrell inquest
Police suspect foster mother Berry Toddler after accidental death. And
then the stand first wild dogs may have taken any
remains of the three year old. Now it does say
no bones or clothing belonging to William were located, but
(17:29):
it doesn't mention that the senior lawyer at the inquest
has specifically said it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found,
which I think is a difference in terms of how
strongly he's put there. And then the Daily Mail headline
is expert combed through a rubbish dump in the hunt
for William Tibble's body as detectives reveal shocking theory they
(17:53):
believe solves the mystery. I mean that's strong language, and
the article beneath it it says this expert didn't find
William's remains, but admitted animals could have removed them like
they do with kangaroo carcasses. And again it does say
police did not believe any trace of William was left there.
(18:17):
But that's actually quite different to what the lawyer said,
which is it's beyond argument no forensic evidence was found.
So I asked to speak to both of those reporters
and asked to interview them both about why they wrote
it the way they did, just out of interest because
I would have done it differently. And neither of them
took me up on the offer of an interview. But
(18:38):
I did speak to the Daily Mail reporter and we
had actually a really nice players and interesting conversation, and
she was talking about different things. So she's not actually
the one who kind of does the final bulk together
of her article. It gets updated over the day, so
she doesn't have final control of things, particularly like headlines.
She's also said she wasn't convinced that what I thought
(19:01):
was important about the lawyer saying it's beyond argument there's
no forensic evidence. She didn't think that was as important
as I did. As she said in terms of their audience.
This question about could animals have moved William's remains was
more interesting because this idea about wild animals has not
been heard before, so it's new, so it's news. I
(19:23):
said to her, Look, I would have written that article
pretty much the opposite way around, so the top line
is no forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses, and I might not
even have put in the reference to the wild animals.
And also, you know, the coroner challenged it when it
was mentioned in court and said, look, you're not the
right person to even give this as evidence because you're
(19:44):
an expert in hydrology, to which the response was that
that's because I've spent a lot of time criticizing the
police theory and that the podcast we're making right now
is all about criticizing the police, which is fair that
there has. It's been a fair bit of criticism of
the police in this podcast. But today in court the
(20:07):
police barristers back on his feet, so the lawyer representing
the police asking questions again about the effects of wild
animals on human remains. So it is something the police
are interested in.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It's interesting, isn't it. It just shows you how the
media shapes the story absolutely and we're relying on the media.
You know, there's no cameras in court, there's no recording,
there's no transcript the public have access to. We're relying
on the media to give us those reports.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yes, so it's the media who allow the Oh. I know,
this isn't rocket science. Everyone knows this. But it's the
media who shaped the how the public understand the story.
So right across the country, this is how people understand
not just what happened, but who these people are. And
you suddenly realize just how powerful it's shifting emphasis can be,
(20:56):
and how potentially damaging a shift of emphasis can be.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
I did catch a new story this morning that kind
of highlights that the court opened today with the coroner
telling people off for abusing the foster mother outside the
court yesterday.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's a really good point because it's the first thing
we hear is that there was a woman outside the
court yesterday as people were coming out. As William's foster
mother walks out, this woman outside the court starts yelling
abuse at her style. Oh, but also starts yelling her
(21:45):
name in public, which is obviously protected by these non
publication orders which haven't been put in place to protect
William's foster mother. They've been put in place to protect
other children who are associated with or have some connection
to her, so she started using her name. She abuses her.
The TV cameras are rolling because they're all there to
(22:07):
get that footage of William's foster mother leaving court. But
then the coroner says this morning, how she's disappointed and
this must not occur. But it struck me this is
one of the problems with courts is they haven't kept
up with the technology. You've got all this technology in
now with social media where people are spreading facts and
lies as well outside of the court, including all this
(22:31):
stuff that people think or suspect or speculating about the
people involved in this case. It's all getting spread, but
it's trickling into the real world. It's having real world
effects on the real people involved. But what we did
see today was ours more evidence about the search. You
know the search. It was big, it was thorough, and
(22:53):
there's no evidence has been found to support the police theories.
