William Tyrrell’s parents tell of their never ending pain 12 months after the three-year-old vanished
PODCAST: On the anniversary of his disappearance, William Tyrrell’s distraught parents give their most detailed interview yet and hit back at people who have accused them of being to blame.
NSW
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WILLIAM Tyrrell’s distraught mum and dad have given their most detailed and harrowing interview ever on the disappearance of the three-year-old, and hit back at people who have accused them of being to blame.
On the eve of the anniversary of his suspected abduction they spoke to the Daily Telegraph about how the crime had shattered their happy family.
Both William’s mum and dad, neither of whom can be identified for legal reasons, broke down at times during the interview, which dailytelegraph.com.au is running in two parts.
They described their nightmare as like being chained to a rollercoaster they cannot get off and appealed to his abductor to ‘bring William back”.
LISTEN TO PART 1 OF WILLIAM’S MUM & DAD’S MOST DETAILED INTERVIEW
She said: “There is no choice. The absolutely awful thing about life is that it goes on. Your world goes on around you. Your world has just fallen to pieces and fallen apart, but everybody else’s is the same.”
His dad added: “There’s a huge gap in our family, and trying to cope each day with him not being there. It’s a deep, wide gap.”
LISTEN TO PART 2 OF WILLIAM’S MUM & DAD’S HARROWING INTERVIEW
In the anguished interview with the Daily Telegraph, they spoke about the wideranging support they had received from the public but also malicious comments made on the internet about them.
William’s mum said: “We’ve received lots and lots of really supportive, loving, beautiful comments from so many people.
“The really distressing thing is that we see so many awful, awful, awful things that people write.
They write absolutely disgraceful things about us. They make really wild accusations against us.
“There have been people who have taken advantage of our pain and manipulated it.”
His dad angrily rounded on their critics, saying: “People should just shut up. They’ve got no idea and if they can’t fathom the impact that has on other siblings, on a relationship, a marriage, your work, everything else, their comments should have no value whatsoever.”
And in a message to William’s abductor his mum asked: “Why did you take him? What makes you think it’s OK to take a child? What makes you think it’s all right to steal a child? What makes it OK for you not to give him back?
“What makes it OK for you to submit a three and-a-half year-old boy to this? How can somebody think this way? How can this person’s friends and family and associates look this person in the eye every day, knowing or suspecting that they abducted a three and-a-half year old defenceless innocent child?
“You need to bring William back.”
A Walk for William will take place tomorrow in the northern NSW country town of Kendall to mark a year’s passing, in which police appear to be no closer to finding what happened to the boy.
His mum told the paper that she “kicks herself” for not recording the numberplates of two cars she saw parked outside her mother’s house the morning of her little boy’s abduction.
She said: “It was really odd because the whole time that mum and dad have lived at Kendall there has never ever been cars parked on that street, ever. It just didn’t make sense to me,” his mum said.
“And I kick myself, I kick myself in terms of why didn’t I note down the numberplates?
“But the logic part of me says, you know what, in Sydney, you’d write down a numberplate. In Kendall, there’s no reason to write down a numberplate. It is one of the safest towns in NSW.”
The two cars, which police say were kept secret for a year for “tactical reasons”, were parked across the road from William’s grandmother’s house on Benaroon Drive with their diver’s side windows down.
She said she noticed the cars while she was playing with William in the garden that morning and realised after he had vanished that they too were gone.
“I realised that night that William went missing that I had actually seen two cars,” she said.
“I raced down to the command van, because they’d set up a command centre in the backyard and I raced down there and said I’d remembered the two cars and I described the cars to them and all that sort of thing.
“Those cars were not here, they were not there when we were looking for him.”
She said she believed there was a reason the owners of the cars had not come forward and identified themselves to police.
“Either they’re involved, or they’ve seen what happened. And we just need them to come forward and say this is what we saw.,” she said.
Police are also seeking information about a four-wheel-drive spotted driving through the area around the time the toddler vanished and a green/grey sedan seen in Benaroon Drive on the morning of the disappearance.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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