Gary Jubelin book extract: The spotlight is focused on William Tyrrell’s foster mother
In late 2021 the William Tyrrell case is ramped up with a new dig to take place in the search for his body, but something does not feel right to Gary Jubelin as things become personal.
NSW
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The day doesn’t stop coming. The news reports are now saying the police are looking at whether William died in an accident and his body was later moved and hidden.
Reporters are reporting other reporters: ‘Multiple media reports suggest police are now probing whether the three-year-old fatally fell from the balcony of his foster grandmother’s home in Kendall.’
There seems no doubt in the reporters’ minds about who’s right: ‘Police close in on new person of interest’.
Their language – closing in – suggests a hunt surrounding its quarry. The theory William fell from the balcony is something we discounted.
For it to be correct, all of this must have happened: William was alive at 9.37am, when he was photographed wearing his Spider-Man costume, playing on the front deck.
Sometime after, he must have gone round to the back balcony, climbed up over the railing and fell from it. His foster mother, or his foster grandmother, went looking for William.
He was found, dead or badly injured. No one called an ambulance.
Instead, either or both of the women decided to cover up what’s happened. If only one of the women is involved up to this point, the other was either deceived or agreed to keep the secret. William’s sister didn’t see what’s going on, or if she did, she must have been convinced to stay silent. She was five. Her account in every conversation and interview with police was consistent.
When William’s foster father arrived back at the house, sometime around 10.30am, he met his wife in the driveway. By then, the neighbours say she had already been outside, looking for William.
She looked desperate, the neighbours will tell police, but she must have been pretending. Her husband must also have been lied to. Or else told William was dead and convinced to join in with the conspiracy.
At 10.57am William’s foster mother called 000 and already had her cover-story ready. She told the operator William left the front deck, ran onto the lawn and went around the side of the house. Nine minutes later the first police arrived.
The foster mother told the cops that William was playing at being a tiger. ‘We heard him roaring round the garden.’ That afternoon, William’s foster grandmother told police the same thing. William was ‘pretending to be a tiger. He was running around roaring.’
This story has remained consistent. From the time the first cop got there, the family were with people constantly, including police, well-meaning friends and neighbours, but also staff from the Department of Family and Community Services, who oversaw William’s foster placement. These people are trained to watch the parents in cases of missing children, looking for anything suspicious.
William’s foster mother, and maybe her husband also, must have managed to deceive them. That morning, or in the days that followed, while hundreds of cops and SES volunteers, and mums and dads, and teenage boys on trail bikes and girls on horseback from the local pony club, and TV crews from what will feel like every station in the country searched through their home, the street and the surrounding bush for any trace of William, somebody must have hidden William’s body.
One of the things that was raised with me in 2016, when we decided to re-interview the foster parents, was that his foster mother did drive down the road from the house that morning for a few hundred metres, then got out and ran around, apparently looking for the three-year-old. Maybe she used the car to move his body, I was told.
Maybe. But what would you do if your child went missing?
You’d run around looking for him outside, like she did. Then you’d get in the car, drive it a little way and get out to keep looking. The best I could say at the time about this whole idea is that it wasn’t likely. With nothing to suggest that is what happened, we decided to look elsewhere.
MY OWN STRATEGY?
I start getting messages from cops, in South Australia, Victoria and Queensland. They’re watching what’s going on. Some reckon it’s a disgrace for a commissioner to be criticising his own police force. Others say the commissioner knows exactly what he’s doing.
Think back over the press coverage, they tell me: the Sky News documentary in July, where David Laidlaw said he knows what happened to William; The Daily Telegraph story in September saying police had zeroed in on a new suspect; the new searches in November; the Apprehended Violence Order the police have applied for against the foster parents; the commissioner going on the radio this morning.
The whole thing might be orchestrated. What if, these cops argue, William’s foster parents have been under surveillance this whole time, with listening devices and telephone intercepts ready to capture anything they might let slip in conversation.
Today, the commissioner might be trying to drive a divide between you and the foster parents. He knows they trust you. They wrote to him asking that you be allowed to attend the inquest with them.
So making them believe I messed the case up would leave them feeling isolated. Some people suggest it’s the kind of strategy I might use. As a detective, if I was going to use listening devices, I’d want to have a plan in place to get the most from them, often by provoking a reaction.
The commissioner’s doing a Gary, one cop tells me. Building pressure.
I get a call from another colleague at the Sunday Telegraph, who says there’s going to be a non-publication order on the upcoming court hearing to decide on the Apprehended Violence Order.
It means the media cannot reveal the identity of anyone involved, including the person the order is supposed to be protecting. Nor can we report the evidence, or any information about the evidence, including what the police are alleging has happened or what the couple say by way of explanation.