But the problem is that a lack of evidence doesn't
prove that William's body wasn't there, which is where these
wild animals come in. If the wild animals could have
taken William's body, then it might still be that the
police theory is possible that this kind of hypothetical situation
(23:13):
where William falls off the balcony, his foster mother discovers him,
doesn't call for help, and decides to dispose of his body,
is still possible because possibly a wild animal took his corpse,
and that's why there's no forensic evidence despite years and
years of searching. The coroner did talk about that evidence
today and she said that the actual expert who gave
(23:34):
that evidence, she looked at the way he'd conducted his
experiments and said that his report could not help the
inquest because there were problems with the experiments. The police
had asked him to assume William's body was placed in
one particular place, and she says, you know, I pause
to say, there's actually no evidence that anyone was seen
placing a body here or anywhere else. And anyway, she said,
(23:56):
the place, which I think is that crossroads, had changed
over the time. So his reports and his suggestion that
a wild animal was involved was actually flawed. So she
decided not to include his report in evidence and was
not going to call him as a witness. But now
that whole idea has got out.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Was that area searched previously in previous search.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, well that's one of the things that did come
out today was we heard evidence from some of the
dog handlers and at least one of them, they put
their maps up on the screen in the court of
where they were searching. He couldn't see one that clearly,
but the other quite clearly showed that they did go
down to that particular crossroads the day after William went
missing and obviously didn't hear anything and obviously didn't find anything.
(24:41):
Although one of the things that's really frustrated me with
this inquest is we're hearing a lot of detail from
these different people. So a guy who mapped the searches,
two different dog handlers, other people, and we know a
lot about them, but nobody is asking them what did
you find? No one in court has actually asked anyone
what was found in that search. All we know is
(25:01):
from what one of the lawyers has said, which is
that no forensic evidence was found. But it's not that
hasn't really been emphasized.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah, because I know that, I mean a time of
the twenty twenty one search, there was so much media there,
and there was lots of moments where they were holding
up bits of material very dramatically and bagging.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Oh it was breaking news. It was breaking news. Yeah,
we've found a bit of red cloth, or we found
a thread.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
But none of that. They haven't said what that was.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I haven't mentioned it at all. Inside the court. There's
still quite a lot of secrecy. There's a lot of
non publication orders. There were a lot of suppression orders
we're dealing with. Just before coming here, we've had to
(25:49):
email the court to say this thing you were talking
about this afternoon, we think it's covered by a suppression order,
but you've been talking about it. So is it suppressed?
Isn't it suppressed? Can we talk about it? That's how
difficult it is to cover this inquest at times, because
so much of it is under wraps. That said, I
(26:12):
think we can talk about it. Do you want to
hear about it?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Okay, now, okay, this was interesting. This was the last
witness today. A police analyst comes in and starts talking
about the number of what the police called persons of
interest and long in the short of it is there's
a lot of them, a lot of potential persons of interest.
I can't tell you how many, because that's where I
think this suppression order kicks in. So there's bits I
(26:36):
can't tell you, but what I think we can say,
and if I'm wrong, then we'll obviously not publish. This
part of the podcast is that by the August of
this year, there's still a lot of those persons of interest,
and the persons of interest we heard in the court
are people who might be suspects in this investigation, except
(26:56):
in August of this year, the lead detective, David Laidlaw,
asks this analyst to change the name from persons of
interest to persons named to police, and she said it
was changed to persons named because they were named on
investigations reports, but they weren't actually investigated, and that struck
(27:18):
me as being interesting.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
That is interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
And then we started to hear in the cross examination
of her that the detectives on the strike force told
the analyst to take some of those names off her list.
And again I can't tell you how many because of
this court order, but she believes that was because those
people had been eliminated by the inquiry, but she doesn't
(27:41):
know why or on what grounds they eliminated, and then
apparently they worked out some of the names had doubled up,
so they took more names off the list, and there
was some uncertainty about those numbers, but it still left
a lot of names. So then she was saying, she
went through and she starts looking at these names and
cross referencing them against things like RMS data, so driver's
(28:03):
license records, and under cross examination they basically established that
you can't eliminate someone who doesn't have a driver's license
because they could still be driving a car just illegally.
