Cleo Smith’s alleged abductor Terence Kelly shared Bratz doll photos to social media

The man accused of abducting Western Australian girl Cleo Smith from her family tent has shared multiple photos of himself with Bratz dolls to social media.

The man accused of abducting Western Australian girl Cleo Smith from her family’s campsite has been identified as Carnarvon man Terence Darrell Kelly.

The 36-year-old was apprehended by WA Police after detectives raided his Tonkin Crescent residence at 12.46am on Wednesday, allegedly retrieving Cleo in the process.

WA Police Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine said his team found Cleo in physically good health sitting in a bedroom in Kelly’s house.

“The lights were on and she was playing with toys, I think that’s about all I want to say. This is still a matter that needs to go before the courts. There’s certain aspects about what we saw that is going to be evidence,” he said.

Kelly was subsequently charged with forcibly or fraudulently taking or enticing a child on Thursday. He was remanded in custody for four weeks.

The man accused of abducting four-year-old Cleo Smith has been identified as Carnarvon man, Terence Kelly.

Terence Kelly shared a photograph of bookcases full of dolls to social media. Picture: Facebook

Kelly shared this photograph of bookcases holding dolls to social media. Picture: Facebook

Responding to questions on Thursday, the head of Taskforce Rodia, Superintendent Rod Wilde, declined to comment on whether a doll collection was found inside Kelly’s house.

Kelly posted photos to Facebook in April 2020 in his car with a doll, while other photos show him posing for selfies with Bratz dolls in the frame.

More images shared to Kelly’s Facebook account show bookcases full of dolls.

Neighbours described Mr Kelly as a loner who lived alone in the public housing property.

He’s been acting a bit strange lately, he would get in his car drive that fast,” one neighbour said, according to The Age.

“He doesn’t have his dog out the front, he had his dog out the back, but for all this week he had his dog out the front.”

Another neighbour mentioned he borrowed a lawnmower from Mr Kelly on Monday, convinced the 36-year-old was acting “normal”.

“He’d say hello and ask for a smoke,” she said.

“I didn’t think he would be like that but nobody thought that.”

Other photos show Mr Kelly posing for selfies with Bratz dolls in the frame.

WA Premier Mark McGowan praised police analysts and detectives on Thursday as media descended on the small town of just 5500 residents, about 900km north of Perth.

“They analyse a lot of the phone material … and that’s a painstaking job as there’s thousands and thousands of calls that need to be looked at,” he said.

“That’s a massive task, they did it methodically and in a very painstaking way to uncover information and I’d just like to thank them.

“I think there was a lot of information that put the clues together, it was both human intelligence, detective work around the town and also analytical work.”

Cleo was allegedly abducted from the family tent at the Quobba Blowholes campground, in the early hours of October 16.

The girl woke up to ask her mum for water at about 1.30am. When Ellie Smith and Cleo’s stepfather Jake Gliddon woke up at around 6am, they found her missing, sparking a massive search.

Cleo Smith with mother Ellie Smith and stepfather Jake Gliddon on Thursday. Picture: Colin Murty

Initially it was believed she had wandered off in the middle of the night, but police soon began to suspect she had been abducted.

Police allege her sleeping bag was also missing and the entrance to the tent was unzipped to a height that the young girl could not have reached to let herself out – suggesting she had been taken.

A team of more than 100 officers and analysts worked around the clock for weeks, sifting through mountains of information including witness statements, calls to Crime Stoppers, CCTV and mobile phone data.

“There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pieces of information, it‘s really joining the dots,” lead investigator Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde said on Thursday.

“We were looking for something that occurred at the Blowholes, this information would be relevant to that, so we could track people in certain locations at certain times. That is what we look to identify, and from that we build a picture of who was there and who shouldn’t have been there, then to us identifying this person.”

A key clue was a car spotted speeding away from the campsite at around 3am on the night Cleo was taken.

Asked if Kelly was the driver of the car, Mr Wilde said, “That hasn’t been confirmed as yet, but certainly we would say that that car was significant and it was in the right time frame.”

A detective fields questions outside the Carnarvon Courthouse. Picture: Tamati Smith/Getty

Mr Wilde described the probe as a “very quick-moving investigation”, with the man only becoming a suspect late on Tuesday afternoon.

“He was arrested not long after that,” he said.

He said Cleo was “physically fine” after her alleged abduction, but police still needed to establish what happened during the 18 days she was missing, describing it as a “traumatic event”.

“Obviously there’s a process to go through with our child specialist interviewers that are here now,” he said.

“Depending on how she is … we intend to start that (part of the investigation) today.”

Shortly after the incredible find, forensic teams arrived at the Carnarvon house where Cleo was discovered – which is just minutes away from her family home – and set up a marquee in preparation of a thorough search, which is expected to take days or even weeks.

Police were seen removing numerous items from the house on Wednesday, including dozens of paper bags of evidence and a large, rolled-up rug.

Investigators will now sift through mountains of data and forensic items to establish exactly what happened on the night she went missing and in the intervening days.

“The investigation into what has happened from now really has started again, because we’ve got Cleo, you know, she is alive and well,” WA Police deputy commissioner Col Blanch told The West Live on Wednesday.

“Now we’ve got to make sure we dot the Is and cross the Ts, do everything according to law and thoroughly and make sure we put together a good brief of evidence, if there is one.”