Bill Spedding calls for inquiry into William Tyrrell investigation
A man whose life was devastated by the William Tyrrell investigation has given his view on its former lead detective.
A white goods repairman who wrongly found himself at the centre of the police probe into William Tyrrell’s disappearance has called for an independent inquiry into the investigation.
Bill Spedding sued the State of NSW in 2022, receiving a $1.8m payout after a judge found he had been the victim of “concocted and false” allegations that were pursued by police investigating William’s case.
Mr Spedding, now in his 70s, was publicly outed as a person of interest after William vanished from Kendall in 2014. He was cleared of wrongdoing and was never charged but his reputation “was comprehensively destroyed” in the course of the investigation, a judge has said.
Speaking to news.com.au’s podcast Witness: William Tyrrell, Mr Spedding recalled the feverish media harassment and the threats he received from members of the public during those early years.
Mr Spedding was asked what his thoughts were on Gary Jubelin – the former lead detective on Strike Force Rosann – almost a decade on from the ordeal that changed his life forever.
“I only know him as a very aggressive policeman. I don’t know him personally, and I think he was handed a poisoned chalice,” he said.
“That he was handed something that was … going to cause him a lot of grief.”
Mr Spedding has now called for an inquiry into the investigation, saying the actions that devastated his life were allowed by the police hierarchy: “And at no point was that plan of action questioned.”
He recalled being “bewildered” at the line of questioning he faced during a six-hour police interview early in the investigation, in which detectives posited that he had abducted the missing boy, Mr Spedding said.
“I did (trust the police) at first because a little boy went missing and I knew they had to look for this little fella.”
An anonymous tip later led to Mr Spedding being charged in 2015 with historical child sex offences, unrelated to the Tyrrell case, despite a judge throwing the same allegations out of court decades earlier.
That judge had described the person who made the claims as “obsessive, compulsive and bizarre”, and their story as containing inconsistencies “so numerous” there were too many to reference.
Mr Spedding spent a brief stint behind bars on remand after police opposed bail before the charges were again dismissed in 2018.
Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison found police had “no reasonable or probable cause” to prosecute Mr Spedding, adding they possessed “material that must, and certainly should, have led them to doubt the viability of the case”.
He ruled the historical charges were “were brought for the dominant purpose of furthering the investigation of Mr Spedding as a suspect in the disappearance of William Tyrrell … and to punish him for his suspected involvement”.
Peter O’Brien, Mr Spedding’s lawyer, told news.com.au the police’s focus on his client had caused an “incalculable amount of damage” to Mr Spedding and his family.
“What it seems to have done in this case is put him at the centre and entirely by coincidence for the fact that he was a washing machine repairman” he said, “going about his ordinary daily work that brought him to the centre of the disappearance of a child that’s raised the entirety of Australia’s concerns.”
Mr Spedding had fielded a call from the Kendall home William was last seen on the day the three-year-old vanished, with the boy’s foster mum seeking the tradie to come and fix the washing machine.
He missed the call, and says he was at a school assembly in another town at the time William went missing.
Mr O’Brien accepted police were right to do “whatever they could” to find William and solve a mystery that had “permeated well into the community psyche”.
But, he said, “they focused too heavily on Bill Spending once they had what was probably a distorted piece of fabricated information on an anonymous tip”.
Mr Spedding’s face and name were slashed across newspapers and TV news, which saw him receive anonymous death threats on his home phone, and on one occasion grabbed around the throat by a stranger while out walking.
His wife, Margaret, recalled the day police officers came to their home and “took him away”.
“I just lost it,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was doing … I locked myself in the house for days.
“I wasn’t a game to go outside. Because of the media and everything.”
There were also four more people whose lives were up-ended by the investigation – the Spedding’s children. He says they still have not fully recovered.
“They were pulled out from a stable home. To a completely unstable environment,” Mr Spedding said.
“They were … severed from their friends, severed from their sporting activities, their family, which was us. And there was a lot of rebellion generated because of that.”
Former homicide detective Mr Jubelin formally took over Strike Force Rosann in February 2015, close to five months after William went missing.
He told news.com.au of holding “concerns” before he took charge “because the whole focus of the investigation at that stage was on Bill Spedding”.
The ex-cop said he asked for a raid on Mr Spedding’s house and office to be stopped in January 2015, before he officially led the team, as he “wanted to approach it … not so overtly”.
“Once you’ve executed the search warrant, you’ve put your hand up and said, basically, ‘we think you’re the suspect for it’. I didn’t want to go down that path.”
He was leading Strike Force Rosann when its detectives charged Mr Spedding with the doomed historical allegations.
Mr Jubelin told news.com.au he accepted the decision of Justice Harrison in the 2022 lawsuit but does not feel sorry for Mr Spedding.
He has also previously called for an independent inquiry to assess the Tyrrell investigation.
Contact: witness@news.com.au
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