But those names had been eliminated on that basis, So
more of the names were taken off the list, so
the list keeps getting smaller.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Sorry that sorry, you're saying as of August, yes, there
were moving people based on whether they had.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
A license or yeah, RMS data yeah, and whether or
not they'd passed one of three point to point cameras
on the Pacific Highway, despite the fact that the analyst
was saying, whether there were are the roads in and
out of Kendall. So she's asked by one of the barristers,
what I'm suggesting to you is that the examination of
the RMS records couldn't exclude anyone from being a person
(28:53):
of interest? Would you agree? And she says, I agree
with that. And yet it was used to take people
off this list, and the list got smaller. And we
don't know how small that list got. It started off
with lots of people, and we don't know how small
it got, except the police Commissioner Mick Fuller back in
(29:15):
I think twenty twenty one, suggested that list got very small. Indeed,
how many suspects have you narrowed the investigation down to?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You know? My understanding is from the investigators is that
there is certainly one person in particular that we are
looking closely at.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Do we know if any previously publicly identified persons of
interest were removed in this process?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
We don't, And I think even if we did know that,
I couldn't tell you because of this suppression order. I think.
But the one thing we have heard more than anything else,
and we've heard it more than once at this inquest,
is that however many people or person is left on
this list of potential persons of interest or people named
(30:01):
to police. The one thing we've heard is that the
police have no forensic and no eyewitness evidence to say
that that person did anything to do with William.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
So that's where we are at the end of day two. Okay,
(30:34):
day three, and I can now tell you the thing
that I didn't think I could tell you last night.
So I got an email at about twenty to ten
last night from the Coroner's Court saying that the information
on the persons of interest list we were talking about
yesterday is not suppressed after all. And what this does
is it shows you the challenges of the secrecy surround
(30:56):
in this case. Because I was going off a suppression
order put in place in twenty nineteen by the coroner
on quote information from the persons of interest list, and
given we spent in court a good chunk of yesterday
talking about information from the persons of interest list, I
thought that might be covered by that suppression order, but
(31:17):
it's not. Either way, I can now tell you what
I thought I couldn't tell you, which is that in
August of this year, there were one thousand, seven hundred
and nine people on the police persons of interest list
for the investigation into William Till's disappearance. One thy seven
hundred and nine. Those are people that the police had
(31:41):
a reason to potentially suspect or want to investigate. But
that's before the cops changed the name of that list
from persons of interest to persons named to police and
then started cutting that list. So we heard in the
inquest that the detectives told the police analyst to take
three one hundred and forty five people off the list
(32:02):
earlier this year. She didn't know why, and we won't
know why because the detectives have not been called to
answer questions at the inquest.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
It's completely maddening. I think at this point I would
pay money to just have any lead investigator on this
case from any point just stand up and outline how
they have investigated the case, how they've ruled people in,
how they've ruled people out.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And the other thing the police are not going to
explain is why they launched the investigation they're currently doing
into William's foster mother. So we don't know why they
decided to do that. Yeah, the other thing we don't
know because the court is closed and I'm currently speaking
to you because the court being closed means we've been
(32:48):
shut out of the room. Well, actually I can't tell
you why that's happened, because there's a non publication order
on the existence of the thing the court is now
hearing evidence about. So all I can say is we're
not in there. We're not able to know what it is.
And I can't tell you what it is that we're
not able to know about. And at this point there
(33:11):
was quite a bit of laughter in the media room
among the journalists. But I can tell you what the
big news from today was.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Yes, is it the truck driver.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
It is the truck driver.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Everyone's excited about the truck driver. What did he or
is she say?
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Okay? So the truck driver is a he okay. The
truck driver drove down Bitar Creek Road at around the
time William's foster mother has said she came out of
Benirun Drive which turns onto Bitar Creek Road and drove
down there looking for William. And the police have been
quite clear, in fact said in court on oath that
(33:50):
they believe she disposed of William's body on that road.
So we've been expecting big things from the truck driver.
