Cleo Smith: What we know about the man in custody

Police acting on community reports saw a pattern of suspicious activity in Tonkin Crescent that led them to Cleo Smith’s suspected kidnapper.

There was no particular lead that led police to the Tonkin Crescent property where Cleo Smith was found.

But police detectives and intelligence analysts acting on community reports began seeing a pattern of suspicious activity in that quiet cul-de-sac in the Brockman suburb that allowed them to identify a 36-year-old suspect.

He was not linked to the family in any way, no connection has been established, but his habits over the past 18 days had raised suspicions with some.

The net was closing Tuesday afternoon but by evening Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch and Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde made the call to roll in at 12.46am WA time (3.46am AEST) Wednesday morning.

Police outside the Carnarvon house where Cleo Smith was found. Picture: 9 News

“There were lots of things, there were car movements, there were phone movements, there were antecedents of people, the jigsaw fit the puzzle,” Blanch said.

“But it took really good intelligence analysts and detectives and specialists to look at all of that information, put it together, and go: ‘You know what, that doesn’t seem right to me. I’ve been doing this a long time and we’re gonna act on it’.

“That’s how we get results.”

Some of the reports from the small community in Carnarvon, population 4400, included the suspect buying toddler nappies when no-one knew he had a toddler as well as other groceries he would not normally purchase from the local Woolworths a few streets away.

Then there were the laps he would do about his own home, almost his own surveillance to see if anyone was watching him and with a $1 million award announced for finding Cleo everyone was watching everyone for clues.

They said he had a dog which he usually kept in the backyard, but said he had put the dog in the front yard in recent weeks.

The house is surrounded by high fences and there is a blue/grey Mazda sedan in the driveway.

In the end she was found just two minutes away from the police station headquarters of Task Force Rodia.

The suspect was still being questioned on Wednesday and forensic detectives were pouring through his house.

He was a well known man to the local community, a large man described as quiet and someone who very much kept to himself.

He would be seen coming and going from the house, separated from his neighbouring properties by less than 20m.

Neighbours were in shock when detectives moved onto the property.

Four-year-old Cleo Smith has been reunited with her family.

Phone data analysis was critical in tracing his last movements and elevating him above other suspects.

Brockman is a modest, working-class suburb just seven minutes away from Cleo’s family home on the outskirts of the town of Carnarvon.

It is a tiny suburb not even one square kilometre in size with less than 450 homes on large blocks of more than 700 sqm.

In Tonkin Crescent, where Cleo was found, the houses were built around the late 1970s as part of a housing subdivision by the public housing authority in Western Australia known as Homeswest.

During the past couple of decades some of the public housing has been sold off to private owners but there remains a mix or private and state owned housing.

Carnarvon real estate agents say it is a quiet residential area.

The suburb from where Cleo was rescued is filled with mainly three-bedroom, one bathroom homes made of brick veneer which rent for around $270 a week and have a median house price of $287,500.

Along Tonkin Crescent, the homes back onto bushland and are a short walk away from a bridge which joins the area to the popular tourist attraction of Babbage Island.

Most of the population in Brockman are couples with and without children with a median age of about 38 years old.