William Tyrrell person of interest Paul Savage complains about police focus
William Tyrrell investigators defied orders and secretly reviewed their own covert operation on a key person of interest after hearing the former suspect mutter to himself “why are they targeting me?”
Police & Courts
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William Tyrrell investigators defied orders and secretly reviewed their own covert operation on a key person of interest after hearing the former suspect mutter to himself “why are they targeting me?”
When their boss, then-Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubelin, found out he was “furious”, a court has heard, and initially refused to let one of the detectives into a team meeting.
The evidence aired in the Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday provided further insight into how split the strike force investigating one of NSW’s most high profile disappearances was in 2017.
Jubelin quit the force last year after being removed from the investigation into three-year-old William’s disappearance in Kendall in September, 2014.
He has been charged with illegally recording four conversations with person of interest Paul Savage during the case.
Jubelin has pleaded not guilty.
Savage has strenuously denied any involvement in William’s disappearance and has not been charged.
The focus on the 75-year-old widower became a sore point for the strike force, with some detectives disagreeing with the intense focus on him.
In 2017, detectives created the “Spider-Man suit strategy”, the court heard.
That involved placing a child’s Spider-Man suit on a bushtrack that Savage walked every morning, and then monitoring phone calls and listening devices hidden inside the widower’s home to see how he would react.
However, there was conjecture within the strike force about exactly when Savage spotted the suit.
The court has heard the suit was placed on the track on July 26, 2017.
Surveillance operatives hiding in the bush with cameras recorded Savage stopping for 12 seconds near the suit before walking on.
The suit was put there again the next day. Savage reported it to police.
After initially denying seeing the suit on July 26, Savage told Jubelin that he did see the “top” part of the suit and a white part.
That was significant, the court heard, because the suit that William disappeared in had a white feature on it while the suit Savage saw didn’t.
Two new witnesses emerged in the Crown case today, much to the dissatisfaction of Magistrate Ross Hudson, who urged police to get their act together.
“How are police running this investigation?” he questioned.
The witnesses were both detectives who worked on the strike force, including Detective Senior Constable Paul Apthorpe.
He monitored the recordings from bugs inside Savage’s home for months.
He told the court Savage, who often spoke to himself or his dead wife, said things like “I don’t understand why they don’t believe me, I didn’t see that suit on 26th, why are they targeting me?”
“After hearing what Savage was saying, the question came into my mind that perhaps he was telling the truth about only seeing the suit on the 27th not the 26th and I wanted to check,” he told the court.
But Jubelin told him not to interfere with the observations of the surveillance branch, who were there.
Disobeying orders, Const Apthorpe went back to the scene of the Spider-Man suit strategy and tried to retrace Savage’s steps.
In the end, the review couldn’t exclude that Savage hadn’t seen the suit on July 26.
He also retrieved the Spider-Man suit from an evidence bag in October, 2017, and photographed it again.
When Jubelin learned what was happening, he was furious, Const Apthorpe said.
At one point, Jubelin told Const Apthorpe he couldn’t go into a meeting because he wasn’t “on board with the Savage strategy”.
“He said ‘you like him, you don’t believe he did it,” Const Apthorpe told the court.
Const Apthorpe told Jubelin it didn’t matter if he believed Savage or not, he was still working on the case.
Jubelin told him he could join the meeting but not to say a “single word”.
“It is unbelievable you guys went and did those inquiries,” Const Apthorpe claimed Jubelin said.
The hearing continues.