I went back and I looked at some of the articles,
or actually you found them for me, and then I
read them. November twenty twenty one, The Daily Mail says
a New South Wales police source said officers believe an
(34:11):
object may have been thrown from the vehicle. That's Williams
foster mum's car as it was driven along Bitar Creek Road.
So there's this suggestion which is left hanging, that something
is thrown out of her car and that that's what
the police are looking for and talking to the journos.
The police were briefing journos at the time that this
(34:34):
was seen by another driver on that road. And then
November twenty twenty one, the Daily Telegraph talks about an
elderly man who told investigators he saw something dumped from
a vehicle on the morning when William went missing, and
the reporter says they showed this man a photo of
the car William's foster mother was driving and the man said,
(34:55):
I'm pretty sure that's the car I saw. Now, interest,
we've not heard anything about that man.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Well, yeah, because I think the public assumed that the
person who saw somebody throwing something from the car was
the truck driver.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Yes, and I did, and all the other journalists did.
So we were expecting this truck driver to be the
key witness because we know Williams foster mum says when
she was driving down that road, she saw a truck
driver coming the other way. And we know because it's
been in the papers that police are saying a witness
saw something being thrown from the car she's driving. So
(35:33):
maybe we've put two and two together and come up
with five, but we're all expecting the witness, the truck driver,
to say he saw William's foster mother throw something and
he was there at the time, because when it gives
evidence in court today, he says he was driving along
that road at about just after ten past ten on
(35:53):
that morning and was driving back around ten to eleven,
and that just before William's foster mother caused the police.
So just after she's driven down the road, on her
evidence says she's looking for William, and on the police
or their version of events, said she's disposing of William's body.
(36:15):
Now here's what that truck driver said. He saw he
saw two cars coming the other way, a black BMW
or maybe burgundy and a gray duel cab ute and
he didn't think either of those were coming out of
benuuin drive. And neither of those are the car that
William's foster mother drove and the driver didn't see anyone else.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Sorry, this isn't the truck driver that the foster mother
saw while driving.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Well, actee, that's a good point. It is a truck
driver who was driving down that road at that time.
She does say she saw a truck driver.
Speaker 5 (36:59):
She did. He thought I pulled over because he acknowledged
me by saying thanks for pulling over.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
But I pulled over because.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
I've just got my head out the window looking for William.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
He in his evidence, doesn't describe the car that she
was in, and also doesn't describe seeing her or anyone
else throwing anything out of a car or disposing of
William's body at the crossroads where police have suggested she did.
(37:27):
So that's it.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Okay, So we've got a truck driver who saw some cars,
not that car.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
We've got a truck driver who was definitely there because
the CCTV and his evidence and the evidence i'm assuming
of the person he was picking his load up from,
So he was there. The significance is what he's not said.
He's not said that he saw anything a bit like
the police search of that area, which went on for
(37:56):
four weeks, found nothing, and we know they have no
eyewitness evidence of William being taken, and we know no
one saw William's body being disposed of anywhere, and we
now know that this witness drove along that road and
didn't see anything either. This truck driver said in his
(38:17):
evidence at the inquest today that he actually called crime
stoppers shortly after William went missing to tell them where
he was and what he'd seen. And he also called
the radio station two GB and spoke to Ray Hadley.
This is what he said at the time, Peter Good,
I good.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
How are you ready?
Speaker 6 (38:35):
Well Pete, thank you mate. I just don't going to
hear this kid being either abjactor or disappeared. I wasn't
condewn that time of the morning. I actually stayed overnight
in Clive Barker the coffee or Bobby called Air BP. Yes,
I had the big A machine up out of Kendal,
Silverdale on Friday and by the time I got up
and got down to Chew area would have been about
(38:58):
nine o'clock. So I was in the area for nine
o'clock onward. And as I came off the Streic Highway
and I had to go over the top of the
highway into Q and as I came into the queue
shopping here, there was a black Camray sitting on the
left han side, now that it was a no parking area.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
The truck driver also said he saw the car acting suspiciously.
There was a black Camray driven by a blond woman,
But while he said it was acting suspiciously, he didn't
really seem to have a lot of grounds for that suspicion.
