William Tyrrell’s family probes police procedure in search

William Tyrrell’s parents’ lawyer has many questions, as an inquest into his disappearance opens.

Evidence presented at the reopening of the coronial inquest into William Tyrrell’s disappearance suggests police think William must have been taken by a stranger. Picture: Supplied

A small child is snatched off the street, bundled into a car and never seen again.

It is about as unlikely a crime as ever is committed, but it is the only explanation police have been able to come up with for the disappearance of three-year-old foster child William Tyrrell.

The evidence presented at the reopening of the coronial inquest into William’s disappearance yesterday suggests police think William must have been taken by a stranger, perhaps a “sneaky” character who had been thinking about kidnap for some time.

Counsel assisting, Gerard Craddock SC, in his opening ­address served up a variety of statistics: 97 per cent of murdered children are killed by somebody they know. The corollary: in just 3 per cent of cases are they killed by strangers. Yet that may have been what happened to William, a situation described as “nightmarish” for his family.

Mr Craddock went on: in more than 70 per cent of cases, bodies of murdered children are found less than 100m from where they were last seen alive.

No trace of William has been found, in a search area of more than 3sq km. But then the court also heard that a full forensic search, described as a “re-search” of the area around Benaroon Drive in Kendall, NSW, where William was last seen, wasn’t carried out until June 2018.

That’s almost four years after he disappeared.

Police found small bones, backpacks, bags, toys, even a speargun, but none of it was connected to William.

The court was shown photographs of the search, many of them supplied by Nationwide News: an officer tackling lantana with a machete; an officer with a cadaver dog; an officer with a special steel tool to plunge into the dirt, bringing up odours that may be of interest to a cadaver dog.

It was the date of the search that interested the newest lawyer at the inquest, Michelle Swift. The bar table has only recently been expanded to allow for the presence of a lawyer for William’s biological family.

He wasn’t in their care when he went missing. He was living with foster parents. Still, this is an inquiry into the disappearance of their son. The parents didn’t know they could have a lawyer, and testified without one, during the last hearings in March.

NSW Legal Aid was alerted, and the family now has Ms Swift and, in a move that suggests she has many questions, she rose on the first day. How had the passing of so much time affected the search? How much evidence may have been lost, or eroded?

Answers were not immediately forthcoming.

Mr Craddock denied police had since “given up” and were no longer looking for William. “The criminal investigation continues. There are detectives following leads as we speak,” he said.

“NSW police continue to believe that the case can be solved.”

The hearing was attended by familiar faces including former detective Gary Jubelin, who ran the investigation for three years, but he was there as a civilian.

Mr Jubelin, whose career has been chronicled in a true crime book and a TV drama, was relieved of his responsibility for the Tyrrell case earlier this year.

He has since quit the force and is facing four criminal charges related to his handling of the case.

He has pleaded not guilty, and will have his own day in court in September.

William’s biological mother, who cannot be named, arrived looking hopeful but fled, in tears, in a taxi within minutes.

His ­father remained, stoic and ­patient, in the front row.

William had been playing outside, supervised by his foster mother, at the time of his dis­appearance. His foster father had left the house an hour earlier.

Mr Craddock said people called to testify during the inquest should not be considered suspects.

The inquest will run until the end of the month.