Is the truth about William Tyrrell about to be revealed?
A former police chief has described how strict laws around the foster care system hampered the search for missing three-year-old William Tyrrell.
As detectives hint that the mystery of what happened to William Tyrrell might soon be solved, police have revealed how strict state laws hampered the search and raised public suspicion.
The entire country was on edge back in 2014 when the three-year-old boy wearing his Spider-Man suit vanished from a tiny NSW town.
It sparked one of the largest police investigations in Australian history.
From the day William went missing from his foster grandmother’s house in Kendall seven years ago, restrictive privacy laws wielded by child welfare authorities constrained investigators.
Now one of Australia’s foremost former detectives has revealed how a hamstrung search and an increasingly sceptical public blighted the case from the start.
Laws hampered search in early days
William was playing with his five-year-old sister in the yard at his foster grandmother’s house on Benaroon Drive, Kendall, on the NSW mid-north coast on September 12, 2014, when she suddenly couldn’t find him.
But because he was in the foster system, detectives were immediately banned from publicly identifying members of William’s biological and adopted families.
Internationally regarded ex-NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas has described how the tough laws hindered police and raised “scepticism” in the community.
Mr Kaldas told 7 News Investigates that the legal issues they faced meant instead of the missing boy’s traumatised family fronting the cameras in the wake of his disappearance, it was a “family friend” who stood beside police in the small town.
He said while the strict state laws were in place to protect the privacy of those in the foster care system, it made the job of detectives much harder in the early days of the investigation.
“It made it very difficult for the initial investigative police holding press conferences and briefings because they were tiptoeing around the issue because of privacy reasons and legal reasons and it made them look like they weren’t telling the whole story,” he said.
“It was incredibly well-intentioned and they were doing the right thing by abiding by what you can and can’t say about children, particularly when they’ve been in foster care. But it was a very difficult situation for those who dealt with it initially.”
‘Extremely confusing’ from the outset
William and his five-year-old sister had been living with the same foster parents at the time of his disappearance.
On the night of September 11, the two children and their foster parents made the five-hour drive from Sydney.
The next morning as the foster father went off to have a Zoom meeting, William went to play in the yard as his foster mother and grandmother drank tea.
His foster mother, who cannot be identified because of the strict laws, said William had wandered off only for a few minutes when she noticed he was silent and went looking for him in the yard.
When the foster father arrived home, neighbours were already looking for William – and then a full-scale search by police and SES ensued.
Part two of Channel 7’s two-part series on the William Tyrrell mystery to screen next week has information that could finally shed light on who was responsible for the young boy’s disappearance.
Channel 7 reporter Michael Usher told the program on Sunday night that from early on the Tyrrell case was “extremely confusing”.
“I think from the very beginning it really hindered and hurt the police case,” he said.
“To make matters worse, the public were growing increasingly sceptical.
“Even I remember thinking this is all very strange, there is something they aren’t telling us.”
Nick Kaldas said the customary pattern of a missing child case, with a search and a public appeal campaign, had been hampered by the huge question mark over the identity of William’s family.
“It was difficult to tell the truth about William’s status because he had foster parents, he had biological parents, he had Family and Children’s Services involved,” Mr Kaldas said.
“And they also had an outside agency partly caring for him as well.
“And then you had the police involved, so this poor little boy was lost in and amongst all of that and his message and his story wasn’t able to be told properly.”
‘People will assume I don’t care’
William’s biological mother, who also cannot be identified, has said the child protection laws have essentially silenced her from making a public appeal in which she can be identified.
She described them as “cruel” and said despite publicity about her and William’s biological father having drug problems before the boy was fostered out, they had been getting their lives back on track after William was born.
“I don’t care about my privacy. It’s got me nowhere. I want to stand up and tell people the real story,” she said.
“Because I haven’t come out and said anything, people are going to assume I don’t care.
“It makes me angry. Angry at the system.”
Fruitless search baffles investigators
On the morning William disappeared, he had been playing a game in which he “roared” like a tiger.
His foster mother said when she noticed he was no longer making a sound, she went and searched the garden but could find no “red” (of his Spider-Man suit) among the “green”.
She later said she had seen two strange cars parked in the street.
Within hours of her calling Triple-0, hundreds of volunteers, SES and RFS members and police were scouring bushland near the property.
But the search would prove fruitless.
Strike Force Rossann detectives conducted multiple searches around the home and in surrounding areas, but no significant clues were ever found and search dogs came up with nothing.
In 2016, the NSW Government announced a $1 million reward for information that led to the recovery of William.
Over the years, subsequent searches for William have been made, and in March 2019, a coronial inquest was launched into his death.
But that inquest was halted in recent weeks as detectives announced new information had “come to light” and revisited the Benaroon Drive house where William vanished.
Could case finally be solved?
On the seventh anniversary of William’s disappearance, police announced that detectives had returned to Kendall with specialist forensic officers to look at the home and nearby areas.
Photos and footage of detectives at the foster grandmother’s former home show them poring over images relating to the case.
“Further information has since come to light, as part of our ongoing review of the materials gathered by investigators since the moment William went missing seven years ago,” officer-in-charge Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw said.
“As our team continue to conduct inquiries and explore all avenues of investigation, our focus has been identifying if anything has been missed, or if there are any details – no matter how small – that need to be clarified.
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“Police remain committed to finding out what happened to William, but our most important job here is to bring him home for both families.”
The second part of 7 News Investigates’ special into William’s disappearance will air on Sunday, September 26 at 7pm.
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