He said the car was in q which is a
town a short drive from where William went missing, and
then he later saw it in Kendall, which is the
(39:34):
town just near where William went missing.
Speaker 6 (39:38):
I sort of went around this person and I started
heading into Kendall about interesting miss letter. That particular car
came into Kendell and parked up because I was almost
like a car park is a nursery there or something.
When you come over the bridge and then you go
over the railway line and there's a few little shops there,
and I was parked up on the left hand side
in the opening there where other cars were sort of
(39:59):
parked for a ninely degree, and.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
It kind of got in his way. It was parked
where he'd wanted to park, and that added up in
his mind to being suspicious.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
It was puck along Simon, but there was nothing room
for them to get out. So that particular car came
and parked, and there was a lady, a well built lady,
black shorts, blacktop, blonde walked into that shop. Now, I
was still there for a while, but then I had
to move on and I came back out a kendall
(40:28):
around eleven thirty twelve o'clock right, So this.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Play, but the key thing was that black can we
with That blonde driver wasn't seen near benuuin drive, which
is where William disappeared.
Speaker 6 (40:44):
Okay, Pleeter, just stay there, stay there down hanging up
at a noisy line. We'll get your details on past them.
Two the investigators were poor filing.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
What's odd is why are we hearing from this truck
driver now. He said in his evidence today that he
called crime Stoppers in the days after William went missing,
and when he was interviewed on two GB Ray Hadley
said he was going to pass his details to the police,
and we know from his evidence today that he did
give a statement to police before twenty twenty one, when
(41:16):
he gave another statement to the current strike Force who
are investigating William's foster mother, So why are we only
hearing from him today, particularly when it doesn't seem that
he saw anything that really proves anything at all. The
(41:47):
foster mother has lived for four years under public suspicion,
ever since that front page story in a newspaper where
police said they had a new suspect and are now
confident they will solve the missay of William's disappearance.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Yeah, and something that comes up every time people talk about,
you know, whether the foster mother is suspicious or not,
people bring up the objects thrown from the car.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah, but there's no actual evidence that we've heard at
the inquest that there was any object thrown at the car,
and the only truck driver they've been able to find
didn't see anything. So for those four years when the
police have been working on this theory, prosecuting it in public,
(42:33):
in court and through the media, and also by trying
to send a brief of evidence to the Director of
Public Prosecutions, that's four years when we seem to know
now that they actually haven't got any direct evidence. And honestly,
there were people here at the court today who are
in tears about this. The whole inquest is talking around
(42:55):
the police investigation and looking at the facts of what
they found, but not talking about the investigation itself. And
the problem with this is police have no evidence, isn't
going to make the front pages, whereas police suspect William's
foster mother made pretty much every front page. There are
(43:18):
journalists here who are not finding stories today for that reason.
There's some that have already gone home, but there's others
who are angry. I've just spoken to one who's He
turned around to me and said, you know, for years now,
we have dutifully reported what the police told us in
good faith and started talking about the damage done to
(43:40):
the people involved. And I think that's fair, and I
think we have to look at ourselves for reporting these things.
But also we're not the ones who've been saying this
in the first instance. And it goes back to that
thing that if we now have four years on no evidence,
then what evidence might have been found if the police
(44:00):
were looking elsewhere. So day four and the last day
(44:22):
of the inquest, at least for now, I'll be honest,
it's been a painful week. So sitting in the courtroom,
I'm only really on the edge of the hurting but
even so, I feel like every night I go to
sleep and I wake up without getting any rest. How
(44:43):
are you doing?
Speaker 4 (44:45):
It's been frustrating to watch it from the outside. I
kind of maagine how frustrating it's been sitting in there.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Look not frustrating to be there because we've learned so
much in the past week. Honestly, today he was probably
the most grueling of the days to witness. So today
we watched a video recording of an interview, no not
even an interview, of the examination of William's foster mother
(45:14):
before the New South Wales Crime Commission. So she was
examined for two days and it's the first time anyone
publicly has seen her questioned. She's now the woman at
the center of the police investigation, and she's been questioned
before by police more than once, and she's done a
very few interviews, either released by the police or with
(45:35):
the media. But this is the first time she's been
sent in public under sustained examination by law enforcement. And
they played it with both William's biological parents and his
foster parents sitting in the room watching.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
This was in front of the Crime Commission. Yeah, can
you tell me what that is? Was You've had to
explain it to me before, and I'm sure a lot
of the members of the public don't really know what
that is.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
The Crime Commission is fascinating. It is a body specifically
set up to fight organized crime, and it doesn't often
or ever maybe get involved in this kind of case.