The order will stay in place until the court case is decided and any appeal has worked its way through the system, or until the findings of the inquest into William’s disappearance are delivered, whichever is the latter. That could take years. In the meantime, for people reading about it in the paper, there will be the news that the police are seeking an AVO, then silence. In that silence, people will whisper rumours.
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
A reporter has tracked down one of William’s biological grandmothers, asking for her opinion. She’s glad about what the detectives are doing, saying her eyes have been on the suspect from the beginning.
One of the detectives has just rung her, she says, telling her they are digging up the garden bed beneath the balcony and that William was probably going to be found there. I doubt that’s true but it all gets reported.
Inside my apartment, I’m still sitting in the same, sweat-stained shorts and T-shirt I trained in that morning. On TV, at the search site, I can see the wind blowing through the stand of trees around the house where William went missing.
A cadaver dog is sent running over the garden, including the bed beneath the balcony. The TV reports that the police will wait until nightfall to test for blood by spraying special chemicals that glow blue on contact.
I watch uniformed cops searching the rainwater tank. We already searched it. Some journalists are passing round copies of the foster father’s witness statement, given to police a few days after William went missing.
There’s nothing in it I haven’t seen but the fact these confidential documents seem to be floating around adds to the feeling that this is becoming a shitstorm. Another journalist calls me, asking, ‘What do you think?’ ‘What the f —k do you mean, what do I think?’
I’m tired.
‘Well, I don’t believe it is the mother. But there’s the AVO. And they’ve clearly got evidence.’
‘On what are you basing that idea?’
‘Well, she drove down the street.’ It’s the same theory we looked at years ago now, that William’s foster mother got into her own mother’s grey Mazda, which was parked outside the house, and drove down the road between the tall, dark gum trees, stopping near the local riding school, where she got out. How has this got picked up and thrown about again today? The journalist says she knows what’s in the police’s application for the Apprehended Violence Order. If that is true, I’d love to know who leaked it. ‘I’ve got it on good authority there’s a typed-up murder warrant ready for [the foster mother’s] arrest,’ she tells me.
‘I thought you were smarter,’ I say.
‘We don’t use warrants to arrest someone for murder. So you don’t type up a murder warrant. I don’t know where you’re getting your information.’ She is silent. We end
the conversation.
POWERLESS
I’m powerless, reduced to reading the constantly updating news stories in the empty lounge room of my apartment. A headline reads, ‘A suspect in the disappearance of William Tyrrell has had a child removed from her custody.’
My heart sinks. Again, the paper doesn’t name the suspect, or the child that has been taken from her, but you don’t have to look far to work out their identities. The same paper says the suspect is one of those against whom the police want to get the Apprehended Violence Order. Another paper reads ‘Police seek AVO against Tyrrell’s foster parents.’
I close my eyes, running my hand over my bowed head. It’s the child I feel sorry for. Where is that child now? In the care of the State Government. Or in another foster home. Alone.
I have a sick feeling in my throat, thinking about what that child is going through. The court order means nobody can name them.
They can’t speak out. Already in their short life they have seen William go missing. Now they have been taken away. Is that child reading the same headlines I am? If they have a phone, or a computer, or can see a television, they could barely miss it.
The AVO. Cadaver dogs. The water tanks. The balcony.
Looking up, I see the sky is growing darker outside. Right now, half of Sydney, if not half of the country, must be watching the evening news and saying, ‘Oh, it’s the foster mother. They’ve got an AVO against her.’ The newspapers are now saying the police will go to court and allege something happened to the child this month. That the child had been bruised. Only the application has not been heard in court yet, meaning these details should never have been made public. If this is a deliberate strategy, I would never have gone this far.
But it feels like everybody is against me on this one.
Another newspaper story reads: ‘The chief suspect in the disappearance of William Tyrrell has had a child removed from her custody.’
That’s a low blow, calling someone the chief suspect. It’s only because the newspaper can’t name the person that they have the courage to say that. Were they to name them without being certain of their guilt and they would have a case to answer for defamation. Call them only ‘the chief suspect’ and, it seems, you can get away with almost anything.
Late that night, I’m still sitting alone and unwashed in my apartment, a silent witness to the constantly repeating news on television. The State Police Minister, David Elliott, has waded in, responding to questions about the claim that we wasted time chasing the wrong people. He says there will be an internal review of the investigation. ‘It’s the least that we can offer the family and it’s the least we can offer the community,’ he tells the pack of reporters.
Bring it on. Take this to a review. But let’s do this in public. Allow people to see what has really been done here.
Badness by Gary Jubelin will be published by HarperCollins on September 7 and is available to pre-order now. For more, listen to Gary’s phenomenally successful I Catch Killers wherever you get your podcasts.
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