It's there for gangsters, drug gangs, and it has incredible powers. Firstly,
it's a secret body, so no one watches its examinations.
(46:22):
If you're called to give evidence to the Crime Commission,
you're not allowed to tell people that you've been there.
When you walk into that room to give evidence. You
have no right to silence. You are not allowed to
not answer the questions. Your answers can't be used in
criminal proceedings, but they can be past to the police
for their investigations. And lying to the Crime Commission is
(46:45):
punishable with a prison sentence. So it goes way beyond
the powers of any normal court or any normal police investigation.
And we saw Williams fostermother sitting there on her own
in the dock, facing this exactation, and she was told
that the police had reviewed the investigation into William's disappearance,
(47:07):
that that involved them going right back to the very
beginning and looking again at every person and possibility to
try to find out what had happened to William. And
we heard that that was what delayed the inquest. So
there's been this four year delay in the inquest and
in her examination at the Crime Commission, they said that's
what the inquest is waiting on. And she looked very
(47:30):
lonely in that. You could call it the witness box,
you could call it the doc She looked very lonely,
and she was told the police have reached a point
of excluding a number of other people and possibilities and
there is a focus on you. I can't imagine what
it would be like to sit in that box on
(47:51):
your own, unable to tell anyone that you were even
in there, and face that kind of examination.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Yeah, it must be such a surreal feeling as well,
because most people, like I said, they wouldn't have heard
of the Crime Commission, So suddenly you're sort of just
brought into this weird, shadowy place.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the stuff of dystopian fiction. The
Crime Commission, probably there's a law against me saying that
we'll find out. Okay, So if there isn't an episode six.
That's because there is a law against saying that.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
So it was a four hour video you guys have played, right.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, we watched excerpts of her evidence. So she was
questioned over two days and we watched chunks of that
and in keeping with the rest of this week, at
the inquest, there was nothing in that examination that was
evidence against her, nothing that you could say, well, because
of that, we can say she did anything to William.
(48:52):
There were uncertainties, you know, she was asked about when
she made tea and when she took it out of
the house where William was reported missing. She was asked
exactly when she made the tea, how long was she
playing with the kids, and William's foster mother was saying,
she can't remember. There's timings and she can't remember other details,
other timings, you know, and her answers she was saying,
(49:15):
I don't know. I can't say definitively, I just don't know.
She was saying she wasn't thinking clearly at the time,
and she'd raise her hands to either side of her
head and to kind of give that sense of just
so much going through her mind at the time. You know,
she was talking about panic and hope, and all I
could think was I don't know where he is. And
(49:37):
she was close to tears at times. And yeah, there
are inconsistencies in what she said. You know, she has
been questioned a couple of days after William was reported missing,
interrogated again by police in twenty sixteen. This is the
third time she's had a kind of a major police interview,
and they challenged her. They said, nine other witnesses say
(49:58):
that you told them you were inside making the tea
when William went missing. But she was now saying she
might have been outside drinking the tea when she noticed
William went missing. And she accepted, you know, possibly she
did say that, and possibly she was inside when William disappeared.
But I'll be honest, that was the level of the inconsistency.
(50:20):
So there they are there. But also think back to
what you were doing. This would have been eight years ago.
She was questioned. Particularly a moment of stress, a moment
of fear, a moment of whatever happened, of high emotion.
It would your recall be exactly right?
Speaker 4 (50:41):
No, And there's been plenty of research on the way
that trauma affects your memory and your brain as well,
so that has to be taken into consideration.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, but they kept they kept looking for these inconsistencies,
and that's fine, that's their job.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
They asked her about that drive when she said she
was looking for William down Benner and Drive and out
to Bitar Creep, the drive that you and I did,
down to that crossroads where the police have said they
believe she disposed of William's body. And they asked, you know,
when did you make that drive? Where did you stop?
Where did you turn around the car? Why was there
(51:12):
twenty minutes between that drive and you calling triple zero?
And she says, I don't know. She doesn't claim to
be able to answer. She says, look, I think I
was so focused on I don't know what I was thinking.
All I was thinking was I've got to find him.
I can't give you an answer for that. I don't know.
(51:33):
And look to me, she seemed honest. She seemed fallible.
You know, she didn't have an explanation for everything. She
didn't have a reason for anything. And over the two
days you could see her getting exhausted by those constant questions.
What did she know? When? What did she think?
Speaker 5 (51:52):
When?
Speaker 1 (51:52):
How did she know that? When did she know that?
And her voice got faint and at times she was
fighting back tears.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Just on the timing of the triple zero call gered.
Craddick made a point at the first part of the
inquest that the average time it takes for a parent
called triple zero is two hours.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
I didn't know that, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
So he made a point at the first inquest of saying,
she actually called triple zero faster than average?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Is that right? That's interesting? But you know, again, the
Crime Commission is doing its job's prizing for those weaknesses
in her evidence, and it's trying to kind of get
in and exploit them and see what if it can
widen those cracks. And the examination eventually got aggressive, genuinely aggressive.
(52:43):
So Williams foster mother is being examined by this barrister,
Sophie Callan, who is very good. I've seen her in court,
and she starts asking her, you know, do you accept
that when you took that drive to the riding school
you could have dumped William's body there. And at that
point Williams foster mother does break down in tears and
there's a very emotional reaction. You think I did that? No,
(53:06):
absolutely not. And the barrister hammers it did you do that?
Did you take his body to the riding school? And
responses no, no, And there are tears in the video,
and there are tears here in the courtroom as well,
because William's foster mother is physically in the courtroom watching
herself answer these questions, and she's crying and her husband
(53:27):
has got his arm around her, but the questions continue.
Did you find his body under the ferns and the
verandah that day? Again? No, she's absolutely insistent. Did you
find his body, realize he died and there was no
point calling emergency services?
Speaker 3 (53:43):
No?
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Did you decide to take charge of that situation that
was beyond remedy and hide his body?
Speaker 5 (53:48):
No?
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Did you decide to take charge of the situation and
hide his body rather than let your mother feel a
sense of responsibility.
Speaker 5 (53:56):
No?
Speaker 1 (53:57):
And then the barrister, Sophie Callon, spells out the police theory.
I want to suggest to you that what happened that
day was William went around the verandah and toppled over
and it was nobody's fault but an accident. No, And
I'm finding him and William's mother interrupts, but I didn't
find him. The barrister says, I want to suggest you
(54:17):
put his body in the car and that's why you
took the drive that day, and the foster mother just responds, no,
I didn't. So she's insistent. She looked drawn and she
looked white.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
By the end of it, was your sense that her
answers were truthful.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Yeah, I'll be honest with you. And look, I've seen
a lot of people give evidence in court and sometimes
you can tell they're lying, and sometimes, well, I guess
you never know what you don't know. But in this case,
there's nothing to make you think she wasn't telling the
truth or she wasn't saying something that was wrong, arguably
(54:59):
unlike the bit we heard next. So the next thing
we heard was this tape of two of the detectives
who went to the foster mother's house to serve the
summons on her, which is the bit of paper saying
you have to go to the crime commission. And one
of them was this detective, Sergeant Andrew Lonegan, who told
her we're not saying you hurt him, so we're not
(55:19):
saying you hurt William. And the other detective a detective
Sergeant Scott Jamerson, who told her, we're saying we know
how it happened, and we know why it happened, and
we know where he is. Now today at the end
of this week's hearings, we know they didn't know that.
They didn't know how it happened, or why it happened,
(55:41):
or where he is, because we heard today that at
that time when they're saying those things, the huge forensic
search of Benneruin Drive had not been done. Neither had
the forensic search of the car that hadn't been undertaken,
and the forensic search of that crossroads where they're suggesting
she left William's body that had not been done, so
they couldn't have had any evidence from those and we
(56:04):
now know those searches didn't produce any forensic evidence. And
this goes back to what you said about how surreal
the crime Commission is. Is Williams foster mother had a
phone call with one of her friends which was covertly recorded,
and they played that in court today and she said
at one point, I feel like I'm living in somebody
else's body. I feel like I'm living in a dream.
(56:27):
Because she now knows the police are targeting her, and
that friend says, do you feel like they're any closer?
And Williams foster mother says no, And that's what makes
me angry. She says, you know, you've got zero, You've
wasted millions and millions of dollars and you've got nothing.
And that devastates me, she says. And she imagines this
(56:49):
time in the future where you know, years from now,
maybe William's body will be found and people will say, oh,
that was the little boy that went missing. What was
his name again? And she says that hurts me, that
he'll be forgotten. And in this phone call with her friend,
she says, I won't let people forget him. And of
(57:10):
course she doesn't know that anyone's listening to that phone
call at the time. So that was the end of
the evidence today, except right at the end, the police
barrister stood up and said, we are going to come back.
There'll be another week of hearings in December. He said
he wants to call that expert on feral animals that
(57:31):
we heard about way back at the beginning of the week.
Speaker 4 (57:33):
We're still on the animals.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
We're still on the animals, and the theoretical possibility that
William's body could have been removed by an animal and
that might explain why there's no actual evidence at the scene.
And the coroner says she's already refused to call that
expert and has said that she's looked at the way
his experiments were done and she doesn't think they're credible.
But the police said they're going to press it. They
(57:55):
really want to call that witness to arguably say that.
And the police also said they want to call William's
foster mother to face questions in person. The coroner said
she's already ruled that that's not going to happen, but
the police barrister said he's going to ask again. So
(58:17):
I don't know if it will happen, but we are
coming back in December, and that was it. That was
the end of the week.
Speaker 4 (58:25):
So back in November twenty twenty one, when they announced
the search, Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Bennett he addressed the media, YEP,
and he did a press conference where he announced that
they were about to do this search. And I'm just
reading off so this is a story from The Australian.
The Australian says that he was pribed about new information
the force reportedly received in September of twenty twenty one,
(58:46):
which pointed to a previous suspect being questioned again, and
he replied, this is in relation to information we have received,
no doubt about that. There is an investigative review that
has been undertaken as an ongoing process, but there is
also new evidence. I will not go into specifics. Have
you heard anything this week that suggests new evidence?
Speaker 1 (59:07):
No? No, In fact the opposite, which is what leads
you to question, what was the purpose of this week?
If we've spent four entire days in court to show
that the police have no evidence, it makes you wonder if,
in fact that was the purpose of this hearing, And
what's missing is then why did the police pursue this?
(59:27):
How did they make the decision to launch this investigation
of William's foster mother. All we've heard is the fact
that they've not found anything. And I guess that's okay
if you trust the police and you trust that they
always make good decisions. But in this case, they haven't
always made good decisions, or we wouldn't be here. Ten
(59:49):
years on from when William went missing with no evidence
and two families who are hurting, and we don't know
what they would have found if the police had spent
the past four years looking at and one else. So
for the inquest to just gather the facts of what's
been found and not been found and not ask how
that happened, what the police are thinking, I think that's important,
(01:00:14):
and that job asking if the police did the right
thing that's been left to others, which is where we
come in. You know, what did the police do right
and wrong? Right from the beginning, and that is what
we're going to do in the next episode. This is
(01:00:35):
Witness William Tyrrell. A lot of different people have been
involved in making this series. Among them, the executive producer
is Nina Young. The sound design was by Tiffany Dimack.
(01:00:56):
The producers have been Emily Pigeon, Nicholas Adams, Jazz, phoebe
Zakowski Wallace and Tabby Wilson. Research by Adan Patrick, original
music by Rory O'Connor. Our lawyer is Stephen Coombs. The
editor at news dot com dot Au is Kerry Warren.
Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
I'm Dan Box
